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The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN)
often gets asked what are the "top ten" issues in World Conservation today.
Usually, IUCN does not answer in those terms. After all, how do you determine what will be
the major conservation problems of the next decade? How do you decide whether climate
change is more important to world conservation than is the loss of a dozen species?
Inevitably, any response to such a question is arbitrary and is a matter of perspective.
There is no objective way of making such determinations.
Having said that, several key questions related to world
conservation will be foremost on people's minds as they gather for the World Conservation
Congress in Montreal. So, here is an arbitrary, incomplete, and partial list of the
"top ten" questions that conservationists will seek to resolve when they meet in
Canada:
1. What role does private enterprise and business play in
conservation? What role should it play? Traditionally, business was considered "the
enemy" by many environmentalists. However, it has become increasingly clear that the
private sector plays a major role in the protection (as well as the destruction) of the
environment. So how can conservationists work closely with the private sector for the
common goal of sustainable development? While some conservation organisations have learned
to work in a much more productive and less confrontational way with business and industry,
others still feel this is reprehensible. They feel that the role of NGOs is to be neutral
monitors of the work of businesses. Still, the fact remains that most of the world's
natural resources are now owned and/or managed by private businesses. How can we achieve
sustainable development unless we influence the way business uses these resources? And how
should governments, non-governmental organisations and others work with the private sector
in order to ensure that their actions help us achieve sustainable development? What are
the different roles of governments, NGOs and businesses vis a vis environmental
protection? Which businesses should conservationists work with, and which should they work
against? The concept of "eco-efficiency" has been touted as the new goal for
environmentally-concerned businesses, but what does it really mean and how can it be
implemented? To seek answers to these questions, IUCN has invited prominent businesspeople
to participate in its World Conservation Congress. The idea is that these and other
related questions can be openly discussed and both groups can share experiences, suggest
ways forward, and learn from each other.
2. How do we reconcile the necessary use of natural resources
with their long-term conservation? All too often conservation is seen to be about not
using natural resources in order to protect them. But all species, including humans, need
to use natural resources in order to survive. This is a fact of life. The question is
therefore not whether humans should or shouldn't use certain natural resources (for they
do) but rather how to ensure that this use is sustainable. This is not to say that in some
cases, the resources should not be fully protected, but rather to acknowledge that there
are different strategies for conserving resources, and in some cases these strategies will
include their use. Take the case of the Ron Palm in Niger. IUCN has been working for
several years with local people in Southern Niger to conserve the Ron Palm (Borassus
aethiopium), which the local people use extensively. The leaves and the wood of this palm
are used for shelter and implements, the fruit is eaten, as are the flowers and the root.
No part of the tree is useless. Obviously, any conservation strategy for the Ron Palm
needs to take its use into account. Indeed, it needs to turn this use into an asset. The
fact that this tree is used so extensively gives it a tremendous value, both economic and
cultural. This value, in turn, makes it easy to convince people that the tree should be
conserved. The question then becomes not "Why should the Ron Palm be conserved?"
but rather "How to conserve it?" Clearly, in this case, conservation means using
the tree, but ensuring that this use does not go beyond the tree's natural capability to
reproduce. In order to ensure this, the people need to know that they will be able to reap
the fruits of the Ron Palm's conservation. They need to know that by moderating their use
of the palm and its products, they will be able to pass more of them on to their children
and grandchildren. In some cases, this will mean ensuring that the communities have legal
ownership and "custody" over these natural resources. Understanding what makes
use of natural resources sustainable or unsustainable in different ecological, cultural,
social, and economic contexts will be an important discussion at the World Conservation
Congress. Indeed, a whole stream of workshops (stream 1) is designed to explore this
issue.
3. How are the costs and benefits of conservation distributed?
Like most human activities, conservation has both costs and benefits. Establishing
protected areas or protecting species means economic and social costs. In the case of a
protected area, there are opportunity costs in the sense that if the area were not a
protected area, it could be used for agriculture or some other use. But conservation also
brings benefits. Again, in the case of the protected area, it might draw tourism, it might
be the source of some new plant that cures a previously incurable disease, or it might act
as a filter to provide freshwater for communities downstream. All too often these benefits
are overlooked. But we also tend to overlook the whole issue of how both the costs and the
benefits are distributed. For instance, who benefits from the park? Is it the local
people, is it central government, or is it foreign tourists and conservation
organisations? Is it a big multinational pharmaceutical corporation, or a big hotel
company? Or does everyone benefit? Likewise, who is paying the costs? Is it the local
people that could otherwise use the land for agriculture? Or is it the central government?
Is the international community paying for its fair share? The answers to these kinds of
questions will help determine whether or not the park is viable in the long-term. In the
same way, one of the important discussions now taking place in the context of the
Biodiversity Convention is the question of access to genetic resources. Again, this is a
question of who pays the costs and who derives the benefits. Plants and animals are
veritable libraries of genetic information. This information can be used by pharmaceutical
companies, the seed industry, and others to make money. How will those benefits be
distributed, and what portion of those benefits (if any?) should go to the local people
who have lived with the resources and presumably protected it for centuries? This
invariably leads into a very complicated political, economic, and legal discussion.
Another variant on this discussion relates to the different roles and responsibilities vis
a vis conservation for developed and developing countries. All too often the debate ends
up in sterile posturing and polarization characterised by both sides blaming the other for
the world's ills. In Montreal we hope to be able to move beyond these unfruitful debates
and into in-depth discussions of the fundamental underlying issues of cost-benefit
distribution. Many of the workshops in Montreal that focus on the biodiversity convention
will inevitably end up discussing these issues.
4. How will we deal with the impending water crises? Water is
essential for human survival, and yet we have fundamentally altered the planet's capacity
to provide us with the water we need to survive. We have affected every part of the water
cycle. We have polluted sources of fresh water, destroyed forests and wetlands that help
filter water and regulate its release, and we are changing global weather patterns. Many
parts of the world are already feeling the impacts of these interventions. It is no wonder
that some experts say the lack of fresh water will be the most important environment and
development problem of the next century. And water is not only an environmental problem.
It also has profound implications for global security. Wars have in the past been fought
over sources of water, and as the availability of water resources declines, these
conflicts are likely to increase in number and in gravity. Our natural system regulates
water through a complex interaction of weather patterns, biological systems, and
geophysical processes. If we are to survive and thrive, these must be maintained. In
Montreal there will be an entire workshop dedicated to issues of water and population, and
one talking about global environmental security.
5. What can the global community do to halt the depletion of the
world's forests, both tropical and temperate, while still deriving benefits from their
use? For a long time we have known that tropical forests are one of the largest
repositories of biodiversity on Earth, and as a result, conservationists have strongly
advocated that the destruction of these tropical forests should be stopped. At the same
time, deforestation of non-tropical forests (the so-called boreal and temperate forests)
has also increased at tremendous rates. Indeed, most of the world's exports of wood and
timber products comes from temperate and boreal forests. Also, the last few years have
seen a drastic increase in the deforestation of Russia's Siberian forests. In Montreal, a
new emphasis will be placed on the conservation of these uHtemperate and boreal forests.
Indeed, there are plans to establish a "Boreal and Temperate Forest" programme
in IUCN that will strengthen the organisation's overall work on forest ecosystems. At the
same time, extensive discussions will address the role of the international and
intergovernmental processes that have been established to protect the world's forests,
processes such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Forests of the UN, the World Commission
on Forests and Sustainable Development, among others. Are these processes working? What
else can be done? Forests and forest products are major sources of income for many
countries. Can this fact be reconciled with the long-term protection of forests?
6. How do we halt the destruction of the world's coral reefs?
The world's coral reefs are bountiful ecosystems that hold as much biodiversity as
tropical forests. They also provide food and a source of income for many of the people
living along tropical coastlines, who are also sheltered from storms by reefs. Still, the
degradation of reefs has not received as much global attention as tropical deforestation.
Pollution, siltation, unregulated tourism, over fishing, and climate change all have
serious impacts on coral reefs. A coalition of organisations interested in marine
conservation has declared 1997 the Year of the Coral Reef and a global coral reef
initiative has been put in place. But what will these processes seek to accomplish? How
will they make a difference? What else can be done? The degradation of coral reefs, the
need to conserve them, and the processes that have been established to do so, will all be
a central part of the discussions in Montreal.
7. How can conservationists use economics as a tool in their
work? For too long most environmentalists have paid too little attention to economics,
while most economists have disregarded the environmental consequences of their work. This
despite the fact that economics can be a very important tool in the conservation of nature
- This article was reproduced with the kind permission of the author.
It was copied with permission from the Official Web Site of the International Union for
the Conservation of Nature. Copyright remains with the author and IUCN. The IUCN web site
may be reached via the following link:
IUCN: The
International Union for the Conservation of Nature
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