Showing posts by Liat Racin.
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Land Continues to Trigger Violence in Kenya
›March 5, 2008 // By Liat RacinLand clashes lie at the heart of a recent outbreak of violence at the foot of Mount Elgon in western Kenya that left at least a dozen people—including several children—dead. Although President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga reached a power-sharing agreement last week, BBC News reports that post-election strife continues to reignite pre-existing conflicts over land and livelihoods in the country. Regions with longstanding violent feuds over land have been hit worst by the latest bloodshed.
According to Bernard Muli, a local police chief, the Sabaot Land Defence Force (SLDF) is responsible for the latest wave of attacks. The SLDF seeks to avenge alleged discrimination against the Soy clan in the government’s Chebyuk Settlement Scheme, which redistributed land in the area. The SLDF is one of the most powerful and best-armed non-state groups in Kenya, according to the International Crisis Group.
Many analysts have noted the links between historical land grievances in Kenya and the violence that followed the country’s multi-party elections in the 1990s. In a recent blog post on the New Security Beat, Colin Kahl notes how this unresolved issue resurfaced again during the latest elections. -
Uganda, Rwanda, DRC Join Together to Protect Threatened Mountain Gorillas
›February 26, 2008 // By Liat RacinRwanda, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) announced an unprecedented joint effort to save the critically endangered mountain gorilla on February 20, 2008. As part of the 10-year Transboundary Strategic Plan, the countries will develop and adhere to a consistent set of conservation policies and laws in Virunga National Park, which overlaps the three countries and is home to more than half of the world’s 700 remaining mountain gorillas.
In addition to protecting the gorillas, the plan will also seek to promote regional stability and improve the livelihoods of nearby communities. The links between environmental conservation and poverty alleviation are particularly strong in areas close to gorilla habitats, where foreign tourists bring in significant revenue for local communities and national governments. The plan calls for more of the $500-a-person gorilla tracking permit revenue to go to local communities.
The first four years of the plan are being funded by the Dutch government, which Susan Lieberman of the World Wildlife Fund praised for recognizing “that species conservation and sustainable development and poverty alleviation go hand in hand.”
Heavy fighting in the DRC between Congolese troops and ex-general Laurent Nkunda’s rebel soldiers has prevented park rangers from entering Virunga National Park for months at a time. This has left the gorillas vulnerable to poaching and execution-style killings. In addition, the expansion of human settlements has damaged their habitat. -
Consumption, Population Growth Are Top Environmental Threats, Argues Diamond
›February 12, 2008 // By Liat Racin“It is true that countries like Kenya and Pakistan and some other developing countries have high population growth rates. And that is a real tragedy for Kenya and Pakistan, which are trying to improve their lot but are getting overwhelmed with more people to feed,” Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jared Diamond told Living on Earth host Bruce Gellerman in a recent interview. “But it’s not a tragedy for the rest of the world because those people in rapidly growing third world countries don’t consume very much. The real tragedy for the world is the growth rate of population and consumption in the first world.” Diamond’s comments echoed points he made in a January 2008 New York Times op-ed, in which he argued that total consumption, not total population, is the real threat to Earth’s dwindling natural resources.
Diamond believes we should focus on reducing consumption rates in affluent societies, where the average person consumes 32 times more resources than the average person in a developing country. “Whether we get there willingly or not, we shall soon have lower consumption rates [in the United States and other developed countries], because our present rates are unsustainable. Real sacrifice wouldn’t be required, however, because living standards are not tightly coupled to consumption rates,” wrote Diamond. “Much American consumption is wasteful and contributes little or nothing to quality of life. For example, per capita oil consumption in Western Europe is about half of ours, yet Western Europe’s standard of living is higher.”
Diamond also struck an optimistic tone in “Environment, Population, and Health: Strategies for a More Secure World,” an article in Environmental Change and Security Program Report 10: “Every one of our problems—deforestation, overfishing, water scarcity, and toxic waste—is of our own making. Therefore, we can choose to stop causing them.” -
Refugees’ Bushmeat Consumption Threatening Tanzanian Wildlife
›January 31, 2008 // By Liat RacinLacking adequate protein in their diet, refugees in Tanzania are eating chimpanzees and other endangered species, says a report by the international wildlife conservation group TRAFFIC, a joint project of the World Wildlife Fund and the World Conservation Union (IUCN). “Relief agencies are turning a blind eye to the real cause of the poaching and illegal trade: a lack of meat protein in refugees’ rations,” said George Jambiya, the lead author of the report, which urges humanitarian agencies to supply refugees with legal, sustainable wild meat.
In response to the report’s assertions, Christiane Berthiaume of the UN World Food Programme, which feeds 215,000 refugees in Tanzania, said that meat spoils quickly, and substituting canned meat for the cheaper beans that currently supply the refugees with protein would cost an additional $46 million over the estimated $60 million currently dedicated to feeding refugees in Tanzania during 2007 and 2008. An IUCN press release argues that not providing East African refugees with meat is inequitable, given the provision of corned beef to Croatians, Slovenians, and Serbians displaced during the early 1990s.
The decimation of the wildlife surrounding refugee camps is threatening local non-refugee communities that depend on wildlife for food and income. Smaller wildlife populations also make these areas less attractive to tourists, another source of income.