Showing posts from category biodiversity.
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Madagascar, Past and Future: Lessons From Population, Health, and Environment Programs
›In Madagascar, “today’s challenges are even greater than those faced 25 years ago,” said Lisa Gaylord, director of program development at the Wildlife Conservation Society. At an event at the Woodrow Wilson Center on March 28, Gaylord and her co-panelists, Matthew Erdman, the program coordinator for the Population-Health-Environment Program at Blue Ventures Conservation, and Kristen Patterson, a senior program officer at The Nature Conservancy, discussed the challenges and outcomes of past and future integrated population, health, and environment (PHE) programs in Madagascar. [Video Below]
Nature, Health, Wealth, and Power
Gaylord, who has worked in Madagascar for nearly 30 years, gave a brief history of USAID’s activities on the unique island, which she called a “mini-continent.” She used the “nature, health, wealth, and power” framework to review the organization’s environment, health, and livelihoods programs in Madagascar and their results. Governance, she said, is the centerpiece of this framework, but this piece “maybe didn’t have an adequate foundation” in Madagascar to see the programs through the political crisis.
Though its programs started at the community level, Gaylord said USAID’s objective was to scale up to larger levels. “You can’t always work on that level and have an impact,” she said, and there was “tremendous hope” in 2002 for such scaling up when Madagascar elected a new president, Marc Ravalomanana.
Unfortunately, changes in funding, a lack of economic infrastructure, and poor governance forced development programs to scale down. After President Ravalomanana was overthrown in a military coup in 2009, the situation got worse – the United States and other donors pulled most funding, and only humanitarian programs were allowed to continue.
“What worries me is that I think we have gone back” to working on a village level, Gaylord said. “We want to go up in scale, and I think that we felt that we could in Madagascar, but that’s where you have the political complexities that didn’t allow us to continue in that direction.”
Going forward, Gaylord said that it is important to maintain a field-level foundation, take the time to build good governance, and maintain a balance in the funding levels so that no one area, such as health, dominates development activities.
Living With the Sea
Based in southwestern Madagascar, the Blue Ventures program began as an ecotourism outfit, said Erdman, but has since grown to incorporate marine conservation, family planning, and alternative livelihoods. One of its major accomplishments was the establishment of the largest locally managed marine protection area in the Indian Ocean, called Velondriake, which in Malagasy means “to live with the sea.” This marine area covers 80 kilometers of coastline, incorporates 25 villages, and includes more than 10,000 people. The marine reserves for fish, turtles, and octopus, as well as a permanent mangrove reserve, protect stocks from overfishing.
One of the biggest challenges facing the region is its rapidly growing population, which threatens the residents’ health and their food security, as well as the natural resources on which they depend. More than half the population is under the age of 15 and the infant and maternal mortality rates are very high, Erdman explained. Blue Ventures, therefore, set up a family planning program called Safidy, which means “choice” in Malagasy.
“If you have good health, and family size is based on quality, families can be smaller and [there will be] less demand for natural resources, leading to a healthier environment,” said Erdman.
The region’s isolation and lack of education and health services are a challenge, said Erdman, but over the past three years, the contraceptive prevalence rate has increased dramatically, as has the number of clinic visits. The program uses a combination of clinics, peer educators, theater presentations, and sporting events, such as soccer tournaments, to spread information about health and family planning.
A Champion Community
“There is a long history of collaborative work in Madagascar,” Patterson said. Focusing on the commune (county) level, she worked in conjunction with USAID, Malagasy NGOs, and government ministries to try to scale up PHE programs in Madagascar’s Fianarantsoa province, which has a target population of 250,000 people.
“We essentially worked at two different levels,” said Patterson. At the regional level, a coordinating body for USAID and local partners called the “Eco-Regional Alliance” met monthly. The “Champion Commune” initiative, which worked at local levels, had three main goals, she explained:
Though working in such remote areas is expensive, and all non-humanitarian U.S. foreign aid has been suspended since the coup, Patterson hopes that development programs will return to Madagascar. Pointing to its vast rural areas, she stressed the importance of integrated efforts: “The very nature of multi-sectoral programs is that they have the highest benefit in the areas that are most remote. These are the areas where people are literally left out in the cold.”- Create a strong overlap with neighboring communes;
- Promote activities that benefited more than one sector (such as reforesting with vitamin-rich papaya trees); and
- Capitalize on the prior experiences of Malagasy NGOs in implementing integrated projects to help build up civil society.
Image credit: “Untitled,” courtesy of flickr user Alex Cameron.
Sources: The New York Times, Velondriake. -
Watch: David Lopez Carr and Liza Grandia on Rural Population Growth and Development in Guatemala
›March 22, 2011 // By Hannah MarquseeDemographers today are largely concerned with two trends: aging in the developed world, and rapid urbanization in the developing world. The majority of people in the world now live in cities, “but this tiny fraction of people that live in rural areas – concealed by the data because it’s a small fraction – still have very high fertility rates, precisely where protected areas are,” said David Lopez-Carr, associate professor of geography at the University of California, Santa Barbara in this ECSP interview.
“You see a gradient. The more rural, the more remote, the higher fertility,” said Carr. In Guatemala, for example, fertility rates range from below four children per woman in Guatemala City, to as high as eight in the remote Maya biosphere reserve, which is mostly indigenous. “These are the populations that are growing the fastest and the ones who are living in direct proximity and whose livelihoods are predicated directly on the rainforest, whether it’s through resource extraction or…agricultural expansion,” said Carr.
Liza Grandia, assistant professor of international development and social change at Clark University, spent many years working in the Maya biosphere reserve with the Guatemalan NGO ProPeten to address deforestation. However, after years of alternative livelihood projects, “it became clear that many of those efforts would be undermined by population growth and continued migration into the region,” she said in an interview with ECSP.
Grandia and ProPeten conducted a study as part of the Demographic and Health Surveys to examine the linkages between health, population, and environmental trends in the Peten region. Based on these findings, Grandia founded Remedios, a program that partnered with International Planned Parenthood Foundation and the Guatemala Ministry of Health to provide family planning services to “one of the most remote places in Latin America.”
Remedios used mass media, such as the radio soap opera “Between Two Roads,” broadcast in Spanish and Q’eqchi’ Maya, to reach people across this remote region. In the popular soap opera, “the villain is a cattle rancher, the heroine is a midwife, and through the tales of daily life in this village we weave in messages about domestic violence, use of family planning, agrarian problems, like land speculation, and a whole host of other issues that come up in people’s daily lives,” said Grandia. “In three years as a result of that work, the total fertility went from 6.8 to 5.8. To date, 10 years later, it’s dropped to 4.3.” -
Managing the Planet’s Freshwater
›“The impact of human activities on the planet and on its biology has risen to a scale that deserves a commensurate response,” said Tom Lovejoy, professor at George Mason University, introducing a discussion on “Managing the Planet’s Freshwater,” the second of a monthly series led jointly by George Mason University and the Woodrow Wilson Center. Karin M. Krchnak, director of International Water Policy at The Nature Conservancy (TNC), and Dann Sklarew, sustainability fellow at George Mason University, joined Lovejoy to discuss the increasing stress placed by population growth, urbanization, and environmental change on freshwater resources and potential solutions to global water insecurity. [Video Below]
Water: “A Global Crisis”
Water insecurity and pollution is “a global crisis,” said Sklarew. Water scarcity is growing and aquatic biodiversity is declining around the world. According to the World Water Council, over one billion people do not have safe drinking water.
Inadequate water management contributes to these problems, said Sklarew. But, human activities “impact water connectivity, quality, and flows” at all scales, he said, and combined with climate change, have fundamentally altered the global water cycle.
“The water-rich and the water-poor are intimately connected,” said Sklarew. National, international, and global trade “water transfers” often move water from dry rural areas to urban centers, he said. “We’re taking from areas that don’t have [water] and moving water, by itself or via food products, to places where they might actually have more water in their local environment.”
But there are many opportunities – from the incremental to the bold, exciting, and revolutionary – to address these problems, said Sklarew, including growing more food with less water, reducing destructive subsidies, restoring natural river flows via dam re-design or removal, encouraging greener infrastructure in urban areas, and supporting participatory decision-making about water. He also pointed to promoting lower population growth and allowing migration that “brings the people to the water rather than the water to the people” as additional ways to improve water security. In the future, “bio-mimicking and techno-fixes,” may also provide promising solutions, he said.
Clear national goals and a global-scale response are critical to making these solutions a reality, said Sklarew: “Even though these challenges are often local, in the end, we have one interconnected water system.”
Watershed Protection: Innovative Solutions
“I know we all wish that there was a silver bullet for global water challenges,” said Krchnak, “but there’s not just one solution.”
As population grows by an additional 2 billion people before 2050, “solutions must take population growth into account,” said Krchnak. One-third of the world’s population is now subject to water scarcity, which is expected to double in the next 30 years
More water will be necessary to meet growing demands for food, energy, and other commodities, said Krchnak. In particular, “the poor in urban centers will be the dominant challenge for us in the next decades.”
Krchnak described three possible strategies to protect watersheds: market-based mechanisms, integrated water resource management, and incentive approaches.
Water funds, a market-based mechanism in which downstream water users pay for protection of the upper watershed, are one possible way to better manage freshwater, said Krchnak. With the help of local partners, TNC’s Quito Water Fund, for example, creates a sustainable finance mechanism and protects watersheds that supply 2 million people. Similar programs “can be taken to other geographies and replicated across the globe,” she said.
Another TNC program, the Great River Partnership, uses an integrated water resource management strategy that focuses on stakeholder collaboration and working with public and private partners to help create “one vision” for major rivers like the Mississippi, Magdalena, Paraguay-Parana, Yangtze, and Zambezi, said Krchnak.
The Alliance for Water Stewardship uses an incentive-based approach to promote “responsible use of fresh water that is socially beneficial and environmentally and economically sustainable.” One of the main objectives of the Alliance is to develop performance standards and create a certification program that recognizes water providers who work to protect freshwater resources.
Strategies like these may not be appropriate everywhere, and programs need to be adapted to make local implementation possible, said Krchnak, but effectively managing the planet’s freshwater is vital for human health, spiritual and cultural well-being, ecosystems and biodiversity, and economic opportunity.
Sources: World Water Council, UNDP.
Photo Credit: “Rio Magdalena,” courtesy of flickr user Esparta. -
Mapping Demographics in WWF Priority Conservation Areas
›February 25, 2011 // By Hannah Marqusee“The developing world is urbanizing at a dizzying pace,” yet rural populations living in developing countries are also rapidly increasing, threatening many of the planet’s most biodiverse regions, says a new study, Mapping Population onto Priority Conservation Areas, by David López-Carr, Matthew Erdman, and Alex Zvoleff.
Using comprehensive data from the USAID-sponsored Demographic Health Surveys (DHS), the researchers analyzed population, mortality, and fertility indicators for 10 of the 19 priority places for conservation identified by the World Wildlife Foundation (WWF). These biological hotspots represent parts of 25 countries throughout South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and South America, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Colombia, Guatemala, Indonesia, Kenya, Nepal, Madagascar, and Thailand.
Urban vs. Rural
The findings confirmed the researchers’ hypothesis that rural areas within WWF priority regions are at a lower state of demographic transition than their urban counterparts, meaning they have higher fertility and infant mortality rates and a younger age structure due to poor access to primary health care, including family planning. Furthermore, women in these regions desire more children than those in urban, non-priority areas, but experience a greater difference between ideal and actual number of children.
For many of the indicators, the differences between urban and rural, and priority and non-priority, regions of the developing world are striking. In urban Asia, the mean predicted population doubling time is 86.1 years; in rural Africa it is only 24.6 years. Urban Asia and South America also have total fertility rates of 1.8 children per woman, while rural Africa’s is 5.2. Infant mortality also ranged from a low of 20 deaths per every 1,000 births in some developing urban areas, to over 100 in rural parts of Coastal East Africa. In the developed world it is less than 10.
There is also consistently less desire among women in priority areas to limit their childbearing. Worldwide, 49.4 percent of women living within priority areas want to limit childbearing, compared to 56.2 percent outside priority areas.
Rural areas in all regions had the highest unmet need for family planning, with the exception of the Congo Basin, where high infant mortality has persisted and dampened women’s desire to limit childbearing. “If much needed health services were provided in the Congo Basin, along with family planning services, child survival rates would increase, and couples would be more inclined to limit overall births,” the study says.
Lower demand for family planning in priority areas is consistent with Caldwell’s theory of intergenerational wealth flows, the paper noted, which explains how in rural agricultural societies, children are economic assets who move wealth to their parents. As countries develop and people gain access to education, healthcare and female empowerment, wealth flows reverse and children become financial burdens. This transition decreases fertility and increases demand for family planning.
Setting Priorities
As WWF plans to scale up its population, health and environment (PHE) programs, this study will help to prioritize places within priority areas that are most in need of PHE intervention and “are most likely to help alleviate negative environmental and social impacts of rapid population growth.” The results of this study show that many areas are ripe for such intervention:Nearly a quarter of households in Coastal East Africa and the Mesoamerican Reef wish to have access to contraception yet their desire remains unfulfilled. Similarly, households within priority places in Coastal East Africa, the Mesoamerican Reef, Amazon and the Guianas, and the Eastern Himalayas wish to have nearly one child fewer than they currently have.
The findings of this study have already informed the planning of several of WWF’s projects in Madagascar and Namibia.
The limited availability and detail of the DHS data was the primary limitation of the study, the researchers noted. The 25 countries examined did not fully cover all WWF’s priority areas – 17 other countries within the priority areas lacked sufficiently comprehensive data for the study. Furthermore, the district or municipality was the smallest unit of analysis possible with DHS data, making it difficult to exactly pinpoint priority communities.
“Geography matters,” write the authors. “Only with further refined data accompanied by qualitative on-the-ground field research can we credibly answer remaining questions.”
Image Credit:“Family Planning: Unmet Need for Family Planning Services” and “Mortality Rate: Child Mortality Rate (Under Age 5)” courtesy of World Wildlife Fund.
Sources: Population Council, World Wildlife Fund. -
Albert Lotana Lokasola, PHE Champion
Improving Health and Preserving Ecosystems in the Democratic Republic of Congo
›This PHE Champion profile was produced by the BALANCED Project.
In the remote forests of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Albert Lotana Lokasola is helping improve livelihoods by bringing much-needed health services to the communities living in and around the Kokolopori Bonobo Reserve. Officially recognized by the DRC government in May 2009, the reserve is a high biodiversity wilderness area covering an area about the size of Rhode Island (4,785 square kilometers).
Located 300 miles southwest of Kisangani, the reserve contains bonobos, a rare and highly endangered great ape species that is as closely related to humans as chimpanzees. In addition, the reserve is highly valued for its biodiversity, including several other flagship species such as leopards, elephants, Congo peafowl, Tshuapa red colobus, and Salonga monkeys.
Lokasola founded a nationally recognized organization called Vie Sauvage, or “Wild Life” in English. He serves as the president of the organization and works with international organizations to foster conservation and rural development in an integrated, holistic approach. As a native of Kokolopori, he believes that “the forest, men, and wildlife live together and should be protected together.”
In partnership with local residents and supported by the Bonobo Conservation Initiative, Lokasola and Vie Sauvage established the first medical clinic in the area in 2006. They garnered support for a doctor, nurses, and supplies from the Indigo Foundation in Australia and the Kokolopori-Falls Church Sister City Partnership.
Before the clinic was founded, community members had to walk or bicycle more than 50 miles to get to the nearest hospital in the territorial capital of Djolu. Now the Kokolopori clinic serves the 8,000 people who live in 30 villages along a 40-mile road in the reserve. One of the clinic’s goals is to help improve women’s health by training and equipping midwives and by providing access to other health services. Malaria and poor nutrition contribute to high maternal and child mortality, and women in Kokolopori do not yet have access to reproductive health services such as family planning.
Vie Sauvage articulates integrated health and conservation messages through their community education projects. They are also working with the community to prevent malnutrition by planting fruit trees in agroforestry fields to produce supplemental food supplies. At the same time, these trees will create corridors for wildlife movement and protect the genetic flow. They also create a sound micro-climate for people, sequester carbon dioxide, and filter the air. Through these efforts, Vie Sauvage and the people of Kokolopori are demonstrating the critical links between human well-being and conservation.
Vie Sauvage has garnered resources and participation from diverse partners (like the Kokolopori-Falls Church Sister City Partnership and the Indigo Foundation, mentioned above) which work together to support the clinic and fund medical staff salaries, training, supplies and equipment, and infrastructure improvements.
According to Lokasola, Vie Sauvage and partners are currently exploring potential partnership opportunities to integrate family planning and reproductive health into existing activities. His hope is that by providing these much-needed services, the community will be healthier and critical ecosystems will be sustainably preserved.
This PHE Champion profile was produced by the BALANCED Project. A PDF version can be downloaded from the PHE Toolkit. PHE Champion profiles highlight people working on the ground to improve health and conservation in areas where biodiversity is critically endangered.
Photo Credit: Building along the road in Kokolopuri village serves as a messsage drum for sending messages from one village to the next, courtesy of Ingrid Schulze and the BALANCED Project. -
Bringing PHE to a Muslim Community in Tanzania
Abdalah Overcomes the Odds
›This PHE Champion profile was produced by the BALANCED Project.
“Now, people can plan their families and know how to use a condom,” says Abdalah Masingano as he proudly tells how his community has come to accept integrated population, health, and environment (PHE) activities.
The 35 year-old Abdalah is a PHE provider. He lives near the Saadani National Park (SANAPA) — one of Tanzania’s newest, and the only terrestrial park with a contiguous marine area in southeastern Tanzania. Saadani is home to the rare Roosevelt Sable antelope and the nesting grounds for several endangered species of marine turtles. One of the largest threats to biodiversity in this area is the clearing of mangroves and coastal forests for firewood and charcoal-making. About 95 percent of households in the area depend on firewood for cooking and most use a three-stone fireplace that utilizes only about 10 percent of its energy potential. These are just some of many pressures that people living around the park place on the biodiversity-rich forest and marine resources of the area.
Abdalah and his 31 year-old wife have two children: a 14-year-old boy and a six-year-old girl. His wife has been on the pill for four years. For two years now, Abdalah has been selling condoms in his village store. He made this decision for simple reasons. He saw that people needed condoms for both family planning and health, and he had come to understand the linkages between the behaviors of people living in the area and the health of the environment.
Abdalah gained this understanding when he was recruited to become a PHE provider by the Tanzania Coastal Management Partnership as part of its work through the USAID-supported BALANCED Project, which is promoting PHE implementation in biodiversity-rich countries. In a two-day training, Abdalah learned about integrated PHE and the links between population (family planning), health, and the environment. He has been educating villagers ever since.
“In the past, it was difficult for people to plan their families because they were embarrassed,” recalls Abdalah. As a PHE provider, Abdalah delivers integrated PHE messages to his fellow villagers. After attending the BALANCED training, Abdalah learned that promoting family planning makes sense for reasons beyond health. Forest and marine resources found both around and inside the Saadani are heavily exploited by local villages – and from a biodiversity conservation perspective, reducing population pressures is just one critical step in protecting this biodiversity.
When people visit his shop, Abdalah takes the opportunity to explain the population and environment connection. Because deforestation is a particular problem in the area where Abdalah lives and works, he promotes the use of fuel-efficient stoves.
Showcasing his own stove, his explains that by using a simple clay stove – which is made locally – a household can save almost 1.5 tons of fuelwood annually and reduce by 50 percent the time women spend collecting fuelwood. At the same time, he reminds villagers that when they plan their families they help keep mothers and children healthy. Healthier families also tend to put fewer pressures on – and thus keep healthier – the very natural resources they depend on for food and income.
Initially, Abdalah’s Muslim neighbors were unhappy with him promoting family planning and condom use. They believed what he was doing encouraged sex and prostitution. “They thought I was lost,” he explains smiling. Fortunately, his wife has been very supportive of him despite the discouraging reactions of his fellow villagers early on in his efforts.
Today, Abdalah’s perseverance has paid off. He now sells more than 200 condoms monthly and takes the time to demonstrate to his customers how to use them properly. When there is the opportunity, he also refers his customers to the local health dispensaries for additional family planning services and commodities. Abdalah believes people respect him now. “I feel good because I am able to help,” he concludes. That “help” impacts both the health and well-being of his fellow villagers and the health and well-being of the environment. Abdalah and his wife plan to have their third child two years from now.
This PHE Champion profile was produced by the BALANCED Project. A PDF version can be downloaded from the PHE Toolkit. PHE Champion profiles highlight people working on the ground to improve health and conservation in areas where biodiversity is critically endangered.
Sources: Darfur Stoves Project, IPS News, TSN Daily News, UN.
Photo Credit: Abdalah showing a box of condoms for sale in his small shop by Juma Dyegula, courtesy of the BALANCED Project. -
Minister Izabella Teixeira at the Wilson Center
A Review of Brazil’s Environmental Policies and Challenges Ahead
›Stressing the need for concrete, tangible institutional policies, Izabella Teixeira, Brazil’s Minister of the Environment, discussed the challenges and goals of her ministry at the Wilson Center on October 20. Sustainable development, not just conservation, must be the focus, and that requires bringing lots of different players to the table, taking into account not only environmental but also social and economic agendas. To do this, she argued, one must take the rather ephemeral and hypothetical notions of environmental stewardship and put them into the realm of a practicable, institutionalized framework, built on a social pact that engages all sectors of society.The foundation of sustainable development and environmental policy must be biodiversity, according to Teixeira. Central concerns, such as food and energy security and combating climate change, all rely on a diverse array of natural resources. These need to be conserved, but they must also be developed in a responsible, sustainable way. A legal international framework toward this end, covering access to biodiversity and genetic resources, has yet to be implemented. Developing and developed countries need to find a middle ground on allocating the benefits that accrue from the use of genetic resources found in areas such as the Amazon, and this agreement must then be linked into existing political institutions.
Teixeira noted the strides Brazil has made toward protecting its environment – including having set aside the equivalent of 70 percent of all protected areas in the world in 2009 and the establishment of the Amazon Fund. Nevertheless, Brazil must continue to protect and maintain these nature preserves, not just establish them. Creating a program that pragmatically implements international goals in a national context is an ongoing process, and countries like Brazil now need to focus on the “how” of implementing these goals, rather than just the “what.”
Teixeira also highlighted the complexity of formulating environmental policy that integrates all the various points of view that must be taken into consideration. At recent meetings to discuss transitioning to a low-carbon economy, 17 different cabinet ministers had to be present to coordinate government positions and policies. The complexity is due in part to the need to create alternatives, not just to prevent certain activities. For example, one must not only use legal enforcement to stop illicit deforestation, but also create paths to legal, sustainable logging. Once again, attempting to balance environmental, social, and economic concerns is difficult, to say the least, but crucial for long-term effectiveness.
Also a unique challenge for Brazil is the natural diversity that exists within such a large country. While much of the attention paid to the environment goes (rightly so) to the Amazon, there are many other biomes and local environments that must be taken into consideration, Teixeira observed.
The cerrado, Brazil’s enormous savanna, requires a different strategy than the Amazon, which is different than the coastal Atlantic forest. Furthermore, urban areas need their own environmental policies that can take into account issues of human development and population density.
To illustrate the need for an inclusive, well-thought-out policy, Teixeira discussed–rather frankly–the controversy surrounding the recent proposed amendments to the Forest Code. She argued that the proposal makes blanket changes that do not take into consideration differences in biomes, differences between large agribusinesses and family farms, and between historic, settled communities and recent developments. The implications of this proposal, according to the minister, could have enormous social costs. Teixeira said she believes that it would be virtually impossible to enforce the amended Forest Code if it was approved by Congress. She used this example to underscore her role in offering legislative alternatives that seek to provide a more nuanced, and ultimately more effective, institutional framework that can use Brazil’s many natural resources to help its population to the greatest extent possible.
J.C. Hodges is an intern with the Brazil Institute at the Wilson Center; Paulo Sotero is the director of the Brazil Institute.
Photo Credit: “Rio Jurua, Brazil (NASA, International Space Station Science, 05/29/07),” courtesy of flickr user NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, and David Hawxhurst/Wilson Center. -
David Lawson, Wildlife Conservation Society
Afghanistan’s Non-Confrontational Conservation
›December 7, 2010 // By Wilson Center Staff
Excerpt from the Center for a Better Life:
Afghanistan is more than war and turmoil; it has a long and colorful history, strong cultures and a stunning landscape. It has enormous biodiversity, as it sits at the crossroads of what biologists call “biological realms.” The country, therefore, has plants and animals that also occur in Europe, northern Asia, India, south Asia and Africa. It has nine species of wild cats, which is the same as the whole of sub-Saharan Africa, as well as an estimated 800 plant species that occur nowhere else in the world. In other words, Afghanistan is worth attention in terms of its biodiversity alone.These natural resources are also critically important from the people’s perspective. After 30 years of conflict, more than 80 percent of Afghanistan’s population relies directly on natural resources for their livelihood. Most of the inhabitants are rural and desperately poor by world standards. Child mortality is the highest in the world, and their infrastructure is mostly broken down and inoperable. The economy is donor-dependent, and the Afghan government is still in its infancy. Outside the capital of Kabul, governance sometimes seems non-existent. As a result, movement away from the major population centers can be very risky due to the presence of various insurgent groups.
And yet, what is seldom mentioned in newscasts and media is that the Afghans are proud and resilient. They want what everyone else wants: education for their children, healthcare for the young and elderly, and reliable livelihoods to support their families. Then they want to get on with their lives in their own unique, culturally diverse way, free of violence and conflict.
Understanding Cultures
Understanding these things is one reason why the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) has been successful in Afghanistan. When hearing of the Society’s field work in this war-torn country, most people are surprised. They wonder how, with its pressing problems, Afghanistan can afford the time, let alone the resources, to conserve its remaining wildlife and wild places. But this is one of the core strengths of WCS – to offer assistance in conserving natural resources at a practical level within a country in need, like Afghanistan. As one of the oldest conservation organizations in the world, with more than 100 years of field conservation experience, the Society has extensive seasoning under extreme circumstances. Currently, WCS has more than 600 projects in place with 3,000 staff; and, many of these projects are in the most remote areas of the world.
Since 2006, USAID has supported WCS’s work in Afghanistan within three geographical areas – the northeast in Badakhshan Province’s Wakhan District, Bamiyan’s central province and the eastern, forested Nuristan province. Experts chose these areas because they believed they held the largest numbers of untouched remaining wildlife; this presumption generally proved correct. Through the years, WCS has created trust by having conservation teams on the ground and working year-round with local communities. Similar trust has been established with the relevant ministries by WCS’ central office, located in Kabul, through continuous presence and assistance.
Results are impressive. More than seven pieces of environmental legislation were enacted; 10,000 Afghans received conservation training; the first biological surveys in 30 years were completed (which doubled as crucial skills development exercises for Afghan scientists); the first wildlife/domestic stock disease assessments were accomplished, with corresponding human health effects, plus many more exemplary achievements. One of the more intriguing results was WCS’ ability to build local governance in the most remote communities, thus connecting communities that had seen no real government representatives for years. This link extended to district authorities then to provincial authorities, and finally to the Kabul central government. This extension of Afghanistan’s rule-of-law is paramount because it improves governance, which is one of the more crucial strategic needs in the country today.
How was a non-governmental conservation organization able to contribute to governance and rule-of-law? It is simple. Wildlife conservation is usually a non-confrontational issue, and most people, when exposed to the process, take an active interest and express opinions. Rural people have grown up with and are surrounded by wildlife everyday; they have local knowledge and feel comfortable discussing how things have changed. They want to be empowered to make natural resource decisions in the areas in which they live. WCS staff encourages local people to discuss species protection with their local and provincial governments. In some instances, WCS workers have taken government officers into communities that cannot recall ever seeing a government official. These processes and contacts evolve and can be used as basis for non-conservation related discussion. These processes and relationships become the building blocks for extending governance and empowering local communities. And, the process works.
Continue reading on the Center for a Better Life.
David Lawson is the Wildlife Conservation Society Afghanistan country director.
Photo Credit: “Bamiyan Band-e-Emir,” courtesy of flickr user USAID Afghanistan. USAID and WCS have been working in the Band-e-Amir lakes region since 2006 to create a national park.
