Showing posts from category biodiversity.
-
Population and Sustainability
›“The MAHB, the Culture Gap, and Some Really Inconvenient Truths,” authored by Paul Ehrlich and appearing in the most recent edition of PLoS Biology, is a call for greater participation in the Millennium Assessment of Human Behavior (MAHB). MAHB was created, he writes, because societies understand the magnitude of environmental challenges, yet often still fail to act. “The urgent need now is clearly not for more natural science…but rather for better understanding of human behaviors and how they can be altered to direct Homo sapiens onto a course toward a sustainable society.” MAHB aims to create an inclusive global discussion of “the human predicament, what people desire, and what goals are possible to achieve in a sustainable society” in the hopes of encouraging a “rapid modification” in human behavior.
The BALANCED Project, lead by the Coastal Resource Center at the University of Rhode Island, released its first “BALANCED Newsletter.” To be published biannually, the newsletter highlights recent PHE fieldwork, unpacks aspects of particular PHE projects, and shares best practices in an effort to advance the BALANCED Project’s goal: promoting PHE approaches to safeguard areas of high biodiversity threatened by population pressures. The current edition examines the integration of family planning and reproductive health projects into marine conservation projects in Kenya and Madagascar, a theater-based youth education program in the Philippines, and the combining of family planning services with gorilla conservation work in Uganda. The newsletter also profiles two “PHE Champions,” Gezahegh Guedta Shana of Ethiopia and Ramadhani Zuberi of Tanzania.“Human population growth is perhaps the most significant cause of the complex problems the world faces,” write authors Jason Collodi and Freida M’Cormack in “Population Growth, Environment and Food Security: What Does the Future Hold?,” the first issue of the Institute of Development Studies‘ Horizon series. The impacts of climate change, poverty, and resource scarcity, they write, are not far behind. Collodi and M’Cormack highlight trends in, and projections for, population growth, the environment, and food security, and offer bulleted policy recommendations for each. Offering greater access to family planning; levying global taxes on carbon; introducing selective water pricing; and removing subsidies for first-generation biofuels are each examples of suggestions advanced by the authors to meet the interrelated challenges. -
Philippines’ Bohol Province: Elin Torell Reports on Integrating Population, Health, and Environment
›For 10 years, I have been working on marine conservation in Tanzania with the University of Rhode Island’s Coastal Resources Center. As part of that effort, I’ve helped forge links between HIV/AIDS prevention in vulnerable fishing communities and marine conservation. However, family planning and reproductive health (FP/RH) were relatively new to me. But a recent study tour of an integrated Population, Health, and Environment (PHE) program in the Philippines helped me understand that combining family planning services and marine conservation can help reduce overfishing and improve food security.
Together with developing country representatives from seven African and Asian countries, I spent two weeks in February visiting three PHE learning sites and a marine protected area in Bohol province in the central Philippines, as part of a South-to-South study tour sponsored by the USAID-funded BALANCED Project, for which I work. The tour focused on the activities of the 10-year-old Integrated Population and Coastal Resource Management Initiative (IPOPCORM) project, which is run by PATH Foundation Philippines, Inc. (PFPI).
IPOPCORM has garnered a wealth of lessons learned and best practices to share with PHE newbies like me. Its integrated programs train people to be community-based distributers (CBDs) of contraceptives and PHE peer educators, as well as work with local and regional government officials to build support for family planning as a means to improve food security.
I was most impressed with the ways in which PFPI identifies and cultivates dynamic and motivated local leaders–men, women, and especially youth–to reach out to the members of their community who are highly dependent on marine resources for their survival. My Tanzanian colleagues and I would like to foster the volunteer spirit and “can do” attitudes we experienced through our work in East Africa. (Similar PHE peer educators are successfully working in Ethiopia’s Bale Mountains, as reported by Cassie Gardener in a previous edition of the “Beat on the Ground.”
My favorite part of the tour was a trip to the Verde Island Passage to see PFPI’s efforts in this fragile hotspot. The insights my Tanzanian colleagues and I gained from talking to the field practitioners in the Verde Islands helped us refine our ideas for translating some of the PHE techniques used in the Philippines to the Tanzanian cultural context, including an action plan for strengthening our existing PHE efforts with CBDs and peer educators.
Thanks to the study tour, I now have a better understanding of how to address population pressures in the context of conservation. Overall, my Tanzanian colleagues and I were inspired by the successes we saw firsthand and hope to emulate them to some degree in our own projects.
Elin Torell is a research associate at the Coastal Resources Center at the University of Rhode Island. She is the manager of CRC’s Tanzania Program and coordinates monitoring, evaluation, and learning within the BALANCED project. -
High Altitude Turbulence: Challenges to the Cordillera del Cóndor of Peru
›In 1998, Peru and Ecuador settled a long-running border dispute in the Cordillera del Cóndor mountain range that had killed and wounded dozens on both sides in 1995. In addition to pledging renewed cooperation on deciding the final placement of the border, the agreement, the Acta Presidencial de Brasilia, committed both sides to establishing extensive ecological protection reserves on both sides of the border: A peace park of sorts was born.
But now, indigenous groups fear that extractive industries in the area could threaten both the biodiversity and the ecological integrity of the forests and streams that they rely upon for their survival. They detail these charges in a new report, Peru: A Chronicle of Deception, and in a new video documentary, “Amazonia for Sale.”
Located on the eastern slopes of the Equatorial Andes, the area is a recognized global biodiversity hotspot with large areas of pristine montane habitat. In 1993-4, Conservation International led a biodiversity assessment trip to the area and identified dozens of species new to science. Their report, The Cordillera del Cóndor Region of Ecuador and Peru: A Biological Assessment, noted the “spectacular” biodiversity of the area, and its key role in the hydrological cycle linking the Andes with the Amazon.
Recognizing the region’s importance, the Acta Presidencial de Brasilia stipulated the need to create and update mechanisms to “lead to economic and social development and strengthen the cultural identity of native populations, as well as aid the conservation of biological biodiversity and the sustainable use of the ecosystems of the common border,” wrote Martin Alcade et al. in the ECSP Report.
Indigenous communities in Peru are accusing the Peruvian government of reneging on those promises by allowing extractive industries extensive access to the region. They charge that the government gave in to gold mining interests who want to reduce the size of the protected area in the Cordillera del Cóndor. They also claim that the Peruvian government is violating promises made to include indigenous peoples in the governance and management of the area.
Carefully managing extractive activities was a key priority for Peru and Ecuador when they negotiated an end to their border dispute. A management plan for the area with strong protection for key biodiversity areas was supposed to ensure everyone’s interests.
However, Peru’s current president, Alan Garcia, has been aggressive in promoting extractive industries in Peru,to the point of inciting significant popular opposition among many indigenous peoples. Less than a year ago, protests over oil exploration in Amazonian lowlands city of Bagua killed and wounded dozens of Peruvians. This violence followed years of social conflict over mining development in a number of communities in Peru’s Andean highlands.
Earlier this decade, Peru made some progress in resolving extractive disputes. But Garcia’s strong promotion of the extractive sector in the face of indigenous opposition, like we currently see in the Cordillera del Cóndor region, suggests years of confrontations to come.
Tom Deligiannis is adjunct faculty member at the UN-mandated University for Peace in Costa Rica, and an associate fellow of the Institute for Environmental Security in The Hague.
Photo Credit: “El vuelo del condor, acechando a su presa,” courtesy of flickr user Martintoy. -
Cassie Gardener
Integrating Population, Health, and Environment in Ethiopia’s Bale Mountains
›Ethiopia suffers from vast deforestation, rapid population growth, and high rates of maternal mortality. But development programs that address these issues in an integrated fashion may help end that suffering. As part of my two-month internship with the PHE-Ethiopia Consortium, I recently visited the Movement for Ecological and Community Action (MELCA) Project in the rural Bale Zone of southeastern Ethiopia to witness these programs in action.
Ethiopia’s Spectacular Bale Mountains
The little-known Bale Mountains are national and global treasures of biodiversity, teeming with dozens of endemic mammal, bird, and plant species. Ethiopia’s most important region for migrating birds, the rivers and streams in the Bale watershed flow to more than 12 million people in southern Ethiopia and western Somalia. Bale Mountains National Park hosts half of the world’s population of its rarest canid, the Ethiopian wolf, which has dwindled to a mere 250 individuals due to human interaction. When I toured the park, I was lucky enough to spot bushbucks, mountain nyalas, molerats, and several Ethiopian wolves.
As in many parts of the country, rural communities around the park face grave livelihood and health challenges, and their unsustainable use of land to eke out a living is threatening its conservation efforts. Due to diminishing agricultural land and an average total fertility rate of 6.2 children per mother in the region, people are increasingly forced to cut trees for fuel and timber in order to feed and house their families.
If Bale’s resources continue to be exploited in an unsustainable way, more mammal species would become extinct here than in any other area of equivalent size in the world. Even worse, MELCA Project Manager Tesfaye Teshome told me that if deforestation and impending climate change dry up Bale’s precious watershed, drought and famine could lead to the displacement or death of millions of Ethiopian citizens.
Raising PHE Awareness in the Community
Since 2005, MELCA, a member organization of the PHE-Ethiopia Consortium, has been working to protect biodiversity and culture in the Bale region through research, advocacy, and their award-winning youth environmental education program called SEGNI, or “Social Empowerment through Group and Nature Interaction.” In March 2008, with funding from Engender Health and the Packard Foundation, MELCA launched an integrated population, health and environment (PHE) project that provides culturally sensitive training at the community, school, and government levels.I was impressed that after just seven months of raising awareness, I met dozens of community members and key stakeholders who strongly believe in both the conceptual and operational benefits of PHE integration. For example, the Health Extension Workers and beneficiaries explained to me that community members in the Bale region, most of whom are conservative Muslims, held negative perception of family planning, which contributed to the area’s large family sizes and maternal mortality. But by involving Islamic community leaders in the project’s discussions, MELCA helped convince religious leaders that family planning is an important part of improving the health and livelihoods of the community.
“After the PHE training, we have improved awareness of population, family planning, health and environmental issues, and we understand that child spacing is better. Even my wife is now using family planning services, and as a result our lives are improved,” said Shihase, a religious leader in the community.
Join the Club: PHE Goes to School
Inspired by training sessions at schools, the SEGNI nature clubs, women’s clubs, and anti-AIDS clubs joined together to form new “PHE Clubs.” With the support of MELCA, PHE Club students plant indigenous tree seedlings in school nurseries for distribution to the community. They also create dramas, songs, poems, and illustrated storyboards about population, health, and environment issues, and use modest “mini-media” equipment such as a stereos and microphones to share these stories with their peers and other community members.
When I arrived at Finchaa Banoo Elementary School, hundreds of students greeted me with a PHE song, wearing traditional costumes with PHE banners strewn across their chests. They led me to their nursery site where they had planted 60,000 indigenous tree seedlings. A beautifully decorated cultural hut was filled with 10 PHE storyboard panels, painted by a local PHE-trained artist.
Fatiye, a 21-year old PHE club leader in 8th grade, proudly told me, “Before the coming of PHE, I’d been working only on SEGNI and knew only about biodiversity and culture. But now, I clearly understand health and population issues, including HIV/AIDS, taught to me by my peers. By having the integration of clubs, we’ve strengthened our power to accomplish more.”
Working Together to Save Time and Improve Health
MELCA’s PHE trainings also helped government officials and development workers who had previously operated in isolated sectors to integrate their work at the planning and implementation levels. Health Extension Workers and experts from the Agricultural and Rural Development Office said that collaboration is beneficial to them and the community, because it saves time and accomplishes greater results. Shankore, one of the Health Extension Workers, told me that integrating efforts across sectors allows them to help more households adopt both family planning and better sanitation, by more consistently and efficiently delivering services at the same time.
And their efforts are paying off: “Previously, we were giving birth just like chickens, our forest coverage was diminishing, and we were damaging our resources. We had cattle in our homes, and our children had health problems. Now, we understand how to improve these issues,” Khasim Sheka, a male member of the community, told me. “Health Extension Workers are teaching us about cleaning our home gardens and homes, and we separate our house from our cattle, liquid, and solid waste. My wife wasn’t using any family planning before, and now she’s using five-year Norplant.”
Although MELCA’s PHE project is still in its early stages, it appears capable of being scaled up with a little investment in additional training and by building the capacity of its staff and community members. In particular, the reproductive health component of the project needs to be strengthened, since Health Extension Workers are not trained on simple long-term family planning methods like IUDs, and are afraid they will lose clients if they continue to have to refer them to the distant health clinic.
With these improvements, MELCA could more successfully implement the integrated PHE approach, which will not only reduce the impact of population growth and deforestation on Bale Mountain Natural Park, but will improve the health and livelihoods of its neighbors, and ultimately protect its biodiversity for Ethiopia and the global community.
For more information about PHE-Ethiopia, please contact phe-ethiopia@gmail.com or visit their website at http://www.phe-ethiopia.org. For more information about MELCA, please contact melca@ethionet.et or visit their website at http://www.melca-ethiopia.org.
Cassie Gardener was the National Campus Organizer for the Sierra Club’s Global Population and Environment Program from 2006-2010, and is currently traveling around the world and volunteering for integrated health and development programs like PHE-Ethiopia and GoJoven prior to beginning her Masters in Public Health Program at UCLA in the fall.
Photo Credits: Morgennenbel034_31a, courtesy of flickr user Agoetzke Practitioners, courtesy of Cassie Gardener. -
Population, Health, and Environment
›The WWF and Equilibrium Research released a report on the interplay between the environment and human health. Vital Sites: The Contribution of Protected Areas to Human Health documents the environmental-human health connection, provides case studies from both the developed and developing worlds, and offers recommendations to enhance the health outcomes that can be gained from environmental good governance. “[P]rotected areas are not a luxury but are key sites to protect not only biodiversity, but also ecosystem services and our wider well-being,” the World Bank’s Kathy MacKinnon writes in the foreword.“Family Planning and the Environment: Connected Through Human and Community Well-Being,” part of PATH‘s Outlook series, details the importance of family planning-environmental projects to communities living in remote and ecologically vulnerable areas. Designed for practitioners, the article aims to promote cross-discipline dialogue and offers case studies from the Philippines and Uganda. The article concludes that “more collaborative family planning and environmental efforts aimed at reducing inequities would better ensure sustainable community development as well as the right of individuals to achieve what they value.” -
To Invest in a Sustainable Future, Fund Voluntary Family Planning
›President Obama’s proposed federal budget for FY2011 includes $715.7 million for international family planning and reproductive health assistance—10 percent ($67 million) more than what was included in the FY2010 budget that Congress approved last December. If approved, the FY2011 allocation would be 54 percent more than the FY2008 budget, which was equivalent to the amount allotted in 1974 when adjusted for inflation. The recent increases mark the end of more than 30 years of stagnation in U.S. funding for voluntary family planning—and herald a new investment in a sustainable future.
Over the last 20 years, the number of women of reproductive age in the developing world has increased by 465 million. Today, the Guttmacher Institute estimates that 201 million women in developing countries want but lack access to modern contraceptives. “Satisfying the unmet need for contraceptive services in developing countries would avert 52 million unintended pregnancies annually, which, in turn, would save more than 1.5 million lives and prevent 505,000 children from losing their mothers,” the Institute reports.
Rapid population growth in some of the world’s most economically disadvantaged countries poses a significant threat to their natural resources and the environment. Currently, more than 1 billion people live in ecological hotspots—areas that are both rich in plant and animal diversity and highly threatened by human activity. Although these areas comprise just 12 percent of the Earth’s land surface, they hold nearly 20 percent of the global population and possess a population growth rate nearly 40 percent greater than the world average. The cumulative impact of a growing global population, which demands more natural resources and exacerbates already unsustainable patterns of consumption, degrades the most basic foundations of life—air, water, croplands, forests, and fisheries—and contributes to climate change.
Improving access to voluntary family planning not only contributes to smaller, healthier families, but also eases the strain on natural resources. By giving couples the information and supplies to plan the number and timing of their children, U.S.-funded population and reproductive health programs have helped countries slow population growth and reduce population pressures on finite natural resources, including local habitats and wildlife. In addition, the success of USAID’s population, health, and environment programs also offers important lessons for climate change adaptation and building resilience in local communities.
In our interconnected environment, the impacts of natural resources use, management, and protection around the world are felt here in the United States. Despite the difficult budgetary and economic environment our country faces, the president’s request for approximately $716 million in international family planning and reproductive health assistance funding is a wise long-term investment. These resources are an important step toward the broader goal of investing $1 billion in these critical programs to create a healthier, more sustainable future for our world.
Rebecca Wadler Lase is the program associate for the Sustainability Education Program at the Izaak Walton League of America.
Map: “Poverty-Biodiversity Mapping Applications.” Courtesy UNEP/Grid Arendal. -
Guerrillas vs. Gorillas in the Congo Basin
›Gorillas could disappear from the Congo basin in the next 10-15 years, according to a new report issued by the United Nations and Interpol. The Last Stand of the Gorilla – Environmental Crime and Conflict in the Congo Basin places responsibility for the decline of gorilla populations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and its surrounding region squarely on the shoulders of resource-hungry militants, who poach gorilla bushmeat to feed hungry soldiers and mine workers and sell in local markets. Militants extract timber, charcoal, diamonds, and other resources to raise funds for arms, reducing gorilla territory.
Yet another rationale is retaliation against park rangers who attempt to limit their illegal activities within national parks. In the process, park rangers have found themselves, their parks, and their endangered charges targets of militant groups seeking to plunder and traffic goods through protected areas. “In Virunga Park alone, 190 park rangers have been killed in the last 15 years,” notes the report, which is also available in an interactive e-book edition.
Conflict with local communities also frequently leads to the slaughter of the gorillas and loss of their habitats. Displaced people and refugees also compete with gorillas for land. In several cases, gorillas facing shrinking natural domains have satisfied their appetites in banana plantations, and local farmers have struck back.Strengthening Law Enforcement
Not all, however, is dire. The report finds several success stories stemming out of transboundary law enforcement collaboration and recommends increased training and support for local and international law enforcement groups. “The gorillas are yet another victim of the contempt shown by organized criminal gangs for national and international laws aimed at defending wildlife,” said David Higgins, Interpol’s Environmental Crime Programme Manager. “The law enforcement response must be internationally coordinated, strong, and united, and Interpol is uniquely placed to facilitate this.”
Law enforcement in the Congo Basin faces an uphill battle, in part due to conditions present in peace agreements between guerillas and the Congolese government. Removing vehicle checkpoints from important border crossings was key to the insurgents agreeing to peace. While these agreements reduced violence, they have created a highway for illegal exports. This trade props up the militant groups and undercuts the chances for peace on a regional scale. It is an example of how large remaining quantities of automatic weapons and turns to poaching by ex-militants can render post-conflict environments even more damaging to local wildlife than war itself.
Toward Coexistence
In some locations, conflicts between gorillas and local farmers are disappearing with the construction of natural barriers and as local populations realize the potential of ecotourism to generate greater revenue from thriving gorilla populations than collapsing ones. Greater international coordination and local commitment, however, are necessary. Turning threatening competition into beneficial cooperation is possible.
Tara Innes is a PhD student at the University of Maryland, studying conflict-environment linkages.
Photos: Gorilla, courtesy Flickr user mrflip; Gorilla Territory Affected by War, Mining, and Logging courtesy UNEP/GRID-Arendal. -
Imagine There Are No Countries: Conservation Beyond Borders in the Balkans
›International peace parks have captured the imagination of visionaries like Nelson Mandela, who called them a “concept that can be embraced by all.” Such parks—also known as transboundary protected areas—span national boundaries, testifying to the peaceful collaborative relationship between neighboring countries and to the co-existence of humans and nature.
Peace parks seek to simultaneously promote regional peace and stability, conserve biodiversity, and stimulate job creation. How can they accomplish such ambitious goals?- Biodiversity: The political borders and physical barriers within the park are removed, allowing animals and humans to migrate freely. In addition, surveys of the area’s biodiversity don’t stop at sovereign borders, but are instead conducted on an ecosystem basis.
- Job creation: Developing eco-tourism—one of the fastest-growing industries in the world—provides people living near peace parks an incentivized alternative to exhausting the very resource base on which their survival depends.
- Peace and stability: To jointly manage natural resources successfully requires countries to collaborate through cross-boundary committees on conservation, safety and security, finance, human resources, legislation, and tourism.
My organization, International Peace Park Expeditions, uses experiential peacebuilding, academic programs, and professional trainings in international peace parks to integrate theory with practice. We seek to develop leadership and collaboration among three distinct, but complementary, groups: students and professors, transboundary protected area professionals, and youth from the peace park countries.
Our Summer 2010 programs focus on the proposed peace park in the Western Balkans’ Prokletije/Bjeshket e Namuna mountains, between Albania and the newly independent countries of Montenegro (2006) and Kosovo (2008), which were formerly part of Yugoslavia. The Balkans Peace Park Project, a UK charity and their local network of partner organizations and individuals, first conceptualized the Balkans Peace Park, an area of approximately 4000 square km, in 2001.
This summer, participants in our professional training symposium will collaboratively develop a more precise and dynamic map. Students and young leaders in our other two programs will learn about peace parks while trekking together across the borders into all three countries.
Experiential Peacebuilding (July 19-25, 2010)
Experiential Peacebuilding programs combine outdoor experiential education and practical skills training in peacebuilding to foster the development of a community of young leaders capable of catalyzing positive peaceful changes in their communities. This summer’s program is being developed in conjunction with our local partner organizations (ERA and Marimangut in Kosovo; Outdoor Albania and High Albania in Albania; and PSD Prokletija in Montenegro). The primary goals of these programs are to unite youth from conflict-affected communities to develop relationships across borders; transform negative attitudes and stereotypes; and create a core group of young leaders with the skills, tools, and motivation to generate and direct changes in their communities.
Academic Expedition (June 7-26 and August 2-21, 2010)This three-week, three-credit course, “Conservation Beyond Borders,” will combine traditional academic teaching with proven experiential learning methodologies to create a unique, dynamic expedition that will provide students with a strong understanding of the theory and practice of international peace parks. Course readings and lectures will provide the academic base, and guest lectures from subject-matter experts working in the field will create the bridge; both will address sustainable forestry management, biodiversity surveys, eco-tourism plans, development and infrastructure planning, environmental conservation, water resource management, peacebuilding initiatives, and cross-border projects. First-hand experience trekking through the proposed Balkans Peace Park, crossing the borders of Albania, Kosovo, and Montenegro, and living among the local people will bring theory to life.
Professional Training Symposium (July 8-9, 2010)
This year’s Professional Field Training Symposium, “Critical Transboundary Environmental Linkages,” will bring together experts, policymakers, and stakeholders from the Prokletije/Bjeshket e Namuna region to discuss cross-border ecotourism, biodiversity mapping, and sustainable forestry management. The symposium seeks to build trust through cross-border collaboration, and to improve environmental management in the peace park region. Participants will create a Google Earth map to house shared environmental data and visit two project sites in the proposed peace park.Todd Walters is the founder and executive director of International Peace Park Expeditions. He holds a master’s degree in International Peace and Conflict Resolution from American University’s School of International Service, and is a National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) certified wilderness guide. While at AU, he worked as an intern for the Environmental Change and Security Program.
Photos courtesy IPPE/Cory Wilson.
