Showing posts from category conservation.
-
“There Is No Choice:” Climate, Health, Water, Food Security Must Be Integrated, Say Experts
›August 9, 2010 // By Russell SticklorBureaucratic stovepipes plague international development efforts, and aid for pressing environmental and human security concerns—such as climate change, food shortages, fresh water access, and global health threats—rarely matches the reality on the ground in the developing world, where such health and environmental problems are fundamentally interconnected.
Instead, development efforts in the field—whether spearheaded by multilaterals, bilaterals, or NGOs—are commonly devoted to single sectors: e.g., the prevention and treatment of a single disease; the implementation of irrigation infrastructure in a specific area; or the introduction of a new crop in a certain region. The reasons for such a narrow focus can come from multiple sources: finite resources, narrowly constructed funding streams, emphasis on simple and discrete indicators of success, and institutional and professional development penalties for those who conduct integrated work. But some experts argue that integrating problem-solving initiatives across categories would not only improve the efficacy of development efforts, but also better improve lives in target communities.
As part of the USAID Knowledge Management Center‘s 2010 Summer Seminar Series, a recent National Press Club panel on integration featured a frank discussion of both the opportunities and challenges inherent in breaking down barriers within and between development agencies. Panelists from the World Bank’s Environment Department, the White House Council on Environmental Quality, and the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Environment Change and Security Program weighed in on the prospects for cross-sectoral integration.
Addressing the impacts of a global problem like climate change “requires multilevel approaches,” and necessitates that we “think multisectorally along the lines of agriculture, water, transportation, energy, [and] security,” said Loren Labovitch of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. The four topics under discussion—climate change, food security, water, and health—are all Obama administration priorities, as reflected by dedicated programs and special initiatives. Finding ways to practically integrate these interrelated challenges (through efforts like the Feed the Future Initiative or the Global Health Initiative) is getting more attention from policy analysts and policymakers with each passing year.
Integration in Practice: Success Stories
While there may be an emerging willingness to discuss and even experiment with holistic programming, what does it actually look in practice? Panelist Geoff Dabelko, director of the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program, singled out integrated development programs in the Philippines, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Asia as examples.
Philippines: The PATH Foundation Philippines’ Integrated Population and Coastal Resource Management (IPOPCORM) initiative uses an integrated approach to address health and environmental concerns in coastal communities. Their “basket of services” includes establishing a locally managed protected marine sanctuary to allow local fish stocks to recover, promoting alternative economic livelihoods outside of the fishing industry, and improving access to local health services and commodities, said Dabelko. To date, IPOPCORM has yielded several notable improvements, among them reduced program costs and improved health and environmental outcomes as compared to side-by-side single sector interventions. A forthcoming peer-reviewed article will appear in Environmental Conservation, and will detail the controlled comparison study of the IPOPCORM project.
Democratic Republic of Congo: Mercy Corps has also successfully pursued cross-sectoral programming as part of a larger effort to be more holistic in its humanitarian and development responses. In war-torn eastern DRC, Mercy Corps brought practitioners with expertise in natural resource management into the fold of what has historically been an emergency relief mission. In particular, the Mercy Corps mission has fused humanitarian assistance with longer-term development efforts such as enhanced environmental stewardship. For example, promoting the use of fuel-efficient cookstoves eases pressure on local forest resources by lowering the need for firewood, and improves respiratory health by lowering air pollution. The project scaled up the effort through resources from further integration, with carbon credits from avoided emissions being sold through a local broker to the European cap and trade market. These resources in turn helped finance more cook stoves, which now total 20,000 for this project.
“The lesson is we have no excuse for not doing this anywhere in the world and saying some place is too unstable,” Dabelko said. “If we can do it [integrated projects] in eastern DRC, we should be able to do it anywhere.”
Asia: Tackling programmatic integration starts with better understanding the interconnections between environmental and health challenges. Dabelko cited a recent effort of the environment and natural resources team within USAID’s Asia Bureau as an example of breaking out of narrow bureaucratic stovepipes.
USAID staff recognized that a wide set of climate, energy, economic, governance, and conflict issues affected their core biodiversity and water portfolios, even if they did not have the time, expertise, or resources to investigate those issues in detail. Trends that appeared to be in the periphery were not viewed as peripheral to planning and designing programs for long-term success.
Working with the Woodrow Wilson Center, the USAID Asia Regional Bureau engaged experts on a diverse set of topics normally considered outside their portfolios. The resulting workshop series and report led to a deeper understanding of the possible impacts of increased Himalayan glacier melt and Chinese hydropower plans on food security and biodiversity programs in the lower reaches of the Mekong River. Bringing analysis from these topically and geographically remote areas into local-level development planning is a process that will require a similar willingness to go outside the typical bounds of one’s brief.
More Integration Ahead?
These case studies provide a glimpse of what integrated programming can look like on the ground. Still, significant hurdles remain standing in the way of regular and effective integration. Cross-sectoral programming demands that old problems be addressed in innovative and perhaps unfamiliar ways, requiring the addition of new capacity in development organizations and better coordination within and between agencies. That can be a complicated process, noted Dabelko, since efforts to pursue greater programming integration can be “hamstrung by earmarks and line items.”
Integration can also prove tricky because it requires a greater willingness to accept multiple indicators of success unfolding over different time frames—health gains may occur quickly, for example, while progress on environmental conservation may unfold less speedily. This means existing programs might need to be reshaped and reoriented to accommodate these divergent time frames, which could prove somewhat difficult. “Integration can be a challenge, both from a programming perspective and from an organizational perspective,” acknowledged moderator Tegan Blaine, climate change advisor for USAID’s Africa Bureau.
Further, the temptation remains strong among appropriators and implementers alike to maintain control over authority and resources in their traditional portfolios. Getting long-time practitioners in particular issue areas to willingly cede some of their turf in the pursuit of greater integration has historically been the “real world” that stands in the way of such integrated work.
But, as shown by the standing-room-only crowd at the seminar, momentum is slowly starting to build in pursuit of breaking down old programming walls and finding new approaches to addressing emerging challenges in human and environmental security.
“There is no choice” but to fuse development agendas with climate change adaptation efforts, asserted Warren Evans, director of the World Bank’s Environment Department. “It can’t be a parallel process anymore.”
Photo Credit: “2010 Summer Seminar Series – July 15th Panel Discussion on Food Security, Climate Change, Water and Health,” used courtesy of USAID and the National Press Club. -
Drug Barons, Poachers, Ranchers, Oh My! Guatemala’s Forests Under Siege
›July 29, 2010 // By Kayly OberLast week, the New York Times ran an article about the many threats converging on Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve. “There’s traffickers, cattle ranchers, loggers, poachers and looters,” Richard D. Hansen, an American archaeologist, told NYT. “All the bad guys are lined up to destroy the reserve. You can’t imagine the devastation that is happening.”
Eric Olson, senior associate of the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center, agrees that drug trafficking is a major problem in the Petén, a region of northern Guatemala that lies within the Biosphere. “Petén’s isolation has made it possible for the biodiversity of the area to survive and thrive during periods of great social turmoil, especially in the 1980s,” Olson told the New Security Beat. “However, the isolation also makes it an ideal place for drug traffickers to move their illegal product northward.”
According to NYT, peasant squatters in search of farmland constitute an additional threat because they “often become pawns of the drug lords,” and, in some instances, “function as an advance guard for the drug dealers, preventing the authorities from entering, warning of intrusions, and clearing land that the drug gangs ultimately take over.”
Plus, the situation seems poised to worsen. According to a UNESCO report, Petén’s population has surged from 25,000 during the 1970s to upwards of 500,000 today. This growth, coupled with an attendant rise in subsistence farming, has had significant environmental impacts across the region.
Population Growth in Protected Areas
“Population has a huge impact on Guatemala’s ecological diversity,” David López-Carr, an associate professor in the University of California-Santa Barbara’s Geography Department, wrote in an e-mail to the New Security Beat. Most striking, according to López-Carr, are total fertility rates in rural areas, which remain “over 5 and much higher still – higher than 6 – in the most remote rural areas where ecological diversity is highest.”
Despite the fact that most migrants move to Guatemala City, smaller cities, or the United States, López-Carr wrote that the “tiny fraction (probably under 5%) that move to remote rural areas have a major impact on biodiversity and forest conversion.” López-Carr pointed out that “in core conservation areas of the Maya Biosphere Reserve, in-migration has swelled the population in some regions by nearly 10% annually during the past two decades.”
At a 2008 meeting at the Woodrow Wilson Center, professors Justin Brashares and George Wittemyer said three factors drive population growth near protected areas in Africa and Latin America: 1) more money for parks (as measured by protected-area funds from the Global Environment Facility); 2) more park employees; and 3) more deforestation on the edges of protected areas.
To avoid population pitfalls, Guatemala’s President Alvaro Colom should take this research into account before putting his “Cuatro Balam” eco-tourism plan into action. The initiative—named for the four main figures in the Mayan creation myth—seeks to divide the reserve into an archaeological park in the north and an agricultural zone in the south, while setting up a Maya studies center for scholars and installing an $8 million electric mini-train to shuttle tourists through the reserve.
The Perils of “Pristine Conservation”
While President Colom’s plan is certainly ambitious, communities in Petén are cautious. They see Cuatro Balam as a continuation of earlier government-funded projects, where “pristine conservation” – oft-touted by large conservation organizations – prohibited human interaction with the forests and limited socioeconomic opportunities for local populations.
Liza Grandia, an anthropology professor at Clark University who has lived and worked in the Peten region, points out in Conservation and Society that “primary” or “pristine” forests flagged as biological hotspots by these conservation organizations are likely remnants of ancient Mayan agroforestry. However, Mayan descendents are not allowed to live within nor manage these areas.
Instead, stewardship of many federal parks is delegated to large conservation outfits or the government. But Rosa Maria Chan, director of ProPeten, a community-based environmental organization, wrote in an e-mail to the New Security Beat that “the environment is not always the government’s priority,” adding that “development” normally signifies large infrastructure projects, instead of smaller-scale ideas that would better address human development.
The Benefits of Community-Based Conservation
One successful local project is the Association of the Forest Community of Péten (ACOFOP), a community-based association made up of 23 indigenous and farming organizations. Under ACOFOP’s direction, uncontrolled settlement in the biosphere reserve has been stopped, communities have ceased the conventional slash-and-burn practices, and forest fires have virtually ceased in community-managed areas. ACOFOP’s projects have also created jobs in local communities, where the beneficiaries re-invest their earnings into collective infrastructure.
In the mid-1990s/early 2000s, ProPeten’s Remedios I and II programs, funded mainly by USAID, used radio soap operas and mobile theaters to educate residents about conservation, reproductive health, nutrition, and sustainable agriculture. Underlying these programs’ success was an unprecedented survey that gathered data on the rapidly changing population-environment dynamics in this frontier region.
Grandia, who served as head of ProPeten’s board of directors from 2003-2005, writes in 2004 Wilson Center article that “the integrated DHS [Demographic and Health Survey] has been a critical part of developing…programs linking health and population with the environment,” which lowered Petén’s total fertility rate from 6.8 to 5.8 children per woman in just four years. Plans are underway to include a similar environmental module in the next DHS survey.
Although the fate of Guatemala’s forests is subject to many outside forces, from the government’s development plans to the cartel’s smuggling operations, small-scale, community-based programs may have the best shot at transforming the drivers of deforestation into sustainable, economic development opportunities.
Photo Credit: “Keel-billed Toucan at Tikal National Park, Guatemala,” courtesy of flickr user jerryoldenettel. -
Environmental Impacts of Madagascar’s Coup
Cutting the Head Off Conservation
›June 24, 2010 // By Tara InnesThe coup in Madagascar in early 2009 not only politically destabilized the country, but also damaged its ability to protect its unique environment. A hotspot of biodiversity, Madagascar is the home of many species that exist nowhere else in the world.
Deposed president Marc Ravalomanana, while criticized for prioritizing business interests, was a proponent of environmental conservation who leveraged the natural wealth of his country to promote sustainable development.
The coup caused donors to withdraw aid to the country; destroyed the tourism industry, and changed the priorities of the country’s leadership. The new government, led by President Andry Rajoelina, has failed to help—and has possibly harmed–Madagascar’s rich ecosystem.
Shortly after the coup, the United States suspended all non-humanitarian aid to Madagascar, including aid targeted at conservation efforts. The World Bank and the African Union also cut aid to the country.
Without international aid—which provides 90 percent of the funding for conservation, according to MongaBay—parks and endangered species cannot be preserved and protected. Conservation International documented reports of endangered lemurs being slaughtered and sold for bushmeat by poachers.
Funding for USAID’s integrated population-health-environment programs, which seek to improve health and reduce population pressures in remote communities near protected areas, was also suspended. Prior to the coup such programs were heralded largely as a success.
Instability has also made Madagascar an unattractive vacation destination. The tourism industry – much of it eco-tourism – has taken a massive economic hit, losing 12 percent of its value in 2009 and depriving some communities of a major source of support. The drop in tourist visits to the country’s national parks has “a big impact on the economics of the villages as 50 percent of the park entrance fees are used for village conservation and development projects,” the manager of the Ranomafana National Park told MongaBay’s Rhett Butler earlier this year.
While Ravalomanana tripled the area of protected lands in Madagascar during his tenure as president, he also made several unpopular decisions leading to rising food costs and unrest. Just prior to the coup, South Korea’s Daewoo Logistics Corporation attempted to negotiate a 99-year lease on 3.2 million hectares of farmland, contributing to anti-Ravalomanana sentiment fueled by Rajoelina, who later canceled the deal.
Some—including Ravalomanana–claim that the new government is being funded in part by illegal lumber exports. More recently, members of the transitional government banned trade in rainforest timber, but there are some concerns that this ban will not be enforceable given the continued political instability, reports MongaBay.
The damage already done “demonstrates that long-term conservation success depends on the overall political stability of a country and in turn on the steady improvement of the lives of its citizens,” wrote Rowan Moore Gerety in wildmadagascar.org last year.
“It’s difficult to work without a state,” said Guy Suzon Ramangason, director general of the organization that manages many of the national parks, recently told the New York Times.
Perhaps that situation will be rectified. In May Rajoelina announced that elections will be held in late 2010, in which he will not be running. Until then, it unlikely that conservation will receive adequate attention—from either Madagascar’s government or international donors.
Photo Credit: “Lemur behind the mesh” courtesy of flickr user Tambako the Jaguar -
Protect Nature to Protect Us: Biodiversity and Adaptation to Climate Change
›June 17, 2010 // By Dan Asin“We believe that changes in biodiversity, either through local extinction or biological invasions, is the single most important and dramatic problem in contemporary ecology,” reads the mission of the Naeem Lab, led by Professor Shahid Naeem of Columbia University and editor of Biodiversity, Ecosystems Functioning, and Human Wellbeing: An Ecological and Economic Perspective. As Naeem told a group of USAID employees last week, this problem is even more important today, because biodiversity is a key factor in determining the resilience of life–and could be an important ally in the fight against the impacts of climate change.
At the talk, Naeem described an experiment funded by the National Science Foundation that tested the effect of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and diversity of plant species on rates of plant growth. The scientists found both carbon dioxide and nitrogen exposure to increase plant growth, but the impact of biodiversity to be even greater.
In the monoculture trials, exposure to carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and both increased vegetation growth by by 7 percent, 2 percent, and 17 percent, respectively. When the plot was expanded to include 16 species, however, rates of plant growth jumped to 22, 25, and 36 percent.
Real-World Implications
Naeem’s message aligned with an earlier World Bank report, Biodiversity, Climate Change, and Adaptation, which in 2008 noted that “Climate change is already impacting on ecosystems and livelihoods, but enhanced protection and management of biological resources can mitigate these impacts and contribute to solutions.”
The report, which examines the importance of biodiversity to mitigating and adapting to climate change, cites real-world examples, such an analysis of a forest management project in Madagascar that would cost $97 million but generate $150-180 million in revenue from direct payments for conservation activities, ecotourism, and watershed protection.
Another example focuses on a farmer in South Africa’s Bokkeveld Plateau, who 30 years ago switched from cultivating cereals and pasture crops to nurturing indigenous vegetation. “With the diversity of indigenous plants, McGregor was able to maintain productivity for much longer through the dry summer season,” the report says. Further, he was able to eliminate the need for pesticides and increase the productivity of sheep grazing. The flowering of the natural plants attracted tourists to his farm, generating greater income for both himself and his district, and has since become South Africa’s ninth botanical garden.
Bringing Science to Bear on Policy
Still, Naeem said that although the scientific evidence connecting biodiversity, resilience, and adaptation has long been established, it is in large part failing to affect environmental and development policy. Naeem said scientists have completed their leg of the race but aren’t able to reach the policymakers who need to carry-on the baton. Along the chain connecting research and policy-making the message becomes lost or diluted.
“How do we translate the science?” Naeem asked the USAID practitioners in the audience. The knowledge of biodiversity’s important role in climate adaptation is available, but how can scientists ensure that it impacts policy? Members of the audience cited both Congressional funding mandates and departmental silos as significant barriers to efforts to address the link between biodiversity and adaptation.
One promising avenue could be programs that already work across departmental silos to integrate environment and health initiatives in areas of the world with high biodiversity. These population-health-environment (PHE) programs, which seek to preserve biodiversity while improving community livelihoods and human health, could be effective mechanisms for exploring the contribution of biodiversity to climate adaptation.
Photo credit: Wildflowers bloom in Namaqualand, South Africa, courtesy Flickr user Martin Heigan. Near the Bokkeveld Plateau, the wildflowers in the two regions are resilient to changes in rainfall and temperature patterns and each year attract tourists from all over the globe. -
‘The Plundered Planet’: A Discussion With Paul Collier
›Who owns the planet’s natural wealth found underwater, below ground, and in the air? How do we reconcile our use of these assets with that of future generations? Such questions are the subject of Oxford Professor Paul Collier’s latest book, The Plundered Planet: Why We Must–and How We Can–Manage Nature for Global Prosperity, which he discussed at a recent Wilson Center event.
The author of The Bottom Billion and Breaking the Conflict Trap, Collier called Plundered Planet “the most important book I’ve written.” Resources are a “one-shot game,” he said; if we waste them, they’re gone. The next 10-20 years are “vital” to preserving natural assets as new technologies for removing them proliferate. We’re sucking fish up like “hoovers,” he said, and a combination of technology and economic growth are rapidly pushing mineral extraction into the few remaining frontiers.
Because time is short, Collier hopes his work will bring economists and environmentalists together. He said the two groups are largely at each other “cat and dog,” yet their objectives–environmental preservation and economic development–are not fundamentally opposed. In fact, to overcome polarization and produce key policy decisions, development and conservation must become partners.
Becoming Custodians, Not Curators
Collier said resource plunder can take one of two forms: “Where the few expropriate what belongs to the many”; and “where nature is expropriated by the present generation and burned up rather than benefiting future generations.” Both forms of plunder not only impede development, but are also unjust, he said.
Unlike other assets–such as books or records, which are typically owned by their authors or artists–natural assets have no human creators. A system whereby “natural assets are owned by the people who are lucky enough to live on top of them” creates “staggering inequality,” said Collier. Instead, resources must be shared equally among all citizens of a nation, including those not yet born.
Yet sharing nature’s wealth with generations to come does not mean leaving all fish in the sea, all trees on land, or all minerals underground. “We are not curators of natural artifacts,” Collier said. “We’re custodians of natural value.”
For the one billion people living in poverty, the development of natural resources can provide a path toward development, growth, and better lives, Collier argued, when properly and justly managed.
Filling the Gaps in Governance
Why have we largely plundered, rather than invested in, our resources thus far? What can be done to change the current principles of resource management? Collier’s short answer: governance.
For the poor countries in the “bottom billion,” Collier said the “broken decision chain” must be mended. The chain has six steps:- Discovering natural assets;
- Avoiding appropriation by a few at the expense of the many;
- Ensuring local inhabitants receive generous compensation for unavoidable environmental damage;
- Consuming in a way that benefits both the present and the future;
- Investing in the absorptive capacity of government; and
- Investing in domestic development.
Igniting a Movement
“There is no substitute…for building a critical mass of informed opinion,” Collier said. While technology enables plunder, it also creates a way for people to share knowledge at tremendous speeds and with wide audiences. The challenge, he said, “is to ignite the information transformation process.” A shift from plunder to sustainable management of transnational and developing country resources is a historic opportunity to benefit the world’s poor. “If these resources are harnessed for sustained development,” he said, “they can drag themselves decisively from poverty to prosperity.” The window of opportunity, however, is closing. -
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. -
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. -
Visualizing Natural Resources, Population, and Conflict
›Environmental problems that amplify regional security issues are often multifaceted, especially across national boundaries. Obtaining a comprehensive understanding of the natural resource, energy, and security issues facing a region is not fast or easy.
Fortunately, the Environment and Security Initiative (ENVSEC) has created highly informative, easy-to-understand maps depicting environmental, health, population, and security issues in critical regions.
Published with assistance from the United Nations GRID-Arendal, these maps offer policymakers and the public a snapshot of the complex topography of environmental security hotspots in Central Asia, Eastern Europe, Southeastern Europe, and the Southern Caucasus.
Some that caught our eye:• Environmental Issues in the Northern Caspian Sea: Overlaying environmental areas and energy production zones, this map finds hydrocarbon pollution in sturgeon spawning grounds, seal habitats in oil and gas fields, and energy production centers and waste disposal sites in flood zones.• Water Withdrawal and Availability in the Aral Sea Basin: Simple and direct, this combination map and graph contrasts water usage with availability in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan—which stand in stark comparison to the excess water resources of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.• Environment and Security Issues in Belarus: In addition to noting the parts of the country with poor water quality and potassium mining, the map also delineates wildfires that occurred in areas contaminated by the Chernobyl explosion, thus threatening downwind populations.
Maps: Illustrations courtesy of the Environment & Security Initiative.
