Showing posts from category Latin America.
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Managing Environmental Conflict in Latin America: Resolution Rests on Inclusion, Communication, Development
›June 23, 2009 // By Brian Klein
Public policies governing natural-resource extraction in Latin America “are often seen as arbitrary” and illegitimate by communities, said Mara Hernández, director of the Centro de Colaboración Cívica, A.C. – México, at the Wilson Center on June 3, 2009. Pablo Lumerman, director of Argentina’s Fundación Cambio Democrático, and Carlos Salazar, director of Socios Perú: Centro de Colaboración Cívica, joined Hernández to share methods of resolving environmental disputes. The event was co-sponsored by the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program and Latin American Program and held in conjunction with Partners for Democratic Change.
The Balance of Power
Fashioning effective and equitable natural-resource policies requires the participation of all the relevant stakeholders, especially community members who are directly affected, Hernández contended. Consensus building must supplant unilateral decision-making by individual authorities, such as local or national governments.
For example, Fundación Cambio Democrático has successfully constructed a “Platform of Dialogue for Responsible Mining Development,” with the Argentinian government as an early and essential partner. The effort is an outgrowth of the organization’s Extractive Industries Program, which examines conflict over mining in Argentina.
Similarly, Salazar and Socios Perú have tried to ensure that the Peruvian government and companies operating in Peru build relationships with local communities from the moment they are interested in communities’ land, not just once a concession is secured.
When a conflict broke out in the Upper Sea of Cortez in 2005 between fishers and environmentalists over protection of the vaquita marina, a rare porpoise, Centro de Colaboración Cívica convened representatives from the community, NGOs, and corporations. The diverse stakeholders formed an organization called Alto Golfo Sustentable (“Sustainable Upper Gulf”), which successfully lobbied the Mexican government for better protection of the vaquita, improved monitoring of illegal fishing, and sounder management of marine resources.
Transparency and Communication“Lack of clear and on-time information to the communities” has been a primary driver of conflict around extractive industries, said Salazar. Stakeholders will often disseminate their own information, Lumerman cautioned, with each accusing the other of bias.
A neutral, third-party information provider can mitigate disagreement. For example, in order “to develop a system of information of public access…for all the stakeholders,” Fundación Cambio Democrático is creating a mining conflict map of Argentina, said Lumerman.
Cultural Sensitivity and Sustainable Development
Natural-resource extraction should be closely linked to the sustainable development of communities. Salazar emphasized that projects with a clear plan for “development, fighting against poverty, improving their way of life” are more likely to be met with approval. Lumerman cited the Cerro Vanguardia mining project as an example of a successful partnership that included local development into its long-term plan.
Top Photo: Heavy metal mine at La Oroya, Peru, one of the world’s most polluted places. Courtesy Flickr user Matthew Burpee.
Photos of Mara Hernández, Pablo Lumerman, and Carlos Salazar courtesy Dave Hawxhurst and the Woodrow Wilson Center. -
Weekly Reading
›In the June 2009 edition of The Atlantic, 2008 International Reporting Fellow Delphine Shrank explains how conflict in DRC is harming the local ecosystem and livelihoods.
Oxfam International has released a study (Spanish) arguing that rapidly shrinking glaciers in the Andes are disrupting water supplies and leading to conflict in Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador.
A shortage of clean water is leading to domestic violence in Uganda, report The New Vision and Circle of Blue.
The June 2009 edition of National Geographic includes a special report on food security, agriculture, and population.
“Two decades after its fall, the border between East and West Germany has already become Europe’s biggest nature reserve: an 858-mile ‘ecological treasure trove,’ no longer the Iron Curtain but the Green Belt, and home to more than 600 rare and endangered species of birds, mammals, plants and insects,” reports Tony Paterson for The Independent.
Worldfocus.org’s latest radio show explores the geopolitics of the melting Arctic. -
Swine Flu Not Out of the Blue for U.S. Intelligence Community
›April 27, 2009 // By Rachel WeisshaarToday, the Washington Post’s Ben Pershing called the outbreak of swine flu in North America an “unexpected challenge” for President Obama. Now, Obama’s advisers probably didn’t predict that his first 100 days in office would include this particular threat, but the U.S. intelligence community has been aware of the security threats posed by infectious diseases for a long time.
Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair’s annual threat assessment, presented to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in February 2009, included the following:
“Highly publicized virulent infectious diseases—including HIV/AIDS, a potential influenza pandemic, and ‘mystery’ illnesses such as the 2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)—remain the most direct health-related threats to the United States. The most pressing transnational health challenge for the United States is still the potential for emergence of a severe pandemic, with the primary candidate being a highly lethal influenza virus.”
The U.S. intelligence community did not just start thinking about these issues a few months ago. In 2000, the Environmental Change and Security Program hosted a presentation of the findings of a National Intelligence Estimate entitled The Global Infectious Disease Threat and Its Implications for the United States. In December 2008, the National Intelligence Council released Strategic Implications for Global Health, which built on the 2000 report but also explored non-infectious health issues like maternal mortality, malnutrition, and chronic disease.
The current swine flu outbreak has several geopolitical implications. First, governments and international organizations (particularly the World Health Organization) will be perceived as more or less legitimate based on their ability to contain and treat the disease.
Second, governments’ decisions to issue travel warnings or ban certain products coming from affected countries are made with an eye toward both political and health implications. For instance, after the European Union issued an advisory against traveling to the United States, the acting director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention struck back, saying it was unwarranted.
Finally, this outbreak of swine flu won’t do anything to burnish Mexico’s image as a tourist destination, which has already suffered from the brutal drug violence of the last year. Lagging economic growth in Mexico, due to fewer tourists and the fallout from the global financial crisis, could help fuel unrest or increase immigration to the United States.
For more on diseases that can spread between animals and people—and how this relates to the environment—see “Human, Animal, and Ecosystem Health,” a May 2008 meeting sponsored by ECSP.
Photo: Mexican police officers wear surgical masks to guard against the spread of swine flu. Courtesy of Flickr user sarihuella. -
Weekly Reading
›The authors of Asia’s Next Challenge: Securing the Region’s Water Future, a report by the Asia Society, argue that population growth, urbanization, and climate change are converging to make water an important security issue in Asia. The authors argue for including water in policy and development discussions, but warn against “securitizing” the issue.
China’s population is rapidly aging while the country is still developing and modernizing, explains China’s Long March to Retirement Reform: The Graying of the Middle Kingdom Revisited, a report by the Global Aging Initiative of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). The report recommends steps to ensure that China’s aging citizens are not left without a safety net. Another report by CSIS’s Global Aging Initiative, Latin America’s Aging Challenge: Demographics and Retirement Policy in Brazil, Chile, and Mexico, argues that these countries have a rapidly narrowing window of opportunity to prepare to meet the needs of their aging populations.
According to a study published in the British Journal of Zoology, wild populations of major grazing animals—including giraffes, impala, and wildebeest—in Kenya’s Maasai Mara National Reserve decreased significantly from 1989-2003. “Researchers found the growing human population has diminished the wild animal population by usurping wildlife grazing territory for crop and livestock production to support their families,” reports the International Livestock Research Institute.
On April 22, Bill Butz of the Population Reference Bureau, Paul Ehrlich of Stanford University, and Hania Zlotnik of the UN Population Division discussed world population trends on the Diane Rehm Show. -
In Rio de Janeiro, an Opportunity to Break Barriers
›January 23, 2009 // By Will RogersThe city of Rio de Janeiro’s plan to erect a 650-meter long, three-meter high concrete wall between the 7,500 residents of the Dona Marta slum and the surrounding rainforest signals the government’s reluctance to address the underlying causes of environmental degradation. Although it is heralded by authorities as an “eco-barrier” that will protect the rainforest and “improve living standards and protect slum residents from the armed gangs that control many of Rio’s 600 or so slums,” the wall does not address the issues of acute poverty and lack of access to affordable housing that keep many Brazilians living in slums, harvesting resources from the rainforest.
Without access to decent housing and living-wage jobs, many slum residents will continue to encroach on the hillsides, warn Brazilian environmentalists. “It is hypocrisy to talk about protecting the Atlantic rainforest without considering the issues of housing and transport to take the pressure off the forest,” said Sergio Ricardo, a leading environmental campaigner in Rio de Janeiro, in an interview with the Jornal do Brasil.
Slums have often stalled Rio’s efforts to improve its environmental report card, as slum residents tend to be focused more on daily survival than on the environmental consequences of their actions. But slums do not have to be a thorn in the side of the government’s eco-friendly image. In fact, Rio’s previous attempts to reverse deforestation through grassroots reforestation projects have been extremely successful.
According to a 2005 article in the San Francisco Chronicle, municipal reforestation projects around Rio employed several hundred slum residents to plant millions of trees surrounding their communities. The projects “resulted in the return of dozens of species of birds, monkeys and other animals—many not seen in decades,” as well as cooler air temperatures, writes William Bennett. At the same time, the municipal projects became a source of steady work for residents. “Before this job, I worked as a day laborer; one day I would have work—the next day nothing,” said Carlos Alberto Ribeiro, a reforestation worker who earned about $200 a month planting trees. By 2005, community reforestation projects had employed 914 slum residents in 93 projects that had restored a total of 4,500 acres of native-species trees to the region.
Rather than segregating slum residents from the rest of the city in what some critics have called “social apartheid,” perhaps Rio should scale up community forestry projects, employing greater numbers of slum residents to improve the health of the Atlantic rainforest. While the government still has far to go in providing affordable housing, a steady wage could help residents secure access to adequate housing and reduce pressure on the region’s delicate environment.
Photo: Rocinha, one of Rio de Janeiro’s largest slums with an estimated 200,000 residents, is one of hundreds of slum neighborhoods surrounding Rio, putting extreme pressure on the region’s environment. Courtesy of flickr user andreasnilsson1976.
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Weekly Reading
›The Center for Global Development’s interactive 2008 Commitment to Development Index rates 22 wealthy countries on how much they help poor countries in seven areas: aid, trade, investment, migration, environment, security, and technology.
“Destitution, distortion and deforestation: The impact of conflict on the timber and woodfuel trade in Darfur,” a new report from the UN Environment Programme’s Post-Conflict and Disaster Management Branch, says that saw-mills and wood-fired brick kilns are devastating Darfur’s fragile environment.
“If we are successful in reaching peak population sooner, at a lower number of people, rather than later with more people, we will be much more able to confront the myriad interlocking crises we face — a comparatively less crowded planet is an easier planet on which to build a bright green future,” writes Worldchanging’s Alex Steffen.
“In the case of the South American farms studied in this report, average simulated revenue losses from climate change in 2100 are estimated to range from 12 percent for a mild climate change scenario to 50 percent in a more severe scenario, even after farmers undertake adaptive reactions to minimize the damage,” finds a World Bank report on climate change and Latin America. Foreign Policy’s Passport blog comments.
In A Framework for Achieving Energy Security and Arresting Global Warming, Ken Berlin of the Center for American Progress sets out five sets of issues the federal government will have to address in order to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions and dependence on foreign oil.
“Ask any environmental organisation what it thinks about birth control; it’ll sidestep the issue, and say it’s not their place to comment. If a commentator says there are too many people on the planet, their words smack of authoritarian dictatorships and human rights violations, and echo traces of unpalatable eugenics. However, the reality is that every time we eat, switch on a light, get in a car, drink a beer, go on holiday or buy something to wear or use, we are adding to our environmental footprint,” writes Joanna Benn in BBC’s Green Room, in an article that generated a lively stream of commentary.
Land Conflicts: A practical guide to dealing with land disputes, a report by GTZ, is available online. -
Weekly Reading
›Military leaders and climate experts gathered in Paris for a November 3-5 conference on the role of the military in combating climate change. A conference report will include “proven strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while improving military effectiveness.”
The 2008 Africa Population Data Sheet, a joint project of the Population Reference Bureau and the African Population and Health Research Center, reveals significant differences between northern and sub-Saharan Africa. Also from PRB, “Reproductive Health in Sub-Saharan Africa” examines family planning use, family size, maternal mortality, and HIV/AIDS in major subregions of sub-Saharan Africa.
In the October 2008 issue of Humanitarian Exchange Magazine, Alexander Tyler of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees for Somalia argues that longer-term livelihoods projects must be incorporated into emergency humanitarian relief efforts. The authors of the Center for American Progress report The Cost of Reaction: The Long-Term Costs of Short-Term Cures (reviewed on the New Security Beat) would likely agree; they argue that although emergency aid is necessary, “what is true in our own lives is true on the international stage—an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
The Dining & Wine section of the New York Times profiles a Quichua community in the Ecuadorian Amazon that has formed a successful chocolate cooperative with the help of a volunteer for a biodiversity foundation. “They wanted to find a way to survive and thrive as they faced pressure from companies that sought to log their hardwood trees, drill on their land for oil and mine for gold,” reports the Times. -
Fertile Fringes: Population Growth Near Protected Areas
›November 7, 2008 // By Rachel Weisshaar“Protected areas are the backbone of biodiversity conservation strategies,” so it is critical to examine how population growth is affecting them, said Justin Brashares of the University of California, Berkeley, at “Fertile Fringes: Population Growth at Protected-Area Edges,” an October 22, 2008, meeting sponsored by the Environmental Change and Security Program (ECSP). “Biodiversity conservation objectives are being impacted by higher deforestation rates, [natural resource] offtake rates, [and] increasing pressure on the protected area” due to high local population growth, explained George Wittemyer of Colorado State University. Brashares and Wittemyer, who recently co-authored an article on population and protected areas in Science, were joined by Jason Bremner of the Population Reference Bureau.
To Stay or To Go?
“Many of the protected areas that we have today in sub-Saharan Africa and in Latin America are carryovers of areas set aside by colonial governments,” said Brashares, “and for many researchers and for many communities, the creation of parks is seen to come at the cost of local communities.” Yet certain features can encourage people to move near protected areas, including:- Services made available by foreign assistance, such as health care, education, and livelihoods programs;
- Employment opportunities as park staff or in the tourism industry;
- Better ecosystem services, including food, water, wood, and traditional medicine;
- Easier access to markets, due to roads built to attract tourism; and
- Improved security provided by park guards and government staff.
Other features of protected areas deter migrants, including:
- Land-use restrictions;
- Conflict with wildlife (e.g., attacks on livestock and crops);
- Disadvantages associated with tourism, including higher cost of living and potential loss of cultural heritage;
- Isolation from urban centers; and
- Conflict with park staff, government representatives, or rural militias.
Higher Population Growth Near Protected Areas
Brashares and Wittemyer examined IUCN Category I and II protected areas in Africa and Latin America—which limit human activity within their boundaries—and excluded potentially confounding urban, marine, and new parks. Using UN Environment Programme population data from 1960-2000, they compared population growth in a 10-kilometer “buffer zone” surrounding each protected area with average rural population growth for that country. In 245 of the 306 parks they examined—and 38 of the 45 countries—population growth at protected-area edges was significantly higher than average national rural population growth.
Brashares and Wittemyer found three factors correlated with higher levels of population growth: more money for parks (as measured by protected-area funds from the Global Environment Facility); more park employees; and more deforestation on the edges of protected areas. Brashares emphasized, however, that there could be equally relevant correlations between population growth and employment in extractive industries, but that “the timber industry won’t give us their data and the mining industry and the oil industries aren’t so happy to share.” Thus, the study might inadvertently penalize NGOs and international organizations for their transparency.
Some researchers hypothesized that because protected areas are usually located in ecologically dynamic areas, this ecological wealth might be attracting new residents, rather than the protected areas themselves. But Brashares and Wittemyer found that proximity to a protected area, not general ecological abundance, was driving the trend. Others suspected that population grows at protected-area edges because the people who have been displaced by the creation of a park move to the park’s border. But population growth rates within the parks have been mostly stable or positive, so Brashares and Wittemyer doubt this is driving the trend.
Implications for Conservation
Brashares and Wittemyer outlined several policy implications of their research:- Emerging infectious diseases are a serious risk in areas with high human density close to wildlife populations, so governments and international organizations should try to limit potential outbreaks near protected areas.
- If the effectiveness of a protected area is measured by its ability to preserve biodiversity for generations, then community development programs must be executed carefully. For instance, roads and schools should not be built in an ecologically fragile corridor between two parks.
- Multi-use buffer zones that make core areas less accessible can allow individuals to continue to benefit from their proximity to nature while protecting biodiversity. “Some of the best protection of biodiversity is through isolation,” said Brashares.
Bremner took issue with some of Brashares’ and Wittemyer’s methods and conclusions; his full critique is available on the New Security Beat. Although Bremner agreed that migration—not natural increase—is likely driving higher population growth around protected areas, he believed the authors did not provide adequate evidence to demonstrate that this migration is driven by investments in conservation. “I hope that publishing this conclusion here in Science doesn’t provide our detractors, those who don’t want us to be spending on conservation, with the means to limit future spending for international conservation,” said Bremner.
Photo: Justin Brashares. Courtesy of Dave Hawxhurst and the Woodrow Wilson Center.
For more information, including a webcast of this event, visit ECSP’s website. To receive invitations to future events, e-mail ecsp@wilsoncenter.org.
Public policies governing natural-resource extraction in Latin America “are often seen as arbitrary” and illegitimate by communities, said Mara Hernández, director of the 
“Lack of clear and on-time information to the communities” has been a primary driver of conflict around extractive industries, said Salazar. Stakeholders will often disseminate their own information, Lumerman cautioned, with each accusing the other of bias.
Today, the Washington Post’s Ben Pershing called the outbreak of swine flu in North America an “
The city of Rio de Janeiro’s plan to erect a 
“Protected areas are the backbone of biodiversity conservation strategies,” so it is critical to examine how population growth is affecting them, said Justin Brashares of the University of California, Berkeley, at “Fertile Fringes: Population Growth at Protected-Area Edges,” an October 22, 2008, meeting sponsored by the Environmental Change and Security Program (ECSP). “Biodiversity conservation objectives are being impacted by higher deforestation rates, [natural resource] offtake rates, [and] increasing pressure on the protected area” due to high local population growth, explained George Wittemyer of Colorado State University. 
