What We Talk About When We Talk About Protecting and Saving

This post originally appeared on The Green Skeptic in March 2008, when I was about to speak at the Aspen Environment Forum. It's reprinted here as I am on hiatus from writing the blog. I promise to be back at it soon. Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy this piece. --Scott

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Everything we think about saving or protecting ecosystems and habitats is wrong.

This week, I'm at the Aspen Environment Forum, where tomorrow morning I'll be on a Panel called "Nature's Place: Saving Ecosystems and Habitats."

For the better part of 15 years I worked with The Nature Conservancy to save some of the world's "Last Great Places" around the world (I left in August; see my posts reflecting on my career at TNC
and here.

I consider myself a conservationist, not an environmentalist. What I mean by that is a conservative and prudent approach to our use of resources that requires us to manage them for the long-term -- for the benefit of people today and for future generations.

The Green Skeptic grew out of an increasing concern about our relationship to the natural world and how we protect it. I am a skeptic in the sense that I believe we need to constantly challenge the assumptions we have about "saving ecosystems and habitats."

In my view, we operate under four basic assumptions:

1. We can continue to "save" or "protect" ecosystems and habitats from harm in perpetuity;
2. We can ignore basic human needs and treat poverty alleviation as a separate issue from the environment;
3. We can entrust protection to governments and corporate NGOs;
4. We can't trust human ingenuity and community to manage its own resources.

First, I need to step back and look at the words we use. (I am a poet, so words matter to me.) Specifically, "protecting" and "saving."

Both imply we need to keep ecosystems and habitats from something. The American Heritage Dictionary defines protecting as "To keep from being damaged, attacked, stolen, or injured; guard." When we use the word protecting in terms of ecosystems and habitats, we are guarding nature from something or someone, presumably humans.

Saving is a little less problematic, as it implies a conservative approach to the future (as in saving seed corn for next year's sowing). Still, the AHD's first definition is "To rescue from harm, danger, or loss." It's not until definition number three that we get to the conservative impulse: "To avoid spending (e.g. money) so as to keep or accumulate it."

The question is not about what we should save, but how and for what purpose.

Is it hubris to assume we have protected or saved anything? We promote the fact that percentages of ecosystems or habitats are protected, but they continue to be encroached upon -- see the Amazon Rainforest for example.

What have we really saved if massive changes from climate change or the drive for much-needed economic development will have significant impact on the future status and makeup of places, habitats, and ecosystems?

Climate change will disrupt many ecosystems that exist today -- much as the Internet disrupted print media, the travel industry, TV, bookstores, you name it. It will change everything.

So the question is what are we really protecting when we talk about protecting ecosystems and habitat? Will the places we select for protection today be the same 10-20 years from now? Probably not.

Ecosystems are constantly changing, either from "external" (human) or "internal" (natural) forces. Change is inevitable and could, in the face of global warming, be dramatic.

Shouldn't we be preparing for the changes and begin to think about how we adapt to some of the most likely changes, those brought on by climate change or economic development or basic human needs, such as for food and energy?

Demand for energy and food will drive economic development for years to come and we can't continue to ignore these drivers to "save" the natural, non-human world.

This leads me to assumption two, which is about ignoring basic human needs. It's irrational for us to think that people in developing countries, many of whose basic human needs are not being met, will care deeply about the non-human natural world.

Yet, we continue to have blind faith in our cause and ignore the needs of real people.

I recently returned from India where the extreme poverty is evident almost everywhere you look. Also evident is a growing middle class that strives for the kind of lifestyle we have here in the west, specifically the US, with its inherent accelerated pace and impacts.

Who are we to say that people in developing countries have no right to the kind of lifestyle we have exported for decades? We can not convince, persuade or cajole or even pay people -- Americans as much as people in developing nations -- to "come around to our way of thinking," and yet this is what I hear whenever I talk to environmentalists.

And we can't ask poor people around the world to forgo the comforts of the lifestyle we have been living, and which they wish to copy, "for the sake of the planet" or to set aside their habitats and ecosystems for the sake of humanity. No country wants to become an ecological reserve for the world, especially if it means it cannot pursue economic prosperity.

Try floating this idea with people who go hungry every night for lack of food or money to buy food and see what kind of reaction you get.

In the end, poor people matter. And the governments of Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and African countries must be concerned first and foremost with the well-being of their people. I'm not saying that human well-being isn't tied to ecosystem health; I'm a strong believer that economic growth is tied to those resources.

I believe we can no longer separate the issue of economic development and poverty alleviation from ecosystem health. We also can't expect that governments whose people aren't meeting basic needs to protect their habitats over the economic well-being of their people.

Which leads me to assumption three: increasingly, we are entrusting protection of habitats and ecosystems with the wrong people. Governments have a mandate to improve the economic health of their country and people.

Yet we continue to have faith that these governments will "do the right thing" and enforce laws protecting their forests or other ecosystems in the face of seemingly insurmountable economic obstacles.

Why do we think that is a good strategy? What indicators do we have that tell us this strategy will succeed where it hasn't in the past? Why do we think that the World Bank program to pay countries to "avoid deforestation" will be any more successful than their previous grand plans?

The same goes for NGOs. NGOs are basically corporations that serve a set of shareholders (donors in this case) who subscribe to a specific idea of Nature and a specific set of outcomes, outcomes that may not necessarily be shared by all stakeholders.

This idea of Nature has for a long time discounted the needs of people both today and in the future. To illustrate this, one only need look at the environmental community's approach to government debt.

Conservation groups (my old employers among them) have promoted using a country's debt as leverage to gain conservation protection. The debt-for-nature swap was an innovation of the past couple of decades and a noble one. But it was also painfully ignorant of the true nature of that debt -- in many cases "dictator debt" incurred by regimes that did not have its people's best interests in mind.

Now that we have a more clear understanding of how that debt was derived, and can no longer ignore its immoral origins, we need to give up or adjust the debt-for-nature swap concept and join the call for debt forgiveness. That will free some countries from having to exploit their natural resources to pay down that debt.

Yet, many in the environmental community continue to push the debt-for-nature strategy, because they can't let go of a good thing that advances their agenda.

How is this different from any corporation -- a sector many environmentalists attack -- that advances its agenda at the expense of people here and abroad? Can we really trust ecosystems and habitats to big government or big international non-governmental corporations?

In the end, wouldn't a better approach be to put our trust in the people and the communities where these ecosystems and habitats are found? They have the most at stake in managing these resources, as their needs and livelihoods are most closely tied to the lands and waters.

I believe human beings are basically good. I also believe that, given the opportunity, communities will manage their common interests and keep each other in check. This is the open-source community approach one finds in social networks and in business models such as eBay.

I also believe that human beings are the most creative and adaptable species on the planet -- just look at the variety of habitats, climates, and conditions we inhabit. Our resilience as a species is astounding. I argue that we need to embrace this resourcefulness and apply it to overcoming ecological shifts, climate change, and loss of ecosystems and habitats.

We need to unleash the power of human creativity to find new ways to "save" those places for future use by both human and non-human species.

Unleashing this human capacity will require suspending our assumptions. We will need to focus more on community-based or "commons-based" management (as Jonathan Rowe of the West Marin Commons in California calls it in a recent essay in The State of the World 2008).

We need a people-centered conservation that addresses the real needs of real people, and to empower individual entrepreneurs and communities to manage their resources cooperatively rather than impose grand plans from Washington.

We need to clearly draw the lines connecting economic prosperity with ecological health and human well-being.

And, finally, we need to unleash human creativity to find new technological solutions as well as new ways of living with nature.

This may, in the end, be our only hope to really save habitat and ecosystems – and, ultimately, to save ourselves.

New Report Points to Looming Extinction Crisis in Oceania

Science Daily reports today on a landmark study of threats to biodiversity and species extinctions across Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands.

"Published in the international journal Conservation Biology, the report is the first comprehensive review of more than 24,000 scientific publications related to conservation in the Oceanic region. Compiled by a team of 14 scientists, it reveals a sorry and worsening picture of habitat destruction and species loss. It also describes the deficiencies of and opportunities for governmental action to lessen this mounting regional and global problem."

According to the study,

* Loss and degradation of habitat is the largest single threat to land species, including 80 percent of threatened species.
* More than 1,200 bird species have become extinct in the Pacific islands and archipelagos.
* In Australia agriculture has modified or destroyed about 50 percent of woodland and forest ecosystems, and about 70 percent of remaining forests are ecologically degraded from logging.
* Invasive species, particularly vertebrates and vascular plants, have devastated terrestrial species of the Pacific Islands and caused 75 percent of all terrestrial vertebrate extinctions on oceanic islands.
* More than 2,500 invasive plants have colonized New Zealand and Australia – representing about 11 percent of native plant species.
* Many invasive weeds, vertebrate pests, and fishes were introduced by government, agriculturalists, horticulturalists and hunters.

Read more @ Science Daily:

Additional information can be found at: University of New South Wales

Related articles by Zemanta

• Humans 'driving Earth's extinction' (guardian.co.uk)
• Extinction crisis looms in Oceania: Landmark study (scienceblog.com)
• Australia and the Pacific 'becoming extinction hotspots' (telegraph.co.uk)

World Oceans Day: Imagine a World Without Fish

On World Ocean's Day, it's important to remember just what an important resource our oceans are. The Guardian (UK) has a story about the state of the earth's fisheries:

Eating fish is good for us, but catching it in the way we do devastates the sea. Nearly nine tenths of European stocks are over-fished, and around a third are beyond safe biological limits: that is, the adult population is too depleted to provide replacement stock. Almost all cod caught in the North Sea have not had a chance to breed. Bottom dredging trawlers rip up everything in their path.

The south Pacific and American coastal waters have almost been fished out. West African fishing communities are being forced from the water by the industrial fishing fleets of Europe. Russian and Asian fishing fleets greedily scoop the fish from the Pacific. On the latest estimates, around a third of the world's oceans need to be closed to fishing, perhaps forever, to regenerate stocks.

According to Charles Clover, whose film "The End of the Line" is released today with the ambition of creating the momentum for reform, it is a moment that compares with the launch of the organic movement 50 years ago to fight the threat of the "silent spring".

Read the full article here: Over-fishing.

Here is the trailer for "The End of the Line"; looks like a powerful film:



And if you need a reminder of the beauty of our ocean planet, here is a slide show of one of my favorite places on earth, Raja Ampat, Indonesia. I was diving there four years ago. How I long to get back there: Raja Ampat.

And here is a link to the official World Oceans Day 2009 web site: A Sea Change.

Imagine a world without fish? I'd rather not, thank you.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Sea change: deal saves California fishing industry (telegraph.co.uk)
• George Monbiot on the senseless destruction of oceans and fisheries in Europe (isiria.wordpress.com)
• Consumer ignorance over endangered fish (telegraph.co.uk)
• An Inconvenient Truth for Fish (telegraph.co.uk)
• Iceland is the Success Story of Sustainable Fishing (treehugger.com)
• EU begins fisheries policy review (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Call for 20-year fishing ban in a third of oceans (guardian.co.uk)

Review: Lester Brown's Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization

You may want to read this book by starting with Part II. Either that or make sure all the knives are locked away so you won't slit your wrists during Part I.

Lester Brown has his facts straight and uses them liberally, but reading about how dire is the current situation on the Earth leaves you feeling hopeless.

Increasing shortages of water, rising CO2 levels, food security, health, education, and natural systems under stress. What can we possibly do to change this for the better?

Luckily, Brown pivots after the first 127 pages and devotes the rest of the book to solutions.

"There are many things we do not know about the future," Brown writes. "But one thing we do know is that business as usual will not continue for much longer...Will the change come because we move quickly to restructure the economy or because we fail to act and civilization begins to unravel?"

That is the critical question of this book. Can we move fast enough and for the right reasons?

Brown, the founder of Worldwatch and the Earth Policy Institute, has been promoting a sustainable future for over 30 years.

He includes recommendations for eradicating poverty, stabilizing population (through education and contraception), restoring natural systems, feeding the projected 8 billion we are likely to see in this century, and shifting to greater energy efficiency and alternatives.

And he budgets out the necessary costs, estimating Plan B will take an additional annual expenditure of $190M, "roughly one third of the current U.S. Military budget or one sixth of the global military budget."

Brown concludes: "The choice is ours -- yours and mine. We can stay with business as usual and preside over an economy that continues to destroy its natural support systems until it destroys itself, or we can adopt Plan B and be the generation that changes direction, moving the world onto a path of sustained progress."

What choice do we have?


(Blogging by BlackBerry; links to come later.)

Nature: Magpies Recognize Themselves in Mirror

From New Scientist: "Self-recognition, once thought to be an ability enjoyed only by select primates, has now been demonstrated in a bird.

"The finding has raised questions about part of the brain called the neocortex, something the self-aware magpie does not even possess.

"In humans, the ability to recognise oneself in a mirror develops around the age of 18 months and coincides with the first signs of social behaviour.

"So-called 'mirror mark tests,' where a mark is placed on the animal in such a way that it can only be observed when it looks at its reflection, have been used to sort the self-aware beasts from the rest.

"Of hundreds tested, in addition to humans, only four apes, bottlenose dolphins and Asian elephants have passed muster.

"Helmut Prior at Goethe University in Frankfurt and his colleagues applied a red, yellow or black spot to a place on the necks of five magpies.

"The stickers could only be seen using a mirror. Then he gave the birds mirrors.Catch a glimpseThe feel of the mark on their necks did not seem to alarm them.

"But when the birds with coloured neck spots caught a glimpse of themselves, they scratched at their necks - a clear indication that they recognised the image in the mirror as their own.

"Those who received a black sticker, invisible against the black neck feathers, did not react.

"Self-recognition was thought to reside in the neocortex, but birds don't have one. Franz de Waal at Emory University in Atlanta points out that the magpie does nevertheless have a big brain. 'You need a large brain with a lot of connectivity,' he says. 'If it had been a sparrow, it would have been a problem.'

"The authors suggest that self-recognition in birds and mammals may be a case of convergent evolution, where similar evolutionary pressures result in similar behaviours or traits, although they arrive at them via different routes.

"De Waal agrees: 'Magpies are known for their ability to steal shiny objects and to hide away their loot. It's not too far-fetched that a master thief like a magpie has that perspective-taking ability,' he says, referring to the idea that the birds have a 'theory of mind.'"

But do they care what they look like in the morning?

(Blogging by BlackBerry; links to come.)

Review: Where the Wild Things Were by William Stolzenburg

I remember the day when I was no longer at the top of the food chain.

I was flying into Lower Talarik Creek in southwestern Alaska with nothing but a fly rod, a note book, a sleeping bag, and hubris. As we circled the lagoon, the float plane pilot pointed out 10 or 12 brown bears that had already secured the fishing hole.

We landed anyway and the bears disappeared. The low brush was barely enough to hide them. They were gone, but they were out there.

Until you've experienced the fear, adrenaline rush, and deep respect you feel in close proximity with a large predator, you haven't really lived.

As a species we have a complex relationship with predators, whether large cats, bears, wolves, sharks, or killer whales. It's a mixture of deep-seated fear and loathing, along with time-honored respect and admiration. Some of it goes back so far in our DNA that it is no longer top-of-mind. Most of us don't have to worry about it, safely ensconced in our cities, towns, and bedroom communities.

But Will Stolzenburg worries about it plenty. So do the biologists, activists, ranchers and others he writes about in Where the Wild Things Were: Life, Death, and Ecological Wreckage in a Land of Vanishing Predators, being published this month by Bloomsbury.

Stolzenburg, a former colleague at the Nature Conservancy and a writer for Science News, Conservation, and Nature Conservancy magazine, admits he is biased in favor of big predators. But he also understands the complexity of the psychology around their interaction with Homo sapiens.

"Over the thousands of millennia that our own lineage has spent in the company of killing beasts," Stolzenburg writes. "Competing with them for food and running from them as food -- the great meat-eaters have quite naturally etched themselves into the human persona."

Stolzenburg has written a compelling book, a short history of our relationship with predator species, which uses scientists and their stories to tell the story of that relationship and of the importance of predators on land and sea.

His story starts with an unlikely hero, the starfish (Pisaster ochraceous), which prevents mussels such as Myltilus californianus from crowding other species off rock habitats. Who amongst us would classify the sea star among the big charismatic megafauna? But they play an important role.

As do sea otters, which keep sea urchin populations down and minimizes their destruction of kelp forests. And then there are the usual suspects: wolves, coyotes and big cats that maintain a check on populations of smaller mammals and other species to avoid cascading, sometimes catastrophic changes.

Stolzenburg reviews the arguments surrounding the importance of predators to their habitats as well as the various attempts to extirpate them and to bring them back from the brink.

"The great predators are great barometers of our maturity as a species," he concludes. "If we can live with an animal that could just as soon eat us as an apple, if we can make room for an animal that traverses entire states looking for a mate, how better to define the art of compassion"

He follows the major thought leaders in conservation biology of the past 40 years on their journeys of discovery, enlightenment, and sometimes ridicule. The stories are fascinating and Stolzenburg makes the tales come to life in an almost Scott Turow novel way. (If you think scientist-researchers and field biologists lead boring lives in the academe, Stolzenburg will convince you otherwise.)

Equally fascinating are some of the depictions and explorations of the predators themselves, especially the chapters on killer whales and on "the loneliest predator," man. Fascinating, too, how recent some of the thinking is about species interaction and interdependency, until you realize that conservation biology as a field is relatively young.

Will Stolzenburg knows how to tell a story and his narrative is a good read. Part history, part mystery, part philosophical treatise, Where the Wild Things Were is an important book in the field of conservation, but also as a history of our species and our relationship with the others with which we share the planet.

Conservation: What's Ahead for Nature Conservancy with New CEO Mark Tercek?

The announcement last Friday that The Nature Conservancy (TNC) has hired Goldman Sachs' Mark Tercek as CEO came as a surprise.

Many familiar with TNC expected longtime employee and acting CEO and current COO Stephanie Meeks to get tapped for the job. Others felt it was time to look outside of the organizations ranks and bring in a global player.

But Mark Tercek, currently a managing director at Goldman Sachs and head of the Goldman Sachs Center for Environmental Markets as well as the firm’s Environmental Strategy Group, was a candidate from left field. That could be a good thing. (I speculated earlier in the year that another Goldman alum, Henry Paulson, might be considering the post, but alas, he has his hands full at present.)

Mr. Tercek, according to TNC, "combines global business experience, experience working effectively in different cultures and recognized leadership on climate change and other environmental issues."

"Building on our 57 years of conservation results, The Nature Conservancy is working with partners to expand our global reach to achieve our challenging 2015 Goal of effectively conserving 10 percent of all natural habitats on Earth," said John P. Morgridge, chairman of the Conservancy’s board of directors.

"At this important time for conservation and for our organization, Mark's knowledge of global cultures and governments, his passion for conservation and his experience as a decisive consensus builder in an intensely results-oriented organization positions him to lead the Conservancy to accelerate our work around the globe.”

"To ensure a smooth transition of leadership," according to a TNC press release. "Ms. Meeks, who has served as the Conservancy's acting president and CEO since October and as its chief operating officer since January 2007, has agreed to continue in those capacities through the beginning of Mr. Tercek's tenure."

"I have long admired The Nature Conservancy and have an enormous amount of respect for its global mission," said Mr. Tercek. "As climate change, habitat loss and other global trends continue to threaten our planet's biodiversity, the world needs the Conservancy's effective, practical solutions now more than ever."

"Mr. Tercek is currently collaborating with Resources for the Future, the World Resources Institute and the Woods Hole Research Center on projects concerning climate change.

"He serves on the Council on Foreign Relations' independent task force on climate change and the Wildlife Conservation Society's Chilean Advisory Council. He is a member of the Steering Group on the Prince of Wales' Princes' Rainforest Project.

"In addition, Mr. Tercek has worked with Nature Conservancy board member Dr. Gretchen Daily, professor of biology at Stanford University, and Conservancy chief scientist Peter Kareiva on advancing finance and policy mechanisms for valuing forest ecosystems for the vital roles they play in supporting human well-being, thereby creating alternatives to rainforest destruction."

"Mark is opening innovative possibilities for aligning economic forces with conservation," Dr. Daily said. "His vision is central to taking conservation to scale, incorporating the values of nature into real decisions and engaging leaders globally."

With his background at Goldman and focus on market-based solutions, this could be a new era for TNC as it wrestles with threats to its mission from climate change and the undervaluing of the benefits provided to people by natural capital.

It will be interesting to watch how new blood influences the organization, specifically in terms of how it plays in the carbon market-generation space, where it could have a huge role.

Some of the more immediate impacts of climate change are already being felt at Conservancy sites around the globe. Will the new CEO marshal the resources necessary to assess and address climate-based threats to its portfolio of places and risk to its land-rich asset base?

An interesting move. We'll keep an eye on how this plays out over the coming months.

(Disclosure: The author was an employee of The Nature Conservancy until August of 2007.)

Salzburg Global Seminar: Seeking a Green Entrepreneurial Solution in Africa

A "Green Revolution" in Africa?

It may be a good idea; it may even be a necessity. But one hopes we learn from the lessons of the Green Revloution in Asia of the 1960s and 70s and apply those lessons to Africa.

While there were definite benefits and succeses in terms of agricultural yields and production:land ratio -- especially in certain parts of Asia -- there were also negative impacts and unintended consequences.

As I understand it, these negative impacts essentially came from three inputs: increased reliance on chemical fertilizers and irrigation, promotion of the monoculture-style farming popular in the day, and depletion of genetic diversity and soil health that put farmers at higher risk.

The environmental degradation this caused in some places (not all) is well-documented. The impacts are still being felt by people and communities in many parts of Asia.

But we've learned alot since then and part of the solution requires such inputs. We need be vigilant, however, to better monitor these inputs as we seek to increase outputs.

As important, perhaps, is to encourage the entrepreneurial spirit of Africans, both farmers and non-farm entrepreneurs.

Smallholder farmers in particular can help maintain the diversity of species and soil health, keep more of the income generated local, and respond to local changes brought about by global warming and other impacts.

Entrepreneurs working in the non-farm economy can promote access to markets and to microcredit, alternative energy development, and other livelihoods. Again, ensuring a local response to needs and impacts.

My point is, any Green Revolution in Africa must engage, invest in, and deploy entreprenurial Africans.

The continent is full of entrepreneurial people. We only need welcome them to the table and ensure they have a voice in crafting any solutions.

Africans helping Africans. Now there's a concept whose time has come.

(En route to Salburg Global Seminar.)

Salzburg Global Seminar: Towards a Green Revolution in Africa?

This week I'm attending the Salzburg Global Seminar conference, "Toward a 'Green Revolution' in Africa?"

"Toward a 'Green Revolution' in Africa?" is an Initiative of the Salzburg Global Seminar, the Institute of Development Studies and the Future Agricultures Consortium.

The title is posed as a question, which of itself is an interesting statement.

I like that it's a question, because it implies the seminar organizers are not wedded to one idea or one approach to what ails Africa.

It also implies that there are lingering questions about whether a "Green Revolution" is what's needed in Africa.

A healthy skepticism is important when people come together in dialog about issues as important as the health and future of the African continent and its people. I admire the seminar organizers for sticking that question mark in the title.

At the heart of this question are two overarching additional questions:

1. How can new interest and investment in African agriculture be used to bring about real and sustainable change; and

2. How can these efforts be aligned strategically with other investments and development activities (be they from private donors, public aid, or private business) and new strategic alliances and partnerships be created to ensure success?

As the conference organizers write in an Overview provided to participants: "There is a clear need for a new vision for agricultural development in Africa that can deal with the complexities of agriculture in diverse settings across Africa and meet the conditions necessary to achieve more equitable benefits for Africa’s farmers. But whose vision should this be?"

The conference brings together "diverse stakeholders, from within Africa and beyond, who are experts (in their given areas), leading thinkers, change-makers and are, or can influence, senior decision-makers."

At last count, there are 90 participants from government, business, academia, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), "who will explore a set of issues of vital concern to the future of agriculture in Africa, and, indeed, to Africa’s development agenda."

We'll be asked to "devise the conceptual framework within which a new agricultural development agenda in Africa can be set and implemented, and to recommend specific actions," including "recommendations for policy adjustments, streamlining practice, and creating strategic alliances."

It will be interesting to see what the outcomes of the sessions will be. For now, I'm really looking forward to this dialog, both as a learning experience and for what I think I can contribute in terms of linking agriculture to biodiversity health, social entrepreneurship, and investments.

Click here for more on the Salzburg Global Seminars.

Conservation: What We Talk About When We Talk About Protecting and Saving Ecosystems and Habitats

Everything we think about saving or protecting ecosystems and habitats is wrong.

This week, I'm at the Aspen Environment Forum, where tomorrow morning I'll be on a Panel called "Nature's Place: Saving Ecosystems and Habitats."

For the better part of 15 years I worked with The Nature Conservancy to save some of the world's "Last Great Places" around the world (I left in August; see my posts reflecting on my career at TNC).

I consider myself a conservationist, not an environmentalist. What I mean by that is a conservative and prudent approach to our use of resources that requires us to manage them for the long-term -- for the benefit of people today and for future generations.

The Green Skeptic grew out of an increasing concern about our relationship to the natural world and how we protect it. I am a skeptic in the sense that I believe we need to constantly challenge the assumptions we have about "saving ecosystems and habitats."

In my view, we operate under four basic assumptions:

1. We can continue to "save" or "protect" ecosystems and habitats from harm in perpetuity;
2. We can ignore basic human needs and treat poverty alleviation as a separate issue from the environment;
3. We can entrust protection to governments and corporate NGOs;
4. We can't trust human ingenuity and community to manage its own resources.

First, I need to step back and look at the words we use. (I am a poet, so words matter to me.) Specifically, "protecting" and "saving."

Both imply we need to keep ecosystems and habitats from something. The American Heritage Dictionary defines protecting as "To keep from being damaged, attacked, stolen, or injured; guard." When we use the word protecting in terms of ecosystems and habitats, we are guarding nature from something or someone, presumably humans.

Saving is a little less problematic, as it implies a conservative approach to the future (as in saving seed corn for next year's sowing). Still, the AHD's first definition is "To rescue from harm, danger, or loss." It's not until definition number three that we get to the conservative impulse: "To avoid spending (e.g. money) so as to keep or accumulate it."

The question is not about what we should save, but how and for what purpose.

Is it hubris to assume we have protected or saved anything? We promote the fact that percentages of ecosystems or habitats are protected, but they continue to be encroached upon -- see the Amazon Rainforest for example.

What have we really saved if massive changes from climate change or the drive for much-needed economic development will have significant impact on the future status and makeup of places, habitats, and ecosystems?

Climate change will disrupt many ecosystems that exist today -- much as the Internet disrupted print media, the travel industry, TV, bookstores, you name it. It will change everything.

So the question is what are we really protecting when we talk about protecting ecosystems and habitat? Will the places we select for protection today be the same 10-20 years from now? Probably not.

Ecosystems are constantly changing, either from "external" (human) or "internal" (natural) forces. Change is inevitable and could, in the face of global warming, be dramatic.

Shouldn't we be preparing for the changes and begin to think about how we adapt to some of the most likely changes, those brought on by climate change or economic development or basic human needs, such as for food and energy?

Demand for energy and food will drive economic development for years to come and we can't continue to ignore these drivers to "save" the natural, non-human world.

This leads me to assumption two, which is about ignoring basic human needs. It's irrational for us to think that people in developing countries, many of whose basic human needs are not being met, will care deeply about the non-human natural world.

Yet, we continue to have blind faith in our cause and ignore the needs of real people.

I recently returned from India where the extreme poverty is evident almost everywhere you look. Also evident is a growing middle class that strives for the kind of lifestyle we have here in the west, specifically the US, with its inherent accelerated pace and impacts.

Who are we to say that people in developing countries have no right to the kind of lifestyle we have exported for decades? We can not convince, persuade or cajole or even pay people -- Americans as much as people in developing nations -- to "come around to our way of thinking," and yet this is what I hear whenever I talk to environmentalists.

And we can't ask poor people around the world to forgo the comforts of the lifestyle we have been living, and which they wish to copy, "for the sake of the planet" or to set aside their habitats and ecosystems for the sake of humanity. No country wants to become an ecological reserve for the world, especially if it means it cannot pursue economic prosperity.

Try floating this idea with people who go hungry every night for lack of food or money to buy food and see what kind of reaction you get.

In the end, poor people matter. And the governments of Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and African countries must be concerned first and foremost with the well-being of their people. I'm not saying that human well-being isn't tied to ecosystem health; I'm a strong believer that economic growth is tied to those resources.

I believe we can no longer separate the issue of economic development and poverty alleviation from ecosystem health. We also can't expect that governments whose people aren't meeting basic needs to protect their habitats over the economic well-being of their people.

Which leads me to assumption three: increasingly, we are entrusting protection of habitats and ecosystems with the wrong people. Governments have a mandate to improve the economic health of their country and people.

Yet we continue to have faith that these governments will "do the right thing" and enforce laws protecting their forests or other ecosystems in the face of seemingly insurmountable economic obstacles.

Why do we think that is a good strategy? What indicators do we have that tell us this strategy will succeed where it hasn't in the past? Why do we think that the World Bank program to pay countries to "avoid deforestation" will be any more successful than their previous grand plans?

The same goes for NGOs. NGOs are basically corporations that serve a set of shareholders (donors in this case) who subscribe to a specific idea of Nature and a specific set of outcomes, outcomes that may not necessarily be shared by all stakeholders.

This idea of Nature has for a long time discounted the needs of people both today and in the future. To illustrate this, one only need look at the environmental community's approach to government debt.

Conservation groups (my old employers among them) have promoted using a country's debt as leverage to gain conservation protection. The debt-for-nature swap was an innovation of the past couple of decades and a noble one. But it was also painfully ignorant of the true nature of that debt -- in many cases "dictator debt" incurred by regimes that did not have its people's best interests in mind.

Now that we have a more clear understanding of how that debt was derived, and can no longer ignore its immoral origins, we need to give up or adjust the debt-for-nature swap concept and join the call for debt forgiveness. That will free some countries from having to exploit their natural resources to pay down that debt.

Yet, many in the environmental community continue to push the debt-for-nature strategy, because they can't let go of a good thing that advances their agenda.

How is this different from any corporation -- a sector many environmentalists attack -- that advances its agenda at the expense of people here and abroad? Can we really trust ecosystems and habitats to big government or big international non-governmental corporations?

In the end, wouldn't a better approach be to put our trust in the people and the communities where these ecosystems and habitats are found? They have the most at stake in managing these resources, as their needs and livelihoods are most closely tied to the lands and waters.

I believe human beings are basically good. I also believe that, given the opportunity, communities will manage their common interests and keep each other in check. This is the open-source community approach one finds in social networks and in business models such as eBay.

I also believe that human beings are the most creative and adaptable species on the planet -- just look at the variety of habitats, climates, and conditions we inhabit. Our resilience as a species is astounding. I argue that we need to embrace this resourcefulness and apply it to overcoming ecological shifts, climate change, and loss of ecosystems and habitats.

We need to unleash the power of human creativity to find new ways to "save" those places for future use by both human and non-human species.

Unleashing this human capacity will require suspending our assumptions. We will need to focus more on community-based or "commons-based" management (as Jonathan Rowe of the West Marin Commons in California calls it in a recent essay in The State of the World 2008).

We need a people-centered conservation that addresses the real needs of real people, and to empower individual entrepreneurs and communities to manage their resources cooperatively rather than impose grand plans from Washington.

We need to clearly draw the lines connecting economic prosperity with ecological health and human well-being.

And, finally, we need to unleash human creativity to find new technological solutions as well as new ways of living with nature.

This may, in the end, be our only hope to really save habitat and ecosystems – and, ultimately, to save ourselves.

World Water Day: No Drop Left Behind

Water is one of the most precious resources on Earth. Clean drinking water is essential to human life -- but only 10 percent of global water use is for human consumption.

The other 90 percent is used for a combination of direct inputs to industry, agriculture, transportation, recreation, producing hydropower and cooling nuclear power plants, and sustaining the ecosystems upon which we depend.

Over the last century, according to the United Nations, water use increased sixfold, twice as fast as the population rate.

The increase has led to water shortages around the globe. Experts from the International Water Management Institute now estimate that by 2025 over three quarters of the people on Earth will be affected by water scarcity.

Today, 40 percent of people globally (@ 2.8 billion) deal with some degree of water scarcity. Whether physical shortage or issue of access, shortages are increasing demand and competition for water. (Darfur is the poster example for what conflicts can arise from the perfect storm of water scarcity.)

March 22nd is World Water Day,a UN General Assembly designation to call attention to the issue of water scarcity and push for more sustainable management of the resource.

Clearly, global water use patterns are not sustainable. Some scientists claim that current water use rates will lead to such a shortage that there may not be enough water to produce the food needed by the world in 2050.

Not to mention the potential collapse of important ecosystems and the corresponding benefits, which may have a cascading effect on people and economies.

Integrated water resources management may help the situation, as some propose, but it is clear that we need a better method for calculating the true value of our fresh water resources.

The bottom line: No longer can we assume that past abundance of water is a guarantee for our future water returns.

Social Entrepreneurs: Kalyan Paul and Grassroots, Integrated Solutions in the Indian Himalayas

I spent last weekend with Ashoka Fellow Kalyan Paul and his group Grassroots in Ranikhet, Uttarakhand, one of the northernmost states in India, bordering Nepal and China.

Kalyan and Anita Paul moved to the "hill country" -- Ranikhet is 1829 meters above sea level -- in 1987. Originally from Calcutta, Kalyan met his future wife and partner in social change, Anita, while both studied for a Masters in Social Work at Delhi University.

After facing numerous challenges and frustrations in urban settings and with more traditional development approaches, the Pauls decided to work with mountain communities. "Kalyan always wanted to live and work with hill folks," according to a source familiar with the situation. "Anita, a Himachali who grew up in the plains, egged him on."

Less than 20,000 people live in the area in and around Ranikhet, a high percentage of whom live in small hamlets and rely on natural resources for their livelihoods and sustenance.

"We got a grant from the Ford Foundation to literally just 'walk around,' and that's what we did," Kalyan says. "At first the local people were skeptical; they'd check us out and see what we were doing. When they saw us walking around like them -- and we walked all over, man -- they decided, 'He's probably okay.'"

That walking around gave the Pauls a clear sense of the integrated nature of the issues facing mountain people.

"They live totally off of what nature provides," says Kalyan. "If there's no water, they can't grow their food. If there are no trees, there is no water. It affects everything in their lives and some leave the mountains for more urban areas. That kind of life can be hard, man."

Enter Grassroots, which the Pauls founded in this area 16 years ago. They started by looking for the root causes of the mountain peoples' poverty: their lives and livelihoods are tied to the land and its natural resources.

Those resources have been dwindling as a result of changes to the landscape that started under British rule and continue in the Indian forestry bureau today. Basically, the foresters promoted non-native pine plantations and eucalyptus over native broadleaf deciduous trees.

Sounds like a simple thing, but it had two major impacts: the pines didn't help recharge the water sources, especially after harvesting, and the dead leaf litter was gone, which the farmers spread on their fields. Leaf litter is a natural top-soil maker. In contrast, the more acidic pine needles form a thick mat on the forest floor, preventing rainwater from seeping into the soils.

You can figure out what happened next. The water table, that feeds the springs that nourishes the crops that feed the people, kept dropping. Today, at winter's end, there is very little water in the aquifer and the springs are extremely low.

The Pauls, and the people who work with them, are addressing it by promoting native plant nurseries, replanting saplings from those nurseries, and developing rain water catchments to help regenerate the water supply.

That would be fine as a standard environment project, but Kalyan hasn't stopped there.

Grassroots determined that another factor in the forest decline was the villagers' own needs for firewood used for cooking in their homes. This use was not only denuding the forests, but was having health impacts as well: women cook with open wood fires in their homes (breathing in the smoke all day) and they have to walk farther and farther each day to find firewood, which they carry on their heads.

So, Grassroots introduced biogas stoves to their homes. The villagers now burn the methane generated by animal waste (cow and goat dung -- one thing of which they have plenty!) instead of firewood, and they use the slurry on their fields as an excellent fertilizer.


They also formed an artisan's guild to train local villagers as masons to build these stoves, thereby accomplishing three things in one: reducing forest cutting, improving the health of women, and providing jobs for at least 30 men in the area; at least 50 men have been trained as masons.

The Kumaon Artisans Guild promotes and builds appropriate technologies for rural development, including the biogas wells, twin pit outhouses, and infiltration wells for drinking water. (The infiltration well technology, developed by Dr. Tim Rees, is worth another post of its own.)

Members of the Guild, who are known as "Barefoot Engineers," told me they are now installing 300 biogas units annually, 60 water pumps a year, and 400 toilets.

In addition, Grassroots has organized a women's cooperative, called Umang, which means "inner strength" or "self-confidence." Umang now comprises a network of 2000 women spread over hundreds of villages and governed by reps from participating women’s "self-help" groups, with day-to-day functions managed by a group of women from the surrounding area.

Umang’s work includes savings and credit, but also enterprise development. They produce knitwear worth more than Rs.1.5 million each year, about a third of which accrues to the women as wages, according to sources familiar with the situation.

In addition, the Umang women engage in food processing, producing about 10 tons of product annually, especially pickled condiments made from local produce such as chilies, ginger, and garlic, along with fruit preserves and jams. (Their plum chutney is fantastic!) Umang also has an apiculture program that produces about 3 tons of honey every year.

To better understand the impact watershed-wide, Grassroots, together with UNESCO, is conducting a study of the hydrology of the Gagas River Basin, which covers 500 square kilometers and includes 360 villages.

Faisal K. Zaidi, a Post Doctoral Researcher in Hydrogeology who works with UNESCO in New Delhi, on the study says that the Gargas has been included in UNESCO's Hydrology for Environment, Life, and Policy (HELP) program. HELP, according to its website, "is creating a new approach to integrated catchment management through the creation of a framework for water law and policy experts, water resource managers and water scientists to work together on water-related problems."

Zaidi says that by the end of the monsoon season this year, likely around September, they should have the first water budget for the Gagas River Basin, based upon the data collected from this study. To date, they have set up rainfall and stream flow monitoring stations in almost 20 locations, and at least a half-dozen weather monitoring stations in the basin.


The true innovation in Kalyan Paul's work is the holistic approach to the root problems. I have seen plenty of economic development and environmental projects that are limited in their scope. Most projects, indeed most organizations attack one problem, and not always the root of a problem. It's often an either/or dilemma: either economic development or conservation; either livelihood or watershed protection. The Grassroots approach is integrated, holistic and more effective as a result.

Not bad for a guy who started out "walking around" 20 years ago.


(Disclosure: The author is a vice president of Ashoka, which selected Kalyan Paul as an Ashoka Fellow in 1992, preceding the author's employment.)

Clean Tech: In Defense of Biofuels, Tyler Hamilton Weighs In

On the day that Richard Branson launched the first biofueled airliner, one of my favorite Canadians, the Toronto Star's clean tech writer Tyler Hamilton comes to the defense of the beleagured alternative energy source. It's such a good piece, I have to reblog it in full:

I'm getting tired of the doomsday views being spouted about biofuels lately, as much as there's an element of truth to them. Yes, biofuels from food or dedicated crops aren't a sustainable strategy, and yes, biofuels from cellulosic ethanol may be years away before they become economical, but is this reason to completely abandon the idea? To call it a scam? I'm also a little perplexed that people talk about biofuel like we're pinning the climate's hopes on it, rather than as part of a much larger solution.

Yes, we're seeing the hunt for palm oil sources devastating the rainforests of Indonesian. Bad. Bad. Bad. Makes for a great headline, eh? Does this suggest biofuels per se are bad or that we need to pay greater attention to how and where we get them? Is it not the government of Indonesia that's responsible for strictly regulating this domestic market? It's like saying we shouldn't use solar power because factories in China are using child labour. Solar isn't the problem -- it's the factory owners. Perhaps OECD countries should impose trade sanctions on any country that doesn't comply with strict environmental standards, as a recent BBC article suggests. A New York Times editorial at least sees the potential for biofuels, pointing out that it can be done if done responsibly.

The same reasoning goes for the energy balance of biofuels. We've seen report after report saying that producing ethanol from corn takes more energy than what you get out of it, and that changing lands to biofuel crops releases carbon into the air. This might be the case in some circumstances, but there are some huge assumptions here about irrigation (water use), fertilizer use, transportation, and they are often analyzed out of context -- that is, not compared apples-to-apples to the way we go about exploring, producing, refinining and transporting oil. Again, regulation can deal with these issues.

You think there isn't an army of scientists out there not trying to catalogue the best raw materials for producing biofuels, the best enzymes and bacteria for breaking them down, the best methods of transporting them, ways of growing on depleted lands, etc...? These are early days in the middle of a dramatic transition, and there are going to be some mistakes -- and much trial and error along the way. To suggest this isn't going to happen, and never happened in the early days of oil and coal, is simply naive.

So let's stop demonizing biofuels. It's at times like these that I'm ashamed of my own industry for oversimplifying the debate with sensational headlines. But I digress.

On a related note, I'd like to say I'm happy to see Richard Branson -- media stunts aside -- trying biofuels in airplanes. Virgin Fuels launched the world's first commercial flight powered by biofuel today and the company appears serious about studying the benefits and, based on that outcome, pursuing the biofuel option. Virgin contends biofuels could be a commercial reality in the airline industry within five years. Personally, I think this is an area we must aggressively pursue. In fact, I think we should devote most of our research and development on biofuels to their use in the airline sector.

Here's my reason: We can't run planes on batteries, so electric planes aren't in the cards. We can run vehicles on electricity, starting with plug-in hybrids as a transition, and there is great momentum at the moment toward this goal. It's my belief that a biofuel industry devoted strictly to fuelling air travel could be done sustainably without having an impact on food prices and, as cellulosic approaches become more affordable, by depending heavily on agricultural and forest waste.

Maybe I'm oversimplifying things, but it seems to me it makes more sense to target particular approaches to particular problems rather than have all approaches try to be all things to all industries.

I hope Tyler doesn't mind my reblogging his post from Clean Break. It's such a Green Skeptic viewpoint, I thought my readers would appreciate it.

Global Climate Change: UN Summary Report, Dire Warnings

Associated Press reported this morning that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) successfully completed its summary report yesterday.

That's the good new. The bad news is the panel concluded that we are in deep doo-doo.

"The Earth is hurtling toward a warmer age at a quickening pace," according to the Nobel-winning UN scientific panel, and heading toward a future of "inevitable human suffering and the threat of species extinction."

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said climate change imperils "the most precious treasures of our planet."

The potential impact of global warming is "so severe and so sweeping that only urgent global action will do," Ban told the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change after it issued its fourth and final report this year.

The IPCC, following six days of sometimes tense negotiations, adopted a concise briefing paper on the science of climate change and the effects of human-produced greenhouse gases. It lays out various scenarios of future impacts, depending on how quickly and decisively action is taken.

The Summary for Policymakers, and a longer version called the synthesis report, distill thousands of pages of data and computer models resulting from six years of research compiled by the IPCC.

It will be a how-to guide for policy makers meeting next month in Bali, Indonesia, who will begin discussing a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol.

I'll be posting reactions to the Summary for Policymakers, which I've previously read in draft form, over the next day or so. Meanwhile, you can access the Summary here: IPCC Summary for Policymakers