In Case You're Wondering Why The Green Skeptic Hasn't Posted in Some Time...

As the season turns from summer to fall, it's becoming increasingly obvious to me that I've neglected The Green Skeptic and its readers for too long -- my last post was August 2nd.

But there's good reason! 

In addition to the usual summer vacation (those of you who follow me on Twitter or Instagram will have seen my tweets from Martha's Vineyard), back to school, and the Jewish holidays, which I've been fortunate enough to enjoy with my fiancee, Samantha, I've been cooking up a few other things -- besides delicious meals.

First, is EY Cleantech's upcoming CEO Retreat in Napa, California, where we'll welcome over 80 cleantech CEOs, corporate, and government leaders  representatives. It's a very exciting event and I've had the pleasure of organizing and managing it for the second straight year. You can read more about it (and read last year's report) HERE.

Second, I've begun work on a new book of nonfiction that pulls together stories of cleantech innovation and my own insights on the sector, which will be of interest to readers of The Green Skeptic. (More on that later, I hope.)

And finally, this fall, the Aldrich Press is publishing my first full-length collection of poetry, FALLOW FIELD. The book consists of 45 poems, representing my best work from the past quarter century, and you can order your signed copy of FALLOW FIELD here:

Here is what others have said about this collection, FALLOW FIELD:

“Scott Edward Anderson’s poems honor the reality that the things of the world – rye grass, fall warblers, ravens, owls, ‘Sargassum drifting/ in a pelagic wave,’ lovers and sourdough bread – speak to and for our innerness. Here the sense of place is not simply a matter of geography, but of feeling one’s way into that sense of becoming that makes one’s path clear. The book’s fourth section is comprised of poems that beautifully embrace the very human need to join the inner and outer, a territory defined, as the poem titles suggest, by ‘Becoming,’ ‘Shapeshifting,’ ‘Cultivating,’ ‘Mapping,’ and ‘Healing.’ Guided since childhood, as the book’s closing long poem relates, by nature’s teaching, Anderson is devoted to finding the words for what it means to dwell mindfully among others on the wounded earth.”

                                                            –Alison Hawthorne Deming, author of Rope: Poems

“I was impressed by Anderson’s engagement with nature — especially the way in which his lyrical lines sketch the profound relationship between humans and their environment.”

                                                             – Jonathan Galassi, author of Left-handed: Poems

For those of you not familiar with my poetry, it is rooted in nature and grounded in what Robert Hass called the “strong central tradition of free verse made out of both romanticism and modernism, split between the impulses of an inward and psychological writing and an outward and realist one, at its best fusing the two.”  (Hass, Introduction to Best American Poetry 2001)

I studied with Hass and with Gary Snyder, along with the late Walter Pavlich, and received some great mentoring and advice from poets Alison Hawthorne Deming, Donald Hall, Colette Inez, and Karen Swenson, as well as wonderful friends and readers.

My poetry is informed by a deep engagement with the natural world, attuned to the smallest details and complexities of nature and our experience of place. Attentiveness and mindfulness are critical to my method of working, both as the poem first evolves and later, through the often rigorous process of revision.

I believe poetry is the most direct language with which to approach our place in the world and reconnect us to nature. By nature, I mean not only the natural world, but also the built environment; not only the processes and causal powers of the physical world, but our immediate experience of the spiritual and the non-human.

For the past twenty five years, I have been building a body of poetry that tries to achieve my goal of writing that is open, approachable, and eminently readable, at the same time that it is intellectual and revels in the joy of language. FALLOW FIELD represents the best of my poetry over that time.

Order your signed copy of FALLOW FIELD below:

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

##


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.

Green Skeptic Friday LinkFest - 03/11/11

I awoke this morning, as many did, to the news of a devastating earthquake in Japan and the ensuing tsunami.

Once again we are reminded of the power of Nature and the fragility of human existence. My thoughts and prayers go out to all those affected in Japan and elsewhere.

The New York Times and BBC appeared to have the best coverage (thanks to Heidi N. Moore for the links):

Huge Quake and Tsunami Hit Japan

Tsunami hits Japan after massive quake

Video of the Earthquake and Tsunami in Japan

Here are links for this week:

Brad Johnson, of The Wonk Room, reports on Rep. Ed Markey's Sardonic comments during this week's climate hearings in Washington: Markey Asks if GOP Will Repeal Gravity

Meanwhile, Nick Blake, writing in OnEarth magazine asks, "Are We Hard-wired for Extinction?"

My colleague from The Energy Collective advisory board Marc Gunther ponders Can Clean Energy Drive U.S. Economic Recovery?

Our friend Molly Davis of Rainmaker Communications has her film producing premiere at SXSW and got some props in the New York Times: "Something Ventured, A Love Story About Capitalism."  Here's a link to the film's web site: Something Ventured.

Craig Newmark has launched a new venture to connect people to non-profit organizations:  Craigslist Founder Starts Craigconnects To Make World A Better Place.

David Brooks has sparked a lively debate about the failures of contemporary society, which he sees as rooted "a single failure: reliance on an overly simplistic view of human nature," The New Humanism.

My thoughts and prayers go out to the victims of the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

 

The Nature Conservancy : Vote for your favorite nature photo

Cherie Palmer
Nelson, New Zealand

Jewelled Gecko, Otaga, New Zealand

"People who care conserve; people who don't know don't care," wrote biologist Robert Michael Pyle.

One of the best ways to connect to and learn about nature is through photography.  Great nature photography inspires people to go out and appreciate wild places or to just take a closer look at what's right in their own backyards.

From now until noon on Monday, February 7th, you have a great opportunity to choose the winner of The Nature Conservancy's 5th Annual Digital Photo Contest.

Which photograph inspires you?

The Nature Conservancy : You Be the Judge
.
 

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.

Global Climate Change: Myanmar Satellite Images

Thanks to Paul Kedrosky @ Infectious Greed for these NASA satellite images that illustrate the impact of the Myanmar Cyclone. I hear death toll range of 22,000-66,000. And no early warning for many of these people.

In this day and age of technological advances, one would think major destruction of human life could be avoided through communication.

I know no single event can be tied to global warming, but we probably need to get used to these events happening more frequently with climate change.

As Paul said, "Jaw-dropping."

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.

Conservation: Steve McCormick's Departure from The Nature Conservancy, Questions and Appreciation

The emails started hitting my inbox shortly after 11 yesterday morning. From all over the world, colleagues and alumni alike were sending me the news: Steve McCormick resigned from the top of The Nature Conservancy.

"After almost seven years in my role as President," his email to staff began, "and a total of thirty years with The Nature Conservancy, I've concluded that I've contributed all I can to help the organization improve its ability to fulfill the mission. I've decided, therefore, to resign, and will vacate my role immediately."

What is surprising is the abrupt manner in which this was done. It begs the question, "Why now?" The harsh ring of "vacate my role immediately" begs another set of questions. It's not surprising that he stepped down; many of us had speculated that Steve was weary of the top job. And who could blame him?

His first year as president and CEO was marked by an unfair three-part investigative series by the Washington Post. The reporters put Steve -- who was not in charge when many of the alleged discretions were made -- under the spot light; chiefly for the no-interest loan the Conservancy had given him to lure him from California to northern Virginia.

I argued at the time that it was the lack of disclosure and not the loan itself that should have been questioned. I don't see any problem with trying to lure talent to your top position with such incentives. And his salary and Fairfax County home, which were also disclosed, the latter even pictured in the series, were neither extravagant nor lavish.

The Post series, much of which was based on conjecture and a too strict interpretation of what constitutes an "insider," led to two letters of inquiry from the Senate Finance Committee. Even as Steve took the heat most directly, he led the charge for transparency and cooperation, and marshaled all staff to work on the response from whatever corner of the organization they sat.

In the end, the committee in its review called the Conservancy a "model institution" and recommended it as an example of how non-profit organizations should be governed.

During this time Steve was seemingly unflappable. But this belied another struggle he was undertaking: transforming the organization to realize its mission: "to protect the diversity of life on Earth" (emphasis mine), by making it more of a global institution.

In his first 90 days, Steve told staff that the Conservancy needed to act on our global mission and that we couldn't fulfill that promise by spending 80 percent of our resources in the United States, where 20 percent (or less) of the biodiversity was found. We need to flip that ratio and we needed to do it soon -- time was our worst enemy.

Some early advice from ill-considered consultants who misread the organization's appetite for change, led to push-back from many parts of the organization. Much of the Conservancy was ill-prepared to move in this direction or to move as quickly as Steve wanted; some are not there still. Steve's reaction to that push back -- to scale down his tone and rhetoric --- was appropriate, but it eroded his leadership.

The fact is the Conservancy was not ready to do a 180 or even a 90-degree shift. Over 55 years (56 in a few weeks), the Conservancy built a strong infrastructure around a state-based model, and attracted staff, donors, and trustees to make it the largest and most effective conservation organization around.

With that strength and history, however, came responsibility. At times, I've likened this dilemma to a mid-life crisis: the Conservancy has a strong, 55-year marriage and it's faced with the fast-car/trophy spouse of global conservation. To be honest, I'm not convinced Steve's closest advisers at the time were doing him good service. We should have listened to the pulse of the organization, understood how to go about this change in a more strategic, methodical manner.

The Conservancy's brand was so tied up in its history that it seemed intractable. I know about this because my team there was intimately involved with trying to change the perception of that brand, from "We Buy Land" to protecting Nature for life; from "Saving the Last Great Places to words articulating a vision that Steve used in his email to staff: that our vision was not about "protecting lands and waters from people, but conserving them for people."

Truth be told, there were many among us who felt the Conservancy wasn't going far enough and fast enough. The last few years have been characterized by too much planning and process and not enough action. In my mind, some of that leads directly back to Steve's early charge and retreat. Once people got a sense they could push back, they did -- and heavily at times. I don't think Steve's presidency ever fully recovered from that early stumbling.

Ultimately, however, Steve has brought the Conservancy forward towards realizing its potential and his legacy. Much of the organization now better articulates the connections between biodiversity conservation and human well-being; there is a groundswell of recognition of the need to be a global institution, even if it is intellectual and not yet operational; and they now have a more clear strategy for its reaction to the major environmental issue of our time, climate change.

I got to know Steve first when he was California State Director and I was in Alaska. We shared some trustees between our two programs and I always heard about how good Steve was at managing their relationship to the organization. I was also intimately involved in helping shape the conversation on biodiversity/human well-being, going global, and developing the climate change strategy as part of the working group Steve chartered last winter.

At times, he frustrated me; like the Annual Meeting in Monterrey a few years back, right after we had made it through the Senate Finance Committee hearings, when I wanted him to acknowledge our painful journey and how we emerged stronger and better, and now could put it all behind us. I wanted him to take charge, lead the troops, rally all of us towards the ambitious goal we'd set for ourselves. Instead, he told stories that made you scratch your head and had none of the fire of his passion he carries within.

Yet, when Steve was on message, he was on fire, and his tenure as president of The Nature Conservancy should be weighed by the progress the organization made under his leadership. I think the late John Sawhill, whom Steve “replaced,” would be proud of him.

In the end, I left the Conservancy because of a need to explore alternative models, to find a way to catalyze entrepreneurial ideas and approaches that were beyond what the Conservancy could foster. There’s too much of an air of mystery surrounding his abrupt departure (and attempts to reach him have proved futile); I need to know more and why the accelerated timeframe?

I still consider Steve a colleague and am proud to have helped in my small way to move things forward with him. (Would that I could have done more early on to help him navigate the treacherous path he undertook.) I wish the best for him in his next endeavor -- and I hope he does turn his attention to global warming, as he told the Post he may.

For more on Steve McCormick's resignation, see: nature.org

Conservation Action: China's First National Park

China will soon create its first national park in one of the most biodiverse regions of the world. Pudacuo National Park will contain more than 20% of the country's plant species, about one-third of its mammal and bird species and almost 100 endangered species.

My former employer, The Nature Conservancy, played a major role in making Pudacuo National Park a reality. By doing so, it also

Increases conservation in the region by incorporating 10 times more land into an area that was formerly a nature reserve;

Introduces skilled park management techniques to help abate threats to biodiversity in the area;

Provides a source of environmental education for local communities; and

Provides economic benefits to local communities through park-related jobs and ecotourism.

The Conservancy supported the Chinese government's efforts to establish Pudacuo in June 2007 by introducing the concept of the national park system to officials and advising the government on how best to establish this kind of protected area.

And on a personal note, how cool is it to see the impact of your words halfway around the world?

“What…distinguishes this park [from a typical Chinese nature reserve] is that the local communities are already benefiting from it because they are preferentially employed for jobs within the park,” says Zhu Li, communications manager for the Conservancy’s China Program. “The national park system embodies the conservation ideal of ‘nature for people’ rather than ‘nature from people.’"

In the preamble to TNC's 2005 Annual Report, Nature for Life, I wrote: "Conservation today is about conserving lands and waters for people, rather than protecting nature from people."

Cool to see one's words carrying over the world and transforming the way we think about conservation, to connect people and nature in new ways and articulate the interdependency between nature and human well-being.

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