10 Favs; 10 Years: Caring, or A New Conservation Ethic

My son Jasper tagging a saltwater croc,
Mexico, January 2005. Photo by the author.

This post originally appeared on The Green Skeptic in October 2005. It clearly demonstrates my concerns about the disconnect between people and conservation and articulates my view of the need for a new conservation ethic.

Over the past several weeks, in the conference centers of Monterey, the wilderness of Yosemite, and the halls of my company's offices in suburban Washington, our talk has been about drawing a closer connection between conservation and people.

We've come a long way, but still have miles to go before we can say we've expanded the boundaries of our own conservation ethic.

I've been thinking a lot lately about conservation ethic. One phrase that keeps coming back to me is Robert Michael Pyle's statement that "People who care conserve, people who don't know don't care." It's a powerful truism and one to which we should pay heed.

Our movement is often accused of being elitist and defeatist and, frankly, those criticisms are far too often accurate. Beautiful photos of pristine places beg the question, "What about the people?"

(Pyle's words came back to me during tonight's playoff battle of the Sox. It was late in the game, my beloved Red Sox had bases loaded and blew several chances to tie the game or take the lead. Johnny Damon was up, surely ready to play the hero. My nine-year old son, who learned to care about baseball -- and my team -- during the 2003 ALCS, was on tenterhooks: would Damon do it? When the Caveman struck out, stranding three base runners and turning the BoSox into WoeSox once again, my son was apoplectic. "Now I know you are a true fan," I told him. "You really cared." I haven't seen him that upset since he learned that polar bears were losing habitat to global warming!)

We need a new conservation ethic that clearly redefines the human + nature equation: that human beings are not apart from, but rather a part of nature. We need to articulate the real connections between conservation and restoration of the earth's natural functions -- also known as ecosystem services -- and their real implications for the people of the earth.

Moreover, that we care about people as much as the earth's other species. Without this, we will sink in a downward spiral of our own making.

Whether we're talking about food, fuel, fiber for clothing or paper or a myriad of other goods and services nature provides, we need to stop "seeing the natural world as a resource for the economy," as James Gustave Speth writes in his book, Red Sky at Morning, "rather than seeing the economy as nested in the natural world."

We have obligations to the world that go beyond our self-interest, to paraphrase Aldo Leopold, and until we own up to this our conservation ethic will ring false for the majority of the world's people. Our new conservation ethic must be as inclusive as it is pragmatic, and as interconnected to the other issues of our time -- poverty alleviation, terrorism, AIDS/HIV -- as to the natural world we hold dear.

We need to remember this whether we're on higher ground in one of this nation's important National Parks, the sterile corridors of an office in northern Virginia, or the cozy confines of that little bandbox of a ballpark that is Fenway.

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.

On Al Gore, Twitter, Puppies, and Bacon (the Food, Not Kevin)

Twitter is an amazing animal. Yesterday, before heading to a meeting with Al Gore, which I wrote about last night, I decided to ask the Twitterverse what they wanted me to ask him.

Here is a sampling of the responses:



Pretty cool to have such a quick response from the Twitterverse. Thanks to everyone who responded.

In the end, I got to ask one question of Mr. Gore and I went with, "Do you think it is possible for traditional industries, such as the auto industry to adapt and change for the new green economy?"

His answer? "Many of us wish they had done so years ago instead of giving Toyota a 7-year lead in hybrid drive-train development," Mr. Gore said. "But I do think there are plenty of opportunities for industries to get on board now -- and those that see it will do so; those that don't will be gone."

Perhaps Mr. Gore will visit the green skeptic and tackle the questions above in Disqus comments, assuming he is a Disqus user.

(Note: As an experiment, I'm using the words Gore, Puppies, and Bacon in the title of this post.)

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Alaska: As Colonel Norman Vaughn used to Say, "Dream Big and Dare to Fail"

Last weekend while Twittering about my trip back to Alaska -- a place I left 10 years ago this August, one of my stalwart followers, globalgirl, revealed that she is the great niece of one of my heroes, Colonel Norman Vaughan.

For those of you not familiar with the man or the legend, Norman Dane Vaughan dropped out of Harvard in 1928 to pursue Admiral Byrd's Expedition in Antarctica. He was the chief dog driver on the two-year Byrd expedition and later Byrd named an Antarctic mountain in his honor.

He also mushed as part of a search and rescue unit in World War II, in the Olympics, and in the Iditarod, as well as in three Presidential Inauguration ceremonies.

On 16, 1994, Vaughan climbed his eponymous 10,302-foot peak, three days shy of his 89th birthday. National Geographic documented this trip in a film, Height of Courage

My encounters with Colonel Vaughan via my work with the Nature Conservancy in Alaska were inspiring and humorous. The humorous included bringing him to a TNC party in New York as part of an Alaska exhibit where he posed with a sled dog team from Long Island.

He was a man of tremendous courage, opinion, and drive. And he gave me three things that I still hold as inspiration: a zipper pull he had designed for clumsily shod gloved hands, which now dons my sleeping bag; words of wisdom he imparted to my young son when they first met; and a playing card he had developed bearing his face, bio, and motto: "Dream Big and Dare to Fail."

Vaughan died on December 23, 2005, 4 days after his 100th birthday. (Hear an interview with Colonel Vaughan from NPR, recorded just prior to his centennial birthday.

How wonderful to be reminded of Colonel Vaughan, and to be back in the Alaska we both once called home.

(Thanks to globalgirl for reaching out about her Great Uncle!)

Social Entrepreneurs: CNN Interview with Majora Carter of Sustainable South Bronx

Majora Carter is one of my green heroes. As the founder of Sustainable South Bronx, she has effectively turned around an area that was once best known as the poster child for urban blight.

The South Bronx was once a thriving, working-class community; it was also home to rich cultural traditions and influences. (Think: hip-hop, which first emerged from there in the 70s.)

Majora wants to see the South Bronx restored and respected, and is committed to its bright, green future.

Highlights from the story:

-Carter, who grew up in the Bronx, set up Sustainable South Bronx in 2001

-She wrote a $1.25M Federal Transportation planning grant for the South Bronx

-The 11-mile-long stretch now Hunts Point Riverfront Park is the first South Bronx waterfront park in 60 years

-Carter wants to see the South Bronx become a thriving community again

Her organization promotes green-collar jobs and sustainable development as a route out of poverty and to create stronger, healthier and greener communities. She wants Manhattan to start handling its own waste rather than dumping it on the local communities

CNN spoke to her about her inspiration, her work and her hopes for the future:

Majora Carter Interview

Here is more on Majora: Bio

More about her organization: Sustainable South Bronx

And a slide show of her work: Slides

Majora at Aspen Institute Environment Forum: Big Idea

And don't miss Majora's TED Talk, "Greening the Ghetto":




She is so damned inspiring! We need more Majora Carter's in the world.

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."

Wallstrip on Oil and Gas Prices: They've Got Us Over a Barrel

Our minivan now cost over $70 to fill. We don't even drive it that much, but it still hurts.

Here's a Wallstrip "Julie in the Street" episode on oil and gas prices in New York. I'm with Julie, don't know whether to laugh or cry:



The saddest (but truest) comment is the Brit who says he'd pay whatever it takes for a gallon of petrol and just have to do without something else. OPEC take note!

Salzburg Global Seminar: My 3 Take-Aways from Green Revolution in Africa Dialog

Readers of this blog will note that my "Three Take-Aways" exercise is becoming more formalized. Here are my three from this week's Salzburg Global Seminar "Towards a 'Green Revolution' in Africa?"

1.) A Green Revolution in Africa must be people-centered, including farmer households, consumers, and local communities.

2.) A range of solutions must be considered and deployed, including a judicious use of inputs (inorganic fertilizer, improved seed), as well as a longer-term view that promotes organic inputs to improve soil health and structure and increase production. We also can't rely on monocultures of a few major staples, but must employ the full diversity of locally and culturally appropriate food crops.

3.) Investments are needed to create the infrastructure to improve market access, including significant road development and incentives for entrepreneurial business generation. Without roads, in particular, market access will continue to be limited and success out of reach.

And, finally, words of encouragement from Kofi Annan concerning entrepreneurs in Africa (especially women): "Don't underestimate the entrepreneurial spirit of our African women. Our women entrepreneurs can succeed against any multinational."

My bottom line: An entrepreneurial Green Revolution in Africa is possible indeed.

(En route to Munich from Salzburg. Composed on BlackBerry. Links to follow.)

Salzburg Global Seminar: Africa on Agenda of Africans and Others

Day 3 of the Salzburg Global Seminar on "Towards a 'Green Revolution' in Africa."

Productivity, markets and trade, equity, sustainability, farmers and households have all been on the agenda.

The global food crisis did not hijack the agenda, as some had feared, but was clearly on our minds here.

We recognized; however, that while the immediate need to address the crisis is important, we should not lose sight of the longer time horizon required by making real change in African agriculture.

Infrastructure, conflicts, and genetically modified organisms were also on the minds of many here; however, as quickly as these issues were brought up, they were also tabled.

Appropriate? Not necessarily; but most of us recognized we didn't have the time to adequately address these issues.

There must be a focus on these issues and the potential impacts of climate change, by some body. Perhaps sub-groups on peace and stability, infrastructural investments, cliamte impacts, and GMOs?

One subject that came up consistently was strengthening the capacity of farmers and their organizations, as well as ensuring the concerns of farmers and pastoralists (ranchers) are included in agenda-setting.

Another consistent subject was gender equity; both empowering women, but also getting men more completely engaged in agriculture.

One could argue these are not concerns raised at the time of the earlier Green Revolution -- at least not when it was conceived or launched.

Thinking these issues through up front will ensure this Green Revolution/Revolution Vert en Afrique will be very different and, hopefully, even more beneficial to people on the continent as a result.

Ultimately, what it all comes down to is quite simple: we need a people-focused Green Revolution in Africa.

(Composed on BlackBerry; links to come in future.)

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.

Environment: U.N. Expert Calls Food Crisis "a silent tsunami"

CNN reports that a U.N. expert calls the current global food crisis "a silent tsunami."

"Those battling global warming by promoting biofuels may unintentionally be adding to skyrocketing world food prices, creating what one expert calls 'a silent tsunami' in developing nations.

"Josette Sheeran, the U.N. World Food Program executive director, illustrates the food ration for children.

"The rising prices are 'threatening to plunge more than 100 million people on every continent into hunger,' Josette Sheeran, executive director of the United Nations' World Food Program, said on the agency's Web site Tuesday.

"Sheeran is one of the experts attending a Food summit hosted Tuesday by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, aimed at determining ways to boost food supplies and identify deterrents. Also attending the meeting are scientists and representatives from the European Union and Africa.

"On the Web site, Sheeran said the increase in food prices is 'a silent tsunami that respects no borders.'

"'The world's misery index is rising ... as soaring food and fuel prices roll through the lives of the most vulnerable,' she said Friday.

"The crisis is forcing the organization to look for cuts in aid to some of its recipients, she said.

"Soaring food prices have triggered violence in some developing countries, and biofuels are bearing at least part of the blame."

Read the full article: Food Crisis

Read the Economist cover story on the issue: Silent Tsunami

Microfinance: How Big Can Micro Get?

To profit or not to profit? That is the question. Whether it is nobler to make microloans with donor money or with investor capital is being hotly debated in the development community these days.

The question surrounds Compartamos, which means "let's share" in Spanish, and whether its principals -- known as the two Carloses -- should be sharing the spoils of their microlending institution cum commercial bank. According to a study cited in the New York Times, Compartamos enjoyed a 19.6 percent return in the 4th Quarter.

Part of the issue is profit, but another is about shareholder return. Will shareholders or investors keep the best interests of the poor in mind? Or are the interests of the poor better served by the donor community, who have typically funded microfinance?

For the record, among the largest shareholders in Compartamos are Accion Gateway Fund (Accion Gateway Fund L.L.C), IFC (International Finance Corporation), Oikocredit (Oikocredit), PROFUND (ProFund International, S.A.), Triodos-Doen Foundation (Triodos-Doen Foundation). Not exactly cutthroat capitalists.

There is certainly a need for more capital. According to a Deutsche Bank study, cited by The Times, "the global demand for microfinance loans [is] about US$250 billion, 10 times the amount that has been lent."

Banco Compartamos went public last year in an attempt to gain access to a broader capital market rather thank rely on the limited pool of philanthropic capital. That got the attention of Wall Street and drew some ire from more traditional microfinance institutions.

Some of the criticism stems from the roots of microfinance as a tool for eradicating poverty. A play like Compartamos seems to take microlending in a completely different direction, which, to some, strays from the mission.

But the question remains, is there room for traditional banks and other lending institutions to offer financial products for the poor?

What if Compartamos had not started as a non-profit (it was founded by a Catholic social action group called Gente Nueva, according to the Times), but had started with a different approach?

It seems like microfinance is feeling some growing pains. Some 20 years after the concept first sprouted -- and only two years since one of its originators, Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank, won the Nobel Peace Prize for the innovation -- its best practitioners have demonstrated it works. Now others want in the game.

I suspect there has to be room at the table for players like Compartamos, as well as commercial banks and other investors, alongside the small "mom-and-pop" shops and the Kiva.orgs, the latter of which connects lenders directly with borrowers through an online interface. The problems of poverty -- extreme as well as low- and mid-level -- are just too great to be limiting approaches now.

As I've argued before in this blog, the poor need better access to the full range of financial services -- and they need it now more than ever.

We need to remain vigilant as big institutions enter this space or we may end up with something like the mortgage crisis on our hands. We don't want people, as microfinance consultant Charles Waterfield told the Times, "making obscene profits off poor people."

But who decides when micro gets too big to be called micro any more?


For more on this issue, read the New York Times article by Elizabeth Macklin, "Microfinance Success Sets Off a Debate in Mexico."

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.

Social Entrepreneurs: Bill Gates Talk on "Creative Capitalism" at Davos

Readers of The Green Skeptic know that I believe in the concept of market-based social change or doing good and making money; what Muhammad Yunus is now calling "social business" and what Bill Gates spoke about at Davos this week, "Creative Capitalism." Here is the video of Bill Gates from Davos:

Green Skeptic Will Be Quiet for a Few Days...

...knee surgery. Torn medial meniscus.

Wish me luck and I'll be back on my feet again before First Solar climbs back above 200. I don't know which hurts more, my knee or the solar slump!

I'm convinced the knee is proof there's no such thing as "Intelligent Design." Really.

Anyway, see you back here soon. (I hope.)

Social Entrepreneurs: Barack Obama Calls for Social Sector Investment

In a speech last week in Iowa, presidential hopeful, Senator Barack Obama, called for a new focus on social entrepreneurs as agents for positive change, and for increased investment in the social sector:

"The second thing I’ll do is invest in ideas that can help us meet our common challenges, because more often than not the next great social innovation won’t be generated by the government.

"The non-profit sector employs 1 in 12 Americans and 115 nonprofits are launched every day. Yet while the federal government invests $7 billion in research and development for the private sector, there is no similar effort to support non-profit innovation. Meanwhile, there are ideas across America – in our inner cities and small towns; from college graduates to folks making a career change – that could benefit millions of Americans if they’re given the chance to grow.

"As President, I will launch a new Social Investment Fund Network. It’s time to get the grass roots, the foundations, the private sector and the government at the table. We’ll invest in ideas that work; leverage private sector dollars to encourage innovation; and expand successful programs to scale. Take a program like the Harlem Children’s Zone, which helps thousands of kids in New York through after-school activities, mentoring, and family support. We need to make that model work in different cities around the country. And I’ll start a new Social Entrepreneur Agency to make sure that small non-profits have the same kind of support that we give small businesses."

Spurring private action through public programs. Obama almost sounds like a Republican with his call for "personal responsibility" and acknowledgment that "the next great social innovation won’t be generated by the government."

Does Barack Obama have a chance to become President? He got this Independent's attention with this speech.

Read the full speech here: The Swamp

Global Climate Change: Glen Barry's pre-Bali Essay Calls for Equitable Emissions Cuts

Before the Bali Climate Talks begin next week, everyone should read the latest Earth Meanders essay by Dr. Glen Barry, called "Poverty Sucks, the Earth and the Soul."

Barry writes that "To avoid run-away abrupt climate change, all nations must embrace equitable, ambitious and urgent emission cuts in Bali.

"The rich are richer and the poor, poorer -- even as the Earth they share shrivels and dies. Billions live a life of misery on a dollar or two a day, as a sizeable minority enjoys creature comforts fit for kings of old, and a relative few with more wealth then entire nations live in unimagined splendor...

"Humanity is well along the path of cutting and burning ourselves to oblivion. The combined filth from centuries of burning fossil fuels and clearing native vegetation -- primitive practices that continue to this day -- is causing the climate and global ecology to not only change, but collapse...There is perhaps Bali and a few years to get policy right to reduce emissions and avoid total global ecological decline through cooperative international policy-making..."

Read the full essay

Source: Climate Ark

Social Entrepreneurs: Acumen Fund Launches New Web Site, Fellows Blog

We like Acumen Fund's approach to "building transformative businesses to solve the problems of poverty."

Today, Rob Katz @ NextBillion.net points us too Acumen Fund's new, RSS-compatible web site. Here's Rob's take:

"In addition to being syndication-friendly, the new site is rich with stories, photos, videos and lots of dynamic content. I like how they've organized things around their three pillars: capital, knowledge and talent. For more on this three pillars approach, check out my post from the annual Investor Gathering last week.

While you're checking out the new Acumen site - be sure to read Jacqueline Novogratz's recent Pakistan and India journals, by the way - also add Immersion to your RSS feeds or bookmarks. Immersion is the title of the 2008 Acumen Fund Fellows blog. The seven fellows - with whom I met a few weeks back - are working in India, Pakistan and Kenya, and have been blogging regularly about their work and personal lives 'in the field.' I've enjoyed the early posts, and encourage NextBillion readers to check it out."

On first glance, I like the look. It's clean and easy to navigate. There are a couple of broken links, but that will probably be worked out in the coming days. I also like the links to video content, photo essays, and stories. Wondering why it's not so easy to navigate to Fellow profiles from the list or even find such profiles. But these are minor complaints; the content is rich and the look and feel is an improvement.

Global Climate Change: Gore, Climate Activist, Head Contenders for Nobel Peace Prize

Bloomberg.com reports that Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and Canadian activist Sheila Watt-Cloutier are among contenders for this year's Nobel Peace Prize for campaigning about the threat of climate change, according to Stein Toennesson, director of the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo.

Buddhist monk Thich Quang Do, former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari and humanitarian group Save the Children may also be among the 181 nominations for the 10 million-krona ($1.5 million) prize, Toennesson said in an interview. The winner is announced by the Norwegian Nobel Committee tomorrow.

Bangladesh's Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank won last year for advancing social and economic development by giving loans to the poor. Wangari Maathai, Mother Theresa, Aung San Suu Kyi, and the Dalai Lama are among past recipients.

Read the complete article: Nobel Gore?

See link for more on the Nobel Peace Prize

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