An AP article titled "Leaders Want Biodiversity Pay Off" tells us about a five-day conference put together by Conservation International where more than 400 delegates will kick around ideas for using their rich biodiversity to boost local economies. Until the advent of carbon trading, the only real option for doing that was ecotourism. The two ideas can now be combined and may one day prove to be a powerful combination. Forest that is locked away in a legally binding contract to soak up carbon for a century or so may as well be used as an ecotourism destination.
Good things are happening. The president of Madagascar intends to add 23,000 square miles of protected territory by 2008. Equatorial Guinea announced plans to create 1.2 million acres of new national forest along with a $15 million conservation trust fund to manage it. Jumping on the bandwagon, the president of Liberia announced that she is going to create a $30 million conservation trust fund to finance the creation and maintenance of new protected areas as well.
[update]Following is the text of an e-mail I just received. Here you go, Alphonse and good luck:
I was delighted to see your post on Grist Mill titled "Show Me The Monkey" about the Conservation International Global Symposium titled Defying Nature's End: The African Context. I am currently at that event which looks likely to produce a substantive "compact" on how to tie conservation to economic and human development. We are posting news from the conference hourly on the symposium's website http://symposium2006.conservation.org/ and are providing information for the public on our own home page http://www.conservation.org/ It would be wonderful if you could add these links to your article Thanks Alphonse Alphonse L. MacDonald Senior Director Online Communications Conservation International
Ecotourism is in its infancy. There is tremendous potential for growth. Third world governments have to get their act together to tap this potential. They have the forests full of interesting biodiversity; what they now need are local tour guides to point it out, safe food, comfortable lodging and transportation, security, and set prices (to limit theft, bribe taking, and extortion). The tourists will come. Life is to be lived. Most Americans spend their disposable income (whatever that means exactly) on status symbols (mostly expensive cars and houses). I would think that traveling the world, spreading that cash around to third world economies, would be a much better use of it. You can always bring home something cool to hang on your wall to brag about. Go here to see some photos I took on a trip a few years back.
The government of Madagascar has the right idea. As with Indonesia, their biggest hurdle is their explosive population growth (PDF). They need to get a handle on it for their sake as well as the sake of their biodiversity. Subsistence farmers are essentially small businessmen. There are few higher risk businesses. Crops fail for all kinds of reasons you cannot control. You are at war with biodiversity. You eat or the bugs and elephants do. The popular idea that subsistence farmers need to find a way to stay fed while protecting biodiversity is probably a dead end strategy. Urbanization that allows them to earn just as much and work half as hard might be a better one.
Comments
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DianaJardine Posted 3:10 am
22 Jun 2006
Seems like the last thing we need is even more people flying. Though you could argue that people will fly anyway, might as well have them fly to see a beautiful and protected forest.
Thoughts?
Diana
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amazingdrx Posted 3:29 am
22 Jun 2006
My wacky Prairie National Park idea might just be more understandable as a storage site for sequesterd CO 2.
And of course tourism could add to the whole thing as well as the wind power idea out on the prairie park.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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amazingdrx Posted 3:36 am
22 Jun 2006
Ocean going transportation need not utilize fossil fuels. Maybe even some solar powered flight will follow the lead of this crazy gigh flying solar powered spy project utilizing a huge airship.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2006/6/6/2008951.html
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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DianaJardine Posted 4:24 am
22 Jun 2006
I forgot to mention anything about the carbon trading idea. I find that one fascinating. Once again, it runs the risk of being highjacked and used as a tool to make it seem like something is being done when the reality is the opposite (or like in Europe, not being used to its potential, although I do not fully grasp what happened with their cap and trade system).
However, if done correctly, this idea could address the issue of undeveloped countries saying, "Hey, you had to log your forests and mine your mountains to become the rich power you are today. Now you want to tell us we can't do what you already did?"
If it worked, these countries could benefit from their "underdevelopment" in terms of nature and wilderness by using it as an economic resource to "develop" in terms of health-care, standard of living, and the like. I also like the potential, noted by amazingdrx, for rural/urban relations.
Let's hope.
Diana
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caniscandida Posted 5:15 am
22 Jun 2006
Diana's vision is attractive. Here, all along, I have been grumbling and growling, Jeremiahishly, against First-World types that feel entitled to their overseas vacations, and make a cute competitive sport out of claiming he/she has "been to" a less developed or very remote tourist destination before anyone else in the social circle. And in fact, I stick with my principles: Buy less, travel less.
But if indeed eco-tourism is a (smallish) way to distribute the wealth of the First World, then we truly should be encouraged to fly away, fly away! By all means elevate those gas-pump taxes, to subsidize Good Patriotic Earth-Loving Americans' trips to Costa Rica, Madagascar, wherever.
On "carbon off-setting": a silly, lame-brained, probably futile idea, and probably unpersuasive as a tactic to control global warming. Nevertheless, it is a very big-hearted one. And good-intentioned. And that sort of thing must always be encouraged. And meanwhile lots of tree-seeds are (presumably) finding happy homes.
By the way, are there anywhere at airports "activists," with portable credit-card machines, asking travelers if they would like to "off-set" their trip?
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Biodiversivist Posted 6:20 am
22 Jun 2006
Certainly, as things stand today, if enough people flew to these destinations for enough years they would eventually neutralize the carbon sequestering capacity of the reserves.
Drx suggests several innovative potential solutions to that dilemma. My favorite solution would be carbon credits. Essentially this means that every time you visit, you will be further funding the creation of even more ecosystem carbon sinks, hopefully in the form of reforested habitat in Madagascar.
I really like the idea of being able to buy carbon credits at the airport with a credit card. I would especially like to be able to buy an acre of rainforest with that offset. You can buy an acre for about $45 as of today. You could just log on here for example and buy it after you buy your ticket.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Help acquire and protect ecological hotspots, give to a conservation organization: http://www.saveourbiodiversity.com
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bookerly Posted 11:00 am
22 Jun 2006
A couple of weeks ago, I was watching a Chinese television program about ecotourism. There was a nice European lady who was saying that we should really discourage unneccessary travel, such as that for tourism.
She was visiting Beijing for a conference.
My first thought was "Hmmm, she means she gets to travel and I don't."
As people achieve disposable income, they often want to travel (some sort of nascent migratory urge perhaps).
We are unlikely to get to the point where people will voluntarily stop travelling.
So, making travel as unharmful as possible becomes important.
Recognizing that people will fly more and more, means we can either bemoan the fact, or we can demand that research be put into making flying more environmentally friendly.
patrick
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amazingdrx Posted 8:43 pm
22 Jun 2006
I know it's a good idea to travel less to save energy canis, and those carbon credit schemes seem untrustworthy. But this eco-travel idea using wind and solar has legs.
It just sounds wild and futuistic. Really a domestic eco-tourism network using electric rental cars and buses for travel would be a pretty good thing. A lot of retirees who would shun motorhomes might take to it.
Maybe Dave could call Gore's people about the carbon "lockbox" d. Hehehey, they would love ressurecting that phrase?
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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msimsik Posted 5:16 pm
23 Jun 2006
A great deal of current conservation efforts in Madagascar are going toward 'community-based management.' While these efforts are likely to hold (at least part of) the key to conserving biodiversity, all too often villagers think they will make their local protected area profitable by appealing to tourists. Most of these areas are inaccessible and will likely never be able to attract enough people to pay for the opportunity cost of having been protected. People clearly need more options of what to do with their protected pieces of forest or wetlands (for example, sustainable harvesting and production of renewable resources such as timber, fish, and game).
On the mention of "explosive" population growth, it seems that all too often the focus on this issue in conservation circles takes away from the bigger issues of addressing poverty and corruption in countries where rich biodiversity remains.
- Mike
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Biodiversivist Posted 2:16 am
24 Jun 2006
You could be right, but I don't think the lack of big game will be a limiting factor. It hasn't been in Costa Rica. I have no interest in big game. I am thrilled seeing a chameleon. Birders are thrilled seeing birds. A lot of people would be thrilled to see a wild lemur.
On the mention of "explosive" population growth, it seems that all too often the focus on this issue in conservation circles takes away from the bigger issues of addressing poverty and corruption in countries where rich biodiversity remains.
Could you be more specific? Poverty reduction and decreased fertility rates are linked. They facilitate one another. Family planning is a win-win situation, unless you are the present pope. Family planning takes nothing away from "bigger" issues like poverty reduction. Family planning is a necessary part of poverty reduction. The family we stayed with in Costa Rica made a very nice living off tourism and had one well cared for, well-educated, happy little girl. Imagine that family's plight if they had eight children. In fact, I did not meet any family in that prosperous eco-tourist supported village with more than two children.
Corruption (and poverty) is the result of bad governance. You sure are not going to see sustainable harvesting of anything (or ecotourism for that matter) with bad governance. This conference is a hopeful sign that governance might be moving in the right direction. Free market ecotourism works to minimize corruption because corruption chases business (tourists) away. Cheat your customers and word spreads on travel blogs. An entrepreneur will quickly learn that lesson as his or her hotel sits empty while tourists unload across the street.
People clearly need more options of what to do with their protected pieces of forest or wetlands (for example, sustainable harvesting and production of renewable resources such as timber, fish, and game).
I would agree that people clearly need more options. However, I think that "sustainably" harvesting resources in these last few remaining ecosystems of Madagascar is not one of them. Sustainable harvesting of fish and game is not possible once the number of people in a given boundary becomes too great. Imagine if everyone in Seattle decided to quit their jobs and switch to "sustainably" harvesting local fish and game. We need to be more imaginative than that.
If you do not capitalize on modern technologies and create good urban environments for people to migrate too, you will lock them into poverty as they struggle to extract more and more resources from the land. Entire ecosystems are destroyed just from people gathering firewood to burn. Living in an urban environment with running water, sewers and clean sources of heating fuel is the only way out once the population inside a given boundary outstrips subsistence lifestyle technology. Subsistence farming locks people into poverty and pits them against biodiversity.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Help acquire and protect ecological hotspots, give to a conservation organization: http://www.saveourbiodiversity.com
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bookerly Posted 10:28 am
27 Jun 2006
Adding another three billion people to the planet will require us to build sustainable cities in order to manage the transition through "peak people" properly.
patrick
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