Comments Lisa Hymas has made

Van Jones has a goatee, not a 'stache.  Favorite green goatees would be a whole different list.

The chocolate shortbread cookies are delicious. 

"turnkey" is right

Grist's new Finnish intern confirms that "turnkey" is the correct translation.  She also confirms that the project is a total disaster.On Nuclear meltdown in Finland posted 9 months, 3 weeks ago 5 Responses

letters about the maleness of green jobs

There are some interesting letters to the editor responding to Hirshman's piece.  On NYT op-ed says mostly men will benefit from green jobs posted 11 months, 2 weeks ago 8 Responses

I don't know about spanking ...

... but at least they ought not to become energy czar of the United States.  On Palin again mangles facts on energy posted 1 year, 1 month ago 9 Responses

My bad on the cardinal

I added the picture to the post, not knowing the cardinal isn't a big worm consumer.  Canis, can you suggest a different bird that's more prone to chow on earthworms?  On Following the path of contaminants from your bathroom to the birds posted 1 year, 8 months ago 12 Responses

In case you had any doubt ...

Now we know that he's definitely not running for president.    On Al Gore breaks his silence! posted 1 year, 10 months ago 2 Responses

"Skinny Bitch": more than meets the eye

Just this week I started skimming Skinny Bitch (the original diet book, not the sequel cookbook), and I was shocked at how sensible and how political it was. I've never read a diet book before (for the simple reason that I'm not overweight), but the hype over Skinny Bitch intrigued me, so I put the book on hold at the library months ago.  I was #321 in line and figured I'd never actually get my hands on it, but finally a dog-eared copy made its way to the reserve counter with my name on it.

I thought the book would be ridiculous and mockable. But as I skimmed through the first 45 pages (that's as far as I've gotten), I couldn't believe how sensible the advice/abuse is:  stop smoking, stop drinking all soda, stop consuming sugar substitutes like NutraSweet and Equal, drink green tea instead of coffee, look for wines without sulfites, eat complex carbohydrates, beware the high fructose corn syrup and sugar in virtually all processed foods -- and that's just the beginning. Even more surprising were the pages on the shady, corrupt dealings that lead the FDA to approve aspartame. And the warnings about pesticides. And the strident vegan message, complete with tales of grossness from factory farms. I would have expected none of that from the packaging.  Brilliant branding by Freedman and Barnouin.  

Of course, the writing style is still ridiculous and mockable. A sample:

The first thing you need to do is give up your gross vices. Don't act surprised! You cannot keep eating the same shit and expect to get skinny. Or smoke.  Don't even try some pathetic excuse like, "But if I quit smoking, I'll gain weight." No one wants to hear it. Cigarettes are for losers. They are so 1989 and totally uncool.

But hey: If they're getting people worked up about industrial agriculture and disgusting chemicals in our food, you go, girlz!

Daily Grist ...

... does still exist, as an email sent out each weekday. You can subscribe here.  But this daily news section of our website has expanded and now has more info than is included in the email, so we changed its name. True, the name isn't exciting, but that's not reason enough to throw us over for the MSM, is it? We're still not boring! Or so we tell ourselves ...On Municipalities try to encourage students to walk to school posted 2 years, 2 months ago 8 Responses

More interviews to come

Never fear, VivaldiCO. Grist will be publishing interviews with all of the Democratic presidential candidates and as many of the Republicans as agree to talk to us. Read the Edwards interview here, and check here for more interviews over the coming days and weeks.   On An interview with Barack Obama about his presidential platform on energy and the environment posted 2 years, 3 months ago 28 Responses

Watch for Willie

Don't worry, John -- we didn't forget Willie.  Watch for our upcoming list of green musicians.  On 15 Green Actors posted 2 years, 5 months ago 30 Responses

How News Corp. will become carbon neutral

There's more info on this in the article we ran last week: "The company will reduce its carbon footprint 10 percent by 2012 via energy-efficiency efforts and use of renewable energy, and it will become carbon-neutral even sooner, in 2010, by buying emission offsets from projects such as wind farms in India."  On An interview with Rupert Murdoch about News Corp.'s new climate strategy posted 2 years, 6 months ago 14 Responses

Oops!

Thanks, radrerun, for pointing out the mistake.  We've now fixed it and Sanders is correctly identified as an independent.
On Plans to boost energy efficiency start getting traction in Congress posted 2 years, 7 months ago 11 Responses

freshwater is one word

I refer you to Merriam-Webster.On An expedition to see critters and talk freshwater posted 2 years, 7 months ago 4 Responses

How many installments, you ask?

A third one on mitigation will come out on May 4, and then a synthesis report wrapping everything together will come out in November.  On As expected, the news is mostly bad, and then worse, and then worse still posted 2 years, 7 months ago 23 Responses

For what it's worth

I heard a number of non-enviro friends remark on the report -- it clearly seeped into their consciousness. Where that gets us -- well, that's another question.  On It just ain't sexy posted 2 years, 9 months ago 16 Responses

More on avoiding toxic toys and suspect substances

Roosevelt has another piece in Time with practical tips on avoiding phthalates and bisphenol A. Check it out.    On Watch out for scary chemicals in plastic toys for tots posted 2 years, 11 months ago 1 Response

Indigenous World Uranium Summit

FYI, there's an upcoming gathering on these issues -- the Indigenous World Uranium Summit -- for those who want to know more or get involved.
On It's depressing. posted 3 years ago 4 Responses

And ...

... he was bashed in The New York Times today. On Speaking of Inhofe ... posted 3 years, 1 month ago 1 Response

Portland's backtracking

Yeah, Portland had to backtrack on its claim last summer. See our Daily Grist blurb on it: Portland retracts claim that its CO2 emissions dropped below 1990 levels.On Some Portland skepticism posted 3 years, 3 months ago 5 Responses

Yes, that's really petty.

Also: I've read The Nation for years and it's true that their environmental coverage has long been weak, when there's been any at all. But they made a deliberate effort to change that by bringing Hertsgaard on as an environmental correspondent a year or so ago, and he's done great work. As just the most recent examples, see the two pieces he published right before this grassroots story, on the the G8's nuclear agenda and environmental politics and Britain's Conservatives. On Hertsgaard on the environmental movement posted 3 years, 4 months ago 5 Responses

Senate version coming soon

Sens. James Jeffords (I-Vt.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) are expected to introduce a similar bill in the Senate in coming weeks, writes Katrina vanden Heuvel.On Rep. Henry Waxman's Safe Climate Act posted 3 years, 5 months ago 3 Responses

check out this poll

The Courier-Journal's series includes this poll question:

Do you think it is time for government to require reductions in emissions from power plants, automobiles and other sources that contribute to global warming?

As of this posting, 78.6% say "yes."
On Red state penetration posted 3 years, 5 months ago 2 Responses

He does have a way with a camera

Check out Braasch's striking photographs of Tuvalu, an island nation being wiped out by climate change.On Global-warming glamour shots posted 3 years, 7 months ago 4 Responses

That thing youth do

More on the young bloggers and their cohorts in this Reuters article. Protestor poster boy Billy Parish gets a prominent quote. (For the record, we Gristers knew about him long before the mainstream media started fawning.)On Blogging from COP MOP posted 3 years, 12 months ago 1 Response

Watch for yourself

Tune in to Fox News (now there's a phrase I don't write often) ...
"The Heat Is On: The Case of Global Warming"
Sunday, Nov. 13, at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. ET

See a preview clip, a behind-the-scenes photo essay (with Laurie David and RFK, no less), a reporter's notebook, and even a page of action tips with links to NRDC and the Sierra Club.  

Weird.On Fox runs non-BS documentary on global warming posted 4 years ago 3 Responses

Indeed.

Most people care about more than a single set of issues. And progressives are increasingly realizing that they can accomplish a lot more if they work together than if they gripe and say, "That's not my issue."On Organic farms don't treat workers any better than other farms posted 4 years, 1 month ago 6 Responses

Freecycle(TM) to Berate You and Me

As an enthusiastic freecycler -- oops! I mean Member of My Local Freecycle(TM) Community -- I wondered back in May if Matt Weiser's article in Grist about the network's growing pains wasn't overly critical. Now I'm wondering if it wasn't critical enough.

The Freecycle Network(TM) is now paying a "media relations" officer to badger news outlets about the inappropriateness of using "freecycle" as a verb or other unauthorized part of speech? This is how they're spending the WMI grant? And this is benefiting the environment or Freecycle(TM) Members or anyone how? What a pathetic waste of time and money.

Oh, I'll keep freecycling via the Seattle listserv, because I love the concept and because the Seattle listserv monitors and participants are swell people -- not like the paranoid, grammatically challenged bureaucrats apparently now employed at Corporate HQ.On ... oh, and R.I.P. posted 4 years, 3 months ago 13 Responses

Read his resignation letter ...

here [PDF].  He'll be officially ditching the EPA on Aug. 30.  You may be surprised to learn that he intends to "devote more time to [his] wife and children."  

He lists two rules he's proud of having helped shuttle through, each of which will "provide more public health benefits than any rule initiated by EPA since the phase-out of lead in gasoline," he writes: the Clean Air Interstate Rule and the Non-Road Diesel Rule. He's justified in feeling groovy on those fronts. As for his involvement with new-source review reform, not so much ...
On Holmstead resigns posted 4 years, 4 months ago 1 Response

How about ...

the "nearly 300 international, national, regional and local environmental, consumer, and safe energy groups" that "reiterated their substantial concerns today over nuclear energy and rejected the argument that nuclear power can solve global warming"?

The groups -- including the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, U.S. Public Interest Research Group, Public Citizen, and Friends of the Earth -- say they've got five good reasons why nuclear power, well, sucks:

-- cost (it's hugely expensive and dependent on taxpayer handouts)
-- security (think: terrorist + well-aimed airplane)
-- safety (the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is a pathetic failure when it comes to monitoring plants' operation)
-- waste (highly radioactive leftovers stay dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years)
-- proliferation (think: terrorist + uranium, or terrorist + plutonium)

"Nuclear power is fatally flawed and we cannot overcome all of its obstacles," said Wenonah Hauter, director of Public Citizen's energy program. "It's time to support renewable energy technologies because they already exist and have great potential and provide a real opportunity to keep our planet healthy for future generations."On A roundup of the latest and greatest in nuke-bashing. posted 4 years, 5 months ago 1 Response

Dreamy sigh ...

Get links to the audio and video of Obama's commencement address at Knox College here.  

An excerpt with a hint o' green:

Right now, all across America, there are amazing discoveries being made. If we supported these discoveries on a national level, if we committed ourselves to investing in these possibilities, just imagine what it could do for a town like Galesburg. Ten or twenty years down the road, that old Maytag plant could reopen its doors as an ethanol refinery that turned corn into fuel. ... And across the way, a new auto company could be busy churning out electric cars. The new jobs created would be filled by American workers trained with new skills and a world-class education.

All of that is possible but none of it will come easy. Every one of us is going to have to work more, read more, train more, think more. We will have to slough off some bad habits -- like driving gas guzzlers that weaken our economy and feed our enemies abroad. Our children will have to turn off the TV set once in a while and put away the video games and start hitting the books. We'll have to reform institutions, like our public schools, that were designed for an earlier time. Republicans will have to recognize our collective responsibilities, even as Democrats recognize that we have to do more than just defend old programs.

It won't be easy, but it can be done. It can be our future. We have the talent and the resources and brainpower. But now we need the political will. We need a national commitment.

And we need each of you.

Sarah's fish picture ...

is more apropos.  On New diesel design inspired by tropical fish. posted 4 years, 5 months ago 8 Responses

a reminder of what's at stake

Benjamin Wittes argues in The Atlantic that the environment may get screwed over worst of all by a conservative judiciary (as Dave mentioned last month).  On Bush to get roughly half his environmental-nightmare judges through the Senate. posted 4 years, 6 months ago 2 Responses

i kill trees

Though I work for an online environmental magazine, I don't like reading my news from a computer screen. I subscribe to a dead-tree newspaper and magazines, and when I run across interesting, lengthy pieces online, I (gasp!) print them out.

Oh, and though I don't drive much, when I do I'm speedy and aggressive.  
On So tell us ... what's your dirty little environmental secret? posted 4 years, 7 months ago 84 Responses

child labor?

What about the child labor used to sell the cookies?On It's Girl Scout cookie season ... posted 4 years, 8 months ago 2 Responses

Crazy like a peacock

Considering the Bushies' gross hubris and overreaching on Social Security, maybe they're actually so swelled up with delusions of their own power that they truly think they have a shot at slashing farm subsidies.  Maybe they're really just that crazy.
On Bush's budget posted 4 years, 9 months ago 1 Response

NRDC talks back

John Walke at NRDC found plenty to fault in Whitman's article. Here's a letter to the editor he submitted to The Washington Monthly in response:

The Bush Air Pollution Bill: Dirtier Air Longer

David Whitman's apologia for the Bush administration's air pollution agenda -- and his attack on the health groups that oppose it -- misleads readers with false and incomplete information ("Partly Sunny," December 2004).

The administration is promoting an industry-backed bill that would weaken and delay health protections required by today's Clean Air Act. Whitman claims the bill would reduce power plant pollution 70 percent by 2018. But the Environmental Protection Agency's own analysis acknowledges the White House bill would not achieve these nominal reductions until some time after 2025.

The current law's deadline to clean up the air in regions where more than 100 million Americans live is 2010. The administration's bill postpones that deadline to 2023. Worse, it does so to mask the fact that its feeble and delayed requirements make the 2010 deadline unattainable.

Compared to current law, the Bush bill also would allow as much as seven times more mercury pollution, and wouldn't fully achieve its own targets for two decades.

Health groups aren't alone in condemning the bill. The bipartisan association of state air officials, for example, has denounced it for repealing important clean air safeguards, undermining state authorities, relaxing national park protections, and setting standards too weak and too protracted to protect pubic health.

Whitman ignores all this. His story would have been more accurate had he talked to the bill's critics, not just Bush EPA officials. Further, Whitman mischaracterizes health groups' primary reason for opposing the bill. Our principal concern is that it weakens public health protections, not that it also worsens global warming pollution.

The EPA today has the authority to require deeper, cost-effective, achievable pollution cuts from utilities in the next five years. Current law protects Americans better and faster than the Bush administration's proposal to weaken the Clean Air Act.

John D. Walke
Clean Air Director
Natural Resources Defense Council

Learning from the right

The fanatic right-wing evangelicals and the greedy corporate types have no more in common than do various movements traditionally aligned with the left -- except that they more badly want to win, so they join forces to do it.  

Jeff (jdhlax), I quote here from a comment you made in our "Don't Fear the Reapers" discussion:

For those of us whose main concerns are not about humans, there is no reason to tackle social issues unless we get a quid pro quo from groups whose issues we take on to help us with our issues. While I happen to support gay marriage and an end to racial profiling, I would not take on those issues in my environmental work unless groups who work on those issues were willing to take on, say, stopping a logging project. It makes to identifiable difference to the trees whether gays are allowed to marry or whether African Americans are stopped for no reason by the cops ...

Right. And it makes no difference to Wall Street whether abortion is outlawed, or to Christian fundamentalists whether tax loopholes are created for the manufacturing sector. The point is that these factions have teamed up and agreed, to some extent, to support each other's issues. They've got their quid pro quo. Now let's get ours.  

Jeff, you support gay rights, civil rights, probably any number of other left-leaning social movements. And members of those movements, to some degree, probably support environmental goals. So let's get on the same page, people. Let's strike deals. I'll scratch your bill if you scratch mine. I'll fight your fight if you fight mine. We're getting killed here and we need any power that numbers can offer.  
On Try a little togetherness posted 4 years, 10 months ago 3 Responses

Rethinking DDT

Kristof's column actually echoes others recently put out by right-wing pundits like Steve Milloy and Michael Fumento, as well as by The Wall Street Journal -- a key difference being that Kristof actually bothered to call some environmentalists to see what they think. Turns out they're far from unreasonable:

I called the World Wildlife Fund, thinking I would get a fight. But Richard Liroff, its expert on toxins, said he could accept the use of DDT when necessary in anti-malaria programs.

"South Africa was right to use DDT," he said. "If the alternatives to DDT aren't working, as they weren't in South Africa, geez, you've got to use it. In South Africa it prevented tens of thousands of malaria cases and saved lots of lives."

At Greenpeace, Rick Hind noted reasons to be wary of DDT, but added: "If there's nothing else and it's going to save lives, we're all for it. Nobody's dogmatic about it."

So why do the U.N. and donor agencies, including the U.S. Agency for International Development, generally avoid financing DDT programs? The main obstacle seems to be bureaucratic caution and inertia. President Bush should cut through that and lead an effort to fight malaria using all necessary tools -- including DDT.

I'm with Kristof on this. I was convinced in part last year by the persuasive article "What the World Needs Now Is DDT," by Tina Rosenberg in The New York Times Magazine.
On The North knows best? posted 4 years, 10 months ago 19 Responses

Lambasting CI's "cowboy conservationism"

And here's one more letter praising Chapin's article, with a particularly damning insider critique of Conservation International, from Liza Grandia, a Ph.D. candidate in anthropology at U.C.-Berkeley.  A shorter version of her letter may yet be published in a future issue of World Watch, but here we give it to you now, in full:

November 17, 2004

Dear World Watch Magazine:

Thank you for the excellent piece by Mac Chapin, a long overdue critique of the conservation colonialism of the largest transnational environmental NGOs. His comprehensive analysis has opened an important discussion of what I like to call international "cowboy conservationism."

Having been closest to Conservation International (CI, henceforth), I wish to speak specifically of that organization. World Watch will likely receive letters from well-intentioned apologists for CI who may still believe that they still are working in partnership with indigenous and local peoples despite mounting evidence to the contrary.  

Ten years ago, CI was a decentralized and somewhat disorganized organization -- but it was fun and effective. They hired talented local people as in-country directors and delegated full authority to them. There were successful projects in places like Guatemala, Costa Rica, Peru, and Papua New Guinea. And the money began to flow in.  

Instead of investing those funds in field projects, they hired more people in the Washington, D.C. headquarters. Gradually, prestige and decision making shifted from the field programs to CI's new internal think tanks:  the Center for Applied Biodiversity Science, the Center for Environmental Leadership in Business, the Center for Conservation and Government. When my Guatemalan colleagues and I traveled to Washington, D.C. for meetings, I could see the shock in their eyes when they saw how luxurious the new headquarters were in comparison to their own spare field offices.

During this growth spurt in the late 1990s, CI hired more biologists and business people. Social scientists were made to feel unwelcome. As one senior director blurted out in a fit of rage after being challenged by field staff at a planning retreat, "I hate anthropologists."  

Ambitious headquarter staff wanted to feel they were making decisions. They pulled in the reins of the field directors and demanded more reports, more budget requisitions, more complicated planning frameworks -- but it was a one-way street of communication. Field programs rarely had a chance to learn from each other and discuss the challenges of community-based conservation.

At the same time CI was restructuring, there was a changing paradigm shift in the conservation movement away from partnerships with indigenous and local peoples to trendy "business-environment" models. At the first Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, indigenous peoples were heralded as environmental heroes -- with the Kayapo front and center. Ten years later at the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, the pendulum had obviously swung the other direction. Led by IUCN, the international environmental groups held their own forum in a swank banking facility next to the main Sandton Convention Center. Next door was the posh "business and environment" forum. Civil society organizations and indigenous groups were relegated to a drafty expo center called NASREC, one hour south of the official U.N. forum.  

In Johannesburg, I recall a brash young Conservation International cowboy who complained to me that he'd wasted an entire morning at the civil society forum at NASREC because no one was talking about the environment. Funny, I pointed out to him, perhaps that's because the northern conservationists set up their own separate forum.  

While partnerships with business certainly can be another effective tool for protecting the environment, there is a world of difference between organizations like the Environmental Defense whose entire mandate is to engage with corporations to reform their practices and organizations like CI who "take the money and run." Unless business reform is an explicit part of their work, they allow themselves to be used as the "green washing" for these corporations without anything in return. For example, CI's latest annual report shows that they receive money from Dow AgroSciences -- but they certainly do not have corresponding programs to address the impacts of pesticides on biodiversity and human health or the encroachment of plantation agriculture on protected areas. Ditto for the environmental pillage caused by Chevron Texaco, Chiquita, McDonalds, Esso, Exxon Mobil, Georgia-Pacific, Weyerhaeuser, to name just a few of the most infamous multinationals who support CI.

This leaves CI in-country field staff in an awkward and often dangerous position. For example, the Guatemalan staff were campaigning against an oil pipeline to be built across Laguna del Tigre National Park. Unbeknownst to Guatemalan staff, top level management at CI headquarters held negotiations to ask the same oil company to fork up a donation for a conservation endowment for the park. Without even exploring the ethical dimensions of how this endangered the Guatemalan field staff, I simply might point out that you can't object to plunder while asking Genghis Khan for a donation and then expect to be taken seriously.

Following the Dollar -- Another Tropical "Boom and Bust"

Another danger of CI's "aggressive fundraising machine," as Chapin points out, is the donor dependence it creates. As an example, he describes the millions that USAID poured into the Maya Biosphere Reserve in the lowlands of Guatemala from which CI headquarters collected a cool 24-38 percent overhead off the work of its Guatemalan team. When USAID funding for the Maya Biosphere was scheduled to dry up in 2001, CI headquarters staff realized they were going to have to channel some serious funds to Guatemala. Suddenly the hottest Mesoamerican hotspot cooled down. Perhaps not coincidentally, CI management decided to free themselves of this burden by announcing unilaterally that ProPeten (CI's Guatemala program) should become an independent Guatemalan NGO and allowed little negotiation over the process that would take.  

But CI didn't simply pull out of Guatemala. When word came out that USAID/Guatemala's environmental funding would shift to the highlands, CI followed the funding wind. Sure, CI may "partner" with local organizations to get established there, but they should be forewarned that CI is a fair weather friend.  

CI will claim to donors that they do, in fact, "partner" with indigenous peoples. But, who exactly are these partners? Where? Who ultimately makes the decisions? How many indigenous peoples do they have on their board? Even on their staff? What are the scales of pay equity in the organization? Do fieldworkers have comparable benefits to Washington, D.C. staff? Or any benefits at all? From my experiences with CI, they do not. When ProPeten separated from CI in 2002, my Guatemalan colleagues had to threaten to sue to get their rightful benefits according to Guatemalan law.

Hotspots and Corridors

In his article, Chapin shows the commonalities in the Machiavellian rhetoric of the international conservation organizations in describing their large-scale conservation approaches -- "hotspots," "ecosystems," and "living landscapes." Working at the national level is no longer sufficient; they must instead work at a "corridor" level. Always invoking crisis, the conservation cowboys declare they must save biodiversity whatever the cost. This often leads to strange bedfellows. In an age of globalization, conservation "corridors" unfortunately also tend to correspond to corridors of neoliberal economic development.  

For example, take the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor, which is uncomfortably wrapped up with the Puebla to Panama Plan (the PPP), opposed by hundreds of civil society organizations across Central America. The PPP is a $10 billion program designed by Mexico's neoliberal President Vicente Fox and backed financially by the InterAmerican Development Bank. It proposes a network of roads, hydroelectric dams, energy grids, natural gas pipelines and many other mega-development projects that threaten Central America's remaining forests. Although more than 95% of PPP funding is destined for infrastructure projects and undemocratic legal changes to facilitate the Central American Free Trade Agreements (CAFTA), the PPP's marketing team is smart. They've greenwashed the package by earmarking a mere five percent of the budget to support biodiversity conservation and ecotourism. Not surprisingly, CI stepped up to the plate to take the IDB's "ecotourism" money, though CI had abandoned all its commitments to ecotourism initiatives in Peten back in 2002.

In 1992, CI loudly supported NAFTA, and I will not be surprised if CI very soon announces its support of CAFTA (the upcoming Central American "Free" Trade Agreement). By contrast, indigenous peoples, social scientists, and hundreds of civil society groups oppose both the PPP and the CAFTA because they know it will bring more misery to indigenous peoples and the rural poor.  

I have just returned from two years of living among Q'eqchi' communities in the Guatemalan and Belizean lowlands (the very same communities the conservation cowboys accuse of "slashing and burning" Peten's forests, as described by Chapin). My research found that the PPP and CAFTA will likely increase landlessness among the Q'eqchi' and they'll be left with no other option but to invade protected areas. I can already hear the conservation cowboys blaming the Q'eqchi' people for deforestation, rather than recognizing their own complicity with the oil companies and the other forces of corporate globalization that compel the poor and indigenous peoples to destroy their own forests for survival.  

Direct Conservation

Perhaps that is why CI is now calling for strict preservationism. Frustrated with the messiness of ICPDs ("integrated conservation and development programs") and so-called "poverty alleviation," CI now advocates what they call "direct conservation" -- i.e. just buying up concessions from third-world governments. The colonial rhetoric of CI's resource economists who push these "conservation incentives" would make Cecil Rhodes proud. I recall how at a conference in 2002, a senior CI economist whipped out a calculator, punched in a few numbers and declared to the audience that buying up a 45,000 hectare timber concession in Bolivia would be "less than the cost of a house in my neighborhood."

Sure, buying up Third World land might be cheap enough -- but thorny questions of sovereignty and the policing of those areas still remain unresolved.  Perhaps that's why CI recently invested some of their "scarce conservation dollars" on a major study on "Strategies for Improving the Enforcement of Environmental Laws Globally." Amazingly, nowhere in this 34-page document do the authors worry about aligning themselves with the military dictatorships governing most of CI's so-called "hotspots." Even more amazingly, not once in their "in-depth" case study of Chiapas do the authors even mention the Zapatista revolt. While CI may claim to be "apolitical" in such matters, in places as politicized as Chiapas, silence is, indeed, very political.

Alternatives

As Chapin shows, CI, TNC and WWF combined control about half of all conservation dollars available today. From my observations, most of this money is lost to expensive D.C. salaries, frequent travel, and conservation conversation workshops in five-star hotels. I would encourage the donor community not only to fund a series of independent evaluations of their conservation investments, as Chapin suggests, but to also look for alternatives.

There are hundreds of highly capable local and indigenous organizations that can more effectively and accountably carry out conservation work in their own countries. Rather than losing their money to the high overheads and inefficiencies of the three conservation behemoths, donors might support more local projects and invest in network-building forums that would allow them to gain new skills and share experiences. The home mortgage of a senior CI economist might be enough to purchase a timber concession, but it can also pay for a lot of local salaries and projects. For example, after separating from CI in 2002, ProPeten, with a totally Guatemalan staff, has managed to maintain programs and momentum at a fraction of the former budget. ProPeten has also broadened its base by integrating health, organic agriculture, education, and other local priorities into its conservation work.  

In closing, I offer one example of how indigenous organizations can advance their agendas for land security and dignified livelihoods while also contributing to conservation. Across the forests of northern Guatemala, as mentioned above, the landless Q'eqchi' Maya are usually those who get blamed for deforestation. What the international conservation cowboys fail to see is that the Q'eqchi' cut down the forest not because they are ecologically evil, but because under the current Guatemalan legal structure, that's the best way to claim land security.  

To address that problem, an anthropologist, Anthony Stocks, a dynamite Peace Corps volunteer, Jason Pielemeier, and a Q'eqchi' leader, Ernesto Tzi, worked with a group of Q'eqchi' settler communities around the Candelaria caves in the impoverished Chisec region of Alta Verapaz. When they were actually consulted, the Q'eqchi' communities agreed the forests around the caves should be protected. What's more, they expressed interest in co-managing the area as a park. They were even willing to buy the land themselves to protect their forests in perpetuity around these sacred caves. As subsistence farmers, though, they couldn't afford to pay for land at the normal purchasing price of US$128 per hectare.

Stocks helped the communities negotiate with the Guatemalan government land agency, FONTIERRAS, for a lower purchasing price for the land that the communities would leave in conservation. The villagers learned GPS skills, measured their own land, and developed management plans for the area. They also started a project to grow cacao, coffee, and cardamom -- all of which can be sustainably planted under the forest canopy. Interestingly, when the communities received their land tenure, people began to ask for information about family planning. And, spontaneously, many adjoining communities asked to participate. A local Q'eqchi' organization, SANK, now runs the program and they are now working to develop their own kind of conservation corridor for jaguars, while giving hundreds of families the first secure land tenure they've ever had. This project also set a legal precedent that could revolutionize land distribution and conservation in Guatemala.  

Trusting local groups and indigenous peoples may seem like a leap of faith from swank Washington, D.C. offices. But given the mounting pile of failures by the Big Three, it's probably a better gamble for donors to invest in people and organizations that understand that without justice, there will be no conservation and without conservation, no justice.

Sincerely,
Liza Grandia

Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Anthropology
U.C.-BerkeleyOn BINGOs talk back about World Watch article posted 4 years, 11 months ago 1 Response

Some speculation on a Leavitt successor

J. Bishop Grewell at the Commons Blog has a few ideas on who might (and might not) be tapped to fill Leavitt's shoes:  

Some insiders are saying Tom Skinner. Some free market folks are hoping for Lynn Scarlett. Presumably nobody thinks it will be Steven Griles who just left Interior. My prediction (not to be confused with my hope) is former Montana Governor Marc Racicot.

For more on Scarlett, read this interview.

For a taste of Skinner, check out this fresh news bit, hot off the presses, in which he's caught in an embarrassing little prevarication about oil-refinery emissions.  

And with Griles, well, let's just say thank god he resigned from Interior -- and let's hope he sticks to sunny golf courses far, far away from the Beltway.  

And I'll put my money where Grewell's putting his: on Racicot.  
On New blood at EPA posted 4 years, 11 months ago 1 Response

Actually, diesel trucks are being cleaned up

Dramatically. Even under the Bush administration. In 2001, the Bushies announced that they would let stand Clinton-penned rules to cut diesel exhaust from big trucks and buses by 95 percent. And this year they even came out with their own regs that will slash exhaust from "non-road" diesel-powered equipment such as bulldozers, forklifts, tractors, and generators. Alas, it'll still be a few years before the standards go into effect, but you certainly can't say nothing's being done.  
On Diesel posted 4 years, 11 months ago 7 Responses

They just don't get it

The curmudgeons over at the Seattle Times don't get the joke, or the point.  (If Dow didn't want the blood of Bhopal on its hands, it shouldn't have bought Union Carbide.)On Brilliant bit of Bhopal activism posted 4 years, 11 months ago 1 Response

You got something better?

Perhaps Umbra should run a new contest to find a better word for enviro(nmentalist), like unto last year's contest that produced the much-beloved (ahem) word pollutocrat.On Whacked by The West Wing posted 5 years ago 3 Responses

Not just $970 -- a camcorder too!

The Washington Post ran a  follow-up story on this deplorable affair on Saturday, reporting that the study plans have "sparked a flurry of internal [EPA] protests, with several career officials questioning whether the survey will harm vulnerable infants and toddlers."

Suzanne Wuerthele, the EPA's regional toxicologist in Denver, wrote her colleagues on Wednesday that after reviewing the project's design, she feared poor families would not understand the dangers associated with pesticide exposure.

"It is important that EPA behaves ethically, consistently, and in a way that engenders public health. Unless these issues are resolved, it is likely that all three goals will be compromised, and the agency's reputation will suffer," she wrote in an e-mail obtained by The Washington Post. "EPA researchers will not tell participants that using pesticides always entails some risk, and not using pesticides will reduce that risk to zero."

Troy Pierce, a life scientist in the EPA's Atlanta-based pesticides section, wrote in a separate e-mail: "This does sound like it goes against everything we recommend at EPA concerning use of [pesticides] related to children. Paying families in Florida to have their homes routinely treated with pesticides is very sad when we at EPA know that [pesticide management] should always be used to protect children."

Another bit of new info in this latest article:  Not only will participating families get $970, but also some kids' clothes and a camcorder!On Pete Myers posted 5 years ago 5 Responses

stupidity

As anti-Nader activist Jerry Rubin put it, "Stupidity is not a progressive value."  On Nader haters posted 5 years, 1 month ago 9 Responses