In November/Dec 2004, World Watch published an intriguing article entitled "A Challenge to Conservationists."  Its abstract is as follows:

"As corporate and government money flow into the three big international organizations that domiante the world's conservation agenda, their programs have been marked by clear conflicts of interest--and by a disturbing neglect of the indigenous peoples whose land they are in the business to protect."

(read it at http://www.worldwatch.org/pubs/mag/2004/176/)

The World Watch article specifically names World Wildlife Fund, Conservation International, and the Nature Conservancy; Grandia adds to that list of major conservation orgs the Wildlife Conservation Society.  Still, the critiques in the World Watch article remain applicable.

If these same conservation organizations do NOT take a position on CAFTA--which threatens not only their conservation policy agendas, but the well-being of human rights, social, economic and environmental justice as well--it's difficult to see how they can duck charges of blatent conflicts of interest and downright elitism and racism with any kind of integrity.  It's even more difficult to see how these groups can make common cause with working people and in communities of color.  And in this day and age, these alliances are critical, both to creating political power and winning, and to the conservation movement's accountability to the people and communities who are affected by their work.  (For more on this, check out Action Media's excellent analysis exploring who speaks for the environment: "Defining We," at http://www.actionmedia.org/Defining%20We.htm .) This, of course, is to say nothing of the vulnerability to the charge that conservation organizations value, say, spotted owls over people.  

It seems this is exactly the kind of dynamic that the environmental justice movement has been fighting for some thirty years: elite, largely white middle and upper class group defines environment as soley "wilderness," and fail to take into account the environmental concerns of those who are not white, upper and middle class, Western, etc.  It's frustrating to see that we have apparently not gotten farther than this...

The Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines an environmentalist as "one concerned about environmental quality especially of the human environment with respect to the control of pollution." This means that everyone is an environmentalist to one degree or another. Although the word is relatively new, people who act to limit pollution have been around for a long time. Ancient Rome's environmentalists built the first closed sewer system, the Cloaca Maxima

Then, there are those who are mostly interested in protecting wildlife. Usually called conservationists, this group includes, among others, hunters, trappers, and sport fishermen. Again, many of them have an immediate vested interest in preserving the environment for their own recreational uses.

People interested in preserving the planet's biodiversity for its own sake need a unique name to differentiate themselves from the generic environmentalists and the conservationists. I'd like to propose one and call this subgroup, biodiversity preservationists, or even better, biodiversivists. The big four conservation groups would be more accurately described as biodiversity preservation groups.

The big four all have the same focus--to protect natural habitat by the act of preservation. This is done in any number of ways, for example, buying the land, leasing the land, and especially by convincing governments to create protected preserves.

This last method takes a great deal of diplomacy. A government intent on raising the standard of living for its citizens may view the CETA in a favorable light, rightly or wrongly.

From the Trade Resource Center
( http://trade.businessroundtable.org/trade_2005/cafta_dr/environment.html ):

Central America is a region with astounding biodiversity and important world ecosystems. It also is a region suffering from severe poverty and significant environment and public health problems. One important step to improving protection of the environment in Central America is poverty reduction through increased economic growth. Countries with higher national incomes tend to have stronger environmental protections and lower rates of pollution. Liberalized trade through DRCAFTA will produce more and better paying jobs in Central America -- and that prosperity will make it possible for the region to improve environmental protection.

Biodiversivists realize that facilitating the urbanization of ever-growing populations of slash and burn subsistence farmers and pastoralists by providing meaningful jobs is a key to saving habitat in the long run. The combination of urbanization and poverty reduction is by far the best win/win combination for preserving biodiversity. This proven strategy is at odds with the vision many environmental activists share of a solar powered world filled with 9 billion or so hemp wearing, bike riding, organic farmers (which coincidentally also describes the lifestyles of roughly two billion Chinese and Indian peasants). The popular environmentalist strategy of the day is to rail against free trade agreements while fantasizing that the indigenous people of the world have stable populations and live in harmony with their natural environments.  Neither is true. The lion's share of population growth is in impoverished third world nations.  Slash and burn pastoralists live hard, unpredictable, short lives and their way of living makes New Yorkers look green.

I would hope that the big four will to stick to their guns and continue to do what they do best. The Ivory Billed woodpecker survives to this day because of them. They have been making great strides in the past few years. Their role in this struggle is to preserve what remains.  The environmentalist's role is to make cities into healthy places for people to live. It is up to "properly regulated" free markets to give those people economic opportunities in those cities.

Everyone has a role to play. Let everyone do what they do best. Environmentalists and biodiversivists are notoriously ineffectual at creating economic opportunity and free trade enthusiasts are not very good at protecting the environment or our biodiversity.

Lizard with blue lips

Writing from cloudy Brussels, I find particularly strange the comment made by a WWF/US rep - "WWF has not been tracing CAFTA either in Central America or in our U.S. office. As a result, we don't have a position on CAFTA ..."

Over here, WWF International's European Policy Office has a vigorous and influential line on trade and the environment. Maybe the WWF trade folks in Brussels should jump an Airbus to DC and get their better-paid American "cousins" to start tracing and thinking about CAFTA and more on the trade agenda.