Category — Conservation

A new partnership has recently been announced, designed to tackle the age-old problem of how to attach ‘value’ to the environment, or to ‘ecosystem services’, however posh you want to make it sound. Stanford University, The Nature Conservancy and the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) are collaborators in what’s become known as the Natural Capital Project.

Described by Carter Roberts – President and CEO of WWF – as quite possibly the coolest thing in conservation today, the Natural Capital Project, in its own words, aims to “make nature a regular column in our spreadsheets and cost-benefit analyses”. It may not sound that cool, but attaching value to a forest, river, mountain range, savannah, swamp, insect or whatever will take some doing.

Take the humble honey bee, for example. Their value to a bee keeper in Tanzania is undisputed – without the bee there’s no honey. But for a coffee farmer who relies on the same bees for pollination, a shift in population might instead ‘just’ effect his crop. It might not destroy it, but 25% less yield could be the difference between feeding or not feeding his family. So, using bees as our example, a healthy bee population, supported by a healthy forest home, is a key issue. For the bee keeper or the coffee grower, it’s in their interests for the forests to remain intact. What the Natural Capital Project hopes to do is attach some financial ‘value’ to this forest. As they readily admit, however, “putting a price tag on ecosystem services won’t be easy”. Clearly, if it was then someone would have probably managed to do it already.

It’s worth remembering at this point that we already have monetary values for the very services that this project seeks to value. A mahogany tree, for example, is worth several tens of thousands of dollars; a chimpanzee as a pet perhaps a couple of hundred dollars. But these are prices with the ‘ecosystem service’ removed from the ecosystem – not the price to keep it there. This is the key difference.

The problem will be, of course, in convincing as many parties as possible that it’s in their interests to keep forests, rivers, swamps or whatever intact, however many dollars or pounds appear in the financial columns. If the coffee grower owns the forest, then that should be relatively straightforward if you can present the sums, aided, of course, by that spreadsheet. But when external, third parties have vested or varied interests then the value could vary dramatically, down to quite literally zero. Attaching ecosystem value could well help at policy level – which is where the Natural Capital Project is pitching – but it won’t stop illegal logging from outsiders, or ‘travelling bushmeat traders’, or unscrupulous companies or corrupt government officials. It’s in some of these areas where the most pressing barriers to conservation perhaps lie.

This is a brave project which will be quite literally judged on its results. Success – however that is measured – needs to be turned into something tangible, with real results on the ground.

After all, this is where the actual conservation takes place.

On 26th October I was invited to the Africa Table – a lunchtime series of informal talks – at the Center for African Studies here at Stanford University. The focus of my presentation was my year in Nigeria working with primates.

After the presentation – which thankfully went so well I’ve been invited back to do another – John Kuner, another Digital Vision Fellow, took a short video interview for his own project.

Check out the informal (please note – informal!) interview on his ProjectVIEW website by clicking here.

When you visit one of the only national parks in Africa where you can freely walk – quite literally – among the animals, make sure you have a decent camera with you. After all, it’s not every day that a pack of African wild dogs pass through. Here’s one looking for breakfast.

As for the lions…

I’ve tended to shy away from reproducing other people’s work on my blog. After all, it’s a bit lazy, isn’t it? But today I’m making an exception. Conservation is often accused of being too negative, always looking for the worst in everything. Although this isn’t strictly true, the people working behind the scenes often remain up-beat, plugging away in even the darkest hours. Perhaps it is because of this that I found this article so moving. Taken from the Rainforest Portal:

A month ago I made the audacious statement that the rainforest movement had achieved a victory in protecting Indonesia’s rainforests and orangutans from a huge oil palm plantation. I made this statement fully aware that Indonesia’s rainforests were in frenzied crisis and hoping that supporting those in government working to conserve rainforests from such atrocities could make a positive difference. This hope has proven fleeting.

I now realise I was wrong, am retracting the victory claim, and have realised there is little or no hope for Indonesia’s large and intact ancient rainforests. I apologise for my error.

The latest news is that a Chinese company intends to set-up a massive timber plant in Indonesian Papua to process rare rainforest timbers for Olympic construction. This will set the stage for the final destruction of these relatively intact rainforests. The second story details the ongoing power struggle between various Indonesian factions for and against the massive oil palm project. These actions – which are so grossly unjust and unsustainable, and our inability to stop them – show just how impotent the rainforest movement has become.

Together with the nearly four million hectares of deforestation already occurring annually in Indonesia’s rainforests, the new forces of rainforest destruction arrayed against Indonesia’s rainforest ecosystems are simply too great. Nothing can stand against a billion Chinese consumers all aspiring to the wasteful and deadly living standards of Americans and Europeans.

Ecological Internet will continue our campaign to support those in the Indonesian government that oppose these projects. But frankly, there is little hope that anything but the smallest little fragmented bits of Indonesia’s rainforests will ever be protected, and perhaps I was crazy for saying there was. Let’s keep on trying nonetheless…

Dr. Glen Barry
www.ecologicalinternet.org

Over 150 years in the making, global warming – a theory first aired by a Swedish scientist back in the 1890′s – is well underway. In the midst of all the argument and bickering, one thing is clear. The planet is getting warmer, and getting warmer rather quickly. Two degrees is apparently the ‘critical point’ where irreversible damage will take place. The problem is that predicted rises fluctuate wildly between 1.4 and 5.8 degrees centigrade. We could be in a spot of bother.

While scientists do agree that the earth is warming up, they disagree on why. Some say it’s down to human activity, others that it’s a natural planetary cycle. Funny, because the facts do seem to speak for themselves. Since the industrial revolution, and the start of our addiction to burning fossil fuels, temperatures have soared in relative terms. And these are actual temperatures – real measurements – undisputed.

Is now really the best time to dilly-dally around? If human activity is potentially the cause then why wait for conclusive proof, which will probably never come? Or, if it does, too late? True, we won’t end our reliance on fossil fuels overnight, but it’s clearly unhealthy economically – if not environmentally – so where’s the logic in simply continuing the debate at the expense of taking action? What happened to ‘erring on the side of caution’? Fine, let’s make a real effort to reduce greenhouse emissions, and if it turns out not to be the cause of global warming, then we can just start burning again. Nothing lost, surely? But certainly all to gain.

A couple of years ago some colleagues of mine at Fauna & Flora International were working on the interestingly titled ‘Precautionary Principle‘. It really makes quite a lot of sense.

Precaution – the “precautionary principle” or “precautionary approach” – is a response to uncertainty, in the face of risks to health or the environment. In general, it involves acting to avoid serious or irreversible potential harm, despite lack of scientific certainty as to the likelihood, magnitude, or causation of that harm

It makes so much sense, why can’t we apply it to climate change? Perhaps it’s a little too obvious. Perhaps another 20 years of research is in order…