Two American natural resource economists are working on a revolutionary conservation strategy that world leaders at the World Summit on Sustainable Development should bear in mind during their talk-fest in Sandton.
Called “conservation concessions”, the strategy involves investing in sustainable land use directly. It takes over from the green consumerism that became fashionable during the 1990s, but which has been largely limited to consumers in Europe and the United States.
“Green concessions” involve leasing land and paying the owners to put it to ecologically friendly use, in the process providing them with employment. The concept has already taken off in projects in Guatemala, Guyana and Indonesia, where it is being used to save large tracts of land from unsustainable practices such as commercial logging and palm oil plantations.
Jared Hardner and Richard Rice, who work at Conservation International, describe these projects in the May issue of Scientific American: “A common misperception is that conservation cannot compete directly with most other economic uses of natural resources; in reality, the conservation economy is quite large. The international community — including governments, multilateral development banks and conservation groups — spends at least half a billion dollars annually on biodiversity conservation in the tropics.”
The projects involve outbidding competitors such as logging companies, who sometimes pay less than $1 a hectare a year to lease huge tracts of land, and assisting local people to manage the intact ecosystems. The strategy relies on economics.
“The agreements are legally and economically no different from logging contracts or any other business deal that grants control over natural resources to a particular group. Indeed, the income that developing countries can generate in this way is equivalent to, and often more stable than, what they could earn through the volatile international markets for timber and agricultural goods.”
The projects show that huge funds and innovative funding mechanisms can be found for sustainable development.
Official delegations from Southern Africa negotiating the undertakings that will emerge from the World Summit are being accused by their Northern counterparts of being greedy — of putting too much emphasis on the economic pillar of sustainable development, and not enough on the environmental and social pillars.
Consider some of the depressing realities of the crumbling social pillar they are dealing with: about 13-million people in the region are reportedly facing starvation, amid widespread drought and food shortages, while growing demands on water resources mean that at least half the region’s population faces a future without water. Sub-Saharan Africa also contains three-quarters of the world’s HIV-positive population.
Most of the people in the region are living the oft-quoted statistic of life-on-less-than-$1-a-day. Because of their poverty, they are most vulnerable to the climatic vagaries wrought on the world environment by those who live on more than $1 a day.
“The poor rely on natural resources, so we need to address their poverty in order to take care of the planet,” says Mandla Gantsho, head of the regional Development Bank of Southern Africa. “We need a real commitment by African institutions and Northern partners to support initiatives that will lead to measurable improvements in people’s quality of life.”
As for the environmental pillar, sub-Saharan Africa contains some of the world’s richest biodiversity — and, until fairly recently, a good reputation for looking after it. But the thin edge of the wedge is chipping away at this pillar: drought, population growth, logging, agriculture, bushmeat and illegal trade.
“If we look at the South frankly, since 1992 we have made some impressive gains. Even if we just look at Southern Africa and the commitment to protected areas,” says Yemi Katerere, regional director of IUCN-The World Conservation Union. “Protected areas are a global public good, they benefit not just the Southern African region.
“There is a tremendous commitment by the governments of Southern Africa, if you look at the amount of land that has committed to the protected areas. If you look at the pressures that these countries are facing, that land could easily be converted to various other users.”
The IUCN is featuring at the World Summit a range of viable, independently established enterprises from various Southern African countries that are based on the use of natural resources in a sustainable fashion. These good-news stories are showcased under the title Another Way that Works.
That rich countries are prepared to support such best-practice land uses is evinced by their agreement earlier this month to top up the Global Environment Facility (GEF) by $2,92-billion, to fund GEF operations over the next four years.
The GEF is the only new funding source to emerge from the 1992 Earth Summit — the World Summit’s predecessor — and today it counts 173 countries as members. It channels multilateral funds into projects started by people in developing nations that create global environmental benefits. Since its creation it has allocated $4,2-billion in grants and leveraged an additional $11-billion in co-financing from other sources.
On August 8, for instance, a project to protect large tracts of South America’s biodiversity jewel, the Amazon, was given a $30-million boost in the form of a grant from the GEF, with co-financing from the Brazilian government, WWF (the conservation organisation) and the development bank KfW of Germany.
In agreeing to stage the World Summit in Africa, world leaders have undertaken to focus proceedings on poverty reduction. If they want developing nations to grow — the World Bank estimates they will need to grow at 3,6% per capita in order to halve poverty by 2015 — they need to stop pussyfooting around trade and finance issues that are blocking financial flows from North to South.
“The North would prefer to keep trade and finance off the summit agenda, on the grounds that these issues should be addressed separately in the Doha trade round and in the follow-up to the Monterrey conference on financing for development,” says Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism Mohammed Valli Moosa.
“Southern countries believe [the World Summit] should build on the outcomes of Doha and Monterrey. We want to ensure the World Trade Organisation negotiations deliver real results for developing countries, by opening up developed countries’ markets to developing country products and through the elimination of trade-distorting subsidies in key sectors like agriculture.”
And if the world’s leaders want sub-Saharan Africa to continue upholding the environmental pillar of sustainable development, they should listen to the catchy theme tune of a popular money game currently showing on local TV: “Show us the money. That’s what we want.”