From Readers

Your Letters and Comments

Eat Your Vegetables

Fred Pearce’s article, “The Protein Gap” (July-September 2005, Conservation in Practice), served as an excellent complement to Jon Christensen’s call (in the same issue) for greater integration of conservation and human development objectives. John Fa’s detailed studies of the types and quantities of bushmeat consumed in West Africa provided a fascinating glimpse into a market that directly impacts rural poor people and wildlife. Still, I found myself questioning Pearce’s portrayal of animal rights activists and environmentalists as potentially caring more about the survival of a few rare rainforest species than the survival of their hunters. Recent efforts aimed at curbing the bushmeat trade that I am aware of acknowledge the economic and dietary needs of local people and attempt to focus attention on the detrimental impacts of factors such as population growth, urban bushmeat consumption, rising food prices associated with changing agricultural policies, insecure land tenure, lack of access to resources, political instability, and increased forest access granted by new roads constructed to support resource-extractive industries. Forces that drive many of these trends are far from the African jungle.   Also, the data presented by Pearce regarding current and potential sources of protein available to local villagers in a small West African market conspicuously omitted vegetable protein sources, providing an incomplete view of actual protein availability and clouding the reader’s ability to understand the real protein deficit experienced by the villagers Fa studied. Many communities and individuals around the world would indeed benefit by increasing their protein consumption. I can’t think of any respected conservation organization that advocates the opposite. Still, the suggestion to simply ramp up domesticated meat production would bear significant environmental costs and would be impeded by the same social, political, and economic forces that affect the bushmeat industry. Efforts directed at lowering the protein intakes and overall consumption patterns of the wealthy (most Americans consume well over 100 g of protein per day) would likely relieve pressures on wildlife and the rural poor. While the elephant in the forest is undeniably compelling, scolding activists and environmentalists will not bring us any closer to dealing with the very large elephant in our living room.

KATHLEEN GUILLOZET

Portland, Oregon

Conflict of Interest

Jon Christensen’s observation in the July-September “The Uneasy Chair” column that conservationists are not involved in the discussion of how to end poverty in the developing world cuts to the heart of how tropical conservation efforts are carried out. Conservationists are indeed largely absent from the key economic debates going on in places like sub-Saharan Africa, which, as Christensen notes, increasingly focus on governance issues. Governance ultimately determines the fate of forests and fisheries as well as of investments and economic growth in African countries, and it has belatedly moved to the center of aid policies.

But based on my experience working in East Africa for the past seven years on issues of wildlife conservation, rural development, and policy formulation, I would like to highlight a fundamental problem with Christensen’s argument. Conservationists are unlikely to pick up his call for greater engagement. The reason for this is that governance is really a euphemism for politics. And the international conservation NGOs that represent the wealthy north in the countries of the poor south have vested interests in not wanting to get too involved in politics.

International conservation NGOs are embedded in government bureaucracies and foreign aid donors that control power and money in African countries. Conservation groups forge Memorandums of Understanding with the government, which enables them to operate in these countries and gives them perceived access to influence policy-making processes. Meanwhile, an increasing amount of funding for these groups comes from bilateral aid agencies, which are similarly tied to their host governments through diplomatic agreements. This means that the conservation NGOs working in tropical countries basically function according to diplomatic and financial agreements tied to the host government’s interests. The NGOs are in no position to challenge governance—such as by criticizing policies, challenging corruption, or taking stands on politically divisive issues. In other words, conservation NGOs are organized to work in the tropics in a way that emphatically prevents them from effectively working on governance.

Getting into the game and making the key links between biodiversity conservation and governance thus requires a significant reorganization of the way international conservation NGOs pursue their objectives and fund their activities. While there is little hope of the big international NGOs dislodging themselves from the comfortable albeit ineffective status quo in places like Kenya and Tanzania, an array of small-scale, local, civil society efforts are currently working to link conservation and governance issues in a practical and political manner. Those local groups are unlikely to be heard from at Live8, but they are already in the game.

FRED NELSON

Sand County Foundation, Tanzania

Mexico’s Community Forests

Katherine Ellison and Amanda Hawn are to be congratulated for their article on the Mexican government’s visionary experimental program, Payments for Hydrological Environmental Services, and the inspiring work of the Sierra Gorda Environmental Group (April-June 2005 Conservation In Practice). However, there is a significant error in the article. The authors state that the deforestation rate in Mexico is over 1 million ha per year and that this is due mostly to illegal logging. This number, which is popularly used in the press, is exaggerated. The most authoritative national study of deforestation in Mexico was the 2002 Land Use Inventory, a study led by one of the authors of this letter. This comprehensive survey showed that from 1976-2000 the annual rate of loss in temperate zone forests was 0.25 and in tropical forests 0.76 and that the annual average loss of forests, rainforests, and scrubland (matorrales) is some 544,789 ha—almost half the number quoted by Ellison and Hawn. As well, most academic studies show agriculture and pasture expansion to be much more important deforestation drivers than illegal logging. There has also been vigorous forest recovery in many areas due to agricultural abandonment. Of course, these findings should not induce complacency, and vigorous efforts by all segments of Mexican society are required to reinforce these trends.

The program of payment for environmental services described in the article is indeed one of a new suite of options. However, Mexico also has the developing world’s largest sector of community forests managed for the commercial production of timber. A recent national study (of which another one of the author’s of this letter is involved), shows that as of 2002 some 2,417 communities in Mexico had logging permits with management plans. Many of these communities have serious ongoing problems in forest degradation and corruption. However, a large percentage of them are doing an excellent to adequate job of sustainably managing their forests, generating income for the community, and maintaining forest cover and hydrological and other environmental services. These communities are preserving millions of ha of forest cover—far more than is being preserved by experimental programs in environmental services. Other recent studies in which we have been involved have shown that a region of central Quintana Roo dominated by community-managed forests, has the lowest recorded rate of deforestation in tropical southeastern Mexico. Another study of Quintana Roo and Guerrero showed that community-managed forests maintain forest cover at the same or higher rates than protected areas in Mexico, and with little negative impact on floral or faunal biodiversity.

DAVID BARTON BRAY

Florida International University

ALEJANDRO VELÁZQUEZ, JEAN

FRANÇOIS MAS, and ELVIRA DURÁN

Universidad Autónoma de México

Not on the Radar Screen

“Conservationists are sitting on the sidelines,” says Jon Christensen (“Sitting Out the Big Game”) when it comes to fighting poverty and working for good governance. Well, it’s true that I don’t wear a “Make Poverty History” bracelet, and I never even tried to attend a Live8 concert. But I work for a Montana organization that has—for the past 33 years—been organizing citizens to protect the environment, working for sustainable development, and pressing for good governance. Our members know that an economically viable ranch is less likely to be subdivided than a ranch that’s struggling to stay afloat. We know that thriving communities are less likely to be targeted for exploitive development. There are other groups elsewhere in the U.S. that also organize at the grassroots level and work on very similar issues. It appears that locally based organizations like these are simply not on Jon Christen-sen’s radar screen when he makes the blanket statement that conservation groups don’t address poverty and development issues. Overlooking the good work of groups like these is, sadly, very common when writers generalize what the conservation movement is all about.

STEVE PAULSON

Billings, Montana