Showing posts from category forests.
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Forest Conservation Method a Fit for Canada’s Oil Sands?
›In Wednesday’s speech on U.S. energy security, President Obama stated clearly that the United States would continue to rely on oil imports from Canada and other stable nations. But serious environmental concerns continue to dog the Canadian oil sands industry. Could an agreement reached by Canada’s Forest Products Association provide a model for a way forward?
In May 2010, the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement (CBFA) was signed by 21 members of the Forest Products Association of Canada (FPAC) and nine major environmental groups, including Greenpeace, the Nature Conservancy, and the Pew Charitable Trusts, without government involvement. The three-year agreement represents the largest forest conservation plan in history and protects more than 72 million hectares of Canada’s Boreal Forest. It also ended a long “do not buy” campaign of FPAC products, previously spearheaded by environmental organizations.
The CBFA essentially commits FPAC to the highest environmental standards of forest management and conservation, as well as the suspension of logging in environmentally sensitive areas, in part to protect endangered caribou populations. In return, environmental organizations agreed to support FPAC members.
The oil sands industry faces a similar challenge. In both cases, industry and environmental NGOs have clashed in a long and bitter battle over industry practices and their impact on the environment. The difference is that FPAC realized that directly engaging environmental groups in reasoned discussion might be a more intelligent approach to resolving environmental challenges than shouting back and forth at one another. FPAC also believes that buyers will be attracted to their newfound reputation for sustainable practices and higher ethical standards.
Model Agreements
Oil sands producers have much to gain by engaging the environmental community in new and innovative ways Should the CBFA model be followed, the oil sands industry may be able to negotiate an agreement with environmental organizations and voluntarily agree to higher environmental standards in return for recognition and support of their efforts from key environmental organizations.This wouldn’t be the first initiative where creative engagement between environmental organizations and industry served to mutually benefit both sides. For instance, in 1999, WWF and Unilever created the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), a program that rewards fisheries employing environmentally sustainable practices by recognizing their efforts through MSC certification and eco-labeling. Member fisheries maintain that MSC labeling has helped them retain existing markets, expand into others, and in some cases obtain a price premium for their product.
Such an initiative would go a long way to allow oil sands producers to shed their damaging reputation for producing “dirty oil.” Even if an agreement could not be reached, the oil sands industry would be viewed at the very least as willing to listen to the concerns of environmental organizations and take such issues seriously.
Not Perfect, But It’s a Start
The CBFA model may not be a perfect fit for the oil sands but it demonstrates that environmental groups and industry can find common ground on extremely contentious issues.
Finding this common ground must begin with accepting that the oil sands will never be “green.” According to a study by the Royal Society of Canada, in 2008, oil sands mining and development operations covered an area roughly the size of the state of Illinois and was responsible for emitting nearly 37 million tons of CO2. The study also found that there are legitimate concerns regarding the impact of oil sands development on the quality and quantity of regional freshwater supplies.
Nevertheless, the oil sands also represent a critical source of stable energy supplies for Canada and the United States, and calls by some environmental NGOs to halt oil sands production are unrealistic. More than 20 percent of U.S. oil is sourced from Canada, making it the United States’ leading supplier, and roughly half of that comes from the oil sands.
A CBFA-style agreement could help oil sands producers secure the U.S. market, which currently takes 99 percent of Canada’s oil exports, by quelling campaigns in the United States to stop imports from the oil sands. And under an agreement similar to the CBFA, the environmental community could have a larger say in how it is developed and extracted
As it stands, both industry and the environmental community remain engaged in a heated war of words, with neither side really listening to the other. Until they are willing to sit down and engage each other in new ways, both groups are likely to continue to talk over one another and make little progress on striking an environmental and economic balance that could ultimately benefit both sides.
Ken Crist is a program associate with the Canada Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
Sources: Sources: The Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement, National Resources Defense Council, The New York Times, Royal Society of Canada, Vancouver Sun.
Photo Credit: “Athabasca oil sands digger,” courtesy of flickr user . Shell, and “Boreal forest 2009,” courtesy of flickr user Gord McKenna. -
Watch Michael Renner on Improving Environmental Peacebuilding by Moving From the Technical to the Social
›“When we think about environmental peacebuilding opportunities…at a certain level it seems like a very straightforward, almost technical task,” said Michael Renner, senior researcher at the Worldwatch Institute, in this interview with ECSP. “But really stepping back, in a sense, this is far more than just a technical issue – it’s a broader social and, ultimately, political issue.”
As well as reducing tensions in conflict-prone areas, environmental peacebuilding – like reforestation and land/water management initiatives – can have a great impact on local livelihoods. Renner discussed the importance, therefore, of working alongside affected communities to address specific, long-term needs. “You need to have a buy-in from the local communities,” he said. “If you don’t, you may well undertake these efforts, but it’s not very clear how long they can last and how successful they can be.”
“I think it’s very important to understand these as challenges from an interdisciplinary point of view, that really require us not to think in terms of just ‘what’s the best technology, what’s the best practice,’” Renner said. “But also ‘how do we ensure really that this links up with the needs on the ground of specific communities?’” -
Integrated Approach Helps “Model Farmers” Increase Productivity in Ethiopia
›March 24, 2011 // By Schuyler NullTo reach the village of Grar Gaber from Addis Ababa, you drive up over the Entoto Mountains overlooking the capital then motor down two hours of new Japanese-built highway to the town of Fiche. From there it’s 20 minutes on a broken dirt road across rocky hills. I was joined there by about 20 others from the PHE Ethiopia Consortium’s general assembly (see day one and day two coverage here) and Population Action International, to visit an integrated population, health, and environment (PHE) development program run by LEM Ethiopia.
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“Better Bang for the Buck”: Blogging From Ethiopia’s Population, Health, and Environment General Assembly
›March 18, 2011 // By Schuyler NullHello from Addis Ababa, where I am blogging from the 5th annual general assembly of the Population, Health, and Environment (PHE) Consortium of Ethiopia (see further coverage here). Along with the Philippines, Ethiopia is the largest PHE programmer in the world, both in terms of number of programs and people affected, and for good reason: The country combines dire need, willing donors, and a great deal of local capacity and will.
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Sam Rugaba, PHE Champion
Encouraging Childhood Education and Birth Spacing as an Approach to Conservation
›This PHE Champion profile was produced by the BALANCED Project.
Fifty-one-year-old Sam Rugaba is a dedicated teacher who loves his job at the Bujengwe Community Primary School. The school is the result of a community-based project located in the Bujengwe Parish of the Kayonza subcounty in the Kanungu district of Uganda – just 18 kilometers from the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park (BINP). The biodiversity-rich BINP is home to many rare species including the endangered mountain gorilla. Sam is also a Conservation Through Public Health(CTPH) community volunteer and community conservation health worker. -
Ruth Siyage, PHE Champion
Promoting Family Planning and Livelihoods for a Healthy Environment in Uganda
›This PHE Champion profile was produced by the BALANCED Project.
Meet 32 year old Ruth Siyage – a wife, mother, peasant farmer, shop owner, and population, health, and environment (PHE) champion. Ruth, her husband, Siyage Benon, and their three healthy daughters – ages 3, 6, and 11 – live about an hour from Bwindi Impenetrable National Park (BINP) in Uganda’s Kanungu District. The 33,000-hectare BINP is a World Heritage Site known for its exceptional biodiversity – with over 200 species of trees, 100 species of ferns, 350 species of birds, 200 species of butterflies, as well as many endangered species, including the mountain gorilla.
In addition to being a peasant farmer who grows potatoes, millet, beans, and groundnuts to feed her family, Ruth also has a small shop in the nearby trading center where she sells groceries and interacts with most of her friends. Ruth first learned of and embraced the PHE approach through a neighbor and local community volunteer, Mrs. Hope Matsiko – one of 29 PHE volunteers trained by the Conservation Through Public Health (CTPH) programs.
Ruth recalls:Hope used to approach us and tell us about family planning. Others refused to listen, but I took it up. Before, I used to refuse to go to Kajubwe Health Center for services and never got information because it was so far away. However, when Hope, the local volunteer, who is also my neighbor, visited me at home, I got more information about family planning. She also counseled me on the methods I could use, which was best for my health and how to use it. I now use family planning.
As a new champion, Ruth uses several ways to teach her community about family planning and PHE activities. One way is through face-to-face discussions with individuals attending village meetings. She focuses on women she sees often and who she knows have closely-spaced pregnancies. Recently, three of these women started using modern contraceptives.Ruth also spreads her PHE messages through her work with the local women’s association, Kishanda Bakyara Twebiseho (Kishanda Women Livelihoods Association), as an active member of a local church, and as a local village council member. In the council, she is in charge of teaching about agriculture and the environment – a perfect opportunity to share her PHE messages about the linkages between population, health, and the environment. Ruth is a great model of the benefits of taking a PHE approach, with her well-spaced pregnancies – which have helped ensure her own reproductive health and that of her three daughters – and her teaching of others, from what she now knows about the need to keep ourselves and our environment healthy to the impacts of each on the other.
Ruth says she believes that through a PHE approach much can be done and has been done:By teaching people about safe water use, I believe that we can stop diarrhea diseases. And by teaching about sanitation, we can help prevent diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis, and worms. Now my neighbors seldom get sick. We have a fairly healthy life. When we are not sick, we do not have to sell our goats and land to buy medicine. And when we plan our families, we are better able to care for and educate our children. Through our community sensitization, people now even understand the importance of gorilla conservation.
Ruth is especially appreciative of the CTPH program, which first taught her about and then turned her into an advocate for the integrated PHE approach.
This PHE Champion profile was produced by the BALANCED Project. A PDF version can be downloaded from the PHE Toolkit. PHE Champion profiles highlight people working on the ground to improve health and conservation in areas where biodiversity is critically endangered.
Photo Credit: Silverback mountain gorilla named Mwirima with a juvenille gorilla from the Rusguguar group near Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, and Ruth and her son in their shop in rural Uganda, courtesy of CTPH. -
ASRI’s Integrated Health and Conservation Programming in Borneo
›If you have a fever in the town of Sukadana in Indonesian Borneo, the locals might suggest you go to the ASRI clinic. It’s in a little house whose front yard is crowded with bicycles and motorbikes. In the waiting room, you examine a whiteboard that explains your payment options. ASRI accepts cash. But it looks like you can also pay with labor in the clinic’s organic garden or its reforestation site. If you own a goat, you can bring in its manure and pay with that. You can even pay with durian tree seeds!
Doctoring both humans and the environment is the raison d’etre of Alam Sehat Lestari (“healthy life everlasting” in Bahasa Indonesia, or ASRI for short), an NGO dedicated to the idea that human health is so intertwined with that of the environment that trying to fix one must include trying to fix the other. Located beside Indonesia’s Gunung Palung National Park, ASRI aims to protect the park’s irreplaceable rainforests by offering health care incentives to local people to stop illegal logging. We’re supported by our sister NGO in the United States, Health in Harmony.
For both people and the forest, the task is urgent. The island of Borneo was once famously covered by rainforest. But now only half of that canopy exists, and less than one-third will remain by 2020. Beginning in the mid-20th century, loggers, palm-oil plantation companies, and farmers logged, burned, and clear-cut their way through the island. Horrifyingly, much of this destruction has taken place in “protected” areas like national parks. The relentless loss of forest has devastated biodiversity in Borneo and severely reduced habitats for many organisms, including one of humanity’s closest relatives, the orangutan – as of 2005, there were about 55,000 left, a tenth of which live in Gunung Palung. Some experts predict the orangutan will be extinct within a few decades. Despite their protected status, Gunung Palung’s forests are continually threatened by illegal logging for valuable hardwood, poor implementation of management practices, and forest fires, many of which are started to clear land for new uses. Over 50,000 hectares of the 90,000-hectare national park’s forest cover are damaged or gone.Contributing is the fact that Borneo’s economy is based largely on extractive industries; there simply aren’t many other job options. An ASRI survey found that in the Gunung Palung area the average cost of an emergency visit to the district or regional hospital was $460 – more than the average annual income. In fact, one-third of interviewees had faced a choice between health care and food. Financial pressures like that are what drive people to illegal logging. A four-meter board can go for R110,000, or about $10 – a little less than the average villager’s monthly income of $13. Working in a rice field, by contrast, pays about a dollar a day.
Sukadana, located so close to Gunung Palung, is a boom town for these industries. It was recently made a seat of the local regency. We watch new buildings go up every week – most of them built using illegal wood chopped straight out of the national park – and workers and money are flowing in.
As forest is converted to plantations, however, pesticides and fertilizers enter the watershed, which damage water and soil quality as well as human health. Watershed destruction from logging and land conversion leads to flooding which makes it harder to raise rice and can increase rates of flood-related diseases. Logging itself is dangerous work, and there are few or no worker protections. As well, seasonal, man-made forest fires, which this ecosystem is not adapted to and which can last for months, devastate both the natural habitat and respiratory health.
Enter ASRI: Our Sukadana clinic offers high-quality, low-cost medical care to all comers, with discounts for people living in villages that do not contribute to illegal logging (which the National Park office determines using air and ground patrols). This incentive system was devised in consultation with local leaders and is intended to take advantage of powerful social ties in this rural area. But given the complexity of the connections between poverty, health, and the environmental degradation here, ASRI also attacks these problems from other angles.
For one, patients and families can pay by eco-friendly, non-cash means – some of which actually end up providing further benefit to the patients. Many choose to do a stint of labor for ASRI in our organic garden. There they learn techniques that they can apply to their own crops. Some farmers have reported making a considerable profit selling their own organic produce with the skills they learned at ASRI, and some have sworn off traditional slash-and-burn agriculture, because as organic farmers they earn more money for less work. Others decide to work at ASRI’s reforestation site, which aims to restore several hectares of burned-over, degraded grassland to its original forested state. Patients can also bring in compost or manure; rainforest seeds and seedlings; or handmade grass mats, which are snapped up by clinic staff and volunteers.
ASRI’s other programs include Goats for Widows, in which impoverished widows receive a goat and give back its organic manure and one kid. Clinic staff teach townspeople and villagers about the links between the environment and health and include information about diseases like tuberculosis during “movie nights,” when they set up a projection screen and show educational videos. Crucially, ASRI also engages in capacity-building through its trained medical volunteers, who serve as consultants for Indonesian staff doctors who are fresh out of medical school.
On the horizon is a new eco-friendly “super-clinic” that will allow us to perform major surgery and house many more inpatients. We hope that as it goes up, people will learn ways to build with less wood, and that by offering even better health care to people living around the national park, we will gain enough leverage to slow or even stop illegal logging. For the community – everyone from the next generation of Sukadanans to the gibbons and durian trees – that would be a healthy change for all.
Jenny Blair, M.D., is a physician, writer, and long-term volunteer at ASRI, along with her husband, Roberto Cipriano, a LEED-accredited professional and architect who is helping to design ASRI’s newest clinic.
Sources: Center for International Forestry Research, Food and Agriculture Organization, Gunung Palung Orangutan Conservation Program, Mongabay.com, Rainforest Action Network, Tropics, World Rainforest Movement, World Wildlife Foundation
Video and Image Credit: “Conservation – Part 1,” courtesy of AlamSehatLestari, and “Ibu Nurdiah,” used with permission, courtesy of Roberto Cipriano. -
Minister Izabella Teixeira at the Wilson Center
A Review of Brazil’s Environmental Policies and Challenges Ahead
›Stressing the need for concrete, tangible institutional policies, Izabella Teixeira, Brazil’s Minister of the Environment, discussed the challenges and goals of her ministry at the Wilson Center on October 20. Sustainable development, not just conservation, must be the focus, and that requires bringing lots of different players to the table, taking into account not only environmental but also social and economic agendas. To do this, she argued, one must take the rather ephemeral and hypothetical notions of environmental stewardship and put them into the realm of a practicable, institutionalized framework, built on a social pact that engages all sectors of society.The foundation of sustainable development and environmental policy must be biodiversity, according to Teixeira. Central concerns, such as food and energy security and combating climate change, all rely on a diverse array of natural resources. These need to be conserved, but they must also be developed in a responsible, sustainable way. A legal international framework toward this end, covering access to biodiversity and genetic resources, has yet to be implemented. Developing and developed countries need to find a middle ground on allocating the benefits that accrue from the use of genetic resources found in areas such as the Amazon, and this agreement must then be linked into existing political institutions.
Teixeira noted the strides Brazil has made toward protecting its environment – including having set aside the equivalent of 70 percent of all protected areas in the world in 2009 and the establishment of the Amazon Fund. Nevertheless, Brazil must continue to protect and maintain these nature preserves, not just establish them. Creating a program that pragmatically implements international goals in a national context is an ongoing process, and countries like Brazil now need to focus on the “how” of implementing these goals, rather than just the “what.”
Teixeira also highlighted the complexity of formulating environmental policy that integrates all the various points of view that must be taken into consideration. At recent meetings to discuss transitioning to a low-carbon economy, 17 different cabinet ministers had to be present to coordinate government positions and policies. The complexity is due in part to the need to create alternatives, not just to prevent certain activities. For example, one must not only use legal enforcement to stop illicit deforestation, but also create paths to legal, sustainable logging. Once again, attempting to balance environmental, social, and economic concerns is difficult, to say the least, but crucial for long-term effectiveness.
Also a unique challenge for Brazil is the natural diversity that exists within such a large country. While much of the attention paid to the environment goes (rightly so) to the Amazon, there are many other biomes and local environments that must be taken into consideration, Teixeira observed.
The cerrado, Brazil’s enormous savanna, requires a different strategy than the Amazon, which is different than the coastal Atlantic forest. Furthermore, urban areas need their own environmental policies that can take into account issues of human development and population density.
To illustrate the need for an inclusive, well-thought-out policy, Teixeira discussed–rather frankly–the controversy surrounding the recent proposed amendments to the Forest Code. She argued that the proposal makes blanket changes that do not take into consideration differences in biomes, differences between large agribusinesses and family farms, and between historic, settled communities and recent developments. The implications of this proposal, according to the minister, could have enormous social costs. Teixeira said she believes that it would be virtually impossible to enforce the amended Forest Code if it was approved by Congress. She used this example to underscore her role in offering legislative alternatives that seek to provide a more nuanced, and ultimately more effective, institutional framework that can use Brazil’s many natural resources to help its population to the greatest extent possible.
J.C. Hodges is an intern with the Brazil Institute at the Wilson Center; Paulo Sotero is the director of the Brazil Institute.
Photo Credit: “Rio Jurua, Brazil (NASA, International Space Station Science, 05/29/07),” courtesy of flickr user NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, and David Hawxhurst/Wilson Center.
