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Field Trips: Success Stories from PHE Programs in Kenya, DRC, and Madagascar
›November 7, 2008 // By Will Rogers
People in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (
Improving Health, Conservation, Livelihoods in an Insecure Region
According to Merlo, charcoal production, illegal mining, poaching, and ongoing conflict have converged to create a punishing environment for conservationists in Landscape 10, a 50,000-square kilometer region in eastern
For instance, a micro-hydroelectric power plant in Kasugho village—backed by the
The
Healthy Communities Lead to Healthy Environments
“People on the forefront [of conservation] need to be healthy…in order to be able to accomplish conservation,” argued
A Dose of a Vaccine, a Dose of Conservation
“Although we protect marine turtles on our side of the border, they are butchered across the border” in
In
WWF implemented a fishing-gear exchange program to reduce the incidence of illegal gear; improve fishermen’s income by using legal, larger mesh nets that catch bigger fish; and bolster the health of the environment. WWF has also supported beach cleanup by creating programs where local residents turn flotsam like flip-flops into art—in some instances increasing household income by US $130 per month.
“By and large, the conservation world is practiced by biologists, and therefore we may not know how to deal with changing peoples’ behaviors and attitudes,” Weru said. To be truly effective in implementing a PHE program, “you need skills beyond the biological, the ecological skills—you need social skills.”
Photo: Sam Weru. Courtesy of Dave Hawxhurst and the Woodrow Wilson Center.
For more information, including a webcast of this event, visit ECSP’s website. To receive invitations to future events, e-mail ecsp@wilsoncenter.org. -
Probing Population Growth Near Protected Areas
›Justin Brashares and George Wittemyer’s recent article in Science, “Accelerated Human Population Growth at Protected Area Edges,” presents data showing that average population growth at the edges of protected areas in Africa and Latin America is nearly double average rural population growth in the same countries. The authors argue that this phenomenon is due to migration, as people from surrounding areas are drawn to the health-care and livelihoods programs made available to people expelled from the parks.
It’s not news that high population growth rates have implications for conservation, both in terms of land-cover change and biodiversity loss. Yet at last month’s World Conservation Congress, I heard scarcely a mention of population growth or other demographic factors. So I appreciate that the authors are urging us to look at this aspect of conservation. In addition, by studying a large number of countries and protected areas, their work helps move our thinking beyond the inherent limitations of case studies focused on a single protected area.
I feel obligated to take issue with a few of the authors’ assumptions, methods, and conclusions, however. For instance, the authors compare growth rates for individual protected areas with national rural rates, and find the former are significantly higher in the vast majority of cases. I wonder why they don’t make the comparisons with the rural population growth rates for the region in which the protected area is located, since that seems as if it would make for an even more compelling argument.
My second issue is a note of caution regarding gridded population data. The creation of a gridded population layer depends both on the size of the population data units and the way in which the population is distributed. Given the inherent inaccuracies in this process at detailed levels of analysis, how can we be sure that the populations for the 10 km “buffer areas” surrounding the protected areas are accurate? Is there any way to validate these data, and how would errors impact the authors’ analysis? This issue is particularly important because rural areas tend to have large administrative units and sparse populations.
My third issue is with the authors’ examination of infant mortality rates as a proxy for poverty. The authors analyzed poverty in an attempt to determine whether poverty-driven population growth was informing their result; they concluded it was not. Measures of infant mortality are notoriously poor at the local level, and the authors need to go further in assessing what portion of growth is due to migration and what portion due to natural increase. While such an analysis would take time, it is necessary, given higher fertility in remote rural areas.
Despite my reservations about how the authors came to their conclusion, I tend to agree that migration is driving higher population growth in areas of high biodiversity and around protected areas. The reasons for migration, however, are diverse, and my fourth issue is that I don’t think the authors provide adequate evidence to demonstrate that conservation investments are driving migration to these areas. My three main reasons for taking issue with this finding:- The number of protected areas in the world has grown rapidly over the last 40 years, and they are generally located in sparsely populated areas. During this same period, the populations of most African and Latin American countries have doubled at least once. Thus, people have migrated to new frontiers—often near protected areas—seeking available agricultural land.
- Extractive industries—including timber, mining, oil and gas, and industrial agriculture—often provide lucrative jobs near protected areas. These jobs offer migrants far greater economic benefits than the meager amounts spent on conservation. Tourism is likely the only industry than can compete with these industries in attracting migrants, and only in areas with high numbers of visitors.
- The correlations the authors found between population growth and Global Environment Facility spending and population growth and protected area staff could, as the authors note, simply mean that conservationists are wisely spending their limited dollars on the protected areas facing the greatest threats.
Jason Bremner is program director of the Population Reference Bureau’s Population, Health, and Environment Program. -
Cutting Liberian Conflict Timber’s Destructive Impact on Stability, Sustainability
›October 31, 2008 // By Will RogersSilas Kpanan’Ayoung Siakor, a Liberian environmental activist and 2006 Goldman Environmental Prize recipient, was recently named one of Time magazine’s 2008 Heroes of the Environment for his work uncovering the illegal export of Liberian conflict timber. In 2003, Siakor exposed the illegal timber trade orchestrated by Liberian President Charles Taylor and successfully lobbied the UN Security Council to ban its export in an effort to halt the destruction of one of the “last significant virgin forests in West Africa” and bring an end to the devastation that violence and poverty were wreaking upon his country.
In 2005, presidential hopeful Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf adopted forest conservation and poverty alleviation as central policies, and when she was elected, she signed Executive Order #1, which canceled all timber concessions. “The importance of that one act to
Siakor continues to promote conservation and poverty alleviation in Liberia through his organization, the Sustainable Development Institute of Liberia. “In terms of biodiversity conservation,
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Rebels Overrun Government Troops in Eastern DRC; Thousands Displaced, Including Virunga’s Gorilla Rangers
›October 29, 2008 // By Rachel WeisshaarRenegade General Laurent Nkunda’s fighters seized Virunga National Park headquarters at Rumangabo on Sunday, overtook the town of Rutshuru yesterday, and continue to advance on the regional capital of Goma, facing little resistance from either Congolese government troops or MONUC, the UN peacekeeping force. Thousands of local residents have fled the fighting, including 53 gorilla rangers who were in the park when it was taken by Nkunda’s rebels. Twelve of the rangers made it back to the relative safety of Goma today, after more than two days dodging bullets in the forest with no food or water, but the rest remain missing. Almost nothing is known about the condition of the park’s mountain gorillas, which represent half of the world population of 700. -
PODCAST – Sharing the Forest: Protecting Gorillas and Helping Families in Uganda
›October 9, 2008 // By Wilson Center Staff<href=”https://newsecuritybeat-org.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2012/07/Kalema-Zikusoka1.png”>
Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka is founder and CEO of Conservation Through Public Health (CTPH), an NGO that seeks to save the endangered mountain gorillas of Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable National Park and improve the health and livelihoods of people living on the outskirts of Bwindi. Close proximity of humans and gorillas has resulted in the transfer of a number of diseases, including tuberculosis and scabies. In this podcast, Kalema-Zikusoka describes CTPH’s success providing integrated health services, educating people about family planning methods, reducing human–wildlife conflict, and improving local livelihoods. In “Sharing the Forest: Protecting Gorillas and Helping Families in Uganda,” the latest issue in ECSP’s Focus series, Kalema-Zikusoka and coauthor Lynne Gaffikan write that “members of these communities have the potential to serve as model stewards of the country’s natural resource wealth”–if their health needs are met and livelihoods improved. Kalema-Zikusoka recently spoke at the Wilson Center on human, animal, and ecosystem health and population-health-environment lessons from East Africa.
Sharing the Forest-Protecting Gorillas and Helping Families in Uganda: Download
Photo: Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka. Courtesy of Heidi Fancher and the Woodrow Wilson Center. -
Niger Delta Militants Escalate Attacks, Days After Government Establishes Ministry to Aid Delta’s Development
›September 19, 2008 // By Rachel WeisshaarNiger Delta militants destroyed Royal Dutch Shell’s Orubiri flow station on Tuesday and blew up a major oil pipeline near Rumuekpe on Wednesday, according to statements from the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), the main insurgent group. On Monday, militants attacked other Shell oil facilities, killing a guard and forcing nearly 100 workers to evacuate. Clashes between the militants—who demand a larger share of the oil revenue and greater political autonomy for Niger Delta residents—and the Nigerian army have reduced the country’s crude oil output by more than 20 percent since 2006. The conflict is “perhaps the most significant, most volatile, and potentially dangerous in that part of the world,” says Wilson Center Africa Program Director Howard Wolpe, who is part of a working group formed to advise policymakers on the issue.
On Wednesday, MEND announced it was broadening the scope of its land attacks beyond Rivers state, the heart of the Niger Delta, and would also seek to target offshore oil rigs. On September 14, MEND declared an all-out war on the Nigerian government for the first time—only three days after its declaration of a cease-fire. The cease-fire came in response to the Nigerian government’s announcement of the creation of a new ministry to accelerate infrastructure development, job creation, and environmental cleanup in the impoverished region.Perhaps the declaration of both cease-fire and war within the space of three days is not so surprising, given the disagreement among Niger Delta leaders over the new ministry. In an online statement, MEND said,
The people of the region should receive this latest dish with apprehension and not allow the over five decades of starvation to rule our emotions as this is not the first time such ‘palatable’ offers have been served to the region from the late 50’s to date. Creating a ‘Ministry’ is not the coming of the much awaited messiah. Nigeria has in existence, ministries over 40 years old which have not positively impacted on the people. It will be yet another avenue for corruption and political favoritism.
Yet People’s Democratic Party Chief Okotie-Eboh had a different take: “It is a very good measure and it shows the sincerity of President Yar’Adua to resolving the Niger Delta crisis. We should give him a chance. This ministry will get allocations like other ministries to tackle the problems of the Niger Delta.”
Although views on the new ministry vary widely, all agree that the Niger Delta faces several grave security, economic, and environmental threats. For instance, an International Crisis Group report recently concluded that one “major issue that has to be dealt with in the context of reconciliation [between the Ogoni people and Shell] is environmental clean-up. No significant study has been conducted to determine reliably the precise impact of oil industry-induced environmental degradation on human livelihoods in the area, but there are indications of severe damage.”
Yet the Delta must also contend with the longer-term implications of its demographic challenge. Forty-five percent of Nigeria’s population is younger than 15, which amounts to a serious youth bulge. The government’s chronic inability to provide these young people with education, health care, and jobs is likely contributing to instability in the Delta.
Photo: MEND fighters and hostages. Courtesy of Dulue Mbachu and ISN Security Watch. -
PODCAST – Virunga National Park and Conflict in the DRC
›September 11, 2008 // By Geoffrey D. Dabelko“The resource base is a point of contact for local residents, refugees, rebel groups, park rangers, [and the] military as they struggle to survive,” says Richard Matthew of the University of California, Irvine, in this podcast interview, describing the significance of Virunga National Park to the diverse collection of actors in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Matthew cites a fundamental tension between the needs of the park—which is home to some of the few remaining mountain gorillas in the world—and the desperate humanitarian needs of the people living in and around it. On a recent assessment trip to the area for the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), Matthew and his colleagues met with many of these groups to help find ways to reduce pressure on the park’s natural resources, while recognizing they are key to the livelihoods of millions of needy people in the region.I also asked Matthew to highlight some of the human security topics he and his colleagues pursue at the Center for Unconventional Security Affairs at UC Irvine. One such topic is microfinance. “Microfinance lending rarely takes into consideration the environmental impact and conflict-inducing impacts,” says Matthew. He and his colleagues are convening practitioners and conducting research on practical ways to “green” and reduce the conflict-generating impacts of this increasingly popular development strategy.
I conducted this interview in a noisy UN cafeteria in New York City. We were both in town to meet with David Jensen and colleagues from UNEP’s Disasters and Conflicts Programme and the UN Peacebuilding Commission. Expect a podcast and article soon from Jensen on the New Security Beat and in the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program Report, respectively.
Photo: A charcoal checkpoint in Virunga National Park. Courtesy of Richard Matthew. -
Somalia Battered by Drought, Food Shortages, Worsening Violence
›September 5, 2008 // By Will Rogers“The humanitarian nightmare in Somalia is the result of a lethal cocktail of factors,” writes Ken Menkhaus in a recent ENOUGH strategy paper, Somalia: A Country in Peril, a Policy Nightmare,” launched this week at the Wilson Center (video). Menkhaus was joined by Chris Albin-Lackey, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, and Harun M. Hassan, a Somali journalist and writer based in Washington, DC, for a discussion of the political and humanitarian situation in Somalia, which is ranked first on the 2008 Failed States Index.
The country has been plagued by “18 years of state collapse, failed peace talks, violent lawlessness and warlordism, internal displacement and refugee flows, chronic underdevelopment, intermittent famine, piracy, regional proxy wars, and Islamic extremism,” writes Menkhaus. Over the past 18 months, severe drought and increased attacks against relief agencies have left 3.2 million Somalis in dire need of humanitarian assistance. Two-thirds of Mogadishu’s population—700,000 people—has fled the city for Somalia’s harsh countryside, where they lack access to food, clean water, basic health care, livelihoods, and support networks.
Fighting between the Transitional Federal Government (TFG), Ethiopian troops, and regional militias has exacerbated food shortages, as TFG and Ethiopian troops target local markets, including the Bakaara market in Mogadishu, in retaliation for militia attacks. With drought “killing off livestock and reducing harvests in farming areas” and the economy crippled by violence and an outbreak of counterfeiting, food prices have skyrocketed.
Although Menkhaus rightly mentions a few of the situation’s environmental aspects, such as the drought’s role in the food crisis, he neglects the role population growth has played. The 2008 Failed States Index ranked Somalia as the state with the most demographic pressure – a significant indicator of state instability – (tied with Bangladesh). According to the Population Reference Bureau, Somalia has a total fertility rate of 6.7 children per woman and an annual rate of natural increase of 2.7 percent. With 45 percent of the population under 15, Somalia’s youth bulge increases the likelihood of continued violence; in addition, if Somalia ever does find peace and stability, its government will be hard-pressed to meet the needs of all its citizens for jobs, health care, and education.
Humanitarian agencies in Somalia have attempted to provide relief, but they face rampant extortion, corruption, and intimidation. According to Menkhaus, “uncontrolled and predatory TFG security forces, along with opportunistic criminal gangs, have erected over 400 militia roadblocks (each of which demands as much as $500 per truck to pass).” In addition, since May 2008, jihadist cells in Mogadishu operating under al-Shabaab, “a hardline military faction of the Islamist movement,” have stepped up attacks against relief workers and are assassinating “any and all Somalis working for western aid agencies or collaborating with U.N. and Western NGOs.”
Somali piracy has made humanitarian shipments to sea ports a treacherous task. According to Albin-Lackey, Somalia’s second-largest port, Kismaayo, fell to al-Shabaab militants last week after weeks of fighting between the Islamic group and TFG security forces, cutting off a crucial delivery point for humanitarian shipments. According to Menkhaus, with human insecurity worsening, Somalis who would not otherwise support fundamentalism will become more vulnerable to recruitment from criminal gangs and terrorist cells, including al-Qaeda. And although the Djibouti Accord was signed last month between the TFG and a faction of the opposition Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia, experts are pessimistic that it will do anything to end the violence.
Photo: Internally displaced people (IDPs) flee the escalating violence in Mogadishu for IDP camps on the outskirts of the city, where newcomers build their own makeshift shelters. Courtesy of Abdurrahman Warsameh and ISN Security Watch.
Showing posts from category Africa.
Renegade General Laurent Nkunda’s fighters seized 
Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka is founder and CEO of 
I also asked Matthew to highlight some of the human security topics he and his colleagues pursue at the 
“The humanitarian nightmare in Somalia is the result of a 
