I’ve been busy the last several days attending the “Healthy Environments—Healthy People” stream of the World Conservation Congress. While there has been much talk about the connections between environmental services and people’s livelihoods and allusions to how this links with human health, I’ve been surprised by the scarcity of actual documented linkages between conservation strategies and human health.

This conundrum got me thinking about why there aren’t more people trying to actually evaluate impacts on human health. Do environmentalists simply lack the tools and expertise to evaluate human-health impacts? Are human-health benefits too hard to measure? Or does conservation not really have any human-health benefits? No, no, and no again are my answers to these questions.

I think the real problem is that “healthier people” is really just a good selling-point for conservation rather than a true objective of most conservation institutions. In other words, arguing that environmental health promotes human health is a good way for conservation organizations to expand their constituency.

Am I a jaded conference participant who has simply attended one too many sessions? I don’t think so, based on a meeting I attended last week of the EuroNGOs, a network of European organizations advocating for sexual and reproductive health. The topic of this year’s EuroNGOs meeting? The interface between population, environment, and poverty alleviation. Was this really a group of population and health organizations interested in adding an environmental dimension to their work or interested in the environmental benefits of their work? No—the real purpose was to increase funding for sexual and reproductive health by discussing the links and benefits related to environmental conservation and poverty alleviation. So these are different communities coming together for a common goal: to increase the funding for their particular missions.

Does this mean, however, that it is wrong to advocate for conservation interventions based on health benefits or wrong to advocate for health interventions based on environmental benefits? I don’t think so. I just think we need to do a better job of building bridges across communities. It would have been wonderful to have a few environmental organizations at the EuroNGOs meeting and a few more health organizations at the World Conservation Congress. Perhaps then we would do a better job evaluating the cross-sectoral benefits of our health and environment work.

Jason Bremner is program director for population, health, and environment at the Population Reference Bureau.

Photo courtesy of Geoff Dabelko.

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The lawyers are out at the World Conservation Congress Forum in Barcelona. Carl Bruch of the Environmental Law Institute in Washington, DC, was one of several speakers at “Armed Conflict and Environment: Protecting the Environment During War and Improving Post-Conflict Natural Resource Management.”

Bruch is leading a forward-leaning initiative entitled “Strengthening Post-Conflict Peacebuilding and Recovery Through Natural Resource Management” that is collaborating with Tokyo University and the UN Environment Programme’s Conflicts and Disasters Programme to analyze cases from around the world where the environment is key to causing, extending, ending, or recovering from conflict. Bruch and his team of authors are trying to glean lessons for peacebuilding by examining natural resource management in post-conflict societies. Bruch emphasized that the goal is to provide actors on the ground who are not environmental practitioners with the practical means to integrate natural resource management into their operations.

Michael Bothe, an expert on the environment and laws of war from Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany, suggested IUCN could play a positive role in using the parks-for-peace process to establish parks as demilitarized zones. He noted that peacetime treaties often remain in effect in times of conflict, but that obligations in international environmental treaties are promotional and therefore have limited impact during war. Bothe called for more work in three areas:

1. Passing laws that use parks-for-peace mechanisms to prevent valuable habitats from becoming military objectives;
   
2. Clarifying how the military doctrine of proportionality of response applies to environmental damage; and
   
3. Specifying the application of customary (i.e., traditional) law regarding environmental protection during armed conflict.

Illustrating the diversity of participants at the World Conservation Congress, questioners from Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan, Angola, Georgia, and Germany focused on environmental damage from conflicts in their regions.

“Frequently, we forget that environmental management is all about institutions and governance, and the decisions and trade-offs that we make,” said the University of Washington’s Patrick Christie at “Governance of Marine Ecosystem-Based Management: A Comparative Analysis,” a September 29, 2008, event sponsored by the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program (ECSP). “And of course they need to be informed by ecological principles as well. But when it comes down to it, you’re managing individuals, institutions, [and] budgets.” Christie believes that as more and more marine species move dangerously close to extinction—whether from overfishing, pollution, or habitat destruction—ecosystem-based management (EBM), which governs ecosystems according to ecological rather than political boundaries, offers the best approach to marine conservation. This meeting was the final event in ECSP’s “Fishing for a Secure Future” series.

Decentralizing EBM

For Alan White of The Nature Conservancy, the Coastal Resource Management Project (CRMP), initiated by the U.S. Agency for International Development in 1996, exemplifies EBM’s success. Working in 111 coastal municipalities in the Philippines and covering approximately one-sixth of the country’s coastline, CRMP helped managers of municipal fisheries and marine protected areas (MPAs) collaborate with coastal law enforcement agencies to restore fish populations. EBM can be achieved, argued White, by allowing local municipalities to control simple regulatory schemes—so long as they are simultaneously sharing information with larger-scale networks. However, “the local governments have to be the ones to pay for this; they can’t be dependent on foreign donor projects or even large NGOs. It’s got to be sustained through the mechanism of governance and governments in those areas,” he said.

The Coral Triangle Initiative (CTI) regional action plan, drafted by the CTI’s six members—Indonesia, East Timor, the Philippines, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, and the Solomon Islands—is designed to make ecosystem-based fisheries management “more mainstream in the region,” said White. Among the many factors decreasing fish populations in the region are illegal and commercial fishing, chemical poisoning, industrial pollution, coral bleaching, typhoons, and aquarium fishing, he noted, and to effectively address these problems, local municipalities and larger-scale actors must coordinate their strategies.

Curbing Illegal Fishing in the Philippines

Tetra Tech’s Nygiel Armada explained that the Fisheries Improved for Sustainable Harvests (FISH) Project in the Philippines’ Danajon Bank ecosystem demonstrates how improving control mechanisms can combat illegal and commercial fishers’ activities. The FISH Project focuses on improving control mechanisms, including the network of MPAs; species-specific management; gear restrictions; size limits on fish; registration and licensing; and zoning of fishing and water activities. Strengthening these mechanisms and combining them with cross-cutting initiatives such as information, education, and communication campaigns; better policies; and collaboration with law enforcement agencies led to more fish.

“Governance is only as strong as your weakest link,” emphasized Armada. The weakest municipalities—those that allowed illegal fishing practices to continue and failed to enforce control mechanisms—weakened overall gains. To sustain fish stocks and improve governance, all localities must work together to enforce control mechanisms.

Marine Governance, Large and Small

“As scale increases, and complexity increases, and control and potential for coordination become less feasible, there’s really [a] need to pay increasing attention to the context within which governance is taking place,” maintained Robin Mahon of the University of the West Indies, who studies the Caribbean large marine ecosystem. As Mahon argued, “policy cycles at all levels are important because different types of decisions take place at each level.”

Video of the event and PowerPoint presentations are posted on the Woodrow Wilson Center website.

Photo: Patrick Christie. Courtesy of Dave Hawxhurst and the Woodrow Wilson Center.

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“The input of the security sector is indispensable for finding the balance” between mitigation and adaptation efforts to combat climate change, said Wouter Veening, co-founder and chairman of the Institute for Environmental Security, based in The Hague, Netherlands. Veening was the first among many speakers in a linked set of panels entitled “Environment and Security Challenges for Change” here at the World Conservation Congress in Barcelona.

This has been quite an interesting first day at the World Conservation Congress Forum in Barcelona. Since I’m not a conservation expert (I’m here to participate on a panel on population, health, and environment programs), I’m enjoying the opportunity to view the conference a bit like an anthropologist. Here are a few observations from Day One:

The conference has an interesting structure. In an effort to provide some organization for such a large conference (8,000 participants and 800 panels/events) there are three main “streams,” including “Healthy Environments, Healthy People”—the reason our panel was accepted—along with “A New Climate for Change” and “Safeguarding the Diversity of Life.” The participants are also encouraged to join one of 12 “journeys” (e.g., “Forests Journey,” “Species Journey”) to help bring them together for smaller meetings and social events. I found that I couldn’t get into the Forests Happy Hour this evening because I hadn’t signed up for the “Journey.” Some incentives do matter—if only I had known!

Despite the “healthy” headlines, very few panels discuss the relationships between human or animal health and the environment, and there are no health-related “journeys.” The one bright spot regarding interdisciplinary linkages thus far was an announcement by the Australian national parks director that he would host a major “Healthy Parks, Healthy People” meeting in 2010 where 50 percent of the attendees would be health professionals.

Some sessions are held in the Knowledge Café, a large room where folks join one of 12 round conversation tables based on special topics. The United Nations has funded a special program, called “Poble,” which has brought a significant number of indigenous people, in tribal headgear and colorful traditional dress, to the conference. The Poble meetings are in a large room with a low stage and no chairs; attendees sit or lie on the floor while listening to the presentations of their colleagues. The room has been full every time I have peered in.

Attendance seems to vary considerably among sessions. A Knowledge Café roundtable meeting on climate change attracted mid-career pros from the Global Environment Facility, the European Union, the United Nations, and scientific organizations, and the level of the unmoderated discussion was extremely high. Participants were well-informed about the issues facing the international community over the next few months, and were also familiar with the latest ideas regarding how to address climate change. On the other hand, a panel session on accountability in conservation programs and among environmental NGOs attracted only nine attendees who listened to four (good!) speakers. After tomorrow’s sessions, I’ll have an even better sense of which themes are attracting the attention of the conservation professionals here.

John Pielemeier is an international development consultant. During his 22-year career at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), he served as USAID mission director in Brazil, USAID/Washington office director for South Asia, and as a special assistant in the office of the USAID administrator.

Photo courtesy of Heidi Fancher and the Woodrow Wilson Center.

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The leaders of Friends of the Earth Middle East (FoEME), a joint Israeli, Jordanian, and Palestinian environmental organization that uses environmental advocacy as a peacebuilding tool, were recently recognized as “Heroes of the Environment 2008” by Time magazine. FoEME understands that “the road to sustainability, like the road to peace, is going to be a slow, messy human project of community organizing, education and trust-building,” says Time correspondent Andrew Lee Butters.

FoEME’s projects include Good Water Neighbors, which uses joint water management to strengthen ties between Israeli and Arab communities on opposite sides of the Jordan River; as well as a plan to build a transboundary peace park on an island in the Jordan River that would attract ecotourism. “We share the same environment, particularly the same water resources,” says Gidon Bromberg, Israeli director of FoEME. “And if we don’t start working together, we’re not going to have an environment.”

For more information on FoEME’s environmental peacebuilding activities, see “Rehabilitating the Jordan River Valley Through Cross-Border Community Cooperation” (May 8, 2006) and “Good Water Makes Good Neighbors: A Middle East Pilot Project in Conflict Resolution” (January 22, 2003), two events hosted by the Environmental Change and Security Program.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has released a paper examining climate change’s likely effects on water resources, as well as how these changes in water resources could affect ecosystems, agriculture, human health, and the economy.

In “Warfare Ecology” (abstract), an article published in the September issue of BioScience, Gary Machlis and Thor Hanson argue that a new, holistic approach to the ecological study of warfare is needed, encompassing preparations for war, combat, and post-conflict activities.

The conflict over resource-rich Kashmir has sparked renewed tension between India and Pakistan, this time over access to one of Asia’s most indispensable commodities: water. The latest dispute erupted on September 13, 2008, with allegations by Pakistan that India had violated a 2005 World Bank agreement over the operational schedule of the Baglihar Dam, which lies on the Chenab River, just inside Indian-administered Kashmir. That agreement “required that filling [of the dam] should take place between June 21 and Aug 31 with prior consent of Pakistan and subject to a condition that river flows should not drop below 55,000 cusec inside Pakistan at any time,” according to Dawn. India continued to fill the dam well into September, provoking outrage from Pakistan, despite guarantees that water flow into Pakistan would not diminish. Pakistani officials reported that “Pakistan had been losing up to 15,000 cusec of water every day because of India’s action.”

Regional water disputes are no anomaly in Central, East, and South Asia, where population growth and increases in per capita consumption have led to competition over water resources. In recent years, Indiahas invested in hydroelectric projects—such as the Baglihar Dam, projected to generate 450-900 megawatts of electricity—to satisfy a burgeoning middle class hungry for energy. With the dam just up the river from the Pakistani border, Pakistanis have long worried that the dam would severely limit the region’s water and curtail farmers’ ability to irrigate crops. Since construction began in 1999, Pakistani officials have objected to the project, arguing that the more energyIndia attempts to generate from the dam, the less water will reachPakistan.

Last week, Pakistanissued a formal protest to the Permanent Indus Commission, a body formed by the 1960 treaty, over the reduction of Chenab River flows and asked for an emergency meeting with the governing body in order to address the danger posed to Pakistani rice farmers who rely on water flow to irrigate their crops. Since then, prospects for diplomatic resolution have warmed: Pakistani President Asif Zardari and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh met on the “sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly” last week to discuss the issue. Meanwhile, the Permanent Indus Commission is schedule to meet this month, following an invitation from India to Pakistan’s Indus Water Commissioner to meet to resolve the issue.

Fortunately, water disputes have been one area where Pakistan and India have been able to manage their grievances and find resolution through diplomacy rather than force. By working together on environmental issues—whether water resource management, transboundary forest conservation, or endangered species protection—where cooperation is often possible, even longtime foes can move closer to resolving their larger conflict.

Photo: The Chenab River, flowing here through Himachal Pradesh in the Indus Basin, provides farmers and local populations with the water required to meet their sustainable needs. Courtesy of flickr user Motographer.

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