Creating an international policy environment that supports national biodiversity conservation
December 9, 2002
"The developed countries should practice what they preach and should be more serious about their own contradictions regarding biodiversity conservation before attempting to rule the international environment. They should also abolish the poisonous concept of donor with regard to biodiversity conservation. The response to global environmental issues should be based on real partnership for a common endeavor and not on a beggar-to-donor relationship."
Marc Dourojeanni, Inter-American Development Bank; 1992
The loss of biodiversity, and especially of genetic and species diversity, represents a loss to all people, today and in the future. Moreover, the impacts of ecosystem and habitat degradation reach beyond national boundaries. Climate regimes, river flows, sediment deposition patterns, and migratory species are all affected. The interconnections in the world environment mean that biodiversity loss in one area is liable to be felt widely.
These interconnections are the stronger because of the way the whole world shares crop plants, medicinal plants, and other living resources, and because of the increasing interlinkage of the global economy. Consider, for instance, that oil from Saudi Arabia fuels the machines and provides the feedstock for the fertilizers and pesticides that allow marginal land in West Africa to grow -- on trees originating from South America -- cocoa that the Swiss make into chocolate that is flown on American-made airplanes to Singapore for distribution in Southeast Asia and that the profit made by the West African farmer allows her to purchase a Japanese motorcycle, Ethipian coffee, and Thai rice. No longer vulnerable only to local ecological and economic factors, this farmer's livelihood now depends on international commodity agreements, market forces, and many other factors that make the world economy function as a single system.
Although ecological and economic realities mandate a global response to biodiversity loss, global cooperation faces three obstacles.
- First, biodiversity is not a part of the "global commons" in the sense that the high seas are. To the contrary, the bulk of genes, species, and habitats lie within the sovereign jurisdiction of individual nations.
- Second, threats to biodiversity are not evenly distributed among nations -- the costs of conserving biodiversity globally will fall more heavily on some nations than on others.
- Third, the technical and financial abilities to respond to biodiversity loss vary greatly among nations. Indeed, Earth's most threatened natural ecosystems lie within the developing countries, which possess the least resources to conserve them.
Objective: Integrate biodiversity conservation in international economic policy.
Since 1950, measureable global economic activity has more than quadrupled to create a $20-trillion world economy. These large increases in economic activity and exchange have brought about global market forces into once-remote areas that house the greatest remaining concentrations of biodiversity. The global economic system enables countries to exploit their comparative production advantages, and it provides each with access to a wider range of goods and services than it could efficiently produce alone. The challenges are to ensure that the health and diversity of Earth's life systems are not compromised in the process, and that economic power and benefits are equitably shared among and within nations. Realistically, these challenges cannot be met without major changes.
- Action 17. Develop a principle and policy of "national ecological security" to ensure that international trade policies do not intensify biodiversity loss.
- Action 18. Establish an International Debt Management Authority to purchase debt on the secondary market.
- Action 19. Facilitate the exchange and development of technologies for conserving and using biodiversity sustainably.
- Action 20. Ensure that the activities of transnational corporations (TNCs) that destroy biodiversity are curbed in the countries where they are based and where they operate, and that compensation for, or restoration of, damages is sought where applicable.
- Action 21. Ensure that countries are free to decide whether to adopt intellectual property rights protection for genetic resources and how strong that protection should be.
Objective: Strengthen the international legal framework for conservation to complement the Convention on Biological Diversity
The Convention on Biological Diversity is a key element of the international framework for biodiversity conservation. A number of other legal instruments are also important. Current agreements cover a range of specific conservation issues, and should be reviewed and strengthened. In addition, proposed conventions or agreements on global warming and forests must also be crafted to support biodiversity conservation.
- Action 22. Strengthen the effectiveness of existing international conventions and treaties covering the conservation of ecosystems, species, and genes.
- Action 23. Ensure that international agreements on climate change and forests are compatible with the Convention on Biological Diversity and that they support biodiversity conservation.
Objective: Make the development assistance process a force for biodiversity conservation
Development assistance could play an important role in directly supporting biodiversity conservation efforts. All too often, development aid has contributed to the destruction of habitats and ecosystems, the over-exploitation of species, and excessive genetic uniformity in agriculture. The loss of biodiversity brings about social disruption and a reduction in the resource base for people's livelihoods, thus undermining the objectives of development efforts. While development aid forms a relatively small percentage of overall economic activity in most developing countries, it has transformed certain areas and communities. Perhaps more important, institutions such as the World Bank dominate development policy, deeply influencing the decisions of developing-country policy-makers.
If development-assistance institutions are to play a positive role in conserving biodiversity, they must follow two parallel tracks. First, development assistance agencies must channel a greater proportion of their resources into projects that strengthen developing countries' capacity to save, study, and sustainably use biodiversity. Many of the actions suggestions in the Global Biodiversity Strategy could be undertaken through development assistance. Second, and more important, development assistance agencies must reorient their "mainstream" assistance to incorporate biodiversity conservation objectives.
To these ends, development assistance agencies should create guidelines for assessing projects' impact on biodiversity, dedicate special funds to initiating biodiversity conservation programs, develop in-house expertise and strategy statement on biodiversity conservation, and ensure that all sectors include biodiversity conservation among their objectives.
- Action 24. Incorporate biodiversity values into the criteria for choosing, designing, and evaluating development assistance loans and projects, and for assessing developing countries' economic performance.
- Action 25. Open the development-assistance process -- the design, implementation, and evaluation of projects and the policies that guide them -- to public scrutiny, participation and accountability.
- Action 26. Ensure that development assistance strengthens the role of women in the sustainable use of biological resources.
Objective: Increase funding for biodiversity conservation, and develop innovative, decentralized, and accountable ways to raise funds and spend them effectively.
Governments, which have always borne the main responsibility for biodiversity conservation and its costs, should not view biodiversity conservation as a burden or unrecoverable expense. Instead, it should be seen as an investment similar to that in public education or health. Indeed, many of the policy reforms needed to slow biodiversity loss, such as the removal of subsidies, can actually save money for governments. In other cases, the maintenance of key habitats and species provides economically valuable ecosystem services or forms the indispensable basis for such major industries as fisheries, tourism, and the harvesting of non-timber products. Since international funding for biodiversity conservation will always be limited, national governments themselves must make needed policy changes and increase their own investments.
Nevertheless, both the global benefits derived from biodiversity and the inability of many developing countries to invest heavily in conservation, demand that the international community provide financial support for conservation in many developing countries. That support must be provided in ways that surmount formidable constraints hampering the wise and effective use of conservation funding. In particular, the governmental and non-governmental oganizations best suited to carry out conservation often cannot absorb rapid and massive investments efficiently. Moreover, it is difficult for international donors to target funds to those institutions and activities that can do the most good since donors are removed from the communities affected by their actions. Finally, throwing money at biodiversity conservation without simultaneously initiating the policy and institutional reforms discussed in other chapters will not be effective. Money in the wrong hands may merely strengthen inefficient or oppressive institutions and reinforce inappropriate ways of implementing biodiversity conservation.
Agencies that lend funds rather than grant them must also recognize that while investing in biodiversity has potentially large returns, those returns do not necessarily flow into the national treasury. Real econonic benefits may flow to rural dwellers, for example, but not show up as government revenue. Accordingly, governments may be reluctant to borrow for some biodiversity projects at usual rates and terms. Thus, there is a clear need for additional and concessional biodiversity funding.
- Action 27. Involve governments, multilateral development agencies, and non-governmental organizations jointly in establishing new biodiversity conservation funding sources and mechanisms, initially totalling at least $1 billion per year.
- Action 28. Improve debt-for-nature swaps as a means of protecting biodiversity.
- Action 29. Promote the use of trust funds or endowments for biodiversity conservation.
- Action 30. Develop mechanisms to fund grassroots organizations and initiatives.
- Biodiversity criteria for evaluating development assistance projects. Development assistance could play an important role in directly supporting conservation efforts.
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