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by M.A. Sanjayan ,Lead Scientist, The Nature Conservancy

Excerpts from the opening speech given at a symposium on Mainstreaming Biodiversity Conservation - a parallel event at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (Earth Summit) Johannesburg, South Africa.

I was asked to give some brief opening remarks to kick off the day on mainstreaming biodversity conservation. And being nothing of an expert on the subject I had to ponder in preparing these remarks as to what "mainstreaming" actually mean. Being a biologist, I of course understood the other two words "biodiversity" and "conservation" but "manistreaming", I had to go to the dictionary for that one. To my mind, "mainstreaming biodiversity conservation," means making biodiversity conservation everybody's business.

400 generations ago humans were acutely aware of their environment - the plants, animals, waters, lands, and air that fed them and clothed them, that supported their societies. Virtually every person on the planet at that time understood the benefits provided them by an intact ecosystem. In other words, concern for the environment was everybody's business. Just 10,000 years ago, it was a MAINSTREAM issue. Peripherally involved

Today, it's just the opposite. In this decade, for the first time in human history, over half of the world's population will be living in cities. At this time the vast majority of this planet's citizens remain only be peripherally involved in the environmental movement not to mention the even smaller fraction concerned about conservation of biodiversity. Yes, media coverage and schools are doing their part but I honestly don't think this has penetrated deep enough to cause concern or what is more necessary, outrage.

Recently, when I asked a group of schoolchildren where water comes from one replied "the tap". This disassociation between the environment and the well-being of people is in all likelihood the root barrier to mainstreaming biodiversity conservation. In Urban areas and increasingly rural ones, the percentage of people who are genuinely concerned about the environment is vanishingly small - us gathered here at the Earth Summit and perhaps a few remaining indigenous groups. For everyone else, conservation of biodiversity remains a nice but marginal activity.

Look at what people give money to. The people of the United States, believe it or not, are model citizens when it comes to personal giving to charities, $800 per capita, one of the highest in the world. The biggest cause they give to is of course religion (up to 50%), followed by education, human services, health, arts, youth, international aid, and finally just 1.5% of all charitable giving goes to the environment - it is evident from looking at this sort of data that humanitarian concerns dominate and the environment is seen as a nice although not necessary thing to support. Sort of like giving spare change to someone on the street corner - it makes you feel good but it's not going to solve poverty.

Disassociated people

So the point I am trying to make is that we have gone from a time when virtually everyone on this planet could be deemed as concerned with the environment to a point where virtually no one is.

More importantly the trend indicates that the most powerful, influential, and affluent groups of people are the ones most disassociated with nature. With almost half the world's human population now living in cities, it is hardly surprising that conservation is not a mainstream affair. And I believe the conservation community is complacent in recognizing this because we are typically preaching, like I am today, to the choir.

We have allowed others (competing forces from private and public sectors) to define what is important to the average person walking down the street, be it New York or Johannesburg, or Colombo - jobs, food, education, health care, security. The fact that all of these issues are tied to the environment does not register and has all but been lost in the cacophony of rhetoric that attempts to find Band-Aid, proximal solutions to what are really distal causes.

The feedback mechanism between environmental degradation and human welfare is slow, murky, and buffered by business practices, government policies, and NGO inattention.

All organisms modify their environment and humans are no exception - humans however have turned it into a command performance with an almost total domination of many of the earth's ecosystems and no ecosystem is free of pervasive human influence.

The facts are truly staggering. Humans are currently cultivating a landmass equivalent to the size of South America. More atmospheric nitrogen is fixed by humans than by all natural terrestrial sources combined. More than half of all surface freshwater is subject to use by humans. And this one is most shocking to me - half of all net primary productivity, that is all the stuff all plants on earth make through photosynthesis, is used by humans - leaving just half for all the other species on the planet. And most troubling - over one quarter of all bird species on earth have been driven to extinction.

A simple paradox

The global consequences of human activity are not something we will face in the future - they are firmly with us now. My intention here is not to list a litany of disastrous facts but rather to point out a simple paradox.

At a time when we are intimately dependant on the environment (using half of all net primary productivity or freshwater on ourselves, for example), at a time when we have modified the environment to a practically irreversible extent, look at global climate change or species loss for essentially irreversible consequences, at a time when our poor are most impacted by environmental change (access to freshwater, marine resources), regarding conservation, we appear least concerned and we are least connected.

So here is the paradox. Just at a time when we are or at least the vast majority of humanity is divorced from the environment, our reliance on the environment is great and the ability of the environment to impact our lives directly is reaching new limits. Our concerns have become minimal just when the impact of the environment in our daily lives is reaching a new maximum.

The only way out as I see it is to "mainstream" the issue or make it everyone's baseness. Ignite the silent majority, the groups of people who profess to be concerned but in reality do very little except remain silent allowing the debate to be driven by the poles rather than the middle and therefore condemn it to remain marginalized.

Try to conserve

So what can we do to make this happen? I work for an organisation called The Nature Conservancy - a group whose mission is to protect plants, animals, and natural communities that represent the diversity of life on earth by protecting the lands and water they need to survive. Our organization currently works directly in about 30 countries - in the North America, Central and South America and in China, Indonesia, Australia, and many of the pacific islands. We mostly work through partners, both government and non-governmental partners and focus on achieving tangible, lasting results, at a scale significant enough to make a difference on what we are trying to conserve.

I would now like to give two examples of projects we and partners are working on as an illustration of how manistreaming of biodiversity conservation - in a very practical way - might be achieved in the portfolio of areas, worldwide, that are important for conservation.

The first example is from South Carolina, a relatively poor and populous state in the southern eastern part of the United States, which a few years ago, with the help of The Nature Conservancy, created an ecoregional plan - a science based conservation plan - for the state.

The wonderful thing about this plan is that once it was developed, it almost immediately went into implementation and today it is used in the state as a model of how ecoregional planning should be accomplished.

Adequate funding

Instead of going into details of all the different implementation strategies, let me just highlight one that is often the most difficult to execute - adequate funding. In this case a core group made up of the same group that supported the planning efforts created a new state dedicated fund for conservation.

The South Carolina Conservation Bank is currently in operation, being replenished by fees levied on real estate transactions and the money this Bank has is used to place important conservation areas into perpetual conservation easements - that is permanent binding agreements that restrict the most damaging activities (such as subdivision or new home construction) but allow other activities like grazing and certified forestry under certain conditions.

It is managed by a nine person citizen board and it allocates funds to state agencies or to non-profits like TNC for land conservation. To pass muster with the voters, this had and did garner support from a wide variety of constituents.

To me what makes South Carolina unique and noteworthy of discussion here is that it drew up a collective visions for conservation and then is actually in the process of implementing this most ambitious vision for success.

I think they did it because they managed to MAINSTREAM the issue of biodiversity conservation in the state by developing a broad coalition of partners (government, conservation interests, timber companies, real estate interests, citizen groups, scientists etc) to work within the planning and then in the implementation phase of the project. Often the most ardent foes of conservation in the United States is real estate developers - but in this case they were active partners in seeking a solution, convinced by the argument that a healthy environment with substantial natural or intact undeveloped areas is an asset to real estate and is a shared value that citizens of the State support.

In China

A second example is The Nature Conservancy's project in China. The project is located in a region where 4 of Asia's great rivers including the Mekong and the Yantze flow, separated by 5 mountain ranges in span of just 55 miles. NW Yunnan is a biologically and culturally diverse region. An innovative collaboration between The Nature Conservancy, the Provincial Government, National Government, and 40 local partners has resulted in a joint biological conservation plan.

This collective plan enhances the protected area system in the region, addresses the critical need for alternative energy, establishes a Conservation Trust Fund, and looks for common ground between rural development goals and conservation goals, for example through eco-tourism. Again, it is the partnerships and the establishing of clear links between the well-being of people and conservation that has enabled NW Yunnan to mainstream biodiversity conservation.

Fate of species

Our actions (or inactions) in the next 2-3 decades will once and for all determine the fate of millions of species. We are at an inflection point, a threshold, where environmental change will outstrip our remedial capabilities either because of cost or because in the case of extinction of species, simply because it cannot be undone. I think this is an exciting time to be part of the conservation movement - a time when we are aware and a time when we can do something about it. But it is a narrow and closing window and we must make haste.

To me, if we really are to solve the mainstreaming problem - make conservation everyone's business - we have to seek the synergies between NGOs, Governments, and in particular the Private Sector - a group that we have not strategically engaged.

Those who hold the view that ecologically destructive practices are necessary if unfortunate outcome of achieving improved standard of living are wrong. Conversely, those who condemn the role of the private enterprise condemn society to a bitter conflict and one which I doubt not the winner as well as what will be lost.

Poverty

What we have to do is to work in a unified manner to as, as Dr. Gretchen Daily at Stanford University puts it, "tighten the feedback loops so that the environmental consequences of corporate (or even individual) behaviour quickly come home to roost".

We have to find common ground with others in the development assistance and poverty alleviation movement to tackle problems that benefit both our causes.

One example of such common cause is trade subsidies, which not only dampen feedback loops but also create poverty in far away places.

I was stuck by Claude Martin's (President of WWF International) anecdote yesterday at the session on poverty and biodiversity - Trade subsidies to the European fishing fleet not only cost European tax payers money but has directly contributed to the degradation of the West African fisheries and has made poor many a coastal fisherman.

A more recent study I know of has correlated the lack of fish protein with a subsequent increase in the trade of wild meat (bush meat - meat from wildlife often illegally and unsustainably killed to be sold often a premium in market across Africa, South East Asia, and South America). So here is a trade issue that not only dampens the environmental feedback loop thus creating unmanageable problems for conservation but also drives people into poverty.

People must lead

The Earth Summit has shown that governments cannot lead. People must lead, and then governments will follow. It is incumbent upon us in the conservation movement to engage with the private sector and seek mutually acceptable solutions and thereby demonstrate why environmental concerns should be as important and pertinent as food, education, security, jobs etc.

If we instead continue to ignore the private sector and don't try to create partnerships, I am convinced we will never be able to mainstream biodiversity conservation and the adage that people are not just the problem but are also part of the solution will remain tragically unfulfilled.

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