Archive for the ‘Conservation’ Category

For what dost thou lament?

Traditional livelihoods decline in Borneo forests as communities rely on mining, logging jobs, so say CIFOR: A new study by the Center for International Forestry Research has found that villages along the Malinau River, an area rich in valuable timber and mineral resources, are relying less on traditional livelihoods — typically a mixture of hunting, [...]

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CSR and Tropical Conservation

J from the ’Hood has challenged aid bloggers to write something about Corporate and Social Responsibility. This is my contribution focusing on my specific area of expertise. I’m going to start with a bold assertion unsupported by anything more than my gut feeling. Corporate donors to tropical conservation are mostly big polluters and destroyers of [...]

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Whose park is greener?

A quick update on my recent post on the irrelevance of the IUCN classifications of protected areas. Two recent pieces of news courtesy of CIFOR that I should have included in my discussion (I wasn’t quite up to date with my blog reading): In many cases community conservation overall appears more effective than strictly protected [...]

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My park is greener than your park (on paper)

A new paper in Oryx by Charlie  Gardner analyses the application of IUCN’s protected area categories to Madagascar’s parks and reserves system. Apparently they’re not a very good fit, but I find myself struggling to care. In 2008 Boitani et al called for a protected area classification system based on conservation outcomes, which in an ideal [...]

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Conservation and Compromise

Here are some recent posts on blogs I follow which, depending upon your perspective, may count as either good or bad news: WWF are in the firing line for their Global Forest and Trade Network being little more than greenwashing. The climate for climate change mitigation related regulation is markedly better in many (mostly developing) [...]

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In which CORE bids to Stop the War on the Poor by declaring bizarre war on FSC

This has me much bemused. FSC could do with some tightening up on standards and procedures, that is for sure, but the Congress on Racial Equality’s conclusions leave me asking WTF? They claim to expose three myths: Myth 1: FSC is Transparent – FSC created its own NGO-influenced certification system without regard for national forest [...]

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Certification: all things to all men?

IIED’s Sian Lewis has an intriguing piece on Fair Trade over at the Due South blog. My eye was particularly taken by this section: Other participants shared Justice’s concerns over the infrastructure for fair trade certification. Jorge Chavez-Tafur, from the Centre for learning on sustainable agriculture (ILEIA), asked “Is it true that fair trade standards [...]

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Serengeti dodges the bullet

Good news over the weekend. The trunk road that the Tanzanian government proposed to push through the northern part of the world famous Serengeti National Park will not now go ahead as originally planned. The road that wasn’t and the wildebeest migration (map by FZS). I had refrained from commenting on this whilst it was [...]

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World Whatever Day

Yesterday was World Environment Day. Woohoo! Being of a greenish persuasion I guess I should be more enthusiastic, but, honestly who exactly pays attention to these things? How many such days are there, any way? I suspect rather more than 365 … I can see they are not without their uses. They can be good [...]

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CI’s Defence

Conservation International have hit back at their accusers over the ‘scandal’ of their engagement with big business with CI’s CEO Peter Seligmann’s robust defence of their approach. I note that Seligmann raises many of the same points I did last week. Seligmann also points fingers of his own, accusing the investigators of using all the [...]

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