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) countries around the world even if this is not manifesting itself in the UFCCC negotiations.
- Some conservation scientists have imagined how businessmen in developing countries may view conservation, and it ain’t so good!
I could write a lot of preachy stuff about each of the above, but I will content myself with this: most conservation is highly political, and politics is famously the art of the possible. I’m mostly glad that there are the likes of Global Witness out there manning the barricades *, but I prefer the messier stuff of working out practicable solutions that take due note of the fact that environmentalism is not the only narrative out there.
The difference is summed up for me with the simple observation that while those who take a strictly moral view of things object to a single elephant being shot (especially if it is in the name of conservation!), experience has shown that one of the best ways to increase elephant numbers is by leveraging lucrative hunting fees to manage habitat to suit elephants and compensate local farmers whose crops are damaged. I’m tickled that Switzerland would even consider mandating legal representation for animals. (It was rejected, but I’m even more intrigued as to where they proposed to draw the line as to what counts as an ‘animal’.) Maybe, in the distant future we will be regarded as barbarous for even suggesting people could ‘keep’ animals (in the same way that we now regard keeping other people as slaves is barbarous), but in the here and now most conservation action will come about through dirty compromise. Time to roll up our sleeves …
* Though sometimes I wish they wouldn’t crowd out the more nuanced discussions.
Bottom Up Thinking 