[MPWG] IUCN-For Plants and People

[Patricia_Ford at fws.gov]

FYI-
http://www.iucn.org/congress/documents/plants-and-people.htm
Sept. 2, 2004
For Plants and People

By Mark Rowe*


The  environment  movement  has  been accused in the past of putting plants
before people. But, as IUCN ? The World Conservation Union prepares for its
Congress in November, there is an increasing recognition that the health of
the  planet  is  directly linked to the health of those who live on it. How
can the conservation of our forests and other ecosystems tackle poverty?


Is  environmental  protection  a  luxury  for  poor countries? Conventional
wisdom  has  argued  "get  rich  first,  clean up later". Forests and other
ecosystems,  according  to this argument, will only get the protection they
need  when  poverty  has  been  alleviated  and  higher  levels of economic
development attained.


Increasingly,  this notion is being seen as untrue. Thinking in development
and conservation circles has shifted significantly in recent years. Instead
of  setting environmentalists and development agencies against one another,
there is now widespread recognition that social, economic and environmental
issues  are inter-related. If used sustainably, forests, wetlands and other
natural  systems can act as a safety net against destitution and even raise
people permanently above the poverty line.


"Each  year, forest products generate tens of billions of dollars of income
in  developing  countries  ," said David Kaimowitz, Director General of the
Center  for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) . "Poor people would be
a lot better off if a greater portion of that came to them either as direct
income   or   through   government   services  financed  by  timber  taxes.
Fortunately, many countries are increasingly recognising the importance and
potential of community forest ownership."


The  concept  of  sustainable development first gained real currency at the
Rio  Earth  Summit  in  1992.  It  encourages  us  to  blend  environmental
protection,   social   care,   and  economic  development.  While  economic
development  has  often  been  driven  by unsustainable exploitation of the
environment,  recent  thinking  argues  that  these  three elements are not
mutually  exclusive. In short, forests destroyed upstream result in greater
flooding  downstream;  land  cleared for cattle soon becomes overgrazed and
eroded;   but   sustainable   use   allows  their  value  to  be  exploited
indefinitely.


Conservationists  admit  they  haven't  always got the balance right in the
past. According to CIFOR, the well-intentioned policy of closing forests in
Nepal  to  save  them  from  over-exploitation  actually  ended  up hurting
charcoal makers who traditionally depended on forests for their livelihood.
"In  the past few years we have seen the will to move in the direction of a
better  connection between conservation and sustainable development issues,
human  well-being  and  poverty,"  said  Gonzalo Oviedo, senior advisor for
social  policy  with  IUCN.  "That's  a  fundamental  change,  even  though
conservation and development objectives may not always be compatible."


Extreme   poverty,  says  Mr  Oviedo,  is  often  present  in  areas  where
conservationists  are  trying  to  conserve  biodiversity. "Poverty and the
environment  are not mutually exclusive, as some people in this sector used
to think," he said. "We can't ignore the implications that conservation has
for  poverty.  It's impossible to achieve your aims for biodiversity if you
don't  address  the  social  situation and vice versa. Poor people in rural
areas  are  those  who  depend  most  directly  on  natural  resources  and
biodiversity."


So  what  role do forests play in tackling poverty? Forest can offer health
benefits,  by  protecting  the quality and quantity of water supplies. They
also  provide  important  defenses  against sickness for rural families who
lack  access  to formal health care systems. In North Africa and the Middle
East, medicinal plants are seen as an important source of income as well as
accessible medicine. Many communities that produce medicinal plants to sell
do so by taking the plants direct from the forest.


"Hundreds  of  millions  of  poor people depend heavily on food, medicines,
energy,  and the agricultural inputs they get from the forest. Those things
won't  make  these people rich, but they will make their lives easier until
they  are  able to find some way to really improve their incomes," says Mr.
Kaimowitz.


For  several years, IUCN has run a project in Laos, focusing on sustainable
harvesting regimes for bitter bamboo shoots and wild cardamom in Nam Pheng,
a  village  in  the  northwest of the country. Before IUCN became involved,
drinking  and  washing  water came mostly from a stream passing through the
village.  Diarrhoea  and malaria were prevalent. The villagers' main source
of  cash  income  was  non-timber  forest products (NTFPs), such as bamboo,
which  was  bartered  on  a  small  scale to traders exporting to China and
Thailand for clothes and food.


The  project  supported a village rice bank, which addressed the villagers'
most  pressing need of guaranteed food. Other crucial steps were remarkably
simple.  Villagers were taught to use weighing scales, which gave them more
confidence  to  command higher prices. Bamboo brings each seller an average
of 1 million Kip per year (US$93) and accounts for 40% of household income.
Following  the  success  of  bitter bamboo, a similar regime was set up for
cardamom.  This  raised the price for cardamom from 500 Kip/kg (US$4 cents)
to  35,000  Kip/kg  (US$3.26). Around 10% of each sale is placed in an NTFP
Fund, which has supported community projects, including the construction of
a  school,  the purchase of an electric generator, and interest-free loans.
Between 1998 and 2000, 17 million Kip (US$1,586) accumulated in this fund.


The  benefits to the villagers are clear: poverty rates dropped by at least
50%; the number of poor households fell by 23%; the number of middle-income
houses  increased  by  10%.  Child  mortality  of  children  under five was
eradicated.


How  has  this  helped  the  environment?  The  economic value of NTFPs has
provided  incentives  for  villagers  to  manage forests, including the 515
hectares  they  have  allocated as bamboo forest. Villagers say the project
"opened their eyes" to NTFPs, which has meant an appreciation of forests as
an  economic  asset  as  opposed  to  the  more  commonly  assumed economic
hindrance.  It  also  helped  IUCN  to  build  trust  among  villagers in a
conservation project and reduced threats of over-harvesting in forests.


Other  ecosystems, such as wetlands, play a similarly crucial role. In many
places in Africa, the usual pattern of rainfall means that, for much of the
year,  water is scarce. For this reason, the capacity of wetlands to retain
moisture  for long periods, and sometimes throughout the year, makes them a
valuable  resource  for  agriculture.  In  many areas they are inextricably
linked to cropping and livestock management systems.


The  Barotse  Floodplain  in  Zambia  illustrates  how  poor people rely on
wetlands,  and  on  natural cycles, to produce a diverse range of crops and
incomes.  Barotse  covers  an area of some 550,000 hectares, almost half of
the  region's  total  wetland  cover.  The plain is home to 225,000 people.
During  the dry season, the bulk of local production, economic activity and
settlement  are  focused  in  the  floodplain  area.  As  the plain becomes
inundated, most of the population moves to the uplands and plain fringes.


The  inhabitants  depend  on  a  mixed  livelihood, combining crop farming,
livestock keeping and fishing. As mono-cultures are extremely vulnerable to
collapse  and  over-exploitation,  this  diversity is crucial, for it is an
effective  means  of  spreading  risk.  Products include maize, rice, sweet
potatoes, sugar cane, fruit and vegetables. The Barotse Floodplain is known
to  be  one  of  the  most productive cattle areas in the country. When the
floodplain   becomes   fully   inundated,  fish  are  mainly  caught  using
traditional maalelo traps.


The  floodplain  population  makes  use  of a wide range of wetland plants,
animals  and  natural  resources  for  their  daily subsistence and income.
Almost  all  households  harvest  grass, reeds and papyrus for use in house
construction,  thatching,  mat  and  basket  production,  broom  making and
fishing  apparatus  construction.  Clay  is  also important, used for house
construction   and  pottery.  Typically,  the  gross  financial  value  per
household  of  the  wetlands  is  US$417  a year, which is significant when
compared  to the country's GDP per capita of US$354. In total, local use of
wetland  resources  in  the  Barotse Floodplain has a net economic value of
some US$8.64 million a year.


"Barotse  is  absolutely  critical,"  said  Lucy  Emerton,  head  of IUCN's
Ecosystems  and Livelihoods Group Asia. "It forms the basis of the people's
food, income, fuel, medicines, building materials, pasture and agriculture.
The  seasonality of the flooding also dictates their seasonal movements and
livelihood  activities,  where  their  settlements  are  and  how  they are
organized."


But such systems are vulnerable to the increasing pressures of economic and
population  growth.  These threats take us back to that notion that you get
rich  first,  clean up later. Resource over-exploitation, land drainage and
encroachment  for  agriculture,  and  interference with river hydrology for
large-scale  hydropower  and  irrigation.  In  Pakistan,  the inappropriate
exploitation of the environment is causing wide-spread concern.


The  country's socio-economic development plans depend heavily on expanding
land  under  irrigated crops. Pakistan , drawing on glacial waters from the
Himalaya  and the Karakorum that feed the Indus River , has one of the most
developed  irrigation  systems in the world. In the past 60 years, Pakistan
has  built  a network that includes three major reservoirs, 43 main canals,
and  89,000  watercourses  totaling  1.65 million km. These feed 15 million
hectares  of farmland, and use up 60% of the Indus's water. This has helped
large-scale commercial users and driven Pakistan's hydropower schemes.


But  what  about  the  communities  downstream? According to Mohummad Tahir
Qureshi,  Programme Director for IUCN's Coastal Ecosystem Unit in Pakistan,
some  1.5  million  people  are  dependent on mangrove forests in the Indus
delta  for  fisheries,  fuel  and  fodder.  The  annual value of catch from
mangrove-dependent  fish  species  in  the  delta  is around US$20 million.
Shrimps  have  a  domestic  value  of  US$70 million and an export value of
US$105 million.


But the vast abstraction of water from the Indus has, says Mr Qureshi, left
insufficient flow to meet the needs of downstream ecosystems, in particular
the mangrove forests on the coast around the Indus Delta. By increasing the
salinity  of  the  coastal  waters,  fisheries  production  has  been  hit,
crippling local populations.


Mr   Qureshi  believes  that  development  upstream  actually  hinders  the
long-term  development  of  the  whole  Indus  basin. "Due to the change in
ecological  conditions,  the  mangrove  ecosystem has been degraded and its
resources  have  depleted  at  an  alarming rate," he said. "This threatens
natural  resources and the livelihoods of a large number of fishermen. It's
now  becoming  clear that the irrigation system is approaching the limit of
water   exploitation  and  that  this  exploitation  has  had  considerable
environmental, social and economic costs."


Mr  Oviedo  believes  political  support, at the national and international
level, is crucial in order for such policies to change. "It's fundamental,"
he said. "Some countries have a one-dimensional approach to the question of
environment.  They  just  don't  see  the  connection. But if we ignore the
environmental element, poverty will increase in the long term."

Mark Rowe is a freelance writer based in Bristol, UK . This article is
provided for reproduction free of charge by IUCN ? The World Conservation
Union . The article can be reproduced in any way, as long as due
acknowledgment is given to IUCN and the author, and the meaning of the
article is not changed.