Vanmorgen zat ik in mijn kantoor dat uitkijkt vanaf een rots over de Potomac River en las ik in de volkskrant on-line over eem beleid dat mij zeer na aan het hart ligt: "Natuurlijke procesgang". Het SBB heeft een beleid ontwikkeld voor de Oostvaardersplassen, waarbij natuurlijke procesgang zeer vergaand zal worden doorgevoerd. Aldus het bericht in de krant, staat het beleid onder aanvoering van de door mij zeer gerespecteerd oud collega Dr. Frans Vera. Frans was destijds als "LNVer" zeer instrumenteel in het veranderen van het rivieren beleid, dat onderdeel uitmaakte van mijn beleidsveld en we hebben daarin veel samengewerkt. Zijn visie op het rivierengebied - destijds ontwikkeld als "Plan Ooievaar" samen met mijn vriend en collega Ir. Dick de Bruin was van doorslaggevende invloed op "mijn" beleidsterrein binnen de Rijkswaterstaat, de "Zoete Rijkswateren". V&W minister, Drs, Neelie Smit Kroes, onarmde het idee en speelde een sleutelrol in het bevorderen van hun gedachten.
Het is moeilijk vanaf 5000 km afstand te oordelen over natuurbeheers beleidskoersen voor Nederland. Er is sinds mijn vertrek uit Nederland in 1992 zeer veel veranderd ten goede op het gebied van natuurbeheer.
In 1970 schreef mijn vader Dr. Mr. Daan het eerste boekje in Nederland over natuurbeheer, onder die titel. Als biologiestudent en Projects Officer van de International Youth Federation For Environmental Studies, IYF, was ik zeer geporteerd van grootwild beheer en vond eigenlijk dat er weer wolven op de Veluwe moesten worden geïntroduceerd. Om mijn aandringen had mijn vader dat opgenomen in het boekje. Zijn collega en mijn mentor Prof. Mörzer Bruijns, schreef een uitgebreid voorwoord, maar hij stelde als eis dat de passage over de wolven eruit moest en dat gebeurde dus. Er zijn nog steeds geen wolven op de Veluwe, maar ze hebben zich van nature al weer uitgebreid tot in Duitsland, en uiteindelijk zullen ze ook de Veluwe wel bereiken!
Met deze ervaring begon een gedachtengang van het geleidelijk werken aan verandering van trends en beleid. Wanneer je aan werkt aan een verandering van beleid, dan gaat het allemaal zo tergend langzaam! Dan houd ik mijzelf altijd een opmerking voor ogen van een voormalig D66: Als het kompas van een schip op weg van Amsterdam naar New York 1 graad koersafwijking heeft, komt het in Zuid Amerika terecht. Kijk maar eens wat er gebeurd is met het gedachtengoed van de natuurlijke procesgang:
Begin jaren tachtig was ik de coördinator voor het Waddenzeebeleid bij de Rijkswaterstaat. Jarenlang was de Rijkswaterstaat bezig geweest om land aan te winnen en kunstmatig duinen te vormen ter voorbereiding op een toekomstige inpoldering van de Waddenzee, en nadat de regering in 1979 (was dat het jaar?) had besloten om de Waddenzee als natuurgebied te behouden, was het moeilijk voor veel van mijn zeer gerespecteerde RWS collegas om zich in te stellen op een nieuwe situatie. Als ëen van de eerste biologen binnen de dienst, moest ik hen duidelijk maken wat je - in mijn visie - zou moeten doen met dit enorme gebied. Ik legde hen uit over het natuurbeheer in Nederland dat moest werken met zeer kleine gebieden waar door oude landbouwgebruiken een zeer mooie en gevarieerde natuur was ontstaan, die alleen door actief beheer in stand gehouden kon worden. Maar de Waddenzee was anders. Het gebied was weliswaar ontstaan als gevolg van ontvening en ontwatering dat zo'n duizend jaar geleden was begonnen, maar er was nooit landbouw bedreven en er waren weinig soorten afhankelijk van menselijk handelen. Met 240.000 ha was het een gebied van een omvang waar dingen mogelijk waren die nergens elders zouden kunnen plaatsvinden:
Hier kon de natuur tamelijk ongestoord zijn gang gaan. Daartoe introduceerde ik de term "natuurlijke procesgang" binnen de RWS. Ik werd al spoedig gesteund door mijn vriend Dr. Jaap de Vlas, nadat die enkele jaren later zich ging bezighouden met het Waddenzeebeleid als medewerker van LNV. Samen hebben we toen dat concept verder ontwikkeld in het Beleidsplan Buitendijkse Gronden.
Een jaar of 5 later, toen op het hoofdkantoor van de Rijkswaterstaat in Den Haag, werd ik belast met het samengaan van de Rijkswaterstaat en de Rijksdienst IJsselmeerpolders, de RIJP. Op dat moment werden de Oostvaardersplassen onderdeel van "mijn" beleid, en je kunt je wel voorstellen dat ik hier een prachtige gelegenheid zag liggen. Staatsbosbeheer was verantwoordelijk voor het beleid natuurbeheersbeleid, maar de RIJP - op dat moment formeel de RWS Directie Flevoland geworden - voerde het onderzoek en het beheer uit. Ik fluisterde mijn collegas van de nieuwe Directie Flevoland in, dat wij het vanuit de hoofddirectie best aardig zouden vinden als er in de Oostvaardersplassen grote grazers - met name heck runderen, edelherten en wisenten, zouden worden geïntroduceerd en als er een wat natuurlijkere procesgang zou worden nagestreefd. Met deze nieuwe signalen van de RWS, en geleidelijke veranderingen in de traditionele "bosbouwers cultuur" van Staatsbosbeheer in die tijd, kwam er spoedig een verandering op gang, die in de Oostvaardersplassen leidde tot veel natuurlijkere processen.
Overigens moet u niet denken dat ik ooit de illusie gehad heb dat in de 6000 ha van de Oostvaardersplassen een volledig natuurlijke procesgang zou kunnen plaatsvinden. Het gebied ligt een paar meter onder het peil van het IJsselmeer en alleen al voor zijn waterhuishouding is het afhankelijk van een kunstmatig peilbeheer, waarvoor het nodig is een scenario voor te schrijven. Zo'n scenario kan natuurlijk een natuurlijke procesgang nabootsen, maar is dat natuurlijk nooit.
De door Jaap en mij aarzelend geïntroduceerde gedachte van natuurlijke procesgang is nu vrij algemeen goed geworden binnen de grote natuur beherende organisaties, Natuurmonumenten en SBB. De vraag is echter, hoe ver moet je gaan? Willen we grote grazers in de grote natuurgebieden, zoals in de Verenigde Staten? Ik persoonlijk vind van wel. Kunnen die de variatie in stand houden die ontstaan is onder eeuwen van kleinschalig landbouwbeheer? Tot op zekere mate. Maar niet volledig.
De natuurgebieden in Nederland zijn te klein van omvang voor een volledige natuurlijke procesgang van populaties van dieren zo groot als wisenten, edelherten, heck runderen, przwalski paarden, etc. Zeker als je ze dan ook nog eens bij elkaar zet in 6.000 ha. Zelfs in de enorme gebieden van de VS wordt van tijd tot tijd ingegrepen in de populaties van sommige grote dieren, zoals de bisons.
Ik kan mij dan ook de zorg voorstellen van sommige organisaties, zoals Vogelbescherming Nederland over het verdwijnen van vogelsoorten. Wij staan wereldwijd voor de enorme taak om het erfgoed van planten en diersoorten in stand te houden op hooguit zo'n 10% van het "droge" aardoppervlak. Wij zullen vele soorten verliezen (lees hier maar hoe dat werkt: [url]http://www.ecosystems.ws/minimum_area.htm[/url]
Wereldwijd zullen we minstens 30% van alle soorten en planten verliezen, en als gevolg van klimaatverandering waarschijnlijk meer.
Terwijl ik razend enthousiast ben over de uitbreiding van het aantal grote grazers in Nederland, maak ik mij toch ook zorgen over andere soorten die thuishoren in de grote moerassen van de grote rivieren delta, "Nederland". Deze rivieren delta is op geen stukken na zo vrij als die van de andere enorme Europese rivierendelta, die van de Donau. Alle moerasgebieden in Nederland zijn afhankelijk van een door de mens gekozen waterhuishouding (het waterpijl), en daarmee is een volledige natuurlijke procesgang uitgesloten. Toen Jaap en ik dat concept propageerden, waren wij ons daar volledig van bewust, maar in de toen noodzakelijke verandering van de natuurbeheers-cultuur in Nederland, leek het ons niet nodig dat te benadrukken. Ik hoop dat degenen die nu het natuurbeheersbeleid ontwikkelen een middenweg weten te vinden.
Dat is niet makkelijk met zoveel zinnen en zoveel emoties, waar alle groeperingen echter ëen ding gemeen hebben: Een intense liefde en respect voor "alles wat groeit en bloeit" (was dat Thijsse?)
Dit bericht is natuurlijk een zeer geconcentreerde en waarschijnlijk wat éenzijdige weergave van alle zaken die speelden. Als u zich andere belangrijke dingen uit die tijd herinnert, dan vraag ik u om dit verslagje aan te vullen.
Inmiddels heeft een ander zeer nijpend probleem mijn aandacht gekregen en ik wil u haast smeken om het volgende te lezen, omdat het hier gaat om het grootste struikelblok voor de natuurbescherming in onwikkelingslanden, waar toch gauw 70% van alle soorten planten en dieren op aarde voorkomen: http://www.adopt-a-ranger.org Ook hier is het nodig tot een beleidsverandering te komen in de natuurbescherming, maar dan op wereldschaal. Tot nu toe heb ik maar zeer weinig begrip en steun kunnen vinden, en ook hier moet het roer om. Helaas is er maar zo weinig tijd!
2008-04-09
2008-04-07
Why your tree probably does not fix carbon or produce ogygen
The other day, a friend of mine was lamenting about the cherry tree in his yard that a careless contractor had torn down to expand hhis driveway. He remembered how his children had swung from that tree, the cherries they ate and the decades of oxygen that tree had produced to improve the environment.
In my work, I very frequently am confronted with people that think that all trees and forests produce oxygen, so I decided to write down the process, in what I hope is a simple way that helps lay(wo)men understand how it works.
It is true that during its life, a tree produces oxygen and sequesters carbon, following this equation:
6CO2+6H2O->C6H12O6+6O2, which then gets transformed into the many substances that are necessary for living bodies, in which complexes of carbon and hydrogen dominate.
However, what most people don't realize is that after they die, most trees either rot away or get burned. So then the carbon fixed in the tree disintegrates and all the fixed carbon turns into carbondioxide again (very simplified: C+O2=>CO2), thus completing the socalled carbon cycle.
Most organic material of trees in the cities and along roads end up in someone's fireplace, on the city dumps or are left to rot away in the field after they fall down. When that happens, their contribution to fixing carbon and producing oxygen is ZERO.
Now that I have you thinking, what happens to the production of oxygen of all those leaves on the trees? By now, you already guessed it, after they fall off, they rot away, and the carbon accumulated in them, gets transformed into carbon dioxide, while using the oxygen from the air in the process.
With this knowledge, lets reflect a moment about those beautiful tropical forests in the Amazon, or those endless forests in Canada and Siberia. Those forests are mature, and while some young trees grow bigger and bigger, old trees become sick, die and fall down. Every year, new leaves grow, while old leaves fall off and decay. In a slower cycle, new tree trunks grow and old ones tumble and decompose. A permanent cycle of production and disintegration, in which there is no net production of oxygen and no net fixation of carbon. There are many other advantages of natural forests, but the production of oxygen and the fixation of carbon is not among them.
For those who like to think a bit further:
In cold areas, there is a permanent accumulation of organic material on the forest floor, and indeed, the material that is really permanently accumulated, has caused a net production of oxygen and fixation of carbon. This however, is an extremely slow process, and much less 1 percent of the organic material of the very northern forests gets permanently fixed in the soil. In somewhat warmer regions, where occasional forest fires sweep through the forests, no organic material gets permanently fixed into the soil, whereas in tropical rainforests, the decaying process is so fast that most of the time, under the trees, the mineral soil is exposed, showing at best a few centimetres of recently fallen leaves.
So, no green long in the Amazon. :cry:
There are a few exceptions: there are tropical forests on Sumatra, Indonesia, where peat is accumulated, but again, the total amount is so minimal, that it can only be measured over centuries.
In my opinion, one can't consider organic material permanently fixed, unless it is covered under a layer of mineral sediments. That is how the mineral coal, oil and natural gas are fixed in the earth. Only, when covered under a secure layer of sediments, are the chances remote, that they become exposed to the air again, of course, until we dig them up. Those are processes of thousands of years though.
If we plant a new forest, we speculate that that forest will remain a forest forever. That is highly questionable. But even if it does, we must assume that it will be a production forest, and that over time it will go through a permanent cycle of growth and harvesting and that a portion of its wood will eventually burn up again in the form of used wood products (newspapers, furniture, etc.) after they have lost their usefulness to us.
Still, the plantation of new forests in itself is good, as they indeed do fix carbon and produce oxygen. But we will never be able to plant as many new forests as we are now losing to deforestation in developing countries. So before we start spending money on planting new forests, we should first spend money on keeping what we have. That is much cheaper and effective, while we also protect millions of species, that we are now losing to deforestation and climate change.
I have written more about that, and I hope you can spend a few more minutes to read that, so that you understand what is the real problem for nature conservation and using forests for carbon fixation and oxygen production. Please click on:
http://www.adopt-a-ranger.org/carbon_offset.htm
If you have any questions, please ask them on this forum, and I will be happy to answer them.
In my work, I very frequently am confronted with people that think that all trees and forests produce oxygen, so I decided to write down the process, in what I hope is a simple way that helps lay(wo)men understand how it works.
It is true that during its life, a tree produces oxygen and sequesters carbon, following this equation:
6CO2+6H2O->C6H12O6+6O2, which then gets transformed into the many substances that are necessary for living bodies, in which complexes of carbon and hydrogen dominate.
However, what most people don't realize is that after they die, most trees either rot away or get burned. So then the carbon fixed in the tree disintegrates and all the fixed carbon turns into carbondioxide again (very simplified: C+O2=>CO2), thus completing the socalled carbon cycle.
Most organic material of trees in the cities and along roads end up in someone's fireplace, on the city dumps or are left to rot away in the field after they fall down. When that happens, their contribution to fixing carbon and producing oxygen is ZERO.
Now that I have you thinking, what happens to the production of oxygen of all those leaves on the trees? By now, you already guessed it, after they fall off, they rot away, and the carbon accumulated in them, gets transformed into carbon dioxide, while using the oxygen from the air in the process.
With this knowledge, lets reflect a moment about those beautiful tropical forests in the Amazon, or those endless forests in Canada and Siberia. Those forests are mature, and while some young trees grow bigger and bigger, old trees become sick, die and fall down. Every year, new leaves grow, while old leaves fall off and decay. In a slower cycle, new tree trunks grow and old ones tumble and decompose. A permanent cycle of production and disintegration, in which there is no net production of oxygen and no net fixation of carbon. There are many other advantages of natural forests, but the production of oxygen and the fixation of carbon is not among them.
For those who like to think a bit further:
In cold areas, there is a permanent accumulation of organic material on the forest floor, and indeed, the material that is really permanently accumulated, has caused a net production of oxygen and fixation of carbon. This however, is an extremely slow process, and much less 1 percent of the organic material of the very northern forests gets permanently fixed in the soil. In somewhat warmer regions, where occasional forest fires sweep through the forests, no organic material gets permanently fixed into the soil, whereas in tropical rainforests, the decaying process is so fast that most of the time, under the trees, the mineral soil is exposed, showing at best a few centimetres of recently fallen leaves.
So, no green long in the Amazon. :cry:
There are a few exceptions: there are tropical forests on Sumatra, Indonesia, where peat is accumulated, but again, the total amount is so minimal, that it can only be measured over centuries.
In my opinion, one can't consider organic material permanently fixed, unless it is covered under a layer of mineral sediments. That is how the mineral coal, oil and natural gas are fixed in the earth. Only, when covered under a secure layer of sediments, are the chances remote, that they become exposed to the air again, of course, until we dig them up. Those are processes of thousands of years though.
If we plant a new forest, we speculate that that forest will remain a forest forever. That is highly questionable. But even if it does, we must assume that it will be a production forest, and that over time it will go through a permanent cycle of growth and harvesting and that a portion of its wood will eventually burn up again in the form of used wood products (newspapers, furniture, etc.) after they have lost their usefulness to us.
Still, the plantation of new forests in itself is good, as they indeed do fix carbon and produce oxygen. But we will never be able to plant as many new forests as we are now losing to deforestation in developing countries. So before we start spending money on planting new forests, we should first spend money on keeping what we have. That is much cheaper and effective, while we also protect millions of species, that we are now losing to deforestation and climate change.
I have written more about that, and I hope you can spend a few more minutes to read that, so that you understand what is the real problem for nature conservation and using forests for carbon fixation and oxygen production. Please click on:
http://www.adopt-a-ranger.org/carbon_offset.htm
If you have any questions, please ask them on this forum, and I will be happy to answer them.
2007-02-26
The earth's largest upcoming species extinction event ever: Specicide?
Currently, the protected areas in the UNEP-WCMC protected areas database cover between 10 and 12% of the world's land mass. The information is very inaccurate, in terms of size and IUCN protection category. Only about half of the area consists of fully protected areas in the IUCN categories I-IV. In the other half, forest exploitation can and usually does take place. So if of the other half, 50% would be effectively protected, somewhere between 7.5 and 9% would be protected. However, I estimate that less than 50% of the protected areas in developing and transition countries has any field staff at all, while the areas with field staff are understaffed by at least 50%. Expecting effective protection of even 7.5% seems rather optimistic.
When applying Arrhenius' (1921) "species-area curve", while assuming (1) the optimistic value z=.15 (Dobson 1996) to the protected land mass; (2) a land cover protected effectively and durably of about 9%; (3) all ecosystems represented using a fine distinction in ecosystems (Vreugdenhil et al. 2003) and (4) stable ecological conditions, one may expect the conservation of 70% of the terrestrial species of the planet and according to this model the loss of 30%.
However, for island situations, the z factor increases, thus lowering the value of the species-area relationship . As many protected areas will be surrounded by large areas of agricultural land, they are becoming islands for many populations of species. There are no detailed ecosystem maps for most developing countries and representativeness evaluations have only taken place for a few countries in the world. The protected areas of the world are not including all ecosystems of the world, and therefore the species area curve is too optimistic and a solid representativeness evolution for all developing and transition countries is direly needed.
There are no scientifically sound models to predict the effect of climate change on the survival of species. Changing ecological conditions resulting from climate change however, will impact the survival strategies of many species and particularly in the world's most diverse ecosystems, the humid tropical forests. There, the impact may be far reaching if climate change would intensify and prolong the dry seasons. If this would happen, more trees would seasonally shed their leaves, and the sun would penetrate forest levels that previously would never be exposed to direct sunlight. Many species would not be able to survive such conditions for prolonged periods of time. As there are no models to predict the effects, we may only speculate the impact on the species survival on earth, but whatever the outcome, its effect will be accumulated to the minimum species loss of 30%. For the sake of having some kind of idea how much we are talking about, I dare to speculate that another 10 - 20 % may be lost. Yet another 10% - 20 may be lost due to inadequate ecosystem representation and ineffective protection of the protected areas. Under the most optimistic scenario the world would lose 40% of its species, while under a more pessimistic scenario, the world may lose as much as 70% of its species. All this is expected to take place in the twenty first century and depending on the outcome of the measures to be taken, this will be among the most severe or even the single most severe species extinction event in the existence of the planet. As this entire extinction event is due to human actions and at least a part of it is due to political inaction, this extinction event should be considered as a mass specicide.
When applying Arrhenius' (1921) "species-area curve", while assuming (1) the optimistic value z=.15 (Dobson 1996) to the protected land mass; (2) a land cover protected effectively and durably of about 9%; (3) all ecosystems represented using a fine distinction in ecosystems (Vreugdenhil et al. 2003) and (4) stable ecological conditions, one may expect the conservation of 70% of the terrestrial species of the planet and according to this model the loss of 30%.
However, for island situations, the z factor increases, thus lowering the value of the species-area relationship . As many protected areas will be surrounded by large areas of agricultural land, they are becoming islands for many populations of species. There are no detailed ecosystem maps for most developing countries and representativeness evaluations have only taken place for a few countries in the world. The protected areas of the world are not including all ecosystems of the world, and therefore the species area curve is too optimistic and a solid representativeness evolution for all developing and transition countries is direly needed.
There are no scientifically sound models to predict the effect of climate change on the survival of species. Changing ecological conditions resulting from climate change however, will impact the survival strategies of many species and particularly in the world's most diverse ecosystems, the humid tropical forests. There, the impact may be far reaching if climate change would intensify and prolong the dry seasons. If this would happen, more trees would seasonally shed their leaves, and the sun would penetrate forest levels that previously would never be exposed to direct sunlight. Many species would not be able to survive such conditions for prolonged periods of time. As there are no models to predict the effects, we may only speculate the impact on the species survival on earth, but whatever the outcome, its effect will be accumulated to the minimum species loss of 30%. For the sake of having some kind of idea how much we are talking about, I dare to speculate that another 10 - 20 % may be lost. Yet another 10% - 20 may be lost due to inadequate ecosystem representation and ineffective protection of the protected areas. Under the most optimistic scenario the world would lose 40% of its species, while under a more pessimistic scenario, the world may lose as much as 70% of its species. All this is expected to take place in the twenty first century and depending on the outcome of the measures to be taken, this will be among the most severe or even the single most severe species extinction event in the existence of the planet. As this entire extinction event is due to human actions and at least a part of it is due to political inaction, this extinction event should be considered as a mass specicide.
2007-02-21
Protecting Nature Reserves: much better for the climate and hundreds of times cheaper
Protecting Nature Reserves: hundreds times cheaper than planting forests
According to the data of the United Nations Protected Areas database, there are almost one billion (1,000,000,000) ha of protected areas in developing and transition countries; about as much as Brazil and Peru together. If without sufficient rangers, half of those areas would disappear, the forests would disappear in half a billion (500,000,000) ha. That is more than 100 times of what could be planted as forest plantations over the same period of time, a measure that is promoted under the Kyoto protocol against climate change.
Planting new forest easily costs $1,000 - $5,000 per ha and like nature reserves, planted forests need to be protected by rangers, while additionally they need to be managed at least during the first 10 years. Compared to protected areas, forest plantations are small and therefore their cost per ha can be as much as 100 times more expensive than those of natural protected areas. So protecting nature reserves may be several hundred times cheaper than planting new forests, while it is far more effective in preventing CO2 production than forest plantations are in reducing CO2 from the air. Protecting nature reserves helps reduce the onslaught of life on earth, whereas forest plantations contribute very little to species conservation.
If you feel you want to do something that REALLY helps against climate change, you can be sure that adopting a ranger is one of the most effective ways. By adopting a ranger, you help prevent hundreds of millions of hectares of forest turn into Carbon dioxide (CO2) over the next twenty years, while you help protect the millions of species that would disappear with the forests. http://www.adopt-a-ranger.org/carbon_offset.htm has been created to raise funds to effectively help protect nature in developing and transition countries.
According to the data of the United Nations Protected Areas database, there are almost one billion (1,000,000,000) ha of protected areas in developing and transition countries; about as much as Brazil and Peru together. If without sufficient rangers, half of those areas would disappear, the forests would disappear in half a billion (500,000,000) ha. That is more than 100 times of what could be planted as forest plantations over the same period of time, a measure that is promoted under the Kyoto protocol against climate change.
Planting new forest easily costs $1,000 - $5,000 per ha and like nature reserves, planted forests need to be protected by rangers, while additionally they need to be managed at least during the first 10 years. Compared to protected areas, forest plantations are small and therefore their cost per ha can be as much as 100 times more expensive than those of natural protected areas. So protecting nature reserves may be several hundred times cheaper than planting new forests, while it is far more effective in preventing CO2 production than forest plantations are in reducing CO2 from the air. Protecting nature reserves helps reduce the onslaught of life on earth, whereas forest plantations contribute very little to species conservation.
If you feel you want to do something that REALLY helps against climate change, you can be sure that adopting a ranger is one of the most effective ways. By adopting a ranger, you help prevent hundreds of millions of hectares of forest turn into Carbon dioxide (CO2) over the next twenty years, while you help protect the millions of species that would disappear with the forests. http://www.adopt-a-ranger.org/carbon_offset.htm has been created to raise funds to effectively help protect nature in developing and transition countries.
2007-01-04
Climate change kills species long before they can perish from heat and draught
When in my last blog I wrote about my concern how the IMF impedes the increase of field staff required to grow along with the protected areas that have been created, mostly over the last two decades, as its structural adjustment programmes prescribe governments to reduce both staffing and budgets, I realized that another dramatic effect currently contributes to the onslaught of species.
Climate change has become the new wave of environmental concern. As governments have become increasingly budget aware, the ministers of finance do anything to prevent additional spending. New political agendas will have to be financed from budgets for politically less hot programmes. Biodiversity conservation has lost its political momentum and much of its financing is now used for other purposes, particularly climate change. The largest financing for biodiversity conservation has been redirected to different other noble and important directions, one of it being combating climate change. The World Wide Fund for Nature, WWF is now also using part of its funding to combat climate change.
As global change gets more and more attention from political icons, like Al Gore and Tony Blair, nature conservation will increasingly be pushed to the background. With the financing of the protected areas in developing countries already being very inadequate, the reduction of the budgets for biodiversity conservation to finance global change abatement, leads to ADDITIONAL species loss. Not because of climate change, but because of budget reduction! As a result, climate change kills species, long before the effects of global warming and draughts have permanently altered the ecosystems. Don't let this happen! Speak out to your government representative and let him/her know that for you species conservation is just as important as climate change abatement.
Climate change has become the new wave of environmental concern. As governments have become increasingly budget aware, the ministers of finance do anything to prevent additional spending. New political agendas will have to be financed from budgets for politically less hot programmes. Biodiversity conservation has lost its political momentum and much of its financing is now used for other purposes, particularly climate change. The largest financing for biodiversity conservation has been redirected to different other noble and important directions, one of it being combating climate change. The World Wide Fund for Nature, WWF is now also using part of its funding to combat climate change.
As global change gets more and more attention from political icons, like Al Gore and Tony Blair, nature conservation will increasingly be pushed to the background. With the financing of the protected areas in developing countries already being very inadequate, the reduction of the budgets for biodiversity conservation to finance global change abatement, leads to ADDITIONAL species loss. Not because of climate change, but because of budget reduction! As a result, climate change kills species, long before the effects of global warming and draughts have permanently altered the ecosystems. Don't let this happen! Speak out to your government representative and let him/her know that for you species conservation is just as important as climate change abatement.
2006-12-29
IMF structural adjustment policy greatest single impediment to conservation
Over the past year Global warming finally again was getting the attention it needs to get, since Mr. Bush had rather effectively wiped it off the political agenda by not signing the Kyoto protocol. While we continue to do far too little about it, climate change now seems to be high on the political agenda's again in many countries. Also WWF Netherlands has embraced the issue of global warming. It has been competing with Biodiversity funding by being financed from the GEF pot for quite a while now. Many conservation organizations and specialists too are redirecting their focus towards climate change.
But what about biodiversity conservation? What about the protected areas, those last places on earth where at least a part of those millions of critters and plants that call this planet HOME, can survive?
Never in history has nature conservation looked so gloomy. You ask why? It is rather simple. This most unfortunate war in Iraq and peace missions in countries like Afghanistan and a couple more by now almost forgotten countries, are consuming government budgets of important donor countries. As climate change rose on the political agendas, many governments have reduced budgets that are spent on nature conservation as they increased finances to fight global warming. After all, it is all the same isn't it? In fact, it is argued, we need to address global warming first, or otherwise many species will get extinct because of changing climate conditions.
These same wealthy and powerful countries dominate the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. Through these institutions, they are gently coercing developing countries to put financial order in the house through what is called "structural adjustment", something that that seems to be paying off, as over the last decade the economies of many developing countries have started to show growth rates that they never had before. But the medicine has been bitter both socially and environmentally. In the contracts with the IMF, the developing countries commit themselves to reducing the number of government employees. That is a major problem for conservation. As the ministers of finance of those countries simply reduce the staff and budgets of each ministry by a percentage, the ministries of Environment and National Parks Services in developing countries never can grow and I have come across many cases where they even had to REDUCE staff. Now, if your ministry has thousands of employees, the effect may not be so dramatic. But if your ministry has been created recently and you don't have the staff or funds to have any park rangers in in the majority of your national parks and nature reserves, you simply can't do your job at all as a ministry or as a national parks service.
So in spite of their good intentions, those IMF imposed structural adjustments are some of the most serious impediments to the conservation of nature and wildlife on earth, as they PREVENT the Ministries of Environment and National Parks Services to increase both staff and finances.
Please make comments on what you think!
2006-12-01
Nature Worldwide Creates Nature Oriented Search Engines Powered by Google
How often has it happened to you that you entered your search words in Google and got all those generic websites that gave you endlessly useless information, while you just knew something better must be out there somewhere? Recently, Google came up with a new facility, a customized search engine to your specifications. So, at WICE, we thought, that this would be a great facility, in the first place for our own research purposes, but then we thought, we should make this a facility to be shared with the entire conservation community. With the latter idea in mind, we came to the conclusion that we needed several specialized search engines, each with different focuses. Obviously, a general one was needed, which we dubbed "Nature Search" in which all nature related topic could be searched. But nature related topics are very broad and for certain fairly broad topics, a specialized search engine would be needed. Birds is one of those, so we created "Bird Search". Other animals, like mammals and insects appear to be much less requested, so we lumped all animals together in "Animal Search", which does not include specific bird websites. Then there are all the wild plants. We felt that those should be combined with vegetation, so we created "Flora and Vegetation Search". Maybe in the future we will need to add more thematic search engines, but we will start out with these non-commercial ones.
Of course, we often need products and service, and some of the most commonly needed products and services are "Ecotourims", "Natural Products", and "Field Equipment".
We currently have one of the WICE sponsored students, Jael Marquez, in Bolivia go through thousands of nature related website links to populate our search engines with the appropriate websites per category. We expect her to be ready by mid December 2006. The commercial websites will be finished a bit later.
We invite all our visitors to spend 10 minutes to add some of their favourate websites to the search engines, thus helping yourself and others to make these search engines very powerful web research tools.
Of course, we often need products and service, and some of the most commonly needed products and services are "Ecotourims", "Natural Products", and "Field Equipment".
We currently have one of the WICE sponsored students, Jael Marquez, in Bolivia go through thousands of nature related website links to populate our search engines with the appropriate websites per category. We expect her to be ready by mid December 2006. The commercial websites will be finished a bit later.
We invite all our visitors to spend 10 minutes to add some of their favourate websites to the search engines, thus helping yourself and others to make these search engines very powerful web research tools.
2006-11-12
Tens of millions wild animals die in Africa to safe children. UNICEF to blame?
Last Fryday, Michael Fae spoke at the National Conservation Training Center (http://nctc.gov) on mega transects, a method he has applies in Africa and now also on the Appalachian trail in that runs 2175 miles through the Appalachian Mountains of North America from Maine to Georgia (http://www.nps.gov/appa/)
He showed countless beautiful slights of African wildlife, and part of it particularly caught my attention. As many may know, mammals in Africa heavily depend on waterholes, particularly during the dry season. In some cases, local people use the consentration of animals in and around those waterholes to make an easy harvest of whatever they can get their hands on. One of the methods is to poison a waterhole with............... DDT to catch some fish. Wao, I thought, I thought that stuff had been banned for decades! Apparently not so.
In many countries in Africa, DDT can be bought cheaply and it appears to be distributed by or with the help of UNICEF in its quest to reduce or eradicate malaria, no doubt intended to be used to only spray inside homes (see also http://www.perc.org/perc.php?subsection=5&id=310). Having almost lost my wife and daughter to malaria in Benin about 3 decades ago, I have personal experience with the devastating attacks of this horrible disease. So I don't take malaria lightly! But there must be an alternative to handing out malaria to local people of at least distributing it at extremely low costs.
If you poison waterholes with DDT, the poison becomes more and more concentrated as the waterbody dries out, while the mammals start accumulating more and more DDT in their tissues as the dry season progresses, and even large mammals like elephants can perish, or at least their babies. But do you believe that as these poor villagers have access to cheap DDT that they won't use it to protect their harvests? DDT can double or triple their harvests! So the unintended use of DDT is virtually unavoidable when you make it available and wherever it is used it will have a devastating and long-lasting effect among birds, fishes, mammals, reptiles and probably even among children and unborn babies.
I don't know the answer or a solution, but there must be a better way of dealing with malaria than by promoting the use of DDT. People that donate to UNICEF must not be put in the situation where their donation safes a child but kill wild animals!
He showed countless beautiful slights of African wildlife, and part of it particularly caught my attention. As many may know, mammals in Africa heavily depend on waterholes, particularly during the dry season. In some cases, local people use the consentration of animals in and around those waterholes to make an easy harvest of whatever they can get their hands on. One of the methods is to poison a waterhole with............... DDT to catch some fish. Wao, I thought, I thought that stuff had been banned for decades! Apparently not so.
In many countries in Africa, DDT can be bought cheaply and it appears to be distributed by or with the help of UNICEF in its quest to reduce or eradicate malaria, no doubt intended to be used to only spray inside homes (see also http://www.perc.org/perc.php?subsection=5&id=310). Having almost lost my wife and daughter to malaria in Benin about 3 decades ago, I have personal experience with the devastating attacks of this horrible disease. So I don't take malaria lightly! But there must be an alternative to handing out malaria to local people of at least distributing it at extremely low costs.
If you poison waterholes with DDT, the poison becomes more and more concentrated as the waterbody dries out, while the mammals start accumulating more and more DDT in their tissues as the dry season progresses, and even large mammals like elephants can perish, or at least their babies. But do you believe that as these poor villagers have access to cheap DDT that they won't use it to protect their harvests? DDT can double or triple their harvests! So the unintended use of DDT is virtually unavoidable when you make it available and wherever it is used it will have a devastating and long-lasting effect among birds, fishes, mammals, reptiles and probably even among children and unborn babies.
I don't know the answer or a solution, but there must be a better way of dealing with malaria than by promoting the use of DDT. People that donate to UNICEF must not be put in the situation where their donation safes a child but kill wild animals!
2006-11-11
NATURE WORLDWIDE
NATURE WORLDWIDE is the title of the website http://www.birdlist.org, the official website of the World Institute for Conservation and Environment, WICE.
I got the ideas about the website during a training course on websites in 1995, when my webdesign instructor showed some websites that had some of the highest rankings on the internet, and I thought by myself, "How can we use the net to promote conservation? What would appeal to a large audience that could promote the interest in nature and nature conservation? Is there anything that people would want to find out about nature and that could stimulate their interest in helping to protect nature in a way that would be beneficial to themselves?
I was particularly concerned about visitation to national parks and nature reserves in developing countries. Only a few countries (at the time Costa Rica, Ecuador, Kenia and South Africa) were enjoying significant visitation, but even in those countries, only a few areas enjoyed more than 100,000 visitors per year.
Tourist operators were often sending their visitors to commercial places with which they had a particular deal, and most ecoturisme would bypass the majority of the protected areas. Having experimented with an ecotourims lodge in a national park, the Cuyabeno Lodge http://www.cuyabenolodge.com, I knew that most birdwatchers wanted the species list of the country before they would go on a trip, and birdwatchers are among the most adventurous ecotourists, often opening new destinations. So the idea was born to create a website that would provide a checklist of the birds of each country of the world. So WICE (http://www.wice.ws)started hiring young biologists in developing countries and biology students in the USA to analyze official checklists when available and analyze birding guides for all those numerous countries that did not or had not published an official birdlist. Millions of data were entered into what at the time was the largest database on bird presence for the entire world.
Our site was unique in many ways. First of all the major birding sites like "Birdlinks of the World", http://www.bsc-eoc.org/ and http://www.camacdonald.com/ listed country lists from a variety of links on the internet. Nobody however had taken the trouble of doing serious research in actually entering vast amounts of data into a database. It is a bit sad to now see that particularly Avibase has later copied our idea and now pretends to be the avibase . Well, anyway, that is the web. While birds no longer is unique, our site remains unique: We also list the protected areas of all the countries (http://www.nationalparks-worldwide.info), as well as the lists of mammals. For the latter, most continents are fairly well covered, but so far we have not done well in finding exhaustive mammal guides for most countries in Azia and there our lists are primarily limited to the macro mammals. But one day we will get there!
When our website is complete a few years down the road, you will find for every country of the world the protected areas, birds, mammals and possibly herpetofauno in one single website, as well as a vast resource of management tools and manuals for national parks, nature reserves and other protected areas. Ultimately it is our intention to provide you with info on each protected area, such as highlights, how to get there, options for staying, etc.
As WICE continuously works at methods for improving protected areas management, we also are sharing lots of tools and docuement on our websites, such as on monitoring (http://www.monitoring-nature.info), completely free GIS tools (http://www.ilwis.org), the Minimum Conservation System (MICOSYS) programme to analyse the representativeness, prioritize among protected areas and to assess staffing and financing needs.
Ultimately, we put the different themes in an integrated system of domains that are designed and linked in such a way that one barely notices the transfer from one domain to the next. These are our domains:
I got the ideas about the website during a training course on websites in 1995, when my webdesign instructor showed some websites that had some of the highest rankings on the internet, and I thought by myself, "How can we use the net to promote conservation? What would appeal to a large audience that could promote the interest in nature and nature conservation? Is there anything that people would want to find out about nature and that could stimulate their interest in helping to protect nature in a way that would be beneficial to themselves?
I was particularly concerned about visitation to national parks and nature reserves in developing countries. Only a few countries (at the time Costa Rica, Ecuador, Kenia and South Africa) were enjoying significant visitation, but even in those countries, only a few areas enjoyed more than 100,000 visitors per year.
Tourist operators were often sending their visitors to commercial places with which they had a particular deal, and most ecoturisme would bypass the majority of the protected areas. Having experimented with an ecotourims lodge in a national park, the Cuyabeno Lodge http://www.cuyabenolodge.com, I knew that most birdwatchers wanted the species list of the country before they would go on a trip, and birdwatchers are among the most adventurous ecotourists, often opening new destinations. So the idea was born to create a website that would provide a checklist of the birds of each country of the world. So WICE (http://www.wice.ws)started hiring young biologists in developing countries and biology students in the USA to analyze official checklists when available and analyze birding guides for all those numerous countries that did not or had not published an official birdlist. Millions of data were entered into what at the time was the largest database on bird presence for the entire world.
Our site was unique in many ways. First of all the major birding sites like "Birdlinks of the World", http://www.bsc-eoc.org/ and http://www.camacdonald.com/ listed country lists from a variety of links on the internet. Nobody however had taken the trouble of doing serious research in actually entering vast amounts of data into a database. It is a bit sad to now see that particularly Avibase has later copied our idea and now pretends to be the avibase . Well, anyway, that is the web. While birds no longer is unique, our site remains unique: We also list the protected areas of all the countries (http://www.nationalparks-worldwide.info), as well as the lists of mammals. For the latter, most continents are fairly well covered, but so far we have not done well in finding exhaustive mammal guides for most countries in Azia and there our lists are primarily limited to the macro mammals. But one day we will get there!
When our website is complete a few years down the road, you will find for every country of the world the protected areas, birds, mammals and possibly herpetofauno in one single website, as well as a vast resource of management tools and manuals for national parks, nature reserves and other protected areas. Ultimately it is our intention to provide you with info on each protected area, such as highlights, how to get there, options for staying, etc.
As WICE continuously works at methods for improving protected areas management, we also are sharing lots of tools and docuement on our websites, such as on monitoring (http://www.monitoring-nature.info), completely free GIS tools (http://www.ilwis.org), the Minimum Conservation System (MICOSYS) programme to analyse the representativeness, prioritize among protected areas and to assess staffing and financing needs.
Ultimately, we put the different themes in an integrated system of domains that are designed and linked in such a way that one barely notices the transfer from one domain to the next. These are our domains:
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