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.

Many donor institutions are restricted by certain policies. In general, governmental donors don't finance the hiring of staff for the governments of developing countries, as they feel that governments should pay for their own public servants. So, they use the money to finance very good and useful studies, training and some infrastructure.

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.
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