allAfrica.com: Africa: Conservation Should Be Major U.S.-Africa Policy Issue, Report Says (Page 1 of 2)

Nicholas P. Lapham, Vice President for Policy at Conservation International, joined other experts in making recommendations for U.S.-Africa policy in a Center for Strategic and International Studies report commissioned by Congress. Natural resource conservation, Lapham believes, should be promoted in its own right. However, it can also help the United States achieve other policy goals relating to health, security and economics.

Lapham argues that natural resources are integral to people's lives in Africa and sees a possibility for an increased role by the United States. The U.S. has great expertise in nature conservation, he said, and should therefore share this experience with other countries. Lapham spoke to AllAfrica's Tali Trigg about the recommendations made in the CSIS report.

Concerning U.S. nature conservancy action in Africa, can you mention any examples of U.S.-Africa projects that are currently being pursued?

The first recommendation encourages the U.S. government to build on the example of the Congo-Basin forest partnership, which is an effort that Secretary Powell has led and that started in 2002 to promote the conservation of shared eco-systems - in other words, natural habitats that stretch across national boundaries. These natural habitats do not respect political borders. So if you're really going to conserve them effectively, you must have effective cooperation between nations or your conservation work isn't going to succeed.

What role do you see for Africa in this U.S.-Africa partnership?

There are African governments [that] have developed conservation visions and blueprints for these eco-systems. It's not the case of the U.S. coming in and telling them what to do or what to conserve - on the contrary. In the Congo-Basin there was something called the Yaounde Declaration, which was adopted by all the heads of states in the region. It identified the priority areas to conserve and really the Congo-Basin forest partnership builds on that declaration. In other words, it's not an American vision. It's an African vision that the U.S. is coming in and saying, `How can we help you implement this and realize it.'

Where do you think this partnership will be applied in the future?

Let's take that approach to two other major shared eco-systems. One of them is what is called the Miombo woodland. Miombo is a species of tree and the Miombo woodlands are a vast, tropical, dry forest that extends through almost all - not completely all - but most of the SADC countries. And there is a protocol under SADC that calls for its conservation. Again, this is a case where the U.S., we believe, could not just come in and provide important technical, financial, diplomatic assistance, but also can leverage funding from other major donors, like the World Bank, the Global Environmental Facility, [and] the private sector.

The other eco-system that we talk about and focus in on is the Guinea Current Large Marine Ecosystem - what is more commonly known as the Gulf of Guinea. When people think of the Gulf of Guinea they think of it because of its importance for oil. However, it's got a lot more to it. It's one of the richest marine environments on Earth. It has tremendous significance and importance for food security in terms of the fisheries that it contains. I forget the exact numbers, but you have hundreds of millions of people living along the coast within that marine ecosystem, so they - A) stand to be affected by fishing or pollution of marine ecosystem and B) through their own activities have a tremendous impact on how that ecosystem functions. We felt that those two systems - because they're of obvious strategic relevance to the U.S. and because the needs of those ecosystems cry out for U.S. financial and technical assistance - would be logical candidates for future regional conservational efforts. And that again ties back into the background paper which talks about how regional trans-frontier conservation programs [to] help not just conserve nature but promote economic development through tourism, help build closer bilateral relations between countries through such things such as "peace-parks," and serve other functions as well.

What is the relationship between conflict and mismanagement of natural resources that you wrote about in the report?

The second recommendation relates to the linkages between governance and conservation. One of the ways that Charles Taylor financed his military campaigns is the ruthless activities that he undertook. And if you look at timber and forests are one of Liberia's major assets, as there a number of other forest-rich African countries. And this recommendation basically says that there needs to be greater transparency and a greater emphasis on how forest-resources are governed to achieve a number of different results: a more sustainable management of forests [and] to make sure that resources derived from use of the forests are accounted for and that they get to the local communities where these forests are located. In other words, that they're not siphoned off and misused for other purposes as they were in Liberia.

We make three sorts of sub-recommendations within this. One of them is that we'd like to see a significant portion of the U.S. contribution to Liberia's reconstruction allocated for conservation purposes. We think it is fundamental to Liberia's effective reconstruction. That is one sub-recommendation. Another is that, across Africa we're endorsing the trend towards community-based natural resources management, which is about giving local communities a greater share, a greater authority and responsibility over managing the resources within their area. We think that's going to lead to better management and better conservation. Not only does it give local communities a greater stake in conservation, but it also helps to develop the mechanisms for good governance. If local communities are in charge of managing their own lands and control access to those lands, receive the benefits - whether it's tourism or hunting from those lands - [and] develop small non-profit organizations and civil society, that is an advantage to good governance programs broadly.

web allafrica.com	Enter your search terms	Submit search form
OR subscribers use AllAfrica's premium search engine


Use our pull-down menus to find more stories

Today's Most Active Stories