Washington, DC — Botswana's President Festus Gontenbanye Mogae speaks on African conservation efforts and wildlife protection at a Thursday symposium in Washington, DC, sponsored by the African Wildlife Foundation (AWF). In a statement, the AWF says the symposium, "will help raise awareness of the possibilities for environmentally responsible investments on the continent of Africa." Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa, also scheduled to address the symposium, has been forced to cancel because of illness.
The AWF was created in Washington, DC in 1961 by well-known conservationists like Russell Train, a founding director of the World Wildlife Fund, when a number of African nations associated with wildlife and game parks were just gaining their independence. "The question [the founders] were asking, was, when the colonial authorities pack up and go home will the newly-independent African countries have the capacity to manage these parks and wildlife resources on their own? " says the AWF president andCEO, Patrick Bergin. "They realized it wasn't even fair to ask these countries to do that without some training and capacity."
Over subsequent years, the AWF has played a major role in ensuring the continued existence of some of Africa's most rare and treasured species such as the elephant, mountain gorilla, rhinoceros and cheetah. It has pioneered community-based conservation efforts and promoted international cooperation to protect important sites across Africa.
African conservationists and business leaders will showcase best practices and success stories at Thursday's half-day symposium. AllAfrica's Charles Cobb Jr. spoke with the AWF's Bergin and AWF vice-president for programs Helen Gichohi. Excerpts:
The theme of the symposium is, "conservation is good business." My question is: Why would business think so? It is exactly the opposite of the assumption many people make about business when it comes to things like conservation. Why do you think otherwise?
Patrick Bergin: I am delighted you took it that way and that we are proposing something here that maybe runs contrary to conventional wisdom. We are looking into the future and not the past. The African Wildlife Foundation's mission is for the wildlife and wild lands of the African continent to endure forever. And we know that Africa has to experience development; there has to be economic development. So our program is really designed, I like to say, to negotiate a place for African wildlife in the future of Africa. We're looking at an Africa that can be more prosperous and we're looking at what can be the role of wildlife and conservation in that future.
Two of the countries that are going to be profiled in the symposium are Botswana and the United Republic of Tanzania. These are both countries that are experiencing economic growth and are attracting investment and, at the same time, are countries that have set aside huge areas for conservation. They are among the first countries that come to mind when you think of wildlife and wildlife areas. We think that these things can go together: economic growth and conservation.
I understand your belief, but why will businesses believe that and take it to heart? Conventional wisdom assumes the ruthless exploitation of flora and fauna if you need an oil well or you need a factory or mine or road or whatever. So, presumably you have reasons for believing your position is persuasive to X,Y or Z company.
Patrick Bergin: Yes we do. One of the things about the symposium is that we are going to have panels that are focused on various sectors. And the companies that are participating in these panels, while not necessarily perfect or have everything sorted out, but are companies that are interested in exploring with us what the linkages are between conservation and business.
Let me just give you a couple of examples. There is going to be a panel on agriculture and agri-business. One of the biggest threats we see to wildlife conservation in Africa is the expansion of marginal agriculture into marginal areas. If people aren't able to grow sufficient amounts of food in areas already cultivated, then they're going to keep pushing agriculture into marginal areas. As they do that, [wildlife] migration areas get cut off, protected areas become more and more isolated; there is more conflict between wildlife and farms. Where agriculture can be made more productive on existing agricultural lands, that's better for agriculture and better for conservation. So these are the sorts of synergies that this symposium is exploring.
When we talk about wildlife in Africa, what typically comes to mind here in the United States, I think, is something like the Serengeti in Tanzania or some of the other great game parks in East Africa. Perhaps the mountain gorillas in Congo and Burundi. But what about areas of Africa that are not generally associated with wildlife as such -- West Africa, for example? Other parts of Africa. How does the African Wildlife Foundation grapple with conservation issues in those geographical areas?
Helen Gichohi: Well, I guess broadly speaking there is conservation that has happened in areas that are, as you say, globally recognized - the ones that come to people's minds when you talk about Africa and conservation. And then you've got areas that have undergone greater or more human conversion. But some of these have the greatest potential for reintroduction and restoration of species.
Because many of these places are where agriculture has expanded, you can talk about much more broadly examining conservation of natural resources, more than wildlife per se. These are areas where we can look at natural resources and their interaction and integration with agriculture. For example, if you look at Senegal, which is one of the areas where there have been great strides in looking at interaction and integration of agriculture and natural resources because of the absence of those large mammals that drive a particular view and a particular conservation ethic, you have greater opportunity for attempting to create the kind of relationship that we are talking about: agriculture, agribusiness and conservation. You have the opportunity for reintroducing wildlife much more slowly and looking at how you can interact and integrate wildlife conservation in more human-dominated landscapes.
There are some projects in Africa that are large and significant in which issues of development and conservation converge. Two that come immediately to mind are the massive six-nation Congo Basin forest conservation project. Are you involved with it? And then there is the Chad-Cameroon oil pipeline which will be cutting across Africa. What are your concerns about conservation in terms of that?
Patrick Bergin: I'll take the second question first. We do not have a position of the Chad-Cameroon pipeline.
In terms of the Congo Basin, the central African forest, this is a program that we are very involved in; we're part of the partnership that involves the U.S. government, the African governments of the countries that are involved and a number of NGOs. We believe that we have a very good approach that can bring things to the central African forest and so in dialogue with this partnership we have elected to take the lead on one of the sites which is in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and we are just setting operations now. We will be going in there using our methodology which involves a lot of collaboration and participation by institutions and communities on the ground and good science that actually determines what sort of interventions will be taken on that landscape.
As you said, a lot of people think of big game when they think of African wildlife. We're thinking much more broadly than that. We're thinking of all sorts of biological values, if you will. The important thing about the big game is that frequently the big game allows you to get a handle on some of the economic benefits. We find that where you can protect elephants, where you can protect large predators, you're also going to protect many other things at the same time. As we go into the Central African forest, where, for example, tourism is less of an option, our program will be challenged to look at what are some of the economic opportunities for communities there.
Helen Gichohi: If I can go back as a way of tying this to your earlier question of conservation and business, I would say that our greatest challenge and our greatest desire, and in my view, the reason that symposium is really important, is not just to change those kinds of relationships that you talked about in the beginning, where every time you talk about business you see it as inimical and negative to conservation, but increasingly the role of the private sector, of business in helping Africa to develop but also the role of business in doing responsible business.
So when you talk about the forests of central Africa, they are some of the richest places where a majority of our known and unknown biodiversity is represented. And yet these are some the places getting most rapidly converted - especially by the logging concessions. It isn't that we are saying all logging must stop but part of it is to go in there and work as conservation organizations and to say, 'yes, there is a place for logging' because these are some of the resources that these countries really depend on for economic growth and development, but 'how can you, as loggers, take account of the biodiversity? How can you as business organizations also take account of culture and community requirements of people who live in these resource-rich areas?' And so it is really a question of looking at where we have common interests but also looking at areas where we will not agree and looking at how we will create responsibility on the part of business so that when they exploit whatever resources they are going to exploit, they are going to do it responsibly. If you log forests that are serving as important watersheds it means that in the process of making your money you are denying communities of their ability to have access to clean drinking water. There are global responsibilities too. If you log everything you effect the global community.
There are many, many examples. If you talk about business from a tourism standpoint, if you want to make a quick buck on tourism you take large amounts of people and you drive over those fragile ecosystems. Yet, you could make the same amount of money if you were more responsible about how and where you use that particular system. We see this meeting [Thursday] as having a dual function: to talk about those opportunities and areas of overlapping interest but also areas of increasing responsibility where we can work with the private sector.
Where can you point me to as an example of your greatest success in making this kind of case?
Helen Gichohi: One of our major strategies on intervention in the heartland is directed at looking at how we can use tourism enterprise to provide benefits to communities and to create a relationship that works for the private sector but also for communities. In many of the places we are working they talk of large tourism enterprises because of the trickle down effect. The number of beneficiaries may be larger in terms of employment with a large operator who is going to bring in any number of tourists. But, the model that we go for, that we think works best is an ecotourism type of business. It is respective of culture. It brings people who want to enjoy more than what you would normally find in a minibus operation. It is likely to have lower benefits but ultimately when you look at that in terms of environmental concerns, the impact on the environment is much lower. We are finding that in areas where we are working we have been able to work with the private sector to attract that kind of a business. You are talking about ten to sixteen beds; working with groups to see how we can spread those benefits around the system rather than congregate too many people in one system.
Do you have some place in mind as you say this?
Helen Gichohi: Yes, in Kenya's Samburu heartland where we are working. And in Amboseli, the Kilimanjaro heartland. The Maasai steppe heartland. We are looking at the development of low-impact, low-volume tourism. We are finding that, in general, there is a willingness and responsiveness on the part of private sector operators. And increasingly, there is a growing market for this kind of tourist industry. Many tourists globally are looking to have a different experience and to be more responsible in the way that they undertake tourism.
Most of my questions have been focused on your relationship with business. But the other side of this issue has to do with local communities. Years ago there was a New Yorker magazine article focused on the push and pull between villages and communities on the fringe of the Serengeti and their needs on the one hand, and on the other hand, the need for Tanzania to mount an effort around tourism and sightseeing and big game, some of which were trampling crops. How do you work with communities? What has been the response of traditional communities to this idea of conservation?
Patrick Bergin: If you think of any neighborhood you might be living in here in the United States and you think of your neighbor to the right and your neighbor to the left, those people are having an impact on you and your property. If their properties are beautiful and are well kept up and so forth they are going to enhance the value of your property, making it easy for you to maintain the sort of place you want. If your neighbors to the right and left are piling up junk in their yards, letting the weeds grow, it has an impact on you also. In a sort of parallel way, in Africa if you look at communities that border on national parks there are really only two options: Either that national park is a benefit to them and increasing their own opportunities, or it's the opposite - a major cost to them. So, a lot of our work with communities is about exploring the fact that their land is a part of a larger conservation landscape and putting them in a position where being next to a national park is actually a huge benefit to them.
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If you are in the tourism business, and you have a lodge and you are right next to a national park and a large pride of lions may come onto your land and be available for your tourists to see, that's a benefit. You're going to see a synergy between what you're trying to do and the fact that there is wild life estate next door or close by. If, on the other hand, you live next to a huge herd of elephants and you want to grow maize, it's going to be a huge cost and there is going to be constant conflict. So, a lot of our work is about exploring the landscape , helping communities realize what may be the best options for the use of their lands and really helping them to position themselves economically so as to benefit from having wildlife on their landscape.
Helen Gichohi: It's really a change of mindset: one, a change from the 'us versus them' mentality. I think what happened at the time of independence was because a lot of land was appropriated for wildlife conservation with little consultation with local people there was always the us versus them mentality. As they exploited wildlife they felt like they were getting back at somebody -- the "them". And they didn't see wildlife as belonging to "us".
Secondly, in the past, a lot of what has gone on in terms of business and tourism development in much of Africa has been focused on the parks. And changing that center of economics and power - changing it from the center of the parks to the periphery of the parks - I think is really what's important. And for us, in dealing with issues of landscape conservation, you are really beginning to shift the focus from the parks to larger landscapes that are valuable and important for sustained ecological conservation. So, what we have begun to do, as an institution, is to say that this land has the same kind of value as your own land does, only that someone else is protecting it and whatever benefits are accruing onto this area that is protected by "them" you can take it and make it your own and begin to do the same kinds of activities as they are doing.
We are finding that this has been very important to getting communities to look at parks as partners, parks as important sources of wildlife, parks as important sources of capacity andvarious types of benefits that communities can accrue by changing that mindset and having institutions such as ourselves work as facilitators - ensuring that you can get them into relationships with the private sector so they too can get income from conservation; looking at ways that you can train their own people so they can protect this resource that is suddenly beginning to become a cash cow; and looking at ways they can increase overall their income by looking at the land they have and how they can integrate various types of land use, including wildlife, as a way to ensure that they are able to realize whatever the maximum potential is from the land. That is what is going to have to happen increasingly if we are going to be able to get communities engaged and involved.
