20/03/2006 - With the natural
forest loss rate at 13 million hectares a year —
about 25 hectares a minute — the race is on to protect
what’s left of the world’s forests.
If the world’s governments want
to significantly reduce the current rate of biodiversity
loss by 2010, as they have signed up to do under
the United Nation’s Convention on Biological Diversity,
they are going to have to stem the tide of deforestation,
and increase protection efforts and sustainable
uses, such as certified forest management.
Forests are the lungs of the earth,
regulating the earth’s climate, and are our storehouses
of biological diversity, hosting over two-thirds
of known terrestrial species and numerous plants
and herbs, some of which may hold the secrets to
curing cancer and other diseases. It is estimated
that some 1.6 billion people worldwide depend on
forests, including 60 million indigenous people
who call them home.
But, only about 12 per cent, or
480 million hectares, of the planet’s forests have
been formally protected. WWF, the global conservation
organization, has been part of the drive to increase
protection, helping to safeguard large tracts of
forests and pristine landscapes in the Amazon, Borneo,
the Congo Basin, Russia, Canada, China and beyond.
WWF aims to see another 75 million hectares of the
world’s most outstanding forests brought under protection
by 2010.
With such a timeline just several
years away, the only way to accomplish these ambitious
— but achievable — goals is through creative partnerships.
The single most ambitious partnership
to date is the Amazon Region Protected Areas initiative,
led by the Brazilian government in collaboration
with the World Bank, Global Environment Facility,
the German Development Bank (KfW), WWF and together
with local communities. Through this initiative,
some 50 million hectares of the Amazon’s diverse
habitats and species will be protected in a system
of well-manage and well-financed parks and reserves
— surpassing the size of the entire US National
Park system.
Protecting the Amazon from high
rates of deforestation and land clearing is no easy
task, but the multi-stakeholder initiative has been
living up to expectations and delivering extraordinary
conservation results. Nearly 16 million hectares
of protected areas have already been created. And,
just last month Brazilian President Luiz Inácio
Lula Da Silva signed a decree creating new protected
areas in the Amazonian State of Para. Comprising
an area of 6.4 million hectares — twice the size
of Belgium — the designation includes two new national
parks and the major expansion of a third, four national
forests, and an environmental protection zone where
development is strictly regulated. This mosaic of
new protected areas opens genuine prospects for
halting deforestation, conserving biodiversity,
and promoting sustainable local and regional development.
Hundreds of indigenous communities
living in the Amazon account for the region’s rich,
cultural diversity. Protecting forest areas helps
these communities protect their land and culture
from external threats and development, and in some
areas, allows them access to the forests to sustainably
harvest such important commodities as Brazilian
nuts. It is critical for local and indigenous groups
to be part of the conservation process. Without
them, biodiversity would surely be lost.
This large-scale conservation
vision in Brazil, based on good science, strong
public and private partnerships, and community involvement
is a recipe for success and must be replicated elsewhere.
In fact, half way across the world, WWF is working
with the governments of Brunei, Indonesia and Malaysia
to conserve 22 million hectares of inter-connected
equatorial rainforest in Borneo — the world’s third
largest island — through a network of protected
areas and sustainably-managed forests.
And in Africa, WWF helped bring together African
heads of states to sign an agreement to protect
and sustainably manage over seven per cent of the
Congo Basin, the second largest area of tropical
forest in the world after the Amazon. These forests
are home to more than half of the continent’s animal
species, including most of the forest elephants
left in Africa and the entire world’s population
of lowland gorillas. They also provide food, materials,
and shelter to some 20 million people.
The conservation and sustainable
management of forests and the species that live
in them are critical for the survival of local,
rural and indigenous communities in the developing
world, many of whom are poor and have been marginalized
by poorly designed development strategies of the
past. Bold commitments and ambitious partnerships
are the secret to achieving successful conservation.
As diplomats and environmentalists
gather in Brazil this week at a meeting of the UN
Convention on Biological Diversity to address the
rate at which the world’s natural resources are
being degraded and destroyed, they should look to
large-scale, multi-partner conservation initiatives
as a way to make it to that 2010-targeted finish
line.
* James P. Leape is Director General
of WWF International, based in Gland, Switzerland.
