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Arlington, VA (Vocus) September 19, 2008

A new study published today in the journal SCIENCE finds that World Bank projects that included biodiversity goals were as successful in achieving their development objectives, including poverty reduction and private sector development, as projects that focused solely on development.

The research, conducted by Nature Conservancy chief scientist Peter Kareiva and Santa Clara University Professor Michelle Marvier, challenges the notion that there are trade-offs between protecting the environment and alleviating poverty.

“Ultimately, there is no reason to pursue a development project without also including attention to biodiversity concerns,” concluded Kareiva. “Nothing is lost by incorporating environmental objectives into development work, but in contrast we do suffer environmental consequences if biodiversity is not included as part of a development project.”

There are a multitude of opinions on how conservation and development projects should work together, but this latest research used existing World Bank measures to further address the issue beyond just anecdotal arguments.

Since 1947, The World Bank has loaned hundreds of billions of dollars to developing countries, working to reduce global poverty and improve living standards around the globe. Pulling from The World Bank’s database of 11,000 projects, Kareiva and Marvier chose nearly 200 projects, half of which were focused on development only, the other half focused on development as the primary goal with environmental sustainability and/or biodiversity protection as secondary goals. These two project types were also matched by country to ensure that geographic biases were not a factor.

Among the findings of the project outcomes analyzed:

    When biodiversity goals were added to a project, the addition did not reduce that project’s likelihood of meeting its development objectives, including things like gender equity, poverty alleviation and private sector development.
    However, if a project lacked conservation goals, its performance with respect to the environment was significantly reduced.
    Biodiversity and development projects that incorporated sustainable financing and market mechanisms were found to be more successful than projects that did not include these factors.
    Melding conservation and development goals is not a panacea for solving environmental and poverty issues, but scientists and statisticians must continue expanding research and analysis to determine the best approaches to addressing these concerns.

These findings add to analyses that other organizations have done in regards to conservation and poverty issues in World Bank projects, and the authors hope this study can serve to advance the debate and discussions surrounding the marriage of conservation and poverty work around the world.

As a leading conservation organization, and World Bank partner, The Nature Conservancy is engaged in research and projects that help understand the linkages between poverty alleviation and conservation and strengthen our efforts to achieve both of these important goals.

The Nature Conservancy is a leading conservation organization working around the world to protect ecologically important lands and waters for nature and people. To date, the Conservancy and its more than one million members have been responsible for the protection of more than 18 million acres in the United States and have helped preserve more than 117 million acres in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific. Visit The Nature Conservancy on the Web at www.nature.org.

Contact

Cristina Mestre, 703.841.8779

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Human Threats to Biodiversity

The term biodiversity refers to the wide range of organisms, plants and animals that exist within any given geographical region. That region may consist of a plot of land no more than a few square meters or yards, a whole continent, or the entire planet. Most commonly, discussions of biodiversity consider all the organisms that interact with each other in an extended geographical region, such as a tropical rain forest or a subtropical desert. Concerns about biodiversity are relatively new. Only during the last quarter of the twentieth century did scientists begin to appreciate the vast number of organisms found on Earth and the complex ways in which they interact with each other and with their environments. Biologists have now discovered and named about 1.7 million distinct species of plants and animals. As many as 50 million species, however, are thought to exist.

Biodiversity in the tropics is of special interest since the richness of species found there is so great. According to some estimates, 90 percent of all plant, animal, and insect species exist in tropical regions. At the same time, surveys of organisms in the tropics have been very limited. Those studies that have been conducted provide only a hint of the range of life that may exist there. As an example, one study of a 108-square kilometer (42-square mile) reserve of dry forest in Costa Rica found about 700 plant species, 400 vertebrate species, and 13,000 species of insects. Included among the latter group were 3,140 species of moths and butterflies alone.

One reason for the growing interest in biodiversity is the threat that human activities may pose for plant and animal species. As humans take over more land for agriculture, cities, highways, and other uses, natural habitats are seriously disrupted. Whole populations may be destroyed, upsetting the balance of nature that exists in an area. The loss of a single plant, for example, may result in the loss of animals that depend on that plant for food. The loss of those animals may, in turn, result in the loss of predators that prey on those animals. As human populations grow, the threat to biodiversity will continue to grow with it. And as more people place greater stress on the natural environment, greater will be the loss of resources plant and animal communities need to survive.

Maintaining biodiversity in a region and across the planet is important for a number of reasons. First, some people argue that all species— because they exist—have a right to continue to exist in their own natural habitats, untouched by human development. Second, humans depend on many of the plants and animals that make up an ecological community. For example, one-quarter of all the prescription drugs in the United States contain ingredients obtained from plants. And third, humans themselves benefit from the interaction among organisms in a biologically diverse community: plants help clean the water and air, provide oxygen in the atmosphere, and control erosion. Biodiversity keeps the planet habitable and ecosystems functional.

One of the great issues in environmental science today is how biodiversity can be preserved both in specific geographical regions and across the planet. One proposal that has been made involves the use of ecological reserves. Ecological reserves are protected areas established for the preservation of habitats of endangered species, threatened ecological communities, or representative examples of widespread communities. By the end of the 1990s, there were about 7,000 protected areas globally with an area of 651 million hectares (1.6 billion acres). Of this total, about 2,400 sites comprising 379 million hectares (936 million acres) were fully protected and could be considered to be true ecological reserves.

Ideally, the design of a national system of ecological reserves would provide for the longer-term protection of all native species and their natural communities including terrestrial, freshwater, and marine (saltwater) systems. So far, however, no country has put in place a comprehensive system of ecological reserves to fully protect its natural biodiversity. Moreover, in many cases existing reserves are relatively small and are threatened by environmental change, illegal poaching of animals and plants, and tourism.

The World Conservation Union, World Resources Institute, and United Nations Environment Program are three important agencies whose purpose is to conserve and protect the world’s biodiversity. These agencies have developed the Global Biodiversity Strategy, an international program to help protect plant and animal habitats for this and future generations. Because this program began only in the late 1970s, it is too early to evaluate its success. However, the existence of this comprehensive international effort is encouraging, as is the participation of most of Earth’s countries, representing all stages of economic development.