McNeely, Jeffrey A. Economics and Biodiversity. Gland, Switzerland: IUCN, 1988.
It is appalling to realize that without financial incentive the mass of humanity will not be disturbed in their daily patterns of living to ensure the preservation of their natural environment. This sad realization comes to economists more easily than the rest of us, and indeed may even appear logical, if not particularly wise. In Economics and Biodiversity author McNeely has taken this assumption to heart, and preaches the salvation of the planet’s biota from purely financial grounds. From the perspective of brute human reality he has a valid point: the situation has become so desperate for the majority of people alive in the world today that their interest in the preservation of nonhuman life can be roused solely through the prospect of personal gain. This single-minded obsession with survival must be expected to intensify in our overcrowded, overexploited world, and the planet’s environmental situation, upon which all economic and social progress ultimately depends, may be anticipated to become worse as human numbers and consumption rates spiral ever upward. By providing people with financial incentives to preserve intact ecosystems for the teeming generations of tomorrow, McNeely has taken a realistic approach to retaining representative fragments of ecological diversity, genetic seeds that will be crucial to repopulate the biosphere after the inevitable collapse of industrial civilization.
It is perhaps to be expected that in “underdeveloped” countries (as opposed to overdeveloped ones, like the United States) the need of the local community for economic compensation is necessary to assure the success of any large conservation project. In the Amboseli Game Reserve in Kenya, Maasai pastoralists are paid a user-fee from safari tours for use of the local aquifer; the money is then used to pipe the water to their kraals (thorn-fenced corrals) atop the basin edge so that the wildlife below can exist undisturbed by daily invasions of Maasai cattle. On the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico, local Mayan fishermen have formed cooperatives of limited ownership in the Sian Kaan Biosphere Reserve that seek to protect the valuable spiny lobster resource by improving and protecting habitat while guarding against poachers. In the Philippines, coastal peasants have banded together in Marine Management Committees that protect the rich fishing grounds of the coral reefs from illegal harvesting methods and allocate a set catch limit per participant. In all of these instances, the local economy and the wishes of the its members were included in the decision-making process, thus increasing the likelihood of long-term sustainability.
The environment is not the only winner here: native grazing and fishing traditions, and the fragile threads of knowledge that intimately link these cultures to their landscape, are preserved and protected under the aegis of a global monetary system which elsewhere has been the main agent of an urbanizing amalgamation that extinguishes cultural and biological diversity with equal impunity. Just as former poachers—consumately knowledgable of the threats to and habits of wild animals—invariably make the most effective park rangers, the enlistment of the local communities surrounding protected areas into economic franchises that depend upon the maintainence of natural resources is the most logical method of guaranteeing the resilience of habitat. Inclusive measures such as these, which employ the cash economy as a tool of protection rather than exploitation, may point to the future of effective conservation, particularly in the Third World.
It is appalling to realize that without financial incentive the mass of humanity will not be disturbed in their daily patterns of living to ensure the preservation of their natural environment. This sad realization comes to economists more easily than the rest of us, and indeed may even appear logical, if not particularly wise. In Economics and Biodiversity author McNeely has taken this assumption to heart, and preaches the salvation of the planet’s biota from purely financial grounds. From the perspective of brute human reality he has a valid point: the situation has become so desperate for the majority of people alive in the world today that their interest in the preservation of nonhuman life can be roused solely through the prospect of personal gain. This single-minded obsession with survival must be expected to intensify in our overcrowded, overexploited world, and the planet’s environmental situation, upon which all economic and social progress ultimately depends, may be anticipated to become worse as human numbers and consumption rates spiral ever upward. By providing people with financial incentives to preserve intact ecosystems for the teeming generations of tomorrow, McNeely has taken a realistic approach to retaining representative fragments of ecological diversity, genetic seeds that will be crucial to repopulate the biosphere after the inevitable collapse of industrial civilization.
It is perhaps to be expected that in “underdeveloped” countries (as opposed to overdeveloped ones, like the United States) the need of the local community for economic compensation is necessary to assure the success of any large conservation project. In the Amboseli Game Reserve in Kenya, Maasai pastoralists are paid a user-fee from safari tours for use of the local aquifer; the money is then used to pipe the water to their kraals (thorn-fenced corrals) atop the basin edge so that the wildlife below can exist undisturbed by daily invasions of Maasai cattle. On the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico, local Mayan fishermen have formed cooperatives of limited ownership in the Sian Kaan Biosphere Reserve that seek to protect the valuable spiny lobster resource by improving and protecting habitat while guarding against poachers. In the Philippines, coastal peasants have banded together in Marine Management Committees that protect the rich fishing grounds of the coral reefs from illegal harvesting methods and allocate a set catch limit per participant. In all of these instances, the local economy and the wishes of the its members were included in the decision-making process, thus increasing the likelihood of long-term sustainability.
The environment is not the only winner here: native grazing and fishing traditions, and the fragile threads of knowledge that intimately link these cultures to their landscape, are preserved and protected under the aegis of a global monetary system which elsewhere has been the main agent of an urbanizing amalgamation that extinguishes cultural and biological diversity with equal impunity. Just as former poachers—consumately knowledgable of the threats to and habits of wild animals—invariably make the most effective park rangers, the enlistment of the local communities surrounding protected areas into economic franchises that depend upon the maintainence of natural resources is the most logical method of guaranteeing the resilience of habitat. Inclusive measures such as these, which employ the cash economy as a tool of protection rather than exploitation, may point to the future of effective conservation, particularly in the Third World.
