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The purpose of this blog is to explore and extend new ideas in conservation. Sometimes we will post short articles that reflect our current research, thinking and work, at other times we will comment on current issues and debates. We hope you find this blog interesting and we welcome comments and feedback

Richard J. Ladle

Friday 22 January 2010

Conservation in the New World Order - what to do?

One outcome of Copenhagen is the realization that global geopolitics has changed: China and the other big developing countries (Brazil, India, etc.) are now major international players. One prediction in our new book is that the influence of China will transform the basis of international conservation.

We suggest that international conservation is approaching the end of a golden-age when it was able to piggy-back on western political and economic power overseas. Developing countries in need of investments had no choice but to look to western countries which typically attached various ‘conditions’ to their low cost loans and grant aid. Conservationists have been adept at using this technique to ‘pyggy-back conservation and sustainable resource management on development aid, and this has enabled them to create partnership and build influence (welcome or otherwise) with developing country governments.

The phenomenal growth in the Chinese economy and the need to find the raw materials to fuel it means that China’s influence in developing countries is increasing. China doesn’t do development ‘aid’ in the western sense; instead its big state companies negotiate joint venture deals with state-owned companies in developing countries. These deals commonly involve the construction of infra-structure (e.g. roads and railways) in return for resources and/or a stake in resource extraction companies.

Such investment will undoubtedly benefit the poor of these countries, but improved access is also likely to hasten the demise of wildlife and forests. For instance, the last relatively untouched forests of the Congo are likely to be utterly transformed in the next 30-40 years. What’s more, developing countries now have access to a new major source of development investment - and one that doesn’t come with the same environmental strings attached.

In our view, the economic rise of China poses a major future challenge for international conservation. In the 1970s Max Nicholson astutely identified the need for a new generation of conservation bureaucrats with the skills to graft conservation onto the logics and agendas of international development. The type of person international conservation will need in the future is less easy to discern – mandarin speaking corporate managers, maybe? The point is we need to start thinking about this now, and about how international conservation can adapt to the new geopolitical realties.