MANEJO DE RESIDUOS PELIGROSOS

Today, more than 20 years after the formal introduction of sustainable

development, closer collaborations are occurring between traditional economic actors such as the World Bank and IMF, and traditional conservation actors including NGOs such as CI or WWF. Here I explore these broad collaborations, illustrating how they have recently contributed to more focused approaches that are aimed at increased community and civil society involvement in conservation. These broad collaborations commonly come in the form of conservation finance, financial agreements between lenders, states, and NGOs and at times unique organizations that specialize in facilitating such

interactions. These financial mechanisms take several different forms and most

international conservation organizations have special teams devoted to coordinating the efforts of powerful actors and organizations toward the implementation of these

programs. Among the different types of conservation funding made available by CI, for example, is the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF) that brings together partners such as the French Development Agency, GEF, the Government of Japan, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the World Bank (CI, 2010 a). The CEPF, having committed over $94 million in grants since 2001 for over 1,200 programs, focuses

on funding for NGOS and private organizations located where their conservation efforts will benefit global biodiversity hotspots, areas that have been judged to be particularly vulnerable to biodiversity loss (CI, 2010 b). WWF is another example of an extremely influential international conservation organization that has utilized various forms of conservation finance to support their conservation goals across the world. Having

garnered over $400 million in funding for conservation programs since the 1980s, WWF focus their attention on approximately six different types of conservation finance efforts (WWF, 2010 a). Among the most notable of the forms of financial mechanisms used by WWF and other organizations are conservation trust funds and debt-for-nature swaps. Conservation trust funds are established with the purpose of providing conservation funding over many years in countries that have been found to hold valuable types and levels of biodiversity but that have limited protection capabilities due to economic reasons (WWF, 2010 b). These funds may take approximately seven different forms, including for example endowments, sinking funds, and park management funds, and incorporate a wide variety of funders (i.e. the World Bank and GEF), national governments, and civil society or NGO actors at the local level (WWF, 2010 b). Debt-for-nature swaps are an additional financial mechanism (often times used in conjunction with other mechanisms like conservation trust funds) that have been employed by a number of different organizations such as WWF, CI, TNC, the World Bank, USAID, GEF, and others. These swaps can take several different forms but usually involve a third party (such as an NGO or one of the other aforementioned organizations) purchasing a portion of a developing country’s national debt at a discounted rate from either a commercial bank or another foreign government, that portion of the debt owed is

then in effect forgiven or canceled in return for the establishment of protected areas or other types of conservation efforts to be financed in the local currency, or alternatively debt payments can continue to be made by the indebted country but with the payments going into a conservation trust fund within that country to finance long-term conservation efforts (Resor, 1997; TNC, 2010; WWF, 2010 c).

One organization that plays an active role in mediating or contributing to many (but certainly not all) of these agreements is the Global Environment Facility (GEF). Established in 1991 as a pilot program within the World Bank, today the GEF is a joint effort between 182 governments and numerous international institutions (such as the World Bank, United Nations Development Program (UNDP),United Nations

Environment Program (UNEP),United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization

(FAO), United Nations Industrial Development Program (UNIDO), African Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Inter-American Development Bank, and the International Fund for Agricultural

Development, NGOs, and civil society organizations that work together to address environmental problems (GEF, 2010). According to the GEF, their programs work by “[providing] grants to developing countries and countries with economies in transition for projects related to biodiversity, climate change, international waters, land degradation, the ozone layer, and persistent organic pollutants” (2010). To date the GEF has “allocated $8.8 billion, supplemented by more than $38.7 billion in co-financing, for more than 2,400 projects in more than 165 developing countries and countries with economies in transition” (GEF, 2010). Biodiversity projects account for approximately 36% of the

work of the GEF, with one major focus being on increasing the sustainability of protected area systems (GEF, 2010).

In addition to providing grants, the GEF also serves as the financial mechanism for several international conventions concerning environmental protection including the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs), and the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) (GEF, 2010). Clearly, the GEF has become one of the most influential mediators between governments of

developing countries, conservation NGOs, and global financial lenders. While these conservation funding mechanisms are primarily aimed at biodiversity conservation in some of the world’s most ecologically vulnerable areas, there is broad acceptance and recognition by these organizations of the need for participation from governments, civil society, and local stakeholders in order to come closer to achieving their goals for protection of resources in these places. Framings of sustainable development founded on neoliberal ideals of devolution of blanket government control of the environment and economy in favor of greater emphasis on personal responsibility can be found throughout the various mission statements and directives of these collaborators. In other words, these collaborators generally see widespread government control over conservation and

development interventions as a bad thing and instead wish to see increased

decentralization in order to open up these programs to broader markets while increasing the incentives for local actors to take responsibilities for the environments on which they depend. For example, CI’s mission is stated as “Building upon a strong foundation of science, partnership and field demonstration, CI empowers societies to responsibly and

sustainably care for nature, our global biodiversity, for the well-being of humanity” (CI, 2010 c). Likewise, WWF’s vision combines sentiments for human beings and the non- human environment stating, “Reconciling the needs of human beings and the needs of others that share the Earth, ... We seek to instill in people everywhere a discriminating, yet unabashed, reverence for nature and to balance that reverence with a profound belief in human possibilities” (WWF, 2010 d).

As well respected and established as many international conservation organizations operating in Africa and elsewhere may be, they have come under

increasing scrutiny and criticism by some in the academic and policy communities. These critics accuse these environmental advocacy organizations of misleadingly promoting types of crisis narratives portraying African landscapes as teetering on the edge of

irreparable environmental devastation which they often cite as being caused, for example, by exploding local population numbers or unsustainable farming practices, classic

tragedy of the commons scenarios (Leach and Mearns, 1996; Broch-Due and Schroeder, 2000). These authors cite how viewing landscapes in this manner provides impetus and justification for intense intervention both by national governments and by “outside” experts who are tasked with developing solutions to these problems, often with the assistance of immense financial resources provided by large private support bases in their home countries. Such actions have prompted criticism from some scholars that the

motivations of some of these organizations have become more profit driven than responses to true environmental challenges. These authors acknowledge that there are very real environmental issues being faced in many areas within Sub-Saharan Africa, but question whether or not contemporary strategies for addressing those issues have been

carried out in the right way and for the most appropriate reasons (McCann, 1999).

Additionally, skepticism has been raised concerning the ethics of some funding strategies of some of these large conservation and development organizations, where partnerships have been formed in some cases with private companies known for practices that result in large amounts of environmental degradation.