Sustainable benefits: New road to conservation

Sustainable benefits: New road to conservation

Harry Surjadi, Contributor, Jayapura, Papua

There has been a tug-of-war in understanding how people can make use of forest resources without harming the environment.

Many believe this is fine as long as people are able to make use of the forest wisely and rejuvenate them in return, while others strongly oppose the forests being "touched" when it is supposed to be preserved.

Some people in Papua, however, have proved that forest is more than a source of wood, and that other products from forests can benefit those who live nearby.

The forests of Indonesia have been exploited at a massive scale since the 1960s by concessionaires in an unsustainable manner.

According to the Ministry of Forestry, more than two million hectares of forest are stripped each year, and destructive logging and illegal logging have degraded 43 million hectares.

The World Bank estimates that Sumatran lowland forests will vanish in less than five years and Kalimantan lowland forests will also be gone in less than 10 years, if the government does not take any measures to stop unsustainable forest management.

Unlike Sumatra, Kalimantan or Java, Papua is still richly covered with pristine primary forests, which accounts for nearly 80 percent of the island's total area, even though illegal logging has begun to threaten its virgin forests.

Conservation International has designated New Guinea Island -- comprising Papua and the neighboring state of Papua New Guinea -- as a wilderness area. The island is the most species-rich on earth, with significantly more biodiversity than Kalimantan, Madagascar, Sumatra or Sri Lanka.

Recent estimates of the vascular plant richness of New Guinea range from 15,000 to 25,000 species, with endemism estimated at 9,750 to 10,500 species.

It also has at least 164 species of mammals, 329 reptiles and amphibians, 650 birds, 250 freshwater fish and 1,200 marine fish, 150,000 insects, and hundreds of freshwater and marine invertebrates.

In 2000, a Food and Agriculture Organization survey discovered 2,770 types of rare orchids, the major and most fascinating species of colorful flora in New Guinea forests.

The major debate over conservation areas concerns the balance between leaving areas in their natural or near natural state, and developing and exploiting them. Should a virgin forest be left in its original state or harvested for wood and the land converted to farms?

The Fifth World Parks Congress 2003, a once-in-a-decade conference, was themed "Benefits beyond boundaries". The theme embodied the congress' focus on addressing people's needs and providing a stream of economic, political and environmental benefits to societies worldwide and its complementary concept: Without an effective network of protected areas, all benefits -- such as clean air and water, fertile land, inspiring landscapes and unique wildlife -- would be lost.

The congress stressed that in order to retain all benefits, protected area planners needed to begin thinking outside the box -- that conservation areas should produce benefits beyond their physical or virtual boundaries.

The fences that have kept people out of conservation areas are not the only boundaries discussed at the congress, and marked a turning point for protected areas and their management.

The congress recognized that protected areas cannot exist in isolation from the surrounding land and sea; nor can they be managed without regard to the communities and economic activities within and around them.

The congress affirmed the immense value of protected areas to society, in the present and in the future, and participants committed themselves to working with a variety of partners to develop a broader agenda for protected areas in the future.

The action plan that resulted, the Durban Action Plan, is based on the fundamental concept that activities in protected areas contribute to the eradication of poverty and do not exacerbate it.

Protected areas are thus providers of benefits beyond boundaries -- beyond boundaries on a map, beyond those of nation- states, across societies, gender and even generations -- and urges a change in our way of thinking.

"It's not just a protected area agency taking care of a conservation area; it's also people who live in the cities, corporations, the tourism sector and even the military," said Jeff McNeely, a well-known scientist who attended the congress.

Conservation areas can no longer exist as oases of untouched wilderness, as social and environmental factors beyond the control of conservation area managers are affecting them in ways that cannot be ignored.

The market does not support a system of protected or conservation areas, hence nations, through their various levels of government, must provide environmental protection as a public service in the same manner that they provide health, education, defense and judicial services. Failure to provide these public services impoverishes the quality of life for individuals and indeed, for entire nations -- and environmental protection should be no different, as is written in the guidelines for conservation area management.

The Wanggai and Saway families, for example, have proved that a forest conservation area does not merely contain wood, and such areas can also benefit local economies. Harvesting orchids from forests is one way to benefit from them in a sustainable manner.

More people like the Wanggai and Saway families wish to benefit from the sustainable harvest of non-timber forest products, such as orchids and other ornamental plants.

Sustainable benefits are key to the new conservation paradigm, through which forests, especially conservation areas, can benefit not only timber or mining companies, but all peoples beyond their boundaries.