Environmental Leadership Program: ELP News: Winter/Spring 2003: Voices of ELP Overseas

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newsletter Winter/Spring 2003

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ELP News:

Voices of ELP Overseas

JOHN PARKS is a marine scientist with the Community Conservation Network in Honolulu, Hawaii. John's work focuses on trying to understand and improve the practice of marine conservation and co-management in the Indo-Pacific, particularly at the community level. Previously, John worked as a researcher with the World Resources Institute and the Biodiversity Support Program at World Wildlife Fund.

What are the most urgent global environmental issues in your work?

Without a doubt, today's most urgent environmental issue is the loss of biodiversity on Earth. In particular, a global extinction is being driven by the removal of habitat and degradation of the ecosystems upon which life is sustained. The current rate of this extinction of life and its diversity is frightening - paleontologists say that we are creating the fourth global extinction event that the Earth has seen. The loss of species and original habitats is not something we can go back and fix later.

An important factor driving and being driven by this loss of life is food security. Most of the world is currently experiencing a food crisis, stemming in part from a collapse in global fisheries. Fully one-fifth of the world's population depends on fish as its major source of food and income. In developing counties, where the population growth rates are highest, 50% to all of animal protein consumed is fish. But at the same time, 80% of the worlds fish stocks are fully- or over-exploited or damaged. With new, powerful technologies at work and approximately 15 million fishers around the world, our harvesting pressure is over double of what the world's oceans can sustain. We're simply pulling out too much, too fast.

Both the loss of biodiversity and the need for food security are much more evident in the developing South than in the developed North. But the reality is that we are all in this together. Just as northern consumption drives environmental degradation in the South, so does the resulting poverty, social unrest, and armed conflict in the South threaten security in the North. There are significant connections between the environment, global food security, and our "homeland security" that are not being adequately addressed through current U.S. actions.

What should we do to address these challenges?

John Parks with representatives from a native community in New guinea, with whom he works on conservation projects.
Photo: John Parks

Increasing the number of protected areas is absolutely critical. But doing this the right way is not easy, and we are still learning how to be effective in using such areas. Right now only 9% of the earth's land and less than 1% of the earth's waters are under some form of protection. Meanwhile, 50% of the earth's original forests have been lost, mostly in the last 40 years, and similarly one-quarter of the world's coral reefs have died or are dying. These systems are some of the most diverse and productive on Earth, and yet we are loosing them because they are not being effectively protected. For those few remaining pristine areas, the immediate need to is protect and manage them effectively.

In terms of food security, and in particular fisheries, there are three things that need to be done. First, we need to move away from wild harvest of fish stocks, and instead start farming fish. There are serious environmental risks involved in fish farming, so it must be done using good science and with ecological sustainability in mind. To be honest, I think that at this point we have no real choice but to move into increased aquaculture. Next, we need to limit commercial fishing efforts by better regulating fishing methods. To improve food security for small-scale fishers in the developing world, we need to teach sustainable fishing techniques, improve local management of stocks, and implement small-scale, sustainable fish farming. Thirdly, we need to start eating less fish, especially in the North, to free up food for developing countries that don't have the same dietary protein options that we do.

What approaches/tools do you use in your work to resolve these issues?

I work locally and think globally, particularly on the community application of marine protected areas. This means that instead of being managed by a government, coastal residents and local fishers set the boundaries of where they do and do not fish, and using science, watch and regulate their own use of the waters through time. Not only can this approach work, but once it has been shown to be useful to people at a site, neighboring communities and fishers replicate it on their own (see www.lmmanetwork.org). The key to this work is encouraging people to deliberately change their behavior themselves, and learning how to do it right. When the local protection model is successful, there is more fish, more food, and a healthy environment and community.

These community members and fishermen in Indonesia declared and self-regulate a marine protected area.
Photo: John Parks

What are the main challenges you've experienced in working abroad?

Especially in the developing South, human and financial capacity for this work is very limited. It's a constant challenge to try to secure support for marine protected areas, especially community-based ones, when there are so few funds and skilled people available. Although the threats deteriorating our marine systems are now widely acknowledged, only a handful of donors see it as a priority to put forward the human and financial resources needed to address them.

Another challenge I've experienced is trying to work with cultures that are in transition. In most of the places I work, indigenous cultures that have been isolated from the rest of the world until recently are now suddenly being exposed to the western world and its values through television, film, and other mass media. These people are often given very few incentives to work toward conservation goals. Because the economic needs and desires of cultures in transition are so overt, for conservation work to be effective, it must be done through the lens of improved economic and livelihood options. But fitting conservation into the agenda of an increasingly globalized economy is not easy. How do we meet the legitimate economic needs of transitioning cultures, while still maintaining and preserving the natural wealth that surrounds them? Especially in the Indo-Pacific, where population growth is high, and where there is the greatest diversity of marine life on Earth, this is a considerable challenge.

What is the single most important message to get across to people in the US in regard to international environmental issues?

Simply put, our current consumption patterns here at home are driving the loss of life around the world.

What we buy at the supermarket, how we shop at the home improvement store, what car we drive: all of these daily choices contribute to the rate of the global loss of habitats and organisms. Everything we do in the U.S. has direct, traceable ramifications on places and people elsewhere around the world. Recycling, although important, is not enough. As consumers, we have to learn how to make appropriate choices, and build values that reflect both practical and moral needs into our consumption habits.

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