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ESD Overview | Research | People | Events | Publications
Environment & Sustainable Development
Events
Land Use in Brazil: Integrating Ecology, Economics & Policy (Spring 2003 workshop series)
State of Research in Development Dinner Series (September 30, 2002)
Making It Pay or Paying for Protection: Two Approaches to Forest Conservation in the Tropics (April 2, 2002)
Land Use Change in Brazil:
Integrating Ecology, Economics & Policy
Sponsored by the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies
(DRCLAS)
Addressing the rapid conversion of tropical ecosystems to agriculture presents one of the principle challenges towards achieving sustainable development. While the increase in agricultural land contributes to economic growth, the accelerated replacement of natural ecosystems by cultivated systems has resulted in the reduction and fragmentation of natural habitats and the loss of biodiversity. This is particularly alarming in Brazil because of its extraordinarily high numbers of endemic species and high rate of land cover change. Furthermore, some Brazilian ecosystems (forests, savannas) are among the last of similar habitats on the entire planet.
This workshop addresses the crucial linkages between economic policies, land use change and ecological processes in the Amazon and Cerrado regions. It builds on current CID efforts to assess and model the macroeconomic determinants of land use change, and estimate the impact of national and macroeconomic policies on land uses.
The workshop takes the form of interdisciplinary panels, one on each of the following topics:
Drivers of land use change
Consequences of land use change
Policy responses to land use change
The monthly lunchtime workshop brings in experts from various disciplines to present the rationale and details of their study approach. The workshop is open to students, faculty and researchers, and provides a forum for disseminating, critiquing and revising the various elements of the research.
Drivers of Land Use Change
Thursday, January 30,
2003
12:30- 2:30 pm
Malkin Penthouse,
Littauer Building, KSG
Participants:
Discussants:
Consequences of Land Use Change
Monday, March 3, 2003
12:00 - 2:00 pm
Perkins Room, 4th Floor,
Rubenstein Building,
KSG
Participants:
Discussants:
Policy Responses to Land Use Change
Monday, April 3, 2003
12:00 - 2:00 pm
Perkins Room, 4th Floor,
Rubenstein Building,
KSG
Discussant:
State of Research in Development: Environment & Development
Monday, September 20, 2002
Allison Dining Room, 5th Floor, Taubman Building, KSG
Panelists:
Media:
Making it Pay or Paying for Protection: Two Approaches to Forest Conservation in the Tropics
Richard Rice, Conservation International
Monday, April 2, 2002
12:00 - 1:30 PM
Perkins Room, Eliot 4th floor, KSG
Concessions Concept Description (Microsoft Word)
Sustainable Forest Management: A Review of Conventional Wisdom (PDF)
Conservation of biodiversity-rich habitats presents a
challenge to nations wishing to develop their natural resources for economic
ends. Logging, mining and other resource-development activities offer the
prospect of tangible economic benefits – including employment and income,
foreign currency from exports, and public tax revenues – but are often
environmentally destructive. Although sustainable resource management seeks
to provide these benefits while conserving natural ecosystems, experience
suggests that a number of obstacles limit both the adoption of sustainable
practices and their usefulness in conservation strategies.
To address this problem, the Center for Applied Biodiversity Science at
Conservation International (CI) has been working in collaboration with
Hardner & Gullison Associates, LLC, to develop the concept of a
"conservation concession," a novel approach that seeks to directly reconcile
resource protection with development.
Conservation concessions hold the potential to protect a wide variety of
critical terrestrial and marine habitats, ranging from vast tracts of
Amazonian rain forest to sensitive fisheries and coral reefs in the South
Pacific. The tool may also be used to protect the habitat of particular
threatened or endangered species, such as the Asian elephant, American
mahogany, or sea cucumbers and other marine species off the coast of
Ecuador's Galapagos Islands.
Under a conservation concession agreement, national authorities or local
resource users agree to protect natural ecosystems in exchange for a steady
stream of structured compensation from conservationists or other investors.
In its simplest form, a conservation concession might be modeled after a
timber concession, whereby a logging company pays the government for the
right to extract timber from an area of public forestlands. Rather than log
the concession area, the conservation investor would pay the government for
the right to preserve the forest intact. The conservation concession thus
presents an alternative opportunity for countries to capitalize on vast
tracks of forest or other areas of high conservation value. With ultimate
objectives that include both the long-term protection of biodiversity and
the stimulation of economic development, this new mechanism offers a land
use alternative that conservationists, development agencies, governments,
and local communities alike can support.
CI’s efforts to establish conservation concessions have met with ground-breaking success in a number of countries. In September 2000, CI obtained an “exploratory permit” from the Government of Guyana to establish a conservation concession that will protect approximately 80,000 hectares of pristine forest. In April 2001, the Indonesian Minister of Forestry issued a public declaration in support of conservation concessions. In Peru, the government recently approved new regulations for its Forest and Wildlife Law that for the first time enable conservation bidders to compete for the land-use rights of its 67.6 million-hectare forest estate. In late July 2001, the country's first conservation concession under this law was granted to the Asociación para la Conservación de la Cuenca Amazónica (ACCA), a Peruvian NGO.
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© 2007 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.
Last revised 10/31/2007