Conserving Biodiversity A Research Agenda for Development Agencies (1992) / Chapter Skim
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
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The specific recommendations offered here flow from the general conviction that comprehension and conservation of biodiversity in developing nations represent a challenge of such magnitude that all links in the research chain must be strengthened to ensure success. The agenda presented here is an ambitious one, but the urgency of the situation requires that it be implemented immediately, and to the fullest extent feasible; a delay of even five years will be too late to prevent irreversible losses.
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National inventories offer exceptional possibilities for professional linkages and community development and provide the thorough knowledge of organisms necessary for intelligent management of biological diversity to solve any number of practical problems. In many cases this work, with appropriate investments, can be implemented through existing institutions, but should be coordinated through the establishment of national biological institutes or equivalent centers.
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Screening allows us to determine more systematically the present and potential uses of organisms for appropriate human purposes. The national biological inventories recommended above should provide both screening opportunities for new natural products and rational methodologies for using materials derived from them.
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Development agencies must play a larger role in encouraging these efforts and applying restoration techniques more widely. Information Needs To enhance the availability and application of scientific information for the purposes of managing and conserving biological diversity, the following actions are needed.
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Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems Additional research and technical development are needed to advance the utility of remotely sensed data for ecosystem monitoring in developing countries. The data of remote sensing techniques, coupled with the data management capacity of geographic information systems, offer unprecedented opportunities to assess and monitor ecosystem processes.
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It is especially important that development agencies support nongovernmental organizations, educational institutions, museums, and libraries in developing countries, and foster effective operation of the government agencies legally charged with managing resources. Expanding Cooperative Research Programs New and existing programs of international cooperative research should undertake research on biological diversity as a fundamental part of their mission, and should be given thefinancial and administrative support to do so.
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The overall objectives of an economic research agenda are: to identify the economic forces leading to the loss of biodiversity within a country; to determine the role of international economic institutions and trends that support this depletion; to elucidate the principles operant in cases of successful development and conservation; and to develop and test economically viable mechanisms for slowing resource depletion and stimulating conservation. Project- or Country-Level Research Project- or country-level socioeconomic research is considered urgent.
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Based on this information, development agencies would be able to design projects that benefit indigenous people and that benefit from local knowledge. Agencies should identify opportunities to demonstrate how local knowledge can be combined with modern scientific studies in the design of systems for sustainable resource use.
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A selection of people and places is required. Of highest priority are those use patterns and knowledge systems that are changing most rapidly or disappearing, including those of foragers and collectors, particularly tropical forest dwellers and desert nomadic pastoralists; coastal fisherman, strand foragers, and small island villagers; subsistence agriculturalists raising unconventional staple crops; subsistence agriculturalists raising local cultivars and breeds of conventional crops and animals; and groups that have successfully adapted traditional technologies and resource use patterns in developing market opportu .
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· Development agencies must support more and broader-based research in connection with their development projects, including specific studies of the projects' impact on biological diversity, along with the required environmental impact statements. Specific examples of projects that have a direct impact on biodiversity include forest clearing, dam construction, road construction, large-scale human resettlement, and the introduction of new crops or new agricultural production packages and technologies (including the expansion of crop production for export earnings)
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Studies should analyze the impact of these activities on the conservation of biological resources for agriculture and other economic activities, for their amenity values, and for their influence on future ecosystem stability, including the effects on regional and global climate change, watershed maintenance, river basin flood regimes, and coastal zone (marine, reef, tourism, fishing) resources.
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