News from Nature Conservation Policy-Makers Event in Europe

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Maciej Dołbień
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As a mentee in the Mentorship Program of World Commission on Protected Areas in Europe region, I had the opportunity to take part in the Regional Conservation Forum in Bruges, Belgium from September 30th till October 3rd, which was organized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. I am grateful for the chance to have participated in a congress that brought together conservationists, environmentalists, politicians, and protected area managers.

However, there were very few (or no) economists, sociologists, philosophers, entrepreneurs, and nature-oriented landowners, as if conservation is not linked to economics, human action, individual human values, and local diversity. Scarcity of these individuals is one of the reasons I am afraid that we are silently implementing dangerous directives which are about decreasing the culture in favor of nature.

The event was filled with discussions and debates of IUCN’s regional delegates, ministers of environment, policymakers, representatives of worldwide entities or ecological NGOs. There were voices coming from the stage or from the audience calling for action regarding the anxiety and apprehensions of the condition of ecosystems, a loss of global biodiversity, air pollution, excessive and unrestrained CO2 emissions, disruptive climate changes and neo-Malthusianism. Most of the solutions of “global problems,” which were raised during the panel sessions or the main parts of the event involved:

•  sustainable development and intergenerational responsibility, summed up in one statement: “Are you a good ancestor?”;
• ideas of ecosystem services and nature-based solutions;
• effective management of protected areas;
• the global “30by30” goal, which means covering 30% of the Earth’s surface with a nature conservation zone and 10% with a strict protection zone;
• enforcing countries to obey mainstream policies

There should have been many questions after the proposal of all of those divine resolutions. Unfortunately, there were not, or almost none. There was only one voice from a human scientist from Switzerland, who had been asking about the local community’s context. I admire and support his audacity to amplify the importance of regular people in the economy and ecology.

To implement global ideas, a chain of consultations with multiple rights-owners and stakeholders across the country is necessary. At this moment, there are many global actions run without local recognition. There is abundant cultural diversity all over the World which requires acknowledgment and respect. International organizations and governments should not treat local communities as ephemeral or just as an inconvenience to global environmental policy. Small villages, rural areas, cooperatives and indigenous peoples have been developing their own strategies of natural resources management in their own sustainable scope of action. By the way, I am aware that it is always a single human who undertakes action, and I use those collective terms just to underline the distinction between local and global movements. There would be no need to grapple with such predicaments if private property rights were abided.

IUCN has been implementing definitions of private protected areas (PPA) and other effective area-based conservation measures (OECM) to support countries to reach the “30by30” target. To make a long story short, we should ask: who are those others who are supposed to additionally conserve nature? Are they connected to governmental structures or in other ways related to global standards? Are they allowed to be equitably governed by themselves? Is the conservation imposed from the authorities or is it voluntarily managed? Are there local community rights recognized and respected? Are there still any commons in Europe? Commons emerged in a bottom-up way, not top-down coercion like in the socialist countries.

As this Swiss scientist stated, we should move out of the traditional boundaries regarding OECMs to involve the others in the nature conservation movement. I would like to add that only individual landowners should be responsible for nature on their property. Get rid of the political methods and let free, voluntary, independent, charitable or profitable actions work. In other words, let the market support nature and people.

Final questions for this movement: when would we be happy enough with the level of nature conservation? What is the arbitrary limit of pro-ecological economy control? What if we have an oversupply of perpetual nature? It was refreshing that Madhu Rao, the chairwoman of the WCPA said that the mandate of the Commission is to provide technical standards, not to enforce nature protection.