Indonesia

Priests and vicars have long demonstrated a penchant for biodiversity. There have been missionaries in remote places who have built up and preserved beautiful collections of butterflies, plants etc. which eventually found their way into the great natural history museums of the world.  The Rev. Gilbert White (1720-93) was the classic 18th century English clergyman-naturalist. Over many years he made observations of the plants and creatures he saw and he pulled the strands together in a widely-read book, 'The Natural History of Selborne'.  In a reflective letter to a colleague in 1768 he wrote, "It is, I find, in zoology as it is in botany: All nature is so full that that district produces the greatest variety which is the most examined". 

Much is written about the effectiveness of encouraging alternative livelihoods in conservation. One argument runs that if you can find an alternative income for someone who currently exploits a natural resource unsustainably or illegally, then the exploitation will cease and biodiversity will be conserved.  The counter argument is that the alternative is actually used as a supplementary income, making it possible for the miscreant to buy a bigger chainsaw or truck for larger scale resource exploitation. Clearly some sort of alternative is needed, but how can it be used unequivocally for conservation?

The Grassroots Business Initiative (GBI) is the brainchild of the World Bank Group’s International Finance Corporation (IFC).  Launched in 2004, the GBI supports innovative social enterprises – dubbed Grassroots Business Organizations (GBOs) – that directly engage the poor as entrepreneurs, consumers, employees and suppliers, offering financing and capacity building know-how to GBOs.

I'm a wildlife biologist.  I'm among the very few lucky World Bank staff to get paid to climb up mountains, go down caves, trek through forests, meet remote forest inhabitants, and to argue the conservation case with senior government officials. But how does this fascinating work translate into Bank projects? Well, it means I work on pure biodiversity conservation projects, on others' projects to add biodiversity value, and on pioneer biodiversity initiatives. It's rather appropriate that I should be writing my first blog on the small Indonesian island of Ternate. It was from here, exactly 150 years ago in 1858, that naturalist and traveller Alfred Russel Wallace wrote to Charles Darwin from a small house somewhere close to my guesthouse.

You may be surprised to know that Indonesia has emerged as the world's third largest emitter of carbon, following the U.S. and China.  This is primarily because of land-based emissions from peatland degradation, forest fires and deforestation, complemented by some of the fastest growing energy-based emissions.  In addition, as an archipelago of 17,000 islands and a significant agricultural population, its coastal urban population and farming-dependent rural economy are highly vulnerable to climate change.

For these reasons, the World Bank has been actively supporting a range of partnerships on mitigation and adaptation, including:

 The World Wildlife Fund recently announced a new report that documents deforestation on the island of Sumatra, Indonesia.  WWF partnered with Hokkaido University and Remote Sensing Solutions GmbH on the full report, (pdf), which details the impact of converting carbon-rich swampy peatlands into pulpwood and palm oil plantations.

New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg was at the World Bank’s Washington, DC headquarters last Thursday to speak on elements of the Big Apple’s success in attracting “the free, global movement of labor, capital and ideas.”  Bloomberg noted that New York has joined more than 700 other American cities in pledging to meet Kyoto protocol standards for carbon reduction – in sharp contrast to the current U.S.