Environment

With winds clocked at over 190 kilometers per hour Cyclone Nargis made landfall in Myanmar on Friday, May 2, about 250 kilometers southwest of the capital Yangon.  On Monday United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said he was “very much alarmed” over estimates from Myanmar’s Foreign Ministry that over 10,000 people may have died.  The New York Times is reporting on the devastation, which comes before a constitutional referendum scheduled by the military government for this Saturday.  According to CNN.com, the U.N. has made $30 million available for emergency aid.  Check these CNN video reports from Yangon.

A few weeks ago I wrote that “many perceive NT2 to be a World Bank hydropower project. From my perspective, that’s inaccurate in every respect. More on that in a future posting.” Following intense pressure from my reading public (thanks, Nanda), it’s time to explain what I meant.

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". 

If you’ve read any of the posts in my blog so far, you’ll notice that I’ve mentioned multiple times how much information there is on Nam Theun 2. One of the cornerstones (pdf) for the World Bank’s involvement on NT2 was that the project would be handled in a transparent manner, and that’s why all of the key reports on NT2 are publicly available. The aim of being transparent means that key documentation related to the project as it was being developed and now implemented is public, that the Bank proactively keeps people informed about what is happening (ahem, the blog for one), and that there would be continuous outreach to stakeholders including local and international consultations.

So the last couple of days have been – how should I put it? – intense. I’m sure at some point when you’ve had some major deadline approaching like preparing a major report for work, handing in a PhD or Masters thesis, preparing for a presentation at a big meeting, making a speech at a conference… You had to double check all your facts, or make sure the footnotes where right, or endlessly practice your presentation, or ensure all the attachments were prepared, or have all the documentation necessary to submit your report, or pray the computer didn’t swallow your information and damage the floppy disk or USB drive in the process (or all of the above)…. Well, getting ready to start the gradual process of filling the NT2 reservoir is easily 100 times more complex than that.

Andrew  Leonard posts in his blog an interesting report from journalist Tony Cheng of Al-Jazeera:

China has banned, for environmental reasons, the free hand-out of plastic bags.  As a result, the country’s largest plastic bag factory has closed, throwing 20,000 workers out on the street.  Some see this as posing a dilemma between environment and economy, but I don’t agree that good environmental policies are bad for the economy, just the opposite.  What this case illustrates instead is the dilemma between doing something good for the whole people, but at the expense of adjustment costs borne by a small group – the 20,000 workers and the factory owner. 

So I’m not eating insects any more (like I was last year*) as unfortunately that really isn’t my daily job (by unfortunate I mean the wildlife tracking, not the insect eating), but back in the office catching up on Nam Theun 2 (NT2) readings after coming back from a 2-week trip that included no insects.

It’s amazing how many things can happen in two weeks time, particularly if it’s an incredibly complex project we’re talking about:

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?

These were the problems facing one of my projects focusing on the conservation of the Lambusango forest block, at the southern end of Buton, an island to the southeast of SE Sulawesi in the middle of Indonesia. This forest is home to many of Sulawesi’s many endemic species, especially the small but belligerent wild buffalo or Anoa.

Arrived at Ban Navang! Arlyne and Tony with some of the villagers who were working on the wildlife monitoring.

Feb. 9, 2007* - This morning we, sadly, had to make our way out of the forest. We had our breakfast and left around 6:30 am as the transect teams were leaving to do their last day (day four) of their surveying in this area (tomorrow they’ll move to a new location).

The walk on the trail back was absolutely stunning. It is such a beautiful forest, it’s hard to describe and no adjective would probably ever do it justice. On the walk back we got lucky again and saw some Douc Langurs! They really are amazing creatures. And they sure make some giant leaps as they make their way from tree to tree.

We stopped midway to have lunch, and reached Ban Navang shortly after 3 pm (about a 16-kilometer walk from Camp 6, towards the opposite direction than Tha Phai Ban). Ban Navang is a very nice, but very poor, village of about 310 people. With support from the WMPA they have been able to build water wells, a school, and the typical “toilet houses” you see in Lao villages: small, little houses made up of wood and palm leaves with a squat toilet. They also have some water wells where Arlyne and I bathed today.

Jennifer Conlin of The New York Times reported recently on a global trend already sweeping through Asia and the Pacific -- the green hotel.   It was just a matter of time before environmentally-friendly practices and the business “bottom line” struck up what looks to be a promising long-term relationship.  Add growing consumer interest, combined with the cost savings realized through energy-saving and conservation strategies, and we have the makings of an eco-boom in tourism.  Case in point:  the eight-room Old Bangkok Inn, which uses solar energy to heat the hot water for the entire hotel, room sensors to shut down lights and appliances when a guest leaves the room, and features locally produced furnishings for the rooms, as well as local food specialties for every breakfast.