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Statements by Nature Conservancy President Steve McCormick at 2005 UN World Summit Gala Dinner

An Environmental Community Call to Jointly Address Poverty and the Environment

New York, NY—September 14, 2005—The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment makes clear, for the first time at such a scale, the inarguable case that healthy ecosystems are essential for human well-being. It compels us to realize that if we can’t get a handle on the deconstruction of natural systems, then we will seriously jeopardize our efforts to make lasting, substantial progress on improving the standard of living of the world's poorest people.

I am here tonight, because The Nature Conservancy wants to be a part of the solution.

For more than 50 Years, The Nature Conservancy has worked with partners to protect the plants, animals and natural habitats that ensure our very existence and enhance our quality of life.

To the poor these natural riches are a most fundamental safety net providing subsistence livelihoods, fuel, food and water.

But humanity's safety net is fraying. Two thirds of the planet's natural systems, the systems that provide for us all, are in decline.

Faced with a growing list of challenges and priorities － poverty alleviation and human well-being, security and peace, economic stability and growth, environmental sustainability － The Nature Conservancy's tradition of collaborative partnerships and creative problem solving offers common ground.

The Nature Conservancy is committed to helping governments, businesses, communities, development organizations and other partners create a world where Earth’s natural systems are conserved and managed to create a lasting, sustainable future for people and for nature.

We are doing this:

• Through partnerships like those in Komodo National Park that engage the public sector, private industry, and local communities. Organizations like The Nature Conservancy are creating an integrated mosaic of protected and productive landscapes and seascapes that contribute to reducing poverty, improving human well being, and increasing economic stability.
• Working with governments like Costa Rica to develop national level conservation strategies that fully value the benefits and services received from our lands and waters. These strategies recognize the role that individual decision making plays by providing compensation for protecting and managing communal or private lands so others can benefit from the clean water and stable climate those lands provide. This compensation in turn contributes to reducing poverty and improving livelihoods.



Densely packed houses of a fishing community line the banks at Komodo National Park
© Andy Drumm/TNC

• Developing policies that enable human and natural communities to survive compatibly now and into future generations. In Papua New Guinea, where economic and political instability have hampered past conservation efforts, the Conservancy has helped tribal communities establish land tenure covenants that prevent outside commercial logging of their forests. Where efforts that ignored the needs of local communities failed in the past, the collective power of local people is now succeeding and ensuring access to the lands and waters that provide for their livelihoods.
• Building capacity for the effective management of natural ecosystems, including protected areas and productive landscapes. Through innovations in valuing ecosystem services and developing ecotourism opportunities, The Nature Conservancy, power companies and national and local partners are providing real economic improvements for the communities surrounding Bolivia’s Noel Kempff Mercado while sequestering carbon in the region’s rich forests.
• Creating the necessary financing flows to ensure sustainable funding for the long-term benefit of people and natural systems. From Colombia to Jamaica, Panama to Peru, The Nature Conservancy has helped to foster debt-for-nature swaps and other creative tools to provide resources to improve economic stability and human well being in critical conservation areas.

Even though the Conservancy is already integrating sustainable development and biodiversity conservation, we realize that our mission and our values require us to do even more.

In 2003, the Conservancy adopted an ambitious goal of working with others to ensure effective conservation of a representative cross-section of life on every heavily populated continent by 2015. Since that time we have been working diligently to identify the highest priority places and most effective cross-cutting strategies to achieve this goal. In many ways, we view our efforts toward this goal as the Conservancy’s initial contribution to the Millennium Development Goals.

Next year the Conservancy will offer the international community important new scientific information that will help guide global conservation priorities:

• The Conservancy will implement its commitment through its growing network of programs and partners in Central America, South America, the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific. Using its collaborative, inclusive approach and as part of its ten-year vision of conserving a representative percentage of critical natural areas in each of the Earth's major habitat types.
• With the new conservation blueprint in hand next year, the Conservancy also will expand its work into new developing countries and regions in the months and years ahead. Conservancy scientists and other experts will collaborate closely with partners in major pilot projects to clearly document how the organization's investment produces tangible benefits not only for biodiversity, but also for the people who depend on these places for their lives and livelihoods.

So let us maintain coastal mangroves for the rare crustaceans that breed there and for the protection they afford thousands of villages from typhoons and tsunamis. Let us save vast rain forests for jaguars and for the carbon they absorb to moderate our climate. And let us keep great temperate forests intact for the tree hollows that harbor woodpeckers from the specter of extinction.

For More Information:

• Joint Statement by Environmental Community at UN World Summit
  The environmental community believes that protecting the world’s ecosystems and their component species is vital to human well-being, particularly the impoverished who are the most vulnerable to environmental disasters such as floods, hurricanes, landslides, disease and water pollution.
• Press Release: Remarks by Steve McCormick for the Launch of Where is the Wealth of Nations? book at UN World Summit
  Where is the Wealth of Nations substantiates the realization that if we can’t get a handle on the deconstruction of natural systems, then we will seriously jeopardize our efforts to make lasting, substantial progress on improving the standard of living of the world's poorest people.
• Our Partners: Indigenous People and Traditional Communities
  Effective conservation cannot be achieved unless the people who live and rely on those lands are an integral part of the conservation process. For more than 50 years, The Nature Conservancy has depended upon partnerships with local communities to conserve some of the most biologically critical and threatened ecosystems on Earth.
• Where We Work: Papua New Guinea, Costa Rica, and Bolivia
  The Nature Conservancy works in all 50 United States and 27 countries, protected more than 117 million acres of land and 5,000 miles of river around the world. Learn more about where we work.
• Places We Protect: Komodo National Park
  Although famous for its unique land-dwelling Komodo dragons, Komodo National Park features one of the world's most biologically diverse marine environments.
• Places We Protect: Noel Kempff Mercado National Park
  Through a unique partnership with the Government of Bolivia, Fundación Amigos de la Naturaleza (FAN) and three U.S. energy companies, this Nature Conservancy climate action project is helping protect 1.5 million acres of Noel Kempff Mercado National Park, one of the most biologically diverse areas in the world.
• How We Work: Debt-for-Nature Swaps
  Debt-for-nature swaps create a link between a country's external debt and financing for biodiversity conservation. Working with partners, The Nature Conservancy has helped to facilitate debt-for-nature swaps in many countries, including Jamaica, Panama, and Peru.
• How We Work: The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA)
  The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment is the largest mobilization ever to assess the current state of the world’s ecosystems, and the services they provide to support life on Earth.