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The Road Ahead
The conservation movement is at a crossroads. While it has been enormously successful in protecting many of the last great places on Earth, important decisions must be made in the years ahead to continue its accomplishments into the 21st Century. A more strategic approach is needed to cope with the increasing complexities of the world we live in, one which is mindful of the need for harmony between local communities and the natural landscape. Conservation tools and science-based measures are required for an approach that looks beyond the borders of protected areas to the world as a whole. To successfully navigate the road ahead, we must adopt new tools and strategies for the increasing complexity of the world's conservation challenges. 1. A Strategic Approach Using the approach that guided Conservation by Design, we are in the final phase of developing a new set of goals for The Nature Conservancy. Our efforts will be aligned to accomplish these goals using a strategic, disciplined approach. 2. Measurable Outcomes
However, acres are just one measure of our conservation efforts and do not tell the whole story behind our work in the field. We have developed a new set of science-based measures that we will use to measure progress. These new measures will go beyond the counting of acres to evaluate the health of critical ecosystems as a whole. 3. New Conservation Tools Richard Pough, who passed away last year, was an innovator. In 1950, Mr. Pough took hold of a small group that called itself the Ecologists Union and used it to create what he described as "an organization that was going to prove something in terms of preserving natural areas." He named it The Nature Conservancy. According to Steve McCormick, current president of The Nature Conservancy, "Dick Pough's straight-forward vision of a solution-oriented, non-confrontational approach to conservation defined The Nature Conservancy 52 years ago, and continues to guide our practices today. Dick was a man of action, and because he didn’t let the grass grow under his feet when he started the Conservancy, there are now literally thousands of places around the world where people can feel the grass growing beneath their own feet."
4. Harmony Between Humans and Nature "Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land." The idea of people living compatibly in a functioning natural landscape was envisioned nearly 60 years ago by the pioneering conservationist Aldo Leopold. He imagined no boundary between humans and nature. To succeed in the years ahead, it will be necessary to enlist the support of local communities, particularly people who derive livelihoods from the land. In a recent book, Michael Rosenzweig makes the case that traditional protected areas will secure merely five percent of the world's species. To preserve the priceless biodiversity of Earth, we must look beyond the boundaries of our natural parks and work with local communities to create the sense of harmony between people and land that Aldo Leopold imagined. 5. Forging Alliances For example, in the pristine Valdivian Coastal Range of Chile, we worked with a wide range of partners to protect 147,500 acres of temperate rainforest. This acquisition is part of a larger partnership among the Conservancy and international nonprofits, World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and Conservation International (CI), and local organizations in Chile to protect the area’s rare plants and wildlife, while creating opportunities for public access that will contribute to the local economy. It represents the next step building upon existing conservation efforts by the Chilean government and local environmental organizations to protect the Validivian Coastal Range. With this agreement, the Conservancy partnered with FleetBoston to transform a bankruptcy into a conservation opportunity. In an article in Foreign Affairs (Sept/Oct 2002), Steve Sanderson, the CEO of the Wildlife Conservation Society, underscored the need for such alliances: "It is high time for non governmental organizations to claim a greater role in conservation by forging novel, pragmatic alliances among themselves and the corporate sector. Just as the government can deliver what private society cannot—public safety, national defense—the conservation community can deliver what government cannot—science-based conservation along with poverty alleviation in the furthest redoubts of the human-nature frontier." 6. Conservation as a Public Trust Governance and transparency are key to keeping the trust of the public. The Conservancy has enlisted a panel of independent, outside experts to develop a standard of best practices for governance in an innovative, highly decentralized global nonprofit organization. In addition, the Conservancy welcomes public scrutiny. This web site, nature.org, is an excellent place to start to learn about our work worldwide. Summary
More Information Remarks by Steve McCormick Steve McCormick: State of the Conservancy Plenary Speech: Towards Sustainable Parks in the 21st Century |
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Copyright © 2008 The Nature Conservancy
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