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		Big Ideas in Conservation Home Archive

Steven J. McCormick is the president and CEO of The Nature Conservancy. Since becoming president in 2001, he has transformed the Conservancy into the world’s largest environmental organization with operations in all 50 states and more than 30 countries. He also sits on several boards, including the Harvard Dialogue Group Advisory Panel and the Advisory Board of the U.C. Berkeley College of Natural Resources. What's Your Big Idea? What do you think the next big idea in conservation is? Share your thoughts with us! "Conservation must become a pillar of U.S. national security policies." — Steven J. McCormick President and CEO, The Nature Conservancy

By Steven J. McCormick
President and CEO, The Nature Conservancy

The lessons from Easter Island several centuries ago are clear again today: When nature stops providing, people start fighting.

Gaza, Rwanda and Chiapas are all places where unremitting natural resource shortages and extreme environmental degradation have helped stitch a tapestry of violence, poverty and despair. And in Darfur, Sudan, and neighboring Chad, drought and deforestation have led to migration, resource scarcity and genocide.

While nature is not the immediate cause of war or human cruelty, environmental degradation — a “war on terra,” if you will — provides fertile ground for instability and conflict. Because wise management of natural resources improves the prospects for peace, conservation must become a pillar of U.S. national security policies. What should we do?

• The United States should call for the creation of a new global scientific body dedicated to producing timely and policy-relevant findings on the links among nature, human well-being and international security. The International Panel on Climate Change has helped us to understand climate changes’ causes, impacts and potential solutions far better today than we did a decade ago.
• The United States also needs to address the climate crisis, this century's number one threat to the natural world. As a first step, the new Congress should enact reasonable, mandatory domestic greenhouse-gas emission limits.
• Traditional measures of gross national product (GNP) fail to capture the value of nature to people. How nations steward their "natural capital" must become a part of national GNP figures.
• Finally, the United States needs to substantially increase its efforts to help poor nations safeguard the planet's natural capital. Since the late 1980’s, U.S. funding for global conservation has declined markedly as a percentage of U.S. foreign aid.

At no time in recent memory has the United States faced so many urgent threats, from Afghanistan to Iraq, the greater Middle East and elsewhere. We can reduce the risk of violence and conflict around the world — but only if we match our resolve in the war on terror with an understanding of and commitment to ending the "war on terra."

Nature picture credits (top to bottom, left to right): Photo © Mark Godfrey/TNC (Chiapas, Mexico); Photo © Mark Godfrey/TNC (Steven J. McCormick).