1. Call it Tom Friedman’s Worst Nightmare: Asia’s already outpacing the United States in clean technology investment by hundreds of billions of dollars — which will mean the U.S. will be importing trillions of dollars in green tech down the road, says a new report. (Hat tip: CleanTechnica.)
2. Call it a Whale’s Worst Nightmare: Japan’s whaling fleet is off to the Southern Ocean for its annual hunt. Dot Earth quotes ocean explorer Sylvia Earle on why eating whale isn’t at all like eating a farm-raised cow, which is what Japanese whaling interests claim.
3. Call it Todd Stern’s Worst Nightmare: Pledges by individual countries to limit their greenhouse gas emissions are multiplying like tribbles, reports The New York Times — and UN climate czar Yvo deBoer is now putting pressure on the Obama administration to release its own proposal.
4. Call it a Gearhead’s Worst Nightmare: Star driver Jeff Gordon has joined with the EPA to warn the public that auto painting causes air pollution and degrades human health, reports Ecopolitology.
5. Call it Ungreen Companies’ Worst Nightmare: GoodGuide releases an iPhone app that scans product barcodes and gives you ratings on the product’s healthy, environmental, and social impacts. (62,000 products in the database so far, says CNET’s Health Tech.)

1. The Daily Green asks, Is everything you know about being green wrong? Here’s the scoop: it’s not about what car you drive or whether you eat meat, but the stuff you buy.
2. Marine sponges are getting a better image, no thanks to that Sponge Bob Square Pants guy. A new study shows that sponges gulp huge quantities of ocean carbon and transform it into food for corals, making them integral to the survival of reefs in these warming times.
3. Is an apple that won’t rot for 4 months somehow better for the planet than traditional apples? The Australian scientists behind the new RS103-130 think so. Only in Oz.
4. On the other side of the equator, the Dutch have cooked up their own crazy scheme: a driving tax designed to cut traffic and transportation emissions. The tax would be imposed on a per-mile basis, although steeper fees apply to driving during rush hour and driving a big car.
5. Rising seas, warmer temperatures, increased rainfall… now here’s a new effect of climate change: more wind. Scientists have observed increased wind over Lake Superior as a result of changing water and air temperatures caused by less winter ice.

What am I trying to illustrate in the above photo (a picture of cattle and elephant dung)? That conservation planning is a pile of poop?

No. But this mixture of excrement does show why such planning needs to incorporate extreme events like drought or flooding – especially for the impacts of those events on local people.

In the place where I took this photo — Mt Kenya – livestock herders have moved into protected areas. Why? Because of a protracted and devastating drought — one Kenya is (hopefully) at the end of. The drought has caused the displacement of huge numbers of people and the estimated deaths of half the livestock.

In times this tough, local herders have been forced to graze their animals in protected areas around the country – areas normally set aside for nature and tourism. I can’t blame them — but in a country that relies on tourism so heavily (it’s the second largest sector of the economy), this development is big and troubling news.

Obviously, conservationists should be planning for such extreme events. They will occur; we just don’t know when. We do often include in our plans responses to long-term environmental events (e.g., blow-downs, hurricanes, etc) and critical threats (such as habitat fragmentation and large-scale agriculture). We are even slowly coming to grips with consequences of climate change. But how often do we consider the effects of extreme events on local people, especially the poor, in the areas in which we work?

Probably not nearly enough.

Why should conservationists do this kind of planning? Because quite often the people living in and around the areas we are interested in protecting rely on their immediate surroundings for sustenance. And how extreme events effect these people will likely tell us how they will in turn use those local resources (in many cases, such as around Mt. Kenya, for their survival). By planning for these events and the ramifications on both nature and people, the effects can be at least reduced or muted.

To that end, many Conservancy projects have indirect benefits to people; but not many plan for direct ones. One example of direct benefits to people is grassbanking – the setting aside of land that can be used for grazing livestock in the event of an extreme drought. It’s simple and effective, and something the Conservancy has done in areas such as Montana, and in Kenya, with our partners at the Northern Rangelands Trust (http://northernrangelands.wildlifedirect.org/) where the grassbanks are being put to good use right now – helping both wildlife and people get through the current drought. And this grassbanking in Kenya has helped reduce pressure on protected areas and keep many more people off of Mt Kenya.

We will get droughts, or floods, or extremes of some sort or another — and people, especially those in poorer areas and countries, will turn to nature to help them through those tough times. We should make sure that nature is resilient enough not only to endure these extreme events, but also the pressures that will be brought to bear by local people — especially when those people’s very survival is at stake.

(Image courtesy Timothy Boucher/TNC.)

In August, we blogged here on the extraordinary cross-country bike journey of Nathan Winters (AKA, “Follow Nathan”) to raise money for The Nature Conservancy and raise awareness for climate change and sustainable agriculture. At that point, Nathan had just crossed the Wisconsin-Minnesota border, halfway through his journey from Maine to Washington State — a trek tracked by thousands through Nathan’s website and his multiple daily tweets.

We’re now thrilled to report that Nathan completed his ride (a ride, BTW, that he began with absolutely no bike touring experience) last month — tired, of course, but glowing with the knowledge of having done a great and extraordinary thing. He was gracious enough to respond to a few questions about the trip and what’s next for him:

*****

Cool Green Science: How many days and how many miles did you end up riding, and where did you finish up?

Nathan Winters: I was on the road for a wonderful and thrilling 145 days over a course of 4,300 miles. The journey ended in beautiful Bellingham, Washington on October 2.

Cool Green Science: Describe the finish and what happened.

Nathan: On the outside it was fairly calm. Essentially I celebrated alone as I dipped my tire in the Bellingham harbor. On the inside, I was a huge dance party. I had so many different ranges of emotions that I was going through. The overwhelming support of my followers online was also very touching.

Cool Green Science: What was more difficult about the ride than you expected? What was less difficult?

Nathan: Hands down the wind. Before I had left, I had many people warn me that going east to west was a big mistake. And while this decision certainly made things a bit more difficult… I wouldn’t change it for the world. As for less difficult, in my honest opinion I thought it would be a bit more challenging to climb the Continental Divide. Don’t get me wrong — this was no easy task. But I think that my mental preparation had a way of alleviating the strain. There would be hills in Ithaca that would prove to be more difficult. My guess: It all boiled down to mental preparation.

Cool Green Science: What were the best experiences of the ride?

Nathan: I really enjoyed getting know people in their communities. So many times we travel by plane or car and we never actually take the time to understand what is happening in a particular area. Communities such as Ithaca and Ann Arbor were geared passionately towards environmental stewardship and sustainable living practices. My theory is that the combination of academia and honest community members creates a lubricant to maintain such a vibrant community-wide effort.

I also came to understand and witness countless people doing great things in their communities all over America. Despite all of the negative talk you see and hear in the mainstream news outlets, America is still the kind of place where you can ask a complete stranger for help and you will find an answer. With or without the swine flu and an economic recession. America is still a place we can all be proud of.

Cool Green Science: Did you come to understand any conservation issues better through your journey?

Nathan: One situation that dealt with conservation issues in depth was in the Adirondacks. It is a very complex and unique situation over there.  Specifically, I found a great struggle between public and private land. Currently, there is a great tension over the possible development of a ski resort in Tupper Lake which could be a huge lift on the local economy — however, there would be catastrophic environmental drawbacks. The struggle between the conservation groups, local people, economy and politics was so evident that you could feel the tension without hearing any words.

Cool Green Science: What was the strangest thing that happened on the ride?

Nathan: You will have to read my upcoming book! I will say that I had a plethora of “strange encounters.” That is what happens when you ride a bike from Maine to Washington.

Cool Green Science: How do you feel now that it’s over?

Nathan: The fact that I accomplished my goal, lived out my dream and gave back to a wonderful organization was and still is an amazing feeling. I feel fantastic. I am in a physical and mental adjustment period. But again… I feel fantastic.

Cool Green Science: What’s next for you?

Nathan: I am currently living in rural Vermont where I am adventurously reliving my journey through a book I am writing. I am currently deep into this endeavor and I will be working hard to get my work published. I am also looking for part-time work with a environmental difference-maker to keep me going.

(Images courtesy Nathan Winters.)

Bogdkhan Uul, just south of Ulanbator, Mongolia, is the oldest national park in the world. That’s right — it predates Yellowstone by over 100 years. Established by the Mongolian government in 1778, it was originally chartered by Ming Dynasty officials in the 1500s as an area to be kept off limits to extractive uses, protected for its beauty and sacred nature.

In 1778, it had 23 full time park rangers on staff. Today, there are only five. And therein lies a tale of a traditional conservation ethic degraded by modern politics and pressures.

We set out from Ulanbator at 7am by taxi to the monastery site of Manzushir, about an hour south, with the idea of walking across Bogdkhan back to UB. Established in 1733, Manzushir had over 20 temples and was home to 350 monks. The Soviets reduced it to rubble and killed or exiled all of the monks in the 1930s as Mongolian Buddhism was nearly stamped out because of its resistance and threat to Stalinism. The monastery is about 100 acres in size, located in a south facing valley below some jagged rock cliffs, and nestled within the boundaries of Bogdkhan.

In the cold early morning, the day before Halloween, walking around the ruins, half-walls, hundreds of terraces and foundations, and a lone restored building, we could almost hear the whirring of prayer wheels, see the young novitiates carrying water from the stream for the day. We could hear the echoes of the lives spent here in devotion and ended in a spasm of political and religious atrocity. Mongolian Buddhism, whose closest relative is Tibetan Buddhism, is slowly rebuilding monasteries and communities — but, as with many ancient traditions in Mongolia, the loss of 3 generations to Soviet interference has left these traditions ill-equipped to cope with the modern world.

An interesting parallel is what happened to the herding culture of Mongolia under the same pressures. In the 1930s and 40s, the traditional pastoralists of this country — herding groups and clans that had sustainably grazed the grasslands for at least 1,000 years using complex social, cultural, geographic and meteorological systems and cues — were forced into shared ownership communes and collectives. Some groups managed to integrate their historical knowledge into the collective, some ignored the collective and kept their traditions, and many others lost their practices to the Soviet socialist experiment. In 1990, the date of Mongolia’s independence, the claim of one of the world’s last nomadic people to the land that had sustained them for generations was in serious doubt. And the last 20 years has done nothing to secure their rights, as the government of Mongolia has issued mining leases on their lands without consultation, partially privatized some lands, and failed to put in place trespass protections.

Bogdkhan is about 100,000 acres, mostly forested mountainous country, surrounded by grasslands to all sides except to the north where the city bounds it. Tsetseegun Mountain is at the center of it, one of the 4 sacred mountains around Ulanbator. There is really only one trail into the center of the park, access is limited, yet the past 20 years have seen a number of illegal encroachments and uses inside the boundaries of the strictly protected area. These have happened when some official of the city of UB or a Mongolian ministry official issues an official-looking piece of paper to a businessman to build a Ger Camp (tourist tent) or to a Middle Eastern sheik to build a huge luxury home.

It also happens when local residents get hungry and look to the park to hunt food or graze animals. Twenty years ago, big herds of Red Deer, close relatives of elk, would walk through the middle of UB on their way between seasonal grazing areas; wolves were occasionally heard on the outskirts of town. The pressures of population, corrupting influence of money and the severance of a multi-generational institution of conservation have slowly frayed the quality of this, the world’s first national park.

East Asian Buddhism has the concept of Pure Land, a realm existing in the primordial universe outside of space-time, produced by a buddha’s merit. It is tempting to think of several hundred years of monks and nuns contemplating the celestial in the bosom of earthly Bogdkhan. And equally tempting to hope that some day, this place will achieve again the ideal of conservation that was started there hundreds of years ago. Until then, perhaps the ghosts of nuns and monks will mingle with the ghosts of the red deer in the Pure Land realm.

(Image 1: Bogdkhan Uul Strictly Protected Area, Mongolia. Credit: yeowatzup/Flickr through a Creative Commons license. Image 2: Ruins of Manzushir Monastery. Credit: Yaan/Wikimedia Commons through a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 license.)

Ecotourism is often presented as the savior for wildlife and wild places — providing local communities with financial incentives to preserve nature while also reducing poaching and development pressure.

But, lately, others question whether rich Westerners jetting around the world really help much at all: They disturb animals, create demands for new development and only employ local people in low paying jobs.

Some conservationists even consider tourism to be a significant threat to natural areas.

Which view is correct? Is ecotourism a problem, or a solution?

My biases up front: I’d rather travel for the purpose of seeing wildlife and enjoying various outdoor activities than just about anything. My wife has remarked it’s my drug of choice.

That aside, I still think the issue of ecotourism defies easy answers. Problem or solution?

It depends.

Certainly, the ecological havoc wreaked by tourists in places like the Galapagos is well documented. A fragile ecosystem, animals unafraid of humans and an increasing number of cruise ships has been a recipe for disaster.

One doesn’t have to look hard to see tourists behaving badly in nature.

People harass and feed wild bison, leave trash strewn across the Himalayas, demand resorts in places they shouldn’t be — the list is long.

And then there’s the whole carbon footprint issue. We all know that flying has tremendous impacts, so can we really justify flying off to some far-off corner of the world to see animals or scenery?

These are important concerns. Without a doubt, ecotourism can be a threat. But is it always?

After all, would there even be a Galapagos left as we know it if it wasn’t for tourism? Really?

Consider other island ecosystems and how difficult it is to conserve native island wildlife. If it wasn’t for those tour boats, the Galapagos would likely be a highly developed, rat-infested island devoid of wildlife.

Yellowstone may at times be crowded with tourists behaving badly, but would there still be herds of bison and packs of wolves and grizzly bears without those tourists?

The Serengeti faces issues, to be sure, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the wildebeest population there continues to migrate, during a period of time when so many other large mammal migrations have disappeared.

Private ranches in places like Brazil’s Pantanal and Namibia still have large populations of wildlife, in part because many ranchers here now attract tourists. It seems naïve to expect that they will keep conserving wildlife if visitors quit showing up.

Ecotourism, ultimately, is a complicated issue. And in that way, it’s not so different from most other conservation issues.

Some conservationists have the tendency to declare activities as simply “good” or “bad” — whether it’s ecotourism, ranching, timber harvest, invasive species, hunting, fire, or agriculture. All have their proponents and detractors.

However, we should make decisions based on the reality of our world, not on utopian fantasies where humans no longer have any impacts on nature.

We can work to make sure that ecotourism is done in appropriate ways that benefit wildlife and local communities.

And as the saying goes, conservationists can’t “let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”

Ecotourism isn’t perfect.

In many cases, though, it’s the best solution we have.

(Photo: Caimans draw tourists to Brazil’s Pantanal. Credit: Matt Miller/TNC.)

My husband returns to the same reefs every year in the Bahamas, where he has been teaching a coral reef ecology class for the last 14 years. On his 2008 trip, he noticed that the reef fish were missing. The culprits were quickly identified — and during his 2009 course, he and his students were eating them.

Lionfish.

Lionfish do not belong in the Caribbean. They are native to the South Pacific and Indian Ocean and made their way into the Caribbean through the release (the exact event is unknown) of aquarium fish. Some say they were in a tank that was destroyed in Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Others say it was a release of just 3 or 6 specimens. Whatever the case, lionfish are now spotted as far north as Rhode Island, and are popping up all over the Caribbean, from Colombia to the Virgin Islands to the Bahamas.

The Bahamas‘ marine ecosystem has already been hard hit. The people that know these reefs well are witnessing a rapid decline in reef fish thanks to these voracious predators, which have an appetite for juvenile reef fish. Their method of attack is particularly unique. Instead of an ambush attack or high-speed chase, lionfish make their presence known and confuse their prey by displaying their beautiful fins like a peacock, slowly dancing towards their prey and then rapidly sucking the prey into their mouths like a vacuum. This technique is so effective because no other predator in the Caribbean uses it — so prey are not adapted to avoid it.

Lionfish have no natural predators in Caribbean waters and are thriving on the tasty but already dwindling choice of baby reef fish. Some think that native grouper might have preyed on lionfish — but because grouper are overfished in the Caribbean (and in most parts of the world), the options beyond human predators are few.

As the distribution of lionfish in the Caribbean expands and the severity of this invasion is becoming more apparent, managers are trying to figure out what to do before the adult populations of reef fish are seriously affected. In the Bahamas, they have issued a “kill on sight” directive. The Caribbean Fisheries Management Council has even developed a Most Wanted Poster to encourage removal of these fish.

The best way to get rid of them? Put them on the menu! In Asia, lionfish are a popular menu item. That’s not yet the case in the Caribbean, so folks are working to change the culture of fear that surrounds lionfish (they have toxic spines that really hurt when they touch you) into a culture of desire for a delightful bite of this light and tasty fish. There are even websites that are collecting lionfish recipes — everything from sushi to Bahamian style fritters to smoked lionfish dip (yum!).

The hope is that people will be motivated to hunt and remove these fish, taking advantage of the existing tradition of artisanal fishing in the Caribbean and turning fishers toward this undesirable species and perhaps away from dwindling populations of grouper and snapper.

An additional approach to this problem — and one that would benefit the reef in multiple ways as well — would be to beef up protection of large predators such as grouper and sharks so that they can work to keep this ecosystem in balance and potentially keep the lionfish population in check.

My husband’s students decided to do a small research project to examine the gut contents (i.e., what is in the bellies) of lionfish they found on the Bahamian reefs, and discovered that their bellies were quite full of baby reef fish. The reward for their efforts was a yummy dinner of fried lionfish…and my husband assures me that in terms of flavor and texture, they compete with any flakey white fish you can think of or catch in the Caribbean. So…

This is probably the only time you’ll hear me advocating for people to eat fish. If you want to eat fish, I’d usually refer you to Monterrey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch — a guide that helps diners make decisions about the most sustainable and healthy options for seafood. However, when it comes to lionfish in the Caribbean, I say chow down to your heart’s content!

Of course this year’s Nobel Peace Prize got all the press — as that prize nearly always does. The Nobel Prize in economics, by contrast, went almost unnoticed.

That’s a double shame. First, because it was given to Dr. Elinor Ostrom of the Indiana University and Arizona State University — the first woman ever to win the economics prize.

And second, because Ostrom has devoted her career to demonstrating how a fundamental premise upon which most modern conservation strategies are built — the “tragedy of the commons” — is at times false.

More than 40 years ago, an ecologist from Texas named Garrett Hardin who had a gift for a well-turned phrase published an article called “The Tragedy of the Commons.”  His central thesis was that any common resource — say an open pasture or woodlot — will be subject to ever increasing exploitation by individuals unwilling to organize or impose a cost to manage the system, eventually leading to accelerated erosion of the resource.

This premise has so influenced the conservation movement that conservationists have focused their strategies on either advocating government interventions (say, creating a national park or wilderness area) or using private enterprise (privately buying land, easements, etc.) to avert death by a thousand cuts.

But Ostrom’s work has shown that this “tragedy of the commons” does not always have to happen.

Her research finds that communities can and will impose substantial costs to themselves to sustainably manage a common resource if (a) the expected benefits of managing a resource are greater than the cost of investing in the rules to govern those benefits, (b) loss of short-term economic gains are offset, and (c) the potential of cheating is eliminated.

Reading her recent paper in Science magazine — “A General Framework for Analyzing Sustainability of Social-Ecological Systems” — was like a flashlight being turned on during a night dive: My whole world was immediately illuminated.

In the piece, Ostrom outlines 10 key conditions or factors under which a local community will self-organize and impose rules or costs on itself in order to sustainably manage a resource for the long term — factors such as moderate territorial size, shared moral or ethical standards in the community, and an influential leader. (The full list of 10 is at the end of this post.) While achieving all 10 might seem daunting, I would bet that a broad survey of The Nature Conservancy’s field efforts would support her findings.

And here’s why those findings are revolutionary: Because conservationists have always worried about the long-term sustainability of our work — especially in poor places with little government presence and where money to fund our efforts will eventually tail off (and it always tails off — that’s the nature of fundraising).

But when we accept the applicability of Ostrom’s work to ours, then our theory of change — our job, if you will — has to change. Instead of defaulting to government intervention or private enterprise, we must now find ways to ensure that the key conditions of resource self-management are present…and where they are absent, to step in temporarily to fill the gap.

Ostrom’s Nobel Prize validates an approach that depends on empowering local communities, under some very specific conditions, to manage and care for nature — the true test of sustainability.  Without it, we will always be dependent on an ever-needier pipeline of funds to support far-flung efforts.

It is high time for the conservation movement to pay attention to a prize the rest of the world largely ignored.

(Image: Sheep in New Zealand. Credit: vtveen/Flickr through a Creative Commons license.)

Ostrom’s 10 conditions:

1.    Moderate territorial size — so there is an optimum size for the resource.  Too big and its tough to self-organize; too small and it won’t provide enough income.
2.    Scarcity or need must be present.
3.    System dynamics need to be sufficiently predictable (e.g., pastoralists may organize at a big scale but not a small one because of rain unpredictability).
4.    Stationary units of resources — e.g. trees or oysters are easier to deal with than highly mobile resources like an unregulated river.
5.    Size of the group or community has to be considered (optimum group size)
6.    An influential leader, previous organizational skills, and education are all necessary.
7.    Shared moral and ethical standards and thus norms of reciprocity.
8.    Knowledge of the socio-economic system — a common knowledge about the resources helps understand how a resource may generate slowly while a population grows rapidly.
9.    Users dependent on or who attach a high value to the sustainability of the resource.
10.   Collective-choice rules.

It’s indeed a bright green morning today, with positive news everywhere: International Climate Day of Action a big success! Smart meters galore! And here’s the big news: a new study shows your personal actions can make a difference in the fight against climate change! Take that, all you climate change pessimists.

1. Bill McKibben says we need to “stop whining and man up” to the fact that we can fight climate change. Grist chatted with him about 350’s International Day of Climate Action on October 24 (see video above), which included thousands of events around the world. Did you participate?
2. If you don’t already have a smart meter in your home, now’s your chance to get one — a government grant for $3.4 billion will install 18 million smart meters into houses across the United States to help improve energy efficiency.
3. And just in case you’re thinking that a smart meter won’t make much of a dent in climate change, a new study found that 33 simple household improvements could reduce national carbon emissions by 7 percent –enough to offset emissions from the petroleum, iron, steel and aluminum industries combined.
4. Can conservationists save the world? It’s the vision and hope of Nature Conservancy President and CEO Mark Tercek. Read a Reuters interview with Tercek about using market forces to protect nature – and how conservation is in everyone’s economic interest.  
5. Scientists have a new tool in the battle to save frogs from a deadly fungus that’s killing them all over the world: a highly-technical protocol for detecting the fungus in frogs is now available online, making it possible for scientists everywhere to have the information they need.

Boys fishing the Zambezi River behind a crocodile barrier

How do you convince people that a river they’ve known their whole lives is not the river it once was…or could be?

That turned out to be my challenge last week, when I traveled to Zambia in support of The Nature Conservancy’s new project to restore the Zambezi River.  After several days of meetings with our partners — including WWF and universities and government agencies from Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique — I finally got to spend some time on the river itself, in Lower Zambezi National Park.

This was my first experience in an African wilderness, and I was awestruck by the sheer abundance of hippos and crocs and the throngs of elephants, buffalo, antelope and baboons brought to the river’s edge by the blazing heat and parched hills that marked the end of Zambia’s long dry season (see below for a slideshow of the river, dam and wildlife).

While the wildlife had left me with a childlike sense of wonder, it was our dinner companion that night that brought home for me the importance and challenge of this project.

We sat down to dinner amidst a throbbing insect soundtrack, a slow-burning fire glowing in the foreground with the Zambezi a sinuous darker void in the darkness beyond. Joining us was Kevin, a Zambian who manages the lodge where we were staying.  Conversation turned to the health of the river and he told us the majority of his guests were anglers lured by the aptly named tiger fish, a fearsome predator with teeth right off the costume rack of a B-horror movie.

Kevin mentioned that fish numbers were down and had been going down for a while. This seemed a natural opening to talk about one of the specific objectives of our Zambezi project: working with dam managers to improve how they release water from the massive upstream Kariba Dam (called “environmental flow releases”), in part to promote the productivity of fish in this part of the river.

My Conservancy colleague suggested this: “You know,” he said, “some people think the fish decline is because the river no longer has high water during the rainy season because how the dam is operated.”

Kevin, nothing if not blunt, shook his head and said: “Nah, that’s crap. The real reason is that people in the villages take too many fish — they use nets with a small mesh that catch everything in the river, even the smallest fish. That’s why the fish numbers are going down.  But what can you do? You can’t simply tell people not to fish, they have nothing else. What will they do then, come and rob you at night?” He went on to relate his skepticism that the operation of Kariba Dam should, or even could, be altered; it just seemed risky to him.

In this one riposte, Kevin succinctly framed both the need and challenges for the Zambezi project.

First, although the river appears healthy — its water is clean and its banks are wild and rich in wildlife — appearances can be deceiving.  The river is not healthy, or at least not the same healthy it once was. Kariba Dam — big enough to store every drop of water flowing in the river for two years — has tamed it, made it a different river. Before the dam, the river ran high during the rainy season and very low in the dry. Today, the big reservoir behind Kariba captures the floods and evens out the flows throughout the year

Though we don’t have fisheries data from before Kariba, if the Zambezi is like most other big rivers, much of its fish abundance would have been produced in the floodplain grasslands and wetlands when they were inundated by high flows. Now the Zambezi mostly stays in its banks.

Second, the challenges for conservation and of people are intertwined. Overfishing is hurting the Zambezi and, ultimately, the people that depend upon it. The people who live here need some combination of better fisheries management, alternative sources of income and protein, and more fish in the river (one of the goals of the environmental-flows project). These livelihood challenges are inextricably linked with nature conservation and restoration.

Finally, even potential beneficiaries of changes can be skeptical of deviations from the status quo, because the risk of disruption looms larger than the as-yet-unproven possibility of benefits. Thus, the benefits must be clearly analyzed, demonstrated, and communicated.

Kevin’s conviction that overfishing, not flow regime, is the cause of fish decline is partly right — it is a problem for the river as it is today, this river. But this river is different from the river it once was. It’s not surprising that Kevin doesn’t suspect the flow regime; the current river is the only river he’s ever known.  Kariba was built in 1955, and so the only people who can really remember how the river previously worked — let’s say those at least 12 years old then — are nearly 70 years old today.  For everyone else, this river is the river.  And this Zambezi is being overfished.  But perhaps some aspects of the old Zambezi can be restored.

It’s clear we need good communications tools.  If Kevin — who has much to gain from a new flow regime — was skeptical of changes to the river’s management, what would other people say?

Fortunately, we got some practice at that communication later in the conversation. Kevin mentioned that the anglers know they need to fish near the river’s edges, where it flows next to or through downed logs, grasses and other vegetation. “Not out in the middle of the river,” he said. “The water’s too fast and the fish don’t like it. The fish are along the edges.”

I explained that what we talked about before — environmental flows to restore the connection between river and floodplain — was really the same thing as creating lots and lots of such “edge” habitat. Rather than just being restricted to the sides of the river, the shallow, calm, and vegetated “edge” habitat would cover an extensive plain — the difference between grazing cows in a strip of grass along a highway versus a vast meadow.

Kevin nodded his head thoughtfully.  I don’t know if he was convinced, but we’d found some common understanding and vocabulary of how the river worked.  We have much work ahead of us.

(Photo credit: Jeff Opperman/TNC.)