Global Conservation Strategies

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Species protection today employs a combination of local efforts by private citizens, called grassroots environmentalism, and far-reaching international laws. International treaties and laws offer the best chance to affect biodiversity loss, because they address entire biomes that stretch across the globe. Two international organizations have had perhaps the greatest
effect on protecting endangered species. The first is the World Conservation Union (IUCN), which was established in 1948 by the United Nations. The IUCN manages the Red List and also organizes meetings among its member nations to establish laws banning poaching, exotic animal trade, and habitat-destroying activities.

The second important international group is the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which also relies on the cooperation of nations to establish biodiversity programs. It resembles the IUCN because it includes hundreds of government and private agencies that work on biodiversity protection. The CBD focuses on the world’s biomes (the ecosystem approach to biodiversity protection) and creates programs for each.

Like the IUCN, the CBD recognizes that economics and politics influence large-scale biodiversity programs. Finally, the CBD gathers all the new technologies available for saving species and habitat.

Conservation strategies that require the cooperation of diverse governments have special challenges. National identity, culture, and type of government impact the success of conservation programs because different societies view species according to different value systems. For instance, some societies kill horses or dogs for food without controversy,
but other societies find this unacceptable. A public disagreement between Japan’s government and global environmental groups has centered on Japan’s yearly hunt in the Southern Ocean (also known as the Antarctic Ocean) for minke and fin whales. Japan values the five-month hunt that kills about 1,000 whales as a part of its culture and a four-century tradition. Some national leaders in countries such as Australia have given their uneasy approval to the hunts, but Israel has taken a strong antiwhaling position. The United States has taken a moderate antiwhaling stance that has fluctuated over the past decade.

Type of government influences the decisions that affect biodiversity. A dictatorship might be a difficult place for an environmental group to make progress in saving biodiversity, especially if the group needs the help of the government to protect land for habitat. Democracies present their own challenges in solving environmental problems. Most democracies provide an open forum for citizens to express different opinions. This can lead to conflicts, such as disagreements between companies that want to drill for oil in the protected Alaskan wilderness and environmentalists who want to preserve the wilderness. Democracies furthermore change administrations periodically so that planning long-term environmental programs can be difficult.

Organizations such as Conservation International serve a role in creating dialogue between national governments but also local governments or political parties so that conflicts do not overshadow the environment’s needs. These types of organizations that work free of political influence offer the best hope for keeping biodiversity programs moving forward and making a difference to endangered habitats and species.