Now that the financial crisis has gone global, there are growing concerns in the conservation community that the protection of our planet will fall to the bottom of priorities. Financial downturns tend to harm the environment as governments look to extraction industries to offset losses elsewhere, and locals find the need to harvest and harm protected areas for their own subsistence.
Another school of thought welcomes the downturn as a means to reset priorities. There’s increasing scrutiny on military spending, with little support for long-term military campaigns that drain public coffers. The troubling economics times also serve to illustrate the inequities of consumption and wealth concentration around the world that can’t continue indefinitely.
Conservation-minded individuals and organizations pin their hopes on the large-picture issue of climate change. Talk about less damaging renewable energy as a means to revitalize the economy, have a win-win benefit for both society and the environment. While there is currently little capital available for such projects, a growing global interest may place such investments at the forefront of the recovery effort.
Read more about the tenuous balance between conservation, the environment and poverty in this National Geographic report from last week’s IUCN Congress in Barcelona.
