From Tom Lovejoy, Heinz Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment.

[on lauding the science-based approach]

In 1989 at the request of COICA (the Coordinating Body of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon), I chaired that body's very first meeting with conservation organizations in Washington. It marked an important transition from an era where indigenous groups had been represented largely by anthropologists to one in which they not only represented themselves but also had formed their own organization. Since then, the role of indigenous peoples with conservation has grown and become more complex.

The picture presented by Mac Chapin in the last issue is of close to uniform failure of large, powerful, and rich NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) to engage seriously with indigenous people. I know first hand and from on the ground that that is far too monochromatic a picture and that NGOs take these issues seriously.

Except in areas where there are no indigenous people, it is impossible to succeed in conservation without taking indigenous and local people into account. It is not surprising that there are failures and that it is not easy. As a field, environmentalists are very prone to false dichotomies, such as whether Integrated Conservation and Development Programs (ICDPs) work or do not. Some do and some don't, and lessons learned should help the prospect for favorable future outcomes.

All of us, including indigenous people, have a stake in a planet that is biologically healthy, functional, and diverse. Without it, there can be no sustainable development or long-term poverty alleviation. Sustainable development will require protected areas in which people are essentially absent as well as vast inhabited areas to be managed and used with a gentle imprint. Where indigenous peoples are involved, we should celebrate their strong connections with nature, but be careful not to rob them--in Peter Matthiessen's words--of "their humanity" by viewing them through a nouveau-Rousseau-esque lens.

We are trapped everywhere--not just in indigenous situations--in the interplay between the urgent and the important: short-term human needs will always trump the longer-term ones such as environment and biodiversity conservation. Rather than begrudge conservation organizations their success in growing big, in garnering substantial funds, and thinking--at last--on a large scale, those of us driven first and foremost by social concerns should celebrate and emulate their success.

Similarly, the science-based approach of the major NGOs should be lauded and not portrayed as opposed to the interests of indigenous and local people. It is the only sensible way to set priorities to maximize conservation and avoid missing important elements as we strive to slow the early stages of the sixth great extinction. Such science-based conservation priorities must be integrated with the socio-economic matrix to achieve successful programs.

All these conservation efforts will fail without engagement of both governments and the corporate sector. Funds from corporations are useful of course, but far more important is improvement in their environmental behavior. NGOs that do work with the private sector and government may well be somewhat less likely to battle their partners publicly in some aspects. That is where it is important to remember the value of division of labor in the environmental community. Conservation as a whole is more effective when it acts with a mosaic of approaches, including strong advocacy and centrist pragmatism, as noted years ago when EPA Administrator Russell Train remarked that then Sierra Club President David Brower made him "seem reasonable."

The most important point is that conservation is very much an exercise of learning by doing. We should not be surprised by mistakes nor by heated viewpoints in the course of acting for change in an overly crowded world. "Silver bullet" solutions are very rare and we all need to spend more time talking to each other. Above all I think we need to both think big and be big-hearted, and--without falling into any traps of expediency--to adhere to Paul Nitze's principle of not letting the perfect get in the way of the possible.

THOMAS E. LOVEJOY

President, H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment