TRAFFIC East Asia is in the midst of a new project to combat illegal wildlife trade in China with the unlikely help of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS).

TRAFFIC, an international network of experts on wildlife trade issues, intends to harness concern about the spread of SARS to reduce demand for wild animal consumption in the long-term.

While SARS has been a human tragedy, it has nonetheless spotlighted the use of wildlife in modern China. Experts believe the flu-like disease first emerged in China’s southern province of Guangdong in 2002 and ultimately caused 774 deaths in 27 countries, including about 300 deaths in China. Health concerns have now become an entry to discussions about sustainable use and conservation of wildlife in China, and traders and consumers are more aware of the uncertain future of endangered species.

Over the past 15 years, China’s Wildlife Conservation Law (1988) has not effectively prevented illegal trade. While primarily a health concern, the suspicion that the SARS virus may have jumped to humans from exotic wild animal food products led to proposals from within the Chinese government during the 2003 outbreak to prohibit the consumption of wild animals.

In response to SARS in 2003, Chinese officials confiscated more than 800,000 animals from markets and arrested over 4,000 people for selling protected species. This week, in response to a newly confirmed SARS case in Guangdong, the government began shutting wildlife markets in the province and exterminating thousands of masked palm civets and other animals on sale—a move World Health Organization officials said may be in haste but, if not undertaken with extreme care, could cause further health risks and eliminate evidence of the origins of the disease.

As part of the project launched in October 2003 with support from the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF), TRAFFIC aims to develop a strategy to leverage concern about health issues, such as SARS, into concrete conservation impact in ways that are responsive to cultural, social and economic circumstances to ensure long-term success.

A joint program of WWF and IUCN-The World Conservation Union, TRAFFIC hopes to engage with relevant partners such as the WWF China Program, the IUCN/SSC Veterinary Specialist Group, the World Health Organization and the State Forestry Administration in China to identify actions needed to strengthen enforcement of China’s existing wildlife laws and build a constituency of consumers in China for sustainable wildlife use. Ultimately, the project aims to reduce illegal and unsustainable wildlife trade in China.

The use of wildlife in China has deep cultural roots, and the key to change will be in raising the importance of the concept of sustainable use in decisions about wildlife consumption, according to Craig Kirkpatrick, the director of the TRAFFIC East Asia regional office in Hong Kong. However, he says by leveraging public and government concern about SARS, the opportunity is ripe to raise awareness and encourage action that protects China’s endangered wildlife and promotes sustainable use of wildlife resources.

A review of the current CEPF portfolio indicates that approximately 35 percent of CEPF-supported projects, totaling in excess of $10 million, are directly linked to poverty alleviation. The finding is key: the CEPF partners share a common understanding that biodiversity conservation and poverty alleviation are intrinsically linked.

The CEPF strategy to preserve the rich natural resources of the world’s hotspots is vital to the health and well being of nature as well as sustaining the livelihoods of people and contributing to poverty alleviation—the fundamental objective of the Millennium Development Goals that all UN member nations have agreed to meet by 2015.

"Based on this common understanding, in actuality all CEPF projects, through their aim to improve biodiversity conservation, have a positive impact on the prosperity, health and well being of nature and people alike," says CEO Peter Seligmann of Conservation International, one of five partners in CEPF.

The review found that CEPF investments are contributing to three identified dimensions of poverty reduction: increased livelihood opportunities and incomes; improved health; and reduced vulnerability. The partnership has:

• contributed to increased livelihood opportunities and incomes through the support of income-generating projects such as ecotourism, alternative agricultural practices, community-based natural resource management and capacity building;
• contributed to improved health through the support of projects such as the creation and management of protected areas, the restoration of natural ecosystems and the benefits they provide, and the sustainable use of medicinal plants; and
• reduced vulnerability to natural, social and political disasters through the support of projects that increase livelihood opportunities and improve health and empower communities as well as projects that directly address threats such as floods, deforestation and forest fires.

In addition to CEPF’s strategic investments, the CEPF partners—Conservation International, the Global Environment Facility, the Government of Japan, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the World Bank—are independently engaged in efforts that will be vital to the success of the Millennium Development Goals.

In recent developments, a World Bank competition awarded $6 million in seed money for social entrepreneurs to tackle local development challenges in 27 countries at the 2003 Development Marketplace Global Competition held at the World Bank headquarters in Washington during December.

"At a time when we are in a race to attain the Millennium Development Goals—and achieve a new balance between rich and poor nations—the need for creative ideas and uncommon partnerships is ever greater," said World Bank President James Wolfensohn as he presented the winners.

This year’s competition was augmented by more than $800,000 from the Global Environment Facility and $500,000 from the MacArthur Foundation.

In a Dec. 24 editorial on the Development Marketplace awards, the New York Times said, "The ability of ordinary citizens to transform their societies has soared with the spread of democracy in the last 15 years, and so has the recognition among project sponsors that spotting these innovators early and financing their work is a cost-effective way to improve lives."

In a separate major development, the MacArthur Foundation recently announced 14 grants totaling more than $3.6 million in support of conservation and sustainable development projects in Ecuador and Colombia. Says Jonathan Fanton, president of the MacArthur Foundation: "The Foundation is investing in organizations that can contribute to preserving critical areas in the region by strengthening the legal infrastructure and helping to nurture political and technical leadership in conservation. (This) is an area of the world where we can still help save many species and protect the biological diversity for future generations."

Read the CEPF paper from the review and the full partner announcements to learn more:

• CEPF and Poverty Alleviation: An Overview (PDF – 143 kb)
• Bank Competition Awards $6 Million in Start-Up Funding to Social Entrepreneurs
• MacArthur Foundation Awards More Than $3.6 Million in Grants for Conservation and Sustainable Development Projects

Information is key to effective conservation: collecting it, making sense of it and doing something with it. Two former Reuters news service correspondents, a chartered accountant and others have teamed together to develop a news service about Africa that will work in all three of these areas in the first dedicated service of its kind.

"Africa's environment—one of the last great natural wonders of the world—is under threat on virtually every front, yet its future health has immense implications not only for ordinary Africans but for the entire world,” says Jonathan Clayton, co-developer of the Africa Environmental News Service (AENS) project and former Reuters regional bureau chief in the Maghreb and Eastern Africa.

“Despite this there is not one information service focusing on its plight,” Clayton says. “AENS will do this, helped by people all over Africa and new technology to bring reports from some of the most remote parts of the planet.”

The service, now in its design and market research phase with CEPF support, is the first dedicated to environmental information about Africa and is expected to provide a resource that draws attention to the linkages between Africa's environmental health and its potential for sustainable development and alleviation of poverty.

Now you can help the AENS developers design the best service possible. Visit the sample AENS Web site today and share your opinion about it by completing the simple and short survey questionnaire highlighted on the homepage.

Three unregistered chainsaws used to cut down protected trees in Rizal have been confiscated in a Direct Community Action, bringing the total number of chainsaw confiscations in the Philippines province of Palawan to 12 in five months.

The confiscation was made through the Swift Justice program, a community-based project managed by the Environmental Legal Assistance Center (ELAC). The program builds the capacity of communities in the Palawan biodiversity conservation corridor to develop a localized enforcement system to discourage and, if necessary, prosecute poaching, illegal logging and similar violations of conservation laws. As part of the program, ELAC is also developing two alternative livelihood projects to further support the effort to combat illegal logging and wildlife smuggling.

CEPF is supporting the program as part of its strategic approach in the Philippines hotspot to build the capacity of civil society to advocate for better corridor and protected area management and against development harmful to conservation.

Despite a moratorium on commercial logging since 1992, small-scale logging, particularly by newcomers to the area, continues to take its toll on the livelihood of indigenous communities that depend on the forests. In some areas, illegal logging has invariably attracted shifting cultivation, resulting in deforestation, erosion, floods and the extensive use of agrochemicals.

"The enforcement of our forestry laws has always been something good only on paper," says Attorney Bobby Chan of ELAC. "Resorting to our program of Swift Justice to augment and change this reality is inevitable if only to provide a provisional remedy to our remaining resource."

In the past, whenever illegal logging or wildlife incidents have occurred, communities have reported the event to the relevant agency but the response has been so slow as to make it ineffectual, according to Chan. The concept of Community Direct Action encourages communities to make timely apprehensions themselves by undertaking a citizen’s arrest confident in the knowledge of environmental legislation and with legal backup behind them in the form of ELAC.

The Swift Justice program focuses on generating or enhancing community initiatives for protected areas management through existing indigenous/tribal justice and community-based systems.

The program primarily works to provide paralegal training to indigenous leaders and farmers in village communities alongside locally based enforcement bodies such as the bargangay tanod or village police and members of citizens’ watchdog groups.

And what of the owners of the confiscated chainsaws?

CEPF now has in operation three small grant programs to provide support to the local coordination of its strategy in the Atlantic Forest biodiversity hotspot.

Most recently, Fundação Biodiversitas para Conservação da Diversidade Biológica launched the Program for the Protection of Threatened Species in December 2003, and the announcement of the first call for proposals is expected later this month. Information about the first call for proposals, as well as general information about the program may be found at www.biodiversitas.org.br or www.cepan.org.br.

This program is the only component within the CEPF Atlantic Forest portfolio that focuses outside of the Central and Serra do Mar biodiversity corridors in Brazil, covering the remainder of the Brazilian portion of the hotspot.

The Program to Support the Creation of Private Reserves (RPPNs) has completed its second call for proposals. Eight new projects to support the creation of new RPPNs and 10 projects to expand the implementation of existing RPPNs are being considered. Also planned for the coming year is a training course for the owners of these reserves that will promote sustainable activities for their protected areas. Detailed information about this program managed by the Alliance for the Conservation of the Atlantic Forest may be found at www.aliancamataatlantica.org.br or view the related stories:

• From CEPF E-News online: Alliance Approves 19 Small Grants for Private Reserves
• From our Web site: New Grants for Atlantic Forest Landowners

The third program—Institutional Strengthening Program in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest—was developed to help build the capacity of small institutions working in the field of environment within the two corridors where CEPF focuses its investments. The main objective is to contribute to the growth and focus of these institutions so their actions will contribute even more toward biodiversity conservation and they become stronger members of the region’s conservation community.

The program is coordinated by Associação Mico-Leão Dourado (AMLD) in the Serra do Mar Corridor and Instituto de Estudos Sócioambientais do Sul da Bahia (IESB) in the Central Corridor.

AMLD and IESB began by developing a list of nongovernmental organizations, associations, institutions and other entities of civil society that work directly on environmental issues. The resulting registries include diverse information about each institution, such as the team, infrastructure, areas of work and projects developed.

Upon completing the registration of these institutions, the program launched two requests for proposals, one for each corridor. The plan is to have two requests for proposals in the Central Corridor and three in the Serra do Mar Corridor. In these first requests, the incentives were for proposals for projects dealing principally with concrete local actions for conservation and biodiversity and the implementation of corridors, in addition to one or two components aimed at institutional strengthening.

In total, IESB received 75 proposals and AMLD, 39. Committees made up of groups of experts from the different states and areas of expertise carried out the selection processes, ultimately selecting 17 projects in the Central Corridor and 12 in the Serra do Mar Corridor to receive funding. Below is a list of the institutions and titles of their selected projects:

Central Corridor

1. Amar Caparó: Virtual Sphere Training
2. Associação dos Amigos do rio Piraquê-Açu em Defesa da Natureza e do Meio Ambiente: Development of AMIP
3. Associação Vila-velhense de Proteção Ambiental: Institutional planning for Avidepa (2003/2004)
4. Centro de Desenvolvimento Sustentável Guaçu-Virá: Local sustainable development project for areas of the Forno Grande and Pedra Azul State Parks, Espírito Santo
5. CEPEDES: Training of trainers for Pro-Atlantic Forest
6. Chão Vivo: Organic agriculture as local sustainable development and conservation of the Atlantic Forest in Espírito Santo
7. Flora Brasil: Contribution to the conservation of the central corridor through capacity building of Associação Flora Brasil
8. GERC – Grupo Ecológico Rio das Contas: Forest’s edge
9. Grupo de Agricultura Ecológica Kapi'xawa: Sustainability of family-based agriculture
10. Instituto Ecotuba: Projeto ALMA – Coastal environment of the Atlantic Forest
11. Instituto Tijuípe: Structuring the Instituto Tijuípe for the strengthening of the APA Itacaré-Serra Grande
12. Instituto Uiraçu: Strengthening of the Instituto Uiraçu
13. Preserva: Support for the Association of Private Reserve Owners of Bahia
14. Núcleo de Comunidades Agrícolas e Associação de Moradores do Marimbu, Santo Anônio e Rio Negro: Operational and professional training for the Projeto Onça
15. Sociedade de Amigos do Parque de Itaúnas: Eco-cultural reference center
16. Sociedade Civil dos Bombeiros Voluntários de Santa Teresa: It is tough to prevent forest fires!
17. Terra Viva: Agro-biodiversity in agro-forests – establishing the Central Corridor Support Center in the Extreme South of Bahia

Serra do Mar Corridor

1. Associação de Pescadores e Amigos do Rio Paraíba do Sul: Flora survey in the islands of Paraiba do Sul River
2. Grupo Brasil Verde: Training for environmental education and conservation
3. Instituto Ambiental Litoral Norte: Landscape perception and environmental conservation – new tools for Serra do Mar State Park
4. Instituto Pau Brasil de História Natural: Socio-environmental analysis; subsidies for the formation of the ecological Corridor of Cantareira-Mantiqueira
5. IPEDS - Instituto de Pesquisas e Educação para o Desenvolvimento Sustentável: Know to Preserve
6. Movimento Ambiental Pingo D'Água: Bird survey in Morro do Governo - Iguaba Grande, RJ
7. Organização Bio-Brás: Research, education and environmental protection - Projeto Nascente
8. Projeto Araras: Digital cartography of Araras - Petrópolis, RJ
9. Régua: Teacher and student training in schools of the Rio Guapiaçu headwaters
10. Salve a Serra: Biodiversity Corridors as agro-forest production units
11. Tereviva: Dissemination of the Muriqui Program for the communities around the Serra dos Órgãos National Park
12. Una nas Águas: Projeto Aulas Passeio – Environmental education

Also as part of the Institutional Strengthening Program, technical training courses will be carried out for the participating institutions. AMLD has already carried out two courses on project design with 45 institutions participating.

IESB has structured its training courses in three modules: institutional management, conservation biology, and public policy. The first two courses have been carried out and the third module is scheduled for March. Close to 50 institutions are participating in these courses.

"The Institutional Strengthening Program has had a tremendous impact," says Ivana Lamas of Conservation International-Brazil, which together with SOS Mata Atlântica leads the coordination of CEPF implementation in the Atlantic Forest.

• The Caucasus Environmental NGO Network (CENN) is a voluntary effort of more than 6,000 members to foster regional cooperation by improving communication among environmental organizations in the Caucasus hotspot. Visitors to its Web site can subscribe to free daily news and monthly bulletins and find links to environmental organizations throughout the region.
• Ornithological Worldwide Literature (OWL) is a new online bibliographic database of more than 19,000 citations and abstracts from literature that pertains to the science of ornithology. Hosted by the Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology at Oxford University in the United Kingdom, OWL is seeking more volunteers to help compile further information for the free service. Contact Managing Editor Jay Sheppard at JMSheppar@aol.com for a list of journals needing abstractors and other information.