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Under Secretary of State Maria Otero blogs on women conservation heroes

October 18th, 2010

On October 7, I had the opportunity to attend a lunch honoring six women conservationists who have dedicated their lives to saving the planet and improving women’s rights. As these six heroes exemplify, environmental conservation begins at home and requires creativity, innovation, and courage.

Around the world, women are at the forefront of providing solutions to global environmental challenges, but they are also the ones who often feel the negative impact of environmental destruction most acutely. These heroes understand that fact, and through their work have improved both the environment and the lives of women. Read more

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The Sacramento Bee

By Dana McCreesh and Samuel Blackman

Brent McCreesh is a happy, healthy second grader, but if he were born 10 years ago he might not have even made it to preschool. Brent was diagnosed with neuroblastoma – an aggressive cancer – when he was just 2 years old. Thanks in part, however, to a medicine created from molecules identified in an African flower, an American mayapple tree and a soil bacterium, doctors were able to save his life.

Treatment of Brent’s cancer brought us – his mother and one of the many doctors who participated in his treatment – together. Our experience also gave us a profound appreciation for the important role nature plays in treating human disease. Now, we feel it is time to speak out on behalf of nature’s medicine cabinet, which is growing smaller every day.

Few people realize that half of all new medicines are based on chemical compounds that come from nature. This includes many treatments used for heart disease, type 2 diabetes, HIV, and other conditions that affect millions. A staggering 70 percent of all cancer drugs contain an active ingredient derived from nature.

Compounds found in a Caribbean sea sponge led to new anticancer and antiviral drugs. In Borneo, an anti-HIV compound emerged from research on the sap of a rainforest tree. A compound found in the venom of a Brazilian snake, the pit viper, is used to treat hypertension. And researchers are examining substances found in the skin of South American frogs for the possibility they may hold the key to stopping AIDS. The rosy periwinkle, a plant found in Madagascar, is the source of vincristine – a drug that was instrumental in Brent’s cancer treatment.

The places that house plants and organisms critical to the development of new drugs often lie far from the hospital or pharmacy. Most of the world’s species live outside our borders, in the forests and along the coastlines of developing countries in the tropics.

And even as scientists and researchers strive to develop new and better medications from substances found in nature, we are rapidly destroying the places from where this raw material comes. An area of forest the size of Costa Rica is destroyed each year, and one-third of coral reefs are already gone. Scientists estimate that half of all the world’s species could be on the brink of extinction by the end of this century.

The United Nations Environment Programme estimates that with current extinction rates, we lose one major new drug every two years. In all likelihood, many of nature’s keys to unlocking disease are already gone. Sadly, many poor countries lack the tools and funds to protect habitat for plants and animals.

A bipartisan bill in Congress, called the Global Conservation Act of 2010, aims to protect the local branches of nature’s pharmacy all over the world before they’re put out of business permanently. It would address global extinction by establishing a U.S. strategy to help developing nations protect large areas of natural habitat. It then asks the administration to get other nations around the world, including newly wealthy countries like China and India, to work with us to help poorer countries.

Many cancer survivors like Brent recently traveled to Washington to support the bill and to tell their representatives how much natural areas in developing countries have affected their lives. While some politicians were sympathetic, some were skeptical about taking any action that could be seen as helping poor countries when we have so many needs here at home.

But one in three Americans will be affected by a disease with a treatment derived from nature. That means we all probably know someone who has or could one day benefit from these medicines.

Without medications derived from several natural areas around the world, Brent would likely not have survived his cancer. We cannot let the tools to fight diseases that affect so many of our loved ones fall by the wayside. The places we need to save may be far away, but the benefits could not possibly hit closer to home.

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ABOUT THE WRITERS

Dana McCreesh is the mother of a cancer survivor who received anticancer medicines derived from nature. Sam Blackman is a pharmaceutical researcher and a pediatric oncologist who helped treat McCreesh’s son. He can be reached at samuel-blackman@merck.com.

This essay is available to McClatchy-Tribune News Service subscribers. McClatchy-Tribune did not subsidize the writing of this column; the opinions are those of the writers and do not necessarily represent the views of McClatchy-Tribune or its editors.

 http://www.sacbee.com/2010/10/14/3103729/conserving-nature-to-protect-our.html#ixzz1327KpMGu

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Prominent Women Tell U.S. Leaders that Protecting Global Environment Helps Women

October 8, 2010             

WASHINGTON—Leading female conservationists, including Dr. Habiba Sarabi, Afghanistan’s only woman governor, today called on Congress and the Obama administration to take a leadership role on global conservation. At a lunch event hosted by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and members of the Congressional Caucus for Women’s Issues from both parties, the group asked leaders in government and the private sector to treat the loss of forests, freshwater, fish stocks and other natural resources as a critical threat to women.

                The conservationists described ways in which women around the world are disproportionately harmed by environmental destruction. For example, they often farm the most environmentally degraded lands and depend on gathering products such as fruits, nuts, natural oils and plant fibers to supplement their income.

                Further, because women are typically responsible for collecting increasingly scarce fuel wood and fresh water, they can spend two to nine hours a day on these tasks alone, depending on the region. According to a study by Doctors Without Borders, traveling long distances for resources places females at a greater risk of violence. In Sudan, 82 percent of rapes occur when women are outside their villages searching for firewood, collecting water or traveling to the market. 

                “Around the world and in Afghanistan, critical natural resources are better protected when women can participate in their conservation,” said Governor Sarabi, who worked to create Afghanistan’s first national park. “And women become powerful advocates for their rights when they see what they can accomplish for themselves and their communities.”

                The leaders called for the United States to make biodiversity conservation a central goal in its efforts to improve the lives of women around the world.

                “The U.S. government has six federal agencies working on conservation efforts around the globe,” said Jeff Wise of the Pew Environment Group, who directs the Alliance for Global Conservation. “But in spite of all this activity, there’s no overarching vision for how our country, working with other nations, can help reverse the environmental degradation trends undermining social and economic development, particularly that of women.”

                The lunch event was sponsored by the United Nations Foundation, the Alliance for Global Conservation and the Green Belt Movement. 

                “Development experts have begun to recognize that the well-being of women can best predict the well-being of their families and communities,” said Kelly Keenan Aylward, Washington office director of the Wildlife Conservation Society.  “Making sure the environment helps bolster women will make whole families and regions stronger.”

                The Alliance for Global Conservation—a coalition of some of the world’s major conservation organizations, including Conservation International, The Nature Conservancy, the Pew Environment Group, the Wildlife Conservation Society and the World Wildlife Fund—is working to prevent the destruction of the world’s remaining natural ecosystems for the species and human communities that depend on them. For more information, visit www.actforconservation.org.

                For more information about the United Nations Foundation, visit www.unfoundation.org.

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The Miami Herald

By Anthony Zinni
           Recently the Department of Defense reported that the value of Afghanistan’s reserves of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and other strategic minerals approached $1 trillion. Some have started calling this financially strapped nation the Saudi Arabia of lithium. Even Zimbabwe, one of the poorest countries in the world, could vault into the top ranks of the world’s diamond producers, according to a U.N. announcement. It sounds so hopeful, yet in fact we see very few examples of nations where mineral wealth has led to peace and prosperity.
            Instead, gold and other rare minerals in Congo have helped to finance that region’s longstanding conflicts. Oil drilling in Niger has enriched politicians while creating few jobs for local people. And Sierra Leone’s diamonds have funded a violent national crime syndicate.
           If developing nations are looking toward natural resources as a way to help break the cycle of poverty and conflict, their hopes may not be misplaced. But they could be looking at the wrong resources. 
          A recent study by the Center for a New American Security examined how environmental degradation, poverty, migration, conflict, weak societal institutions and failed states form a feedback loop. It found that loss of “green” natural resources, such as forests, fresh water, fish and fertile soils, can play a significant role in driving instability and conflict. In fact, possessing green wealth may contribute more to peace and prosperity than gold, diamonds or lithium.
         Environmental degradation by itself, of course, doesn’t automatically lead to conflict, for the linkages are complex. But ample evidence indicates that the desperation, hopelessness and displacement of people that can come from exhausted green resources can encourage conflict and even failed states.
         According to an analysis by the United Nations, at least 11 violent struggles since 1990 have been fueled in part by the degradation of forests, fish, water or soils. While these connections are usually ignored by the media, environmental decline has played a role in several conflicts critical to U.S. interests.
        In one key example, the center’s report describes how the lack of access to fish stocks helped turn desperate Somali fishermen into pirates, requiring an increased U.S. military presence in the region. And it makes clear how the shifting loyalties of impoverished rural Afghans become more logical when considering that soil erosion and deforestation have put 75 percent of the country’s land area on the brink of becoming barren desert.
        Protecting green wealth in the developing world offers far greater potential for peace and prosperity than exploiting mineral resources for three reasons. First, access to the economic benefits that environmental resources provide is far more broadly and democratically shared than that of minerals, which are typically controlled by a single company, government agency or sometimes a foreign country.
        Second, protecting the environment requires cooperation, participation and openness. It’s no surprise that in some of the world’s most autocratic countries, many of the only open, democratic institutions are local forest councils and water boards.
       And finally, mineral stocks eventually run out, encouraging a “gold rush” mentality that defeats longer term considerations. Green resources, however, can keep on giving – for many generations – if used thoughtfully and shared equitably.
        It’s no surprise that the handful of developing countries that decided years ago to take a development path preserving their environmental resources have experienced higher economic growth and greater social stability than their neighbors. Conservation-minded countries like Costa Rica and Botswana have also been islands of peace in regions otherwise wracked by conflict.
        The new scholarship on conservation and security also contains lessons for the United States: Serious environmental degradation has the potential to undermine our security, economic and political goals in many regions of the world. The lesson is being taught to us in Afghanistan, Somalia and many other places, if we care to pay attention: It’s harder to win over hearts and minds when the environment has already been lost.

Anthony Zinni is a retired four-star Marine general and a former commander in chief of the U.S. Central Command. Readers may send him e-mail at Aczinni@aol.com.

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