News

News

Knowledge of economic tools in conservation shouldn't just exist on an individual level. In order to make an even bigger impact on nature, CSF is taking its training to the institutional level this month with Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) in Bolivia. WCS was selected by CSF for our first ever In-House Training, funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation's Andes-Amazon Initiative (AAI). WCS saves wildlife and wild places worldwide through science, global conservation, education and the management of the world's largest system of urban wildlife parks.
The Albertine Rift is the 920-mile long western area of the East African Rift, covering parts of Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Burundi and Tanzania. It runs from the northern end of Lake Albert to the southern end of Lake Tanganyika. Formed over millions of years, the Albertine Rift is the result of two tectonic plates that once collided and are now slowly moving apart. This geologic activity has created some of Africa's tallest mountains and many of the world's deepest lakes. In addition, the unique variation in elevations has contributed to the diversity of habitats that include wetlands, alpine grasslands, lowland and montane forests, and woodland savannas. Within these habitats, one finds everything from active glaciers to volcanoes.
On January 17, CSF course graduate José Serra and CSF's Alfonso Malky presented an economic study of the proposed Inambari dam, designed to generate hydropower primarily for Brazilian consumers. The study, sponsored by the Wildlife Conservation Society's Peru office, examines the feasibility of the project, which would harness energy from an Amazon tributary in the country's southeastern jungle. Serra led the investigation, looking into the overall economic return, environmental costs, profits for the dam builder and impacts on various sectors of Peruvian society. Results showed that the project's feasibility depends on charging a relatively high electricity price and delivering benefits, in the form of flow control, to downstream dams in Brazil.
CSF recently released the HydroCalculator Version 3.0 with two major advances. First, the tool interactively enables the user to pinpoint the exact location of the hydro project on a map, which can show satellite imagery and terrain. Second, a global map of land-cover types, with corresponding carbon densities, has been linked to the tool so that it automatically calculates net carbon emissions. Advanced users can override the land-cover selection and choose up to four different types of land-covers flooded by the dam, and their respective shares of the area inundated. We have added dozens of land-cover types – all of those included in the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center dataset.
CSF will launch African and Himalayan initiatives and expand Andes-Amazon programs through $1.2 million agreement with Biodiversity Understanding in Infrastructure and Landscape Development (BUILD) program of USAID. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) recently announced a $1.2 million agreement with Conservation Strategy Fund (CSF) to launch a comprehensive initiative in central Africa, expand CSF’s programs in the Andes-Amazon region, and initiate a limited program in Asia’s Himalayan region. The goal of the program is to promote biodiversity conservation through infrastructure best practices.
HydroCalculator 2.0 and the Roads Filter have just been released for use on CSF's website. Both were showcased in early September in La Paz where CSF Bolivia staff rolled out the two strategic tools to prioritize conservation efforts in the face of road and dam development in South America. The first, the HydroCalculator enables people to quickly analyze the pros and cons of hydroelectric projects distinguishing between those that are relatively clean and efficient and those that are expensive and destructive. The hydro presentation is the third in a series that included similar events in Medellín, Colombia and Brasília, Brazil and ultimately aims to avoid destructive dam building.
For Conservation Strategy Fund's Brazil Executive Director Marcos Amend was featured on Santa Rosa, California's KRCB, discussing economic development as an alternative to deforestation in the Amazon basin. He also explores the work CSF does to prevent destructive roads from being built through the rainforest. To hear what Marcos has to say, click here.
The May 8th - 14th, 2010 edition of The Economist published a letter by President John Reid and CSF course graduate and Fellow Wilson Cabral about the Belo Monte dam. The letter pointed out that the shaky economics of the dam will create pressure for even more dam development upstream of Belo Monte. Construction of the Belo Monte on the Xingu River is rapidly moving forward. But there are positive aspects to this story. A delay in the project of several years, partly due to CSF's 2006 study of the dam, has given time for protected areas and a big new carbon project to be consolidated. This will make it harder for additional big dams, which are the real threat, to be built upstream of Belo Monte on the Xingu.
CSF has just developed an innovative online HydroCalculator Tool that empowers citizens to analyze the ecological, social, and financial impacts of hydroelectric dams. http://www.conservation-strategy.org/hydrocalculator-analyses
New Development and Ecosystem Service Roadkill by John Reid, Leonardo Fleck, and Marcos Amend featured in The Katoomba Group's Ecosystem Marketplace http://ecosystemmarketplace.com/pages/article.opinion.php?component_id=…