Word: local
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Halting the assault on biodiversity will not be easy, but there are many actions that governments can take. First, they should develop and support local scientific institutions that train professionals in conservation techniques. More money should flow into educational programs that alert people to the irreversible consequences of a loss of genetic diversity. An international, environmental version of the Peace Corps could spread conservation expertise to the Third World...
Throughout the developing nations there are encouraging stirrings of local environmental activity. In Malaysia blowgun-armed Penan tribesmen have joined forces with environmentalists in an effort to stop rampant logging. And in Brazil, which has some 500 conservation organizations, environmentalist Jose Pedro de Oliveira Costa organized a coalition of legislators, conservationists, industrialists and media barons to stir public support to preserve Brazil's remaining Atlantic forests. "The threats to the forests remain," said Costa, "but now at least there is a network in place to scream when a threat arises...
...sustainable development to work, observed Paulo Nogueira-Neto, environmental adviser to the Brazilian Ministry of Culture, governments will have to devise comprehensive national zoning plans so that their countries can achieve the right mix of preservation and economic growth. Local residents can be encouraged to earn a livelihood in the more robust areas, while habitats that are fragile can be protected. Sustainable development can proceed, noted Kenneth Piddington, director of the environmental department of the World Bank, "right up to a park's boundary...
Financial as well as political leverage can be used in the cause of preservation. Governments should force local lending institutions to review the environmental consequences of proposed loans. No bank, for example, should be allowed to lend a company money to set up a cattle ranch if the operation would destroy too large a section of an endangered forest...
...absorb CO2 from the air. "It surely has to be one of the most benign things we can do," said Gus Speth of the World Resources Institute. Tree planting can be encouraged at all levels of society, from individuals putting an extra tree or two in their backyards to local communities and private organizations planting an acre at a time to provincial and national governments reforesting on a more widespread basis...