* Africa: Business and Biodiversity Conservation in Africa
Biodiversity ‘the total variety of life on earth’ (1) is the foundation upon which human civilizations have thrived. At present, this ‘foundation’ is at risk of being uprooted by human activities. Scientist estimate that loss of biodiversity due to human activities, has increased from a background extinction rate of 1 species per million species per year to a present day value of about 10 000 species per million species per year (2). Indicted amongst the plethora of human activities accelerating biodiversity loss are the activities of multinational business corporations hereafter referred to as MNC’s (3). It is estimated that global trade principally by MNCs in products derived from biodiversity is about one trillion dollars per annum (4). The negative impact of MNCs on biodiversity has been linked to its classical and neo-classical economic foundations, which failed to incorporate social and environmental concerns into economic decision making.
To redress this oversight and in response to the sustainable development paradigm, economists today have developed several tools for the appropriate evaluation of nature. The most prominent of these is the concept of total economic evaluation (TEV), which enables MNCs to quantitatively approximate the economic value of natural capital (5) This development has come at a time when the international community through the UN Convention on Biological Biodiversity (UNCBD) and Agenda 21, has challenged MNCs to proactively shoulder their share of the cost of conserving the planets biodiversity. It is maintained that to get business to be more responsive to biodiversity conservation, the primary drivers have to be international/national legislations coupled with pressure from civil society such as consumer boycotts (6). However, moderate voices within the business-biodiversity debate while not ruling out the need for legislation and civil society pressure, are of the opinion that the way to a more biodiversity responsive business community is through the forging of mutually profitable partnerships between the business community and the biodiversity community (7).
The negative impact of MNCs with respect to the environment is well documented in the case of the oil and gas sector due to high profile incidents including the Exxon Valdez, the Brent Spar and the Ogoni (8). This has led to a real fear in the sector of its members losing their licence to operate. The sector is thus proactively involved in initiatives presenting it as biodiversity friendly, examples include the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) business-biodiversity initiatives, the World Bank’s Business Partners for Development (BPD) initiative, the UN Global Compact initiative and the Energy Biodiversity Initiative (EBI) under the auspices of Conservation International (CI).
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Business and Biodiversity Conservation in Africa
Biodiversity ‘the total variety of life on earth’ (1) is the foundation upon which human civilizations have thrived. At present, this ‘foundation’ is at risk of being uprooted by human activities. Scientist estimate that loss of biodiversity due to human activities, has increased from a background extinction rate of 1 species per million species per year to a present day value of about 10 000 species per million species per year (2). Indicted amongst the plethora of human activities accelerating biodiversity loss are the activities of multinational business corporations hereafter referred to as MNC’s (3). It is estimated that global trade principally by MNCs in products derived from biodiversity is about one trillion dollars per annum (4). The negative impact of MNCs on biodiversity has been linked to its classical and neo-classical economic foundations, which failed to incorporate social and environmental concerns into economic decision making.
To redress this oversight and in response to the sustainable development paradigm, economists today have developed several tools for the appropriate evaluation of nature. The most prominent of these is the concept of total economic evaluation (TEV), which enables MNCs to quantitatively approximate the economic value of natural capital (5) This development has come at a time when the international community through the UN Convention on Biological Biodiversity (UNCBD) and Agenda 21, has challenged MNCs to proactively shoulder their share of the cost of conserving the planets biodiversity. It is maintained that to get business to be more responsive to biodiversity conservation, the primary drivers have to be international/national legislations coupled with pressure from civil society such as consumer boycotts (6). However, moderate voices within the business-biodiversity debate while not ruling out the need for legislation and civil society pressure, are of the opinion that the way to a more biodiversity responsive business community is through the forging of mutually profitable partnerships between the business community and the biodiversity community (7).
The negative impact of MNCs with respect to the environment is well documented in the case of the oil and gas sector due to high profile incidents including the Exxon Valdez, the Brent Spar and the Ogoni (8). This has led to a real fear in the sector of its members losing their licence to operate. The sector is thus proactively involved in initiatives presenting it as biodiversity friendly, examples include the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) business-biodiversity initiatives, the World Bank’s Business Partners for Development (BPD) initiative, the UN Global Compact initiative and the Energy Biodiversity Initiative (EBI) under the auspices of Conservation International (CI).
While not dismissing MNCs efforts to be responsive to civil society concerns such as biodiversity conservation, it has been argued that corporate response is highly influenced by the ‘ethics of narcissus’ (9), which is an extremely high and obsessive concern for the corporate image and self-presentation, which often leaves corporate conduct completely untouched. It has also been noted that the implementation of corporate response formulated at far removed company headquarters can be inadequate at the level of the local business unit. Furthermore the lack of a comprehensive and robust global standard to assess the biodiversity friendliness of a MNC hampers universal goal setting (11). This has created room for some MNC to lay claim to being biodiversity friendly based on proactive involvement in initiatives that are no more than skin deep.
Therefore to ensure that business-biodiversity partnerships make meaningful contribution to biodiversity conservation, it is necessary to critically assess the outcomes from existing partnerships. It is in this light that this article turns a critical eye on one such partnership by the oil giant Royal Dutch/Shell in the heart of Africa. In 2000, the firm set up the Shell Gabon Biodiversity Project in the Guinea-Congolian rainforest region of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The Gabon project aims to assess and monitor biodiversity in Shell’s oilfields in Gabon. It’s executed through a five-year US$2.8 million partnership between Shell and the Smithsonian Institution Monitoring and Assessment of Biodiversity (SIMAB) team (12). Gabon lies on the equatorial western coast of the Congo Basin in SSA and has about 80% of its 267 000 km2 land surface area forested (16). Gabon has a population of about 1.2 million people and her population density 4.5 inhabitants/km2 is amongst the lowest in SSA. The country’s GDP per capita in 2000 was about US$4000, eight times higher than the average for SSA, making her the richest country in SSA. Gabon’s economy is heavily dependent on oil, which accounts for about 40% of her GDP and 80% of her export revenue (17).
Genesis and Achievements of the Shell Gabon Biodiversity Project
In 1996, Shell Prospecting and Development Peru (SPDP) entered into a joint venture with Mobil to undertake gas exploration activities in the Lower Urubamba watershed region in Peru. As part of a biodiversity impact mitigation strategy SPDP sought the assistance of the Smithsonian Institution Monitoring and Assessment of Biodiversity (SIMAB) team, who were at the time involved in biodiversity assessment exercise in Peru (13). The working relationship established between SPDP and SIMAB convinced SPDP’s parent company Royal Dutch/Shell to engage SIMAB on a long-term basis. Thus in 2000, Royal Dutch/Shell through the Shell Foundation entered into a five-year business-biodiversity partnership with SIMAB (14). The Gabon biodiversity project is the first initiative from the Shell/SIMAB partnership. The focus of the Gabon project is the Gamba Protected Forest Complex, the operational head quarters of Shell Gabon for over 40years (15).
The Gamba complex is located in South Western Gabon, it’s about 11, 320 km2 and comprises eight protected areas, 2 of which are of IUCN Category VIII status (18). Gamba is noted as a region within the Congo Basin of very high biological distinctiveness with moderate degree of threat (19). Shell/SIMAB Gabon project activities began in 2001 with the establishment of a field office and research facility in Gamba. Field based training was organised for Gabonese research collaborators and a yearlong study on arthropods was initiated. SIMAB commenced wide ranging biodiversity assessment activities in 2002. Results from activities undertaken to date validates the conclusions of the Guinea-Congolian forest expert workshop in 2001 that the Gamba Forest Complex due to limited human presence maintains a high degree of biological distinctiveness (19).
In response to increased interest from the Gamba local community and other national/international stakeholders including the Government of Gabon (GoG), the Shell/SIMAB project has organised a series of sensitisation events and tours presenting the results of their findings (14). The projects supposed achievements was also the subject of a BBC World’s Earth Report film titled ‘Oil’s Well?’ screened in Europe to coincide with the World Park’s Congress in 2003 (20). The Gabon biodiversity project has received favourable reviews from mainstream business and biodiversity conservation community. It is cited as an exemplary initiative in numerous business-biodiversity literature published by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), International Petroleum Industry Environmental Conservation Association (IPIECA) and the World Conservation Union (IUCN).
Critical Evaluation
The Gabon biodiversity project has produced a useful checklist of fauna and flora of the Gamba forest complex, however the significance of this achievement with regards to broader conservation priorities in the Guinea-Congolian forest region is questionable. The choice of Gamba complex as the starting point for the Shell/SIMAB partnership is understandable given the absence of any real challenge to doing conservation work in this area. The Gamba complex by default rather than by design has experienced very little disturbance from subsistence or commercial human exploitation. The population density of Gamba is very low and transportation facilities is about not existent. Furthermore the scale of Shell’s activities in the area is relatively small compared to the firm’s activities in its principal African oilfield in Nigeria’s Niger-Delta region (21). On a conservation priority rating drawn up at the Guinea-Congolian forest expert workshop in 2001, the Niger-Delta is way in front of the Gamba complex as an area in real need of attention to address the impact of human activity on loss of biodiversity.
Critical reading of Shell/SIMAB project documents show that at initiation of the project, the local populace of Gamba despite their limited numbers were not involved in stakeholder planning workshops for the projects. If this is about conserving the biodiversity of the Gamba complex in the long-term, the non-inclusion of the local community in the project is arguably a regrettable oversight. There is evidence that long-term conservation in remote locations such as Gamba is best assured when local inhabitants are empowered and included in the planning, design and implementation of such interventions (18). The reason for this is that specialists and experts brought in from abroad and major cities are not able to reside in these remote places for a considerable length of time. More often these would leave when significant project funding cease.
The evolution of the Shell/SIMAB Gabon biodiversity project since its inception in 2000 to date shows a particular and peculiar drive for attention seeking. There are many more biodiversity conservation initiatives of higher significance, which could have benefited immensely from resources committed to the Gabon project. While not arguing against the need for such a project documenting the biodiversity value of the Gamba complex, the scarcity of funding for conservation in areas of higher biodiversity value in Africa, opens up the Gamba project to the accusation of being an exercise underwritten by the ‘ethics of narcissus’. Perhaps this is stating the obvious, as it is known that in business-civil society initiatives, the business partners more often set the agenda and reap greater benefits (22).
* Emmanuel O. Nuesiri obtained his MPhil. in Environment and Development, from the University of Cambridge in 2002. He is presently a Clarendon scholar enrolled for a PhD at the University of Oxford. His research interests are biodiversity conservation, poverty alleviation and governance in Sub-Saharan Africa.
* Please send comments to [email protected]
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