about a decade ago the last wild
northern white rhinoceros died lonely
somewhere in a north easterly corner of
the Democratic Republic of Congo this
sad story is just one particularly stark
illustration of the key role this
country plays in the war to conserve
some of the world’s most remarkable
wildlife and of the hefty price paid
when individual battles are not I have a
little confession to make though like
everyone else I know the environment is
important I know that the conservation
of nature is a good thing in my head I
know this but it just isn’t an issue
which in passion to me which fires me up
this is perhaps a little shameful but
it’s just the way it is nevertheless
earlier this year I got a commission to
research and write about just this
conservation of nature in Congo so I
dutifully flew to the mangrove Marine
Park about 250 miles west of here on the
coast weather where the river Congo
concludes its epic passage of cross
Equatorial Africa and charges violently
into the Atlantic Ocean here I spent a
little over a week following around the
people who run the park talking to the
people who lived in and around it and
just generally trying to work out how
the whole thing works indeed if the
whole thing works then I came back to
Kinshasa rota did a bunch more research
and then I wrote a couple of stories so
as I said I struggle to get infused by
conservation but Congo and its natural
heritage are a little bit different
they’re a little it’s a little bit
extraordinary so let me just momentarily
scratch the surface this country has the
second largest rain forest on the planet
only Brazil tops it this country has
half of Africa’s entire pitaya rain
forest coverage and many asthma and this
country has many significant significant
populations of importance yet vulnerable
large mammals such as elephant mountain
gorillas and chimpanzees and some
incredible species are endemic to Congo
which means they are found here only
here
and nowhere else these include the ik a
fee this zebra giraffe hybrid the bonobo
the eastern lowland gorilla and a bunch
of birds even the World Bank I can be
the world’s most boring organization
gets excited by what it calls congos
globally unique biodiversity so congos
natural wealth isn’t worth protecting
it’s very difficult to work out what is
so we’re agreed
conserving congos wildlife is a good
thing it’s the right thing to do but
there’s a problem there’s an obstacle
and it’s a pretty big one Congo and more
accurately the Congolese government
doesn’t have very much money or as a
fallen Minister put it to me just last
week so little money it may as well have
no money at all last year the Congolese
government’s annual budget was somewhere
between five point five and seven
billion dollars in the country of 75 to
85 million people sadly this doesn’t go
very far and public expenditure this
year is expected to be even smaller by
way of comparison in the United Kingdom
where I come from which has a population
a little smaller the government will
this year spend a little over a trillion
dollars in South Africa with the
population 20 million fewer than the
Congo the government will spend 120
billion dollars and in neighbouring
Angola with a population only a third
that of Congo the government will spend
over 40 billion dollars the reasons why
the Congolese government doesn’t have
very much money at its disposal to spend
on healthcare roads education let alone
conservation of various and complex we
can point to this form of subjugation in
this country in jordiz a Belgian colony
where it was treated as little more than
a treasure chest full of ivory for the
brother and Philip
and many other precious things and the
Congolese people the exploited means of
digging it up or chopping it down and
spiriting it quickly out of the country
we can point to the early decades of
independence when the Western powers
first helped murder Congress first
elected leader Patrice Lumumba and then
lavishly supported Noguchi ceci Seco
who drove the national economy into the
ground and depleted the public treasury
we can point to the horrifying civil war
which tore apart this country between
1998 and 2003 and cost millions of
Congolese lives and more recently an
extended boom in copper and oil prices
on direct sharp GDP growth and public
spending did begin to rise however in
the last couple of years a clabsi global
commodity prices has triggered the
country’s current economic crisis and
pressured government budgets downwards
so what does this lack of publicly
available resources across the board
mean for the specific area of
conservation which lets us remember is
just one of the many things a government
is supposed to pay for well it means
that conservation it means and
conservation and more specifically the
Congolese institute for the conservation
of nature or the aiccm the government
agency responsible for defending
congress protected areas gets a tiny
slice of the tiny cake or almost nothing
of almost nothing lasts well officially
the aiccm
is supposed to receive between 2.5 and 4
million dollars annually in reality it
doesn’t receive this much and even if it
did get its full quota it wouldn’t go
very far we should avoid being too
critical though only a couple of weeks
ago the ICC ends boss told me openly and
seemingly without resentment that his
agency doesn’t get any money because
quote the government has lots of other
priorities
and I strongly strongly suspect that
there is no government on this planet
but when faced with similar budgetary
constraints wouldn’t push the issue of
conservation down towards the bottom of
the pile any of you
today are welcome to go to a military
barracks lineup the soldiers and tell
them that they aren’t getting paid this
month because some animals need
protecting but understandably most
governments ought to act otherwise
however just because the Congolese
government to justify sidelining
conserva conservation doesn’t mean it
ceases to be important somebody else is
going to have to step up and in some
cases in certain situations they already
have if I would ask this room to name
some protected areas in Congo I imagine
most of you would say Virunga National
Park the subject of an oscar-nominated
documentary and a world famous refuge
for mountain gorillas zoo I also some of
you might say around the National Park
situated near to South Sudanese border
and well known for its populations of
elephants and giraffe but I don’t find
it here many are their names these two
parks are indeed fortunate they and
three others have been designated as
world heritage sites which allows them
to secure millions and millions of
dollars in funding from international
donors such as the World Bank and the
European Union and permitted them to
attract professional organizations to
come in and manage the park so and
little thanks to the ICC n these five
parks and several others are much better
resourced with many more Rangers who are
better paid better trained and better
equipped it should also be said that
this small group of high profile parks
are the most dangerous in the country
where the committed staff regularly come
into contact with trigger-happy well
armed poachers who have killed hundreds
of hundreds of ranges in the course of
this century so these parks continue to
need support but to my mind there’s a
king-size problem that lies elsewhere it
surprised me to learn that there are in
fact around 70 protected areas under the
control of the ICC n covering a total of
12% of the congos landmass and the
government is committed
itself to increasing this figure to 17%
so what happens when you make a
government agency responsible for
protecting the wildlife in an area
larger than the United Kingdom or larger
than Uganda but don’t give it the money
with which to do is job the truth is
that most of these 60 or so other parks
are often fairly protected at all the
world focuses on veranda and veranda
what most of these parks light near
defenseless the mangrove Marine Park
where I was in February is just one of
these is precisely one of these
unheralded places but it is doing much
much better than most of its
counterparts again little thanks to the
aiccm
it still has only a fraction of the
money it needs it still has only a
fraction of the Rangers it needs but it
has made good progress in its two
priority areas protecting marine turtles
from poachers and preserving a huge
aquatic mangrove forest from those who
would like to turn it in to charcoal and
firewood and it isn’t it is in these
forgotten places that someone else is
going to have to stump up a cache and as
I’ve already explained it cannot and
will not be the Congolese government
there are many good reasons why it
should be international donors the
European Union the aid programs of the
world’s rich nations who should be the
ones to open their wallets to put it
mildly this country has been mistreated
and much of the rich world owes this
place of debt and an apology parts of
Belgium are beautiful and opulent
precisely because the Congo was
downtrodden and emitter ated what’s more
Congo unique natural heritage doesn’t
just in hot Congo but clearly the entire
world and in these situations what is
lost is often lost forever just consider
the fate of that poor lass nor wild
northern white rhino but this isn’t
going to happen anytime soon at least
not on the scale necessary international
donors and international organizations
already fund much of Congress public
this is a nearly a hundred percent of
the existing conservation program so for
most of Congress protected areas these
ones that none of us have ever heard of
we’re going to need to find a less
perfect solution and I think that the
mangrove mangrove Marine Park offers a
pragmatic path forward just five years
ago it was one of these near defenseless
parks protected in name only but today
it works it functions
turtles can lay their eggs without being
decapitated poachers are arrested and
then fined or jailed and more than two
thousand charcoal furnaces have been
smashed to pieces and the mangrove
forest has stopped shrinking none of
these very real and very commendable
achievements would have been possible
have the parks director not persuaded a
well-known mining company a well known
oil company and a well known bank to
partner some cash in order to put a nice
shine on their reputations
I don’t doubt that this kind of
bargaining where defenders of the
environment welcomed into their parks
the kind of money not usually associated
with environmentalism will deeply under
many defenders many people active in
conservation will deeply unsettling
they’ll be uncomfortable with it but
congos unloved protected areas faced a
choice they can carry on as they are and
wallow in their ineffectiveness or they
can seek out and embrace unusual
bedfellows and begin to fulfill their
mission I say that until a better option
presents itself they should go where the
money is and get to work thank you
[Applause]
northern white rhinoceros died lonely
somewhere in a north easterly corner of
the Democratic Republic of Congo this
sad story is just one particularly stark
illustration of the key role this
country plays in the war to conserve
some of the world’s most remarkable
wildlife and of the hefty price paid
when individual battles are not I have a
little confession to make though like
everyone else I know the environment is
important I know that the conservation
of nature is a good thing in my head I
know this but it just isn’t an issue
which in passion to me which fires me up
this is perhaps a little shameful but
it’s just the way it is nevertheless
earlier this year I got a commission to
research and write about just this
conservation of nature in Congo so I
dutifully flew to the mangrove Marine
Park about 250 miles west of here on the
coast weather where the river Congo
concludes its epic passage of cross
Equatorial Africa and charges violently
into the Atlantic Ocean here I spent a
little over a week following around the
people who run the park talking to the
people who lived in and around it and
just generally trying to work out how
the whole thing works indeed if the
whole thing works then I came back to
Kinshasa rota did a bunch more research
and then I wrote a couple of stories so
as I said I struggle to get infused by
conservation but Congo and its natural
heritage are a little bit different
they’re a little it’s a little bit
extraordinary so let me just momentarily
scratch the surface this country has the
second largest rain forest on the planet
only Brazil tops it this country has
half of Africa’s entire pitaya rain
forest coverage and many asthma and this
country has many significant significant
populations of importance yet vulnerable
large mammals such as elephant mountain
gorillas and chimpanzees and some
incredible species are endemic to Congo
which means they are found here only
here
and nowhere else these include the ik a
fee this zebra giraffe hybrid the bonobo
the eastern lowland gorilla and a bunch
of birds even the World Bank I can be
the world’s most boring organization
gets excited by what it calls congos
globally unique biodiversity so congos
natural wealth isn’t worth protecting
it’s very difficult to work out what is
so we’re agreed
conserving congos wildlife is a good
thing it’s the right thing to do but
there’s a problem there’s an obstacle
and it’s a pretty big one Congo and more
accurately the Congolese government
doesn’t have very much money or as a
fallen Minister put it to me just last
week so little money it may as well have
no money at all last year the Congolese
government’s annual budget was somewhere
between five point five and seven
billion dollars in the country of 75 to
85 million people sadly this doesn’t go
very far and public expenditure this
year is expected to be even smaller by
way of comparison in the United Kingdom
where I come from which has a population
a little smaller the government will
this year spend a little over a trillion
dollars in South Africa with the
population 20 million fewer than the
Congo the government will spend 120
billion dollars and in neighbouring
Angola with a population only a third
that of Congo the government will spend
over 40 billion dollars the reasons why
the Congolese government doesn’t have
very much money at its disposal to spend
on healthcare roads education let alone
conservation of various and complex we
can point to this form of subjugation in
this country in jordiz a Belgian colony
where it was treated as little more than
a treasure chest full of ivory for the
brother and Philip
and many other precious things and the
Congolese people the exploited means of
digging it up or chopping it down and
spiriting it quickly out of the country
we can point to the early decades of
independence when the Western powers
first helped murder Congress first
elected leader Patrice Lumumba and then
lavishly supported Noguchi ceci Seco
who drove the national economy into the
ground and depleted the public treasury
we can point to the horrifying civil war
which tore apart this country between
1998 and 2003 and cost millions of
Congolese lives and more recently an
extended boom in copper and oil prices
on direct sharp GDP growth and public
spending did begin to rise however in
the last couple of years a clabsi global
commodity prices has triggered the
country’s current economic crisis and
pressured government budgets downwards
so what does this lack of publicly
available resources across the board
mean for the specific area of
conservation which lets us remember is
just one of the many things a government
is supposed to pay for well it means
that conservation it means and
conservation and more specifically the
Congolese institute for the conservation
of nature or the aiccm the government
agency responsible for defending
congress protected areas gets a tiny
slice of the tiny cake or almost nothing
of almost nothing lasts well officially
the aiccm
is supposed to receive between 2.5 and 4
million dollars annually in reality it
doesn’t receive this much and even if it
did get its full quota it wouldn’t go
very far we should avoid being too
critical though only a couple of weeks
ago the ICC ends boss told me openly and
seemingly without resentment that his
agency doesn’t get any money because
quote the government has lots of other
priorities
and I strongly strongly suspect that
there is no government on this planet
but when faced with similar budgetary
constraints wouldn’t push the issue of
conservation down towards the bottom of
the pile any of you
today are welcome to go to a military
barracks lineup the soldiers and tell
them that they aren’t getting paid this
month because some animals need
protecting but understandably most
governments ought to act otherwise
however just because the Congolese
government to justify sidelining
conserva conservation doesn’t mean it
ceases to be important somebody else is
going to have to step up and in some
cases in certain situations they already
have if I would ask this room to name
some protected areas in Congo I imagine
most of you would say Virunga National
Park the subject of an oscar-nominated
documentary and a world famous refuge
for mountain gorillas zoo I also some of
you might say around the National Park
situated near to South Sudanese border
and well known for its populations of
elephants and giraffe but I don’t find
it here many are their names these two
parks are indeed fortunate they and
three others have been designated as
world heritage sites which allows them
to secure millions and millions of
dollars in funding from international
donors such as the World Bank and the
European Union and permitted them to
attract professional organizations to
come in and manage the park so and
little thanks to the ICC n these five
parks and several others are much better
resourced with many more Rangers who are
better paid better trained and better
equipped it should also be said that
this small group of high profile parks
are the most dangerous in the country
where the committed staff regularly come
into contact with trigger-happy well
armed poachers who have killed hundreds
of hundreds of ranges in the course of
this century so these parks continue to
need support but to my mind there’s a
king-size problem that lies elsewhere it
surprised me to learn that there are in
fact around 70 protected areas under the
control of the ICC n covering a total of
12% of the congos landmass and the
government is committed
itself to increasing this figure to 17%
so what happens when you make a
government agency responsible for
protecting the wildlife in an area
larger than the United Kingdom or larger
than Uganda but don’t give it the money
with which to do is job the truth is
that most of these 60 or so other parks
are often fairly protected at all the
world focuses on veranda and veranda
what most of these parks light near
defenseless the mangrove Marine Park
where I was in February is just one of
these is precisely one of these
unheralded places but it is doing much
much better than most of its
counterparts again little thanks to the
aiccm
it still has only a fraction of the
money it needs it still has only a
fraction of the Rangers it needs but it
has made good progress in its two
priority areas protecting marine turtles
from poachers and preserving a huge
aquatic mangrove forest from those who
would like to turn it in to charcoal and
firewood and it isn’t it is in these
forgotten places that someone else is
going to have to stump up a cache and as
I’ve already explained it cannot and
will not be the Congolese government
there are many good reasons why it
should be international donors the
European Union the aid programs of the
world’s rich nations who should be the
ones to open their wallets to put it
mildly this country has been mistreated
and much of the rich world owes this
place of debt and an apology parts of
Belgium are beautiful and opulent
precisely because the Congo was
downtrodden and emitter ated what’s more
Congo unique natural heritage doesn’t
just in hot Congo but clearly the entire
world and in these situations what is
lost is often lost forever just consider
the fate of that poor lass nor wild
northern white rhino but this isn’t
going to happen anytime soon at least
not on the scale necessary international
donors and international organizations
already fund much of Congress public
this is a nearly a hundred percent of
the existing conservation program so for
most of Congress protected areas these
ones that none of us have ever heard of
we’re going to need to find a less
perfect solution and I think that the
mangrove mangrove Marine Park offers a
pragmatic path forward just five years
ago it was one of these near defenseless
parks protected in name only but today
it works it functions
turtles can lay their eggs without being
decapitated poachers are arrested and
then fined or jailed and more than two
thousand charcoal furnaces have been
smashed to pieces and the mangrove
forest has stopped shrinking none of
these very real and very commendable
achievements would have been possible
have the parks director not persuaded a
well-known mining company a well known
oil company and a well known bank to
partner some cash in order to put a nice
shine on their reputations
I don’t doubt that this kind of
bargaining where defenders of the
environment welcomed into their parks
the kind of money not usually associated
with environmentalism will deeply under
many defenders many people active in
conservation will deeply unsettling
they’ll be uncomfortable with it but
congos unloved protected areas faced a
choice they can carry on as they are and
wallow in their ineffectiveness or they
can seek out and embrace unusual
bedfellows and begin to fulfill their
mission I say that until a better option
presents itself they should go where the
money is and get to work thank you
[Applause]
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