290 * Technologies To Maintain Biological Diversity 



Box 11-B.— Amendments to Foreign Assistance Act Concerning 

 International Environmental Protection 



Congressional concern with international environmental protection has increased markedly over 

 the last decade. U.S. foreign assistance programs began incorporating environmental concerns in 

 the late 1970s when a series of amendments to the Foreign Assistance Act defined the Agency for 

 International Development's (AID) mandate in the area of environment and natural resources. These 

 amendments gave specific emphasis to promoting efforts to halt tropical deforestation, a major threat 

 to conserving biological diversity. 



• 1977: Amended Section 102 to add environment and natural resources to areas AID should 



address. 



• 1977: Added new Section 118 on "Environment and Natural Resources," authorizing AID 



to fortify "the capacity of less developed countries to protect and manage their environ- 

 ment and natural resources" and to "maintain and where possible restore the land, 

 vegetation, water, wildlife, and other resources upon which depend economic growth 

 and well-being, especially that of the poor." 



• 1978: Amended Section 118, requiring AID to carry out country studies in the developing 



world to identify natural resource problems and institutional mechanisms to solve them. 



• 1978/79: Amended Section 103 to emphasize forestry assistance, acknowledging that deforesta- 



tion, with its attendant species loss, constituted an impediment to meeting basic hu- 

 man needs in developing countries. 



• 1981: Amended Section 118, making AID's environmental review regulations part of the act, 



and added a subsection (d), expressing that "Congress is particularly concerned about 

 the continuing and accelerating alteration, destruction, and loss of tropical forests in 

 developing countries." Instructs the President to take these concerns into account in 

 formulating policies and programs relating to bilateral and multilateral assistance and 

 to private sector activities in the developing world. 



• 1983: Added Section 119, directing AID in consultation with other Federal agencies to de- 



velop a U.S. strategy on conserving biological diversity in developing countries. 



• 1986: Redesignated Section 118 as Section 117 with the new Section 118 addressing tropical 



forest issues. 



Amended Section 119, which among other things earmarked money for biological diver- 

 sity projects. 



SOURCE: Adapted from B. Rich and S. Schwartzman. "The Role of Development Assistance in Maintaining Biological Diversity In-Situ in 

 Developing Countries," OTA commissioned paper, 1985. 



of the threats but also with sontie of the conse- 

 quences. 



The U.S. Strategy on the Conservation of Bio- 

 logical Diversity: An Interagency Task Force 

 Report to Congress was delivered to Congress 

 in February 1985, in response to Section 119. 

 This report was followed by an annual report, 

 Progress in Conserving Biological Diversity in 

 Developing Countries FY1985, which outlines 

 implementation of Section 119 a year later. 



The strategy has been criticized for lack of 

 commitment to action, even though it contains 

 67 recommendations. Its most concrete aspect 

 is allocation of responsibilities among agencies, 



but this is done without any indication of fund- 

 ing mechanisms. Some critics have questioned 

 whether the strategy advances a cohesive plan 

 and whether U.S. Government agencies are sig- 

 nificantly increasing their allocation of re- 

 sources to address this issue (54,58). Severe bud- 

 get constraints undoubtedly limit the degree to 

 which new programs can be put forward. It is 

 therefore critical for agencies to establish clear 

 priorities and to indicate which actions need 

 to be taken and how much they will cost. 



AID drafted an Action Plan on Conserving 

 Biological Diversity in Developing Countries, 

 to apply the general recommendations to spe- 

 cific agency programs and policies (51). It pro- 



