15 



I am based in New York. I have been personally involved with 

 seven different countries in which we have helped set up USAID 

 programs in biodiversity. 



I would like to mention just one thing in terms of considering a 

 context of biodiversity conservation in Africa, since much has been 

 said on this already today. Africa represents an area where there 

 is tremendous underdevelopment and, yet, great biological rich- 

 ness, which has been referred to. But one of the consequences of 

 this is that there is a strong dependence on the part 01 the local 

 people on biological resources. This means that their biological re- 

 sources are vital to them on a subsistence basis: for both biological 

 products, as well as ecological services. This means that this is a 

 set of issues that is very dear to local and national African hearts. 

 It also means that these resources are under tremendous pressure, 

 which has been mentioned as well: both local pressure, as well as 

 national pressure to derive foreign exchange from those biological 

 resources. 



I would like to say one other thing before talking specifically 

 about biological conservation. I do not believe that such conserva- 

 tion can begin to succeed if we do not have sustainable develop- 

 ment outside of the biologically rich areas. Virtually all of the rich- 

 est areas left in Africa have very little potential for development. 

 They are unproductive places in general. So, you have quite an in- 

 teresting irony here. They are not areas that can be engines for de- 

 velopment. And, yet, the greatest pressures on those wilderness 

 areas occur when development does not take place soundly outside 

 of those areas. And so, the context in which biological conservation 

 is found, is extremely important to success of conservation in Afri- 

 ca. And that should be one of the primary goals of any assistance 

 program to the continent: dealing with the macro level of the prob- 

 lem. 



What should be done? The issues of biological conservation in Af- 

 rica are very complex and demand complex approaches. I think we 

 have to remember that these are experimental approaches that we 

 are taking right now. These ecological systems are not very well 

 understood. We cannot yet predict the impacts of human use on 

 these systems. We do not know how resilient the natural systems 

 are to human use and disturbance. And we are just beginning to 

 establish mechanisms of local participation, which are so far 

 untested. 



Given the experimental nature of what we are doing and the 

 challenges, we face, one challenge of which is the very strong con- 

 flict between short-term economic interests and benefits that could 

 come from these resources, and long-term benefits through con- 

 servation, as well as the conflicts between national regional, global 

 and local benefits, which are frequently not congruent, I think this 

 requires that we take complex approaches; multifaceted approaches 

 to biological conservation. 



This can be seen in a number of different areas. We need to deal 

 with mosaics of different levels of protection. We very much need 

 purely protected areas if we want conservation of biological diver- 

 sity. There is an if there. If we are committed to the protection of 

 biological diversity, we need some purely protected areas and there 

 needs to be support for that. 



