Monday, June 26, 2006

The Fourth Force: Control

The Independent online reports on June 25, 2006 an interesting story along the line, that Blair recognizes, that an independent force is needed to police (in our case rather control) pledges made to Africa at Gleneagles last year at the G8 meeting (Geldof is called in by Blair to police G8 poverty deal). The group will most likely be financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The reason being, that too many pledeges are being made at prime time time, but later, only few of them are kept.

It includes also a statement, that Bill Clinton is too old for such an active role.

We should look into this for biodiversity conservation. We too had a large conference with all the top brass in Paris (Biodiversity, Science and Governance, January 24-28, 2005) convened by the French president Jacques Chirac), inlcluding comments by various minister, that the biodiversity issue will be brought up at Gleneagles. It didn't happen. Conservation International just run one of their global symposiums, this time held in Madagascar "Defying Nature's End: The Africa Context" on June 20-24. What is going to happen? How can we make sure, that we do not forget, and that we actually measure the success of such a conference? The US just designated nearly 140,000 sqaure miles, the largest marine reserve in the World (Science, June 23, 2006). Is the reserve big enough and do we know enough to ask such a question, not to speak how to monitor? The authors of this editoral suggest, that we need much more resources at a scale, not now available, but need increased international cooperative efforts.

An obvious important element is that scientists and conservationists change their culture and share data, write this into their mission statements and deliver. But, it seems, that unless we too start to look into a similar policing practice proposed for Africa, and headed by Bob Geldof, this might not happen. Why not get a biodiversity police headed by Harrison Ford?

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