On this page: Responding to Environmental Conflict, The Answer to Biopiracy: Benefit-Sharing Agreements, A Leader in Environmental Conflict Problem-Solving

Responding to Environmental Conflict:
A New Conservation Imperative

Many of today's so-called environmental problems are rooted in human conflicts over competing demands for shared natural resources - water, fossil-fuels, the Earth's biological diversity. Although recognition of the dependence of human health and well-being on sustainable resource management is growing, so are competing demands for shared natural resources-often resulting in costly conflicts that undermine environmental values as well as legitimate economic opportunities.

The promises and threats are clear - perhaps most clear in the challenges now facing efforts to conserve the world's biological diversity. The biodiversity that makes up the Earth's life-support systems hold much still undiscovered knowledge that has great value for both conservation interests and human society. The alarming rates of species extinction dramatically underscore the importance of seizing every opportunity to demonstrate the value of biodiversity for all to see a way to create incentives that harmonize efforts to manage the world's valuable biological resources for the benefit of present and future generations.

From this perspective, WFED's projects and initiatives respond to environment and development conflicts by seeking to align mutually beneficial resource-conservation activities. WFED also works to inspire renewed public appreciation for the value of conservation areas and the natural resources they protect worldwide.

The Answer to Biopiracy: Conservation-Based Benefit-Sharing Agreements

The work of WFED comes at a time when allegations of biopiracy are on the rise in much of the world-particularly in places where equitable and efficient benefit-sharing arrangements do not exist. Biopiracy - the unauthorized and uncompensated taking of biological resources - undermines the conditions required to promote legitimate scientific research arrangements in ways that can ensure a reinvestment of research dividends into conservation-based communities over time.

WFED believes that it is essential for competing interests to support development of negotiated arrangements that can avert conflicts associated with biological resource use. Widespread interest in the development of equitable and efficient bioprospecting benefit-sharing projects will increase in the United States and abroad as the need for new conservation regimes continues to expand.

A Leader in Environmental Conflict Problem-Solving

Responding to the need for private sector participation in natural resource conservation initiatives, WFED began in 1992 to explore ways to facilitate negotiations relating to access and sustainable use of valuable biological resources around the world. WFED has established a record of achievement and earned international recognition as a leader in environmental conflict problem-solving, with particular focus on biological resource benefit-sharing issues.

The results of WFED's early research activities first appeared in International Environmental Conflict Resolution: The Role of the United Nations. Published in 1992,the book presents case studies of international conflicts involving shared natural resources and human migration and displacement triggered by environmental degradation.

Since 1992,

• We were in Jerusalem at the invitation of the United Nations to meet with some of the first Palestinian delegates to what later became the "peace process" to discuss ways of problem-solving involving shared water resources that did not involve a gun -- more than six months before the first Norwegian-brokered diplomatic breakthrough between Israel and the Palestinians was announced at the White House.

• We helped the UN Environment Programme launch the first international consensus-building initiative to explore creative ways to address the complex causes of climate change -- recognizing the need to balance both the responsibilities and rights of people from so-called developed as well as developing countries.

• At the prompting of colleagues in Costa Rica, WFED took the initiative to get the presidents of both countries to encourage new partnerships between national parks throughout the Mesoamerican region to achieve expanded environmental and economic benefits for an increasingly interdependent regional community finally free from decades of civil war -- announced in Braulio Carrillo National Park near San Jose during President Clinton's visit to Central America in 1997.

• We have worked to explore new ways to elevate public appreciation for the value of national parks and other conservation areas in the United States and around the world -- from the high Himalayas to the four corners of Africa and throughout the Americas -- and created an award-winning internationally acclaimed film about Yellowstone with Walter Cronkite along the way.
  
  
• And years before most people had ever heard the word "anthrax" or thought about the terrors of biowarfare except in science fiction, WFED was working with both US and Russian authorities to find creative ways to prevent the spread of bioweapons from the former Soviet Union -- a task that has taken on a poignant sense of urgency.
  
  
• The Royal Government of Bhutan selected WFED as their primary consultant to draft the Biodiversity Act of Bhutan Rules and Regulations and consult with the government regarding related policy issues, such as access to biodiversity, how benefits from research can go to support Bhutan’s biodiversity protection plan, and how Bhutan can protect and preserve Bhutanese traditional knowledge that relates to the use of local biological resources. 

• WFED has worked with the Smithsonian Institution and the Royal Government of Bhutan to introduce Bhutan as the featured country of the 2008 Smithsonian Folklife Festival.