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Heroes of Environmental Diplomacy
Profiles in Courage
Felix Dodds, Chris Spence, Felix Dodds, Chris Spence
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eBook - ePub
Heroes of Environmental Diplomacy
Profiles in Courage
Felix Dodds, Chris Spence, Felix Dodds, Chris Spence
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About This Book
Today more than ever, when the world is beset by environmental, social, healthcare and economic challenges, we need courage in our politics, both nationally and globally. This book tells the stories, some for the first time, of twelve individuals who made heroic contributions to protecting our planet through ground-breaking international treaties.
Can individuals change the world? Today, when impersonal forces and new technologies seem to be directing our lives and even our entire planet in ways we cannot control, this question feels more relevant than ever before. This book argues that we can all make a difference. It tells inspiring stories of individuals who have had a global impact that is beyond dispute, as well as others who have brought about change that is understated or hard to measure, where the scale of the impact will only become clear in years to come. While some are scientists, others are politicians, diplomats, activists, and even businesspeople. However, they all share the qualities of perseverance, patience, a willingness to innovate or try new approaches, and the endurance to continue over years, even decades, to pursue their goal. Drawing on interviews and the inside stories of those involved, each chapter follows one or more of these heroic individuals, a list which includes Luc Hoffmann, Mostafa Tolba, Maria Luiza Ribeiro Viotti, Raul Oyuela Estrada, Barack Obama and Paula Caballero.
Presenting an uplifting and gripping narrative, this book is an invaluable resource for students, scholars, activists and professionals who are seeking to understand how consensus is reached in these global meetings and how individuals can have a genuine impact on preserving our planet and reinforcing the positive message that global cooperation can actually work.
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1 Luc Hoffmann, Geoffrey Matthews & Eskandar Firouz Escaping a Cold War Quagmire: The Ramsar Convention on Wetlands
Chris Spence
DOI: 10.4324/9781003202745-2
Any story that starts with ‘an Englishman, an Iranian, and a Swiss walk into a room’ sounds like the opening line of a bad joke. In fact, conservationists from these three countries were doing something very serious. They hoped to convince governments to sign a treaty they believed would protect our world.
The year was 1971. The proposed accord was about something most people don’t think much about even today: wetlands. These three individuals were determined to persuade the world’s governments to take better care of the world’s marshes, bogs, swamps, fens, mangroves, floodplains, and peatlands—and the animals and plants that live in them.
Why did a treaty on such a seemingly minor issue matter so much? And how did the Cold War between the USA and USSR—then at its peak—threaten to sink their hopes?
Far from Neutral: An Unlikely Swiss Story
To understand what happened in 1971, we need to go back almost half a century. On 23 January 1923 in the town of Basel, Switzerland, a boy was born. His parents named him Hans Lukas, although in later life he was known simply as Luc. His father, Emanuel, was a successful businessman and his mother, Maja, a talented sculptor. But his family’s wealth could not shield Luc from early tragedy. When he was just nine, his father was killed in a car crash. Less than a year later, his older brother died of leukaemia. These two events had a profound impact on the young boy, who found solace in nature and wildlife.
Luc’s family owned and ran a pharmaceutical business, Hoffmann-LaRoche. Even then it was doing extremely well. Today, it is a sprawling multinational empire boasting almost 100,000 employees. But in spite of his exposure to this world of big business, young Luc did not seem inclined to follow in his father’s footsteps.
After his father’s death, Luc’s artistic mother remarried the well-known conductor and musician, Paul Sacher. Again, however, their influence did not persuade young Luc to follow them down their chosen path. Already, Luc’s own passion was apparent. As a teenager, he would spend countless hours birdwatching around Basel. His interest in nature later found an outlet in academic pursuits. He wrote his first research paper on waders—long-legged shorebirds—at just 18 and went on to complete his Ph.D., with a thesis on the Common Tern, after World War Two.
By then his infatuation had extended beyond waterbirds and into the habitats they inhabited. Through observation and research, Hoffmann had realized the link between his beloved waterfowl and the state of the wetlands they lived in. Hoffmann was not alone. By the 1950s, it was clear many wetlands were in decline. Early warning bells had started ringing in the US in the 1930s as land reclamation, drought, and increased hunting hit geese, duck, and other bird populations. Similar impacts were also being noticed in the UK and across Europe.
As an ornithologist, Luc Hoffmann believed the future of these waterfowl was tied inextricably with the health of the places they lived in. Hoffmann was right. We now know wetlands are valuable to our planet and our own species in many ways, from reducing the impact of floods and coastal erosion to providing 20% of humanity’s food, including fish, rice, and many fruits and vegetables. Wetlands are also considered essential for biodiversity, providing homes to a multitude of plant and animal species. In addition, they can play a role in adapting to climate change, by storing carbon that would otherwise be in the atmosphere, and by providing a barrier against flooding and storms.
When Luc Hoffmann’s fascination with wetlands began, however, they were hardly beloved places. In fact, they had a pretty bad reputation. These habitats featured negatively in many people’s imaginations. In literature, they form an eerie backdrop to Sherlock Holmes’ most famous case. In The Hound of the Baskervilles, the Grimpen Mire is a fog-shrouded, sinister landscape where animals and even people sink without trace. In The Lord of the Rings, the Dead Marshes are a ‘forsaken country’ of ‘sullen waters … dead grasses and rotten reeds’ in which the animated corpses of fallen warriors from an ancient battle lie in wait to drown the unwary traveller.
What’s more, there was then little scientific evidence or research to support Luc Hoffmann’s belief in wetlands’ utility and value. What could he do to change people’s minds? With a quiet determination, the young ornithologist set to work.
Hoffmann’s first step was to focus on building a research-based case for action. In 1954, he set up his own biological research institute, the Tour du Valat, in the Camargue region of southern France. The institute, which continues its work to this day, conducted extensive research into wetlands and waterfowl. It also helped preserve many species locally, including the greater flamingo.
Next, Hoffmann began widening the coalition for action and connecting with pioneers in the UK, France, and elsewhere who were beginning to gather data on these unloved places. As a scientist, he wanted to encourage greater knowledge and understanding not just in France and Switzerland, but everywhere.
In 1960, Luc launched the next stage in his efforts. Casting his net wider, he arranged a meeting of international experts in wetlands and waterbirds. He called his initiative Project MAR, naming it after the first three letters for wetlands in three languages: French (MARecages), Spanish (MARismas), and English (MARshes). This event provided the catalyst for a series of annual meetings held over the next eight years. Hoffmann encouraged an ever-growing number of experts from around Europe and the world to attend these conferences. His goal: to build an international network dedicated to wetlands.
‘He used the Swiss tradition of building a broad base of support,’ explained his son, André Hoffmann, when I interviewed him in 2021.1
The first conference, which took place in the Camargue in November 1962, was attended by 80 experts from a dozen European countries, as well as from Australia, Canada, Morocco, and the US. The initial goal was to build the knowledge and research base, and more than 60 papers were delivered. But there was more to it than this: Hoffmann wanted to make the outcomes action-oriented, and as a result the conference report included 13 recommendations for next steps. Hoffmann knew the research would be meaningless if it was not applied to the real world. For that, he needed a wide coalition. In fact, Hoffmann wanted to influence everyone whose work affected wetlands, from politicians to engineers, farmers, and hunters.
One of the major tools in his armoury was his ability to listen to others.
When he entered a room, he was there with his characteristic bushy eyebrows, his gentle smile, his natural authority and his outstanding knowledge about wetlands, waterbirds, ecology. Most of the time he was silent, listened, but when he spoke it made sense and advanced the discussion. He was a good listener, a patient teacher, an inspiring mentor and a very practical man,recalls Johan Mooij, who worked with Dr. Hoffmann at WWF.
But Hoffmann had more than the ability to remain silent. He also possessed a steely determination that belied his gentle exterior. While Hoffmann’s birth country of Switzerland has a reputation for neutrality, Hoffmann was anything but impartial on the subject of wetland preservation.
‘He was always pushing relentlessly forward,’ his son André told me during our interview. ‘When he presented his case for action, he believed people would either agree or didn’t understand … [in which case] he explained it again,’ André added.
Luc Hoffmann was also unafraid of making unexpected allies. For instance, he engaged actively with the hunting community. ‘This was a contradiction to some scientists, but there was a unity of purpose,’ recalls André Hoffmann. This was because hunters wanted wetlands and waterfowl to thrive just as much as the ornithologists did, since hunting needs a healthy environment and abundant wildlife to be sustainable. This type of out-of-the-box thinking and coalition building grew the number of allies to the cause.
The 1962 conference in Camargue was followed by more international meetings, starting in St. Andrews in Scotland in 1963 all the way through to Espoo in 1970. The Camargue conference also led to a ground-breaking document, Liquid Assets. Published in 1964, this document outlined the available research and made a strong case for preserving wetlands. It demonstrated convincingly that the world’s wetlands play a critical role in both our natural and agricultural systems. Not only do they provide a staggering one-fifth of humanity’s food, they are also critical for biodiversity and are widely considered the most biologically diverse of all the world’s various ecosystems. They also help protect coastal communities against flooding and shoreline erosion, play a key role in water storage, and have become valued by many people for recreational purposes.
Enter the Russians
Hoffmann’s initial coalition of ornithologists was now growing with every conference and each passing year. An increasing number of governments, with the Netherlands and the UK now at the forefront, began to help drive the process forward.
A major breakthrough occurred in 1966 when for the first time a scientist from the Soviet Union officially joined a gathering in Noordwijk, the Netherlands. According to author and researcher Alison Goddard, who wrote an excellent, yet-to-be published account of Luc Hoffmann’s life, the Swiss ornithologist was particularly pleased. ‘The inclusion of the Soviet Union meant that the major bird breeding grounds in Siberia could be included in the proposed convention,’ Goddard observed. It also made it likely that the vast territories of the USSR’s allies in eastern Europe might soon join the throng.
It was also a surprise to many given the geopolitics of the era. As Goddard rightly notes, this was at the height of the Cold War and just four years after the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Vietnam War—a proxy conflict for ideological conflict between the US-led capitalist states and their Communist adversaries the USSR and China—was heating up.
Of course, such political issues should not matter to scientists. And yet it is not scientists who sign treaties. It is governments. Could hopes for an international treaty—even one as far distant from politics as an agreement on wetlands and waterfowl—escape the freezing grip of the Cold War?
At first, the involvement of the Russians resulted in further progress. By early 1968, a draft text had been developed by the Dutch and been finessed after feedback from others. Recognizing that a treaty would need to tread carefully when it came to issues of sovereign territory—especially during this time of heightened tension between the two Superpowers—the draft emphasized countries’ control over which wetlands they would choose for greater protection. It also backed away from any attempt to sanction or punish countries that did not preserve their wetlands.
In the meantime, Luc Hoffmann was extending his efforts to build the research case for action, using his leadership of the International Wildfowl Research Bureau (IWRB) to launch international counts of bird numbers, which started in 1967. From now on, there would be a bird ‘census’ around the world each January. This would allow experts to spot trends in bird numbers, thus strengthening the scientific credentials of the movement still further.
What’s more, the Russians were now so actively engaged and enthusiastic they even offered to host the next meeting. So far, so good. With such advances on several fronts, Hoffmann hoped for a treaty as soon as 1969.
And that was the moment everything stalled.
A Cold War Freeze: Checked by the Czechs
On 21 August 1968, a plane carrying more than 100 Russian agents landed on the outskirts of Prague in Czechoslovakia. At the same time, tens of thousands of allied troops from Hungary, Poland, and Bulgaria were spilling across the borders, crossing the country rapidly as they sought to occupy Prague and other major centres.
Outnumbered and outflanked, the Czech military offered no resistance. Although popular demonstrations and spontaneous acts of resistance flared over the coming days and weeks, the country was soon under foreign control.
Just what was going on?
The invasion was a response from the Russians and their communist subordinates to Czechoslovakia’s efforts to liberalize and democratize. While Czechoslovakia in 1968 was a part of the Soviet Bloc of countries in Eastern Europe, it had recently elected Alexander Dubček to lead its government. Dubček was a reformer and a modernizer. While still avowedly a socialist, he wanted to give more rights and freedoms to his citizens and to move his nation towards a new model of government he called ‘democratic socialism.’ This movement—dubbed the Prague Spring—caused great unease in Russia, however. Fearful these changes might undermine Russian leadership and socialist solidarity, Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev ordered his forces to invade and bring the Czech government to heel.
The invasion was heavily criticized, especially in the West. The US and many European governments spoke out against Russia’s attack. Even China—formerly a communist ally—was highly critical.
Such matters might seem a million miles away from the preservation of wetlands, but in truth such geopolitical matters often intrude into every area of government.
In this case, the fact that the next meeting was to take place on Russian soil caused immediate problems. Should the meeting still go ahead? Should western nations boycott it?
This was certainly the view of the Dutch Government, which indicated it would not send any official participants to a meeting in Russia.
Within 48 hours of the invasion, Hoffmann had written to participants noting the Dutch withdrawal and suggesting discussions on a draft treaty may have to be delayed. But if the Russians were snubbed, would they, in turn, pull out? The process—which Hoffmann and others had nurtured so painstakingly over so many years, and which appeared tantalizingly close to success—now seemed stalled; blocked by the events in the Soviet bloc.
The Gifted Amateur
While the science and the data Hoffmann and his allies had so carefully and successfully gathered about wetlands was clear on what should happen next, it was equally clear delicate diplomacy would be needed to prevent Cold War geopolitics from sinking all his hopes and dreams.
This was a task for which Hoffmann was not prepared, however. ‘The world of international diplomacy was not his thing,’ his son André recalls. An excellent listener, Hoffmann had neither the temperament nor the time for the sort of delicate negotiations now required. His plate was already overflowing with a number of other important projects and initiatives. Did he really have the bandwidth to take this on?
Like a sprinter in a relay race, Hoffmann was ready to hand the baton to another. But who could make the running now?
It fell to Hoffmann’s friend, Geoffrey Matthews, to take the next lap.
Like Hoffmann, Matthews was born in 1923 and he, too, had developed similar interests in ornithology from an early age. In Matthews’ case, however, it was his service during World War Two, rather than a family tragedy, that influenced his futu...