Biodiversity, War, and Tropical Forests

Summary Tropical forests are one of the world's last remaining frontiers. Like all frontiers, they are sites of dynamic social, ecological, political, and economic changes. Such dynamism involves constantly changing advantages and disadvantages to different groups of people, which not surprisingly leads to armed conflict, and all too frequently to war. Many governments have contributed to conflict by nationalizing their forests, so that traditional forest inhabitants have been disenfranchised while national governments sell trees to concessionaires to earn foreign exchange. Biodiversity-rich tropical forests in Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, Indochina, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Central Africa, the Amazon, Colombia, Central America, and New Caledonia have all been the sites of armed conflict, sometimes involving international forces. While these conflicts have frequently, even invariably, caused negative impacts on biodiversity, peace is often even worse, as it enables forest exploitation to operate with impunity. Because many of the remaining tropical forests are along international borders, international cooperation is required for their conservation; as a response, the concept of international “peace parks” is being promoted in many parts of the world as a way of linking biodiversity conservation with national security. The Convention on Biological Diversity, which entered into force at the end of 1993 and now has nearly 180 State Parties, offers a useful framework for such cooperation.