Armed Conflicts, Biodiversity, Environment, Headlines, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean, North America

ENVIRONMENT: When Conservation Bumps Up Against Conflict

Enrique Gili* - IPS/IFEJ

BAJA, May 18 2009 (IPS) - Driving through Tijuana and long stretches of northern Baja, conservationist Zach Plopper loves his job but hates the commute.

As a field cartographer for WildCoast, a binational conservation organisation dedicated to protecting Baja’s natural resources, Plopper has more to contend with than rugged roads and poor weather conditions. There’s the ever-present danger of roadside hijackings, encounters with heavily-armed armed soldiers, and highway etiquette mixing fatalism with machismo.

Plopper’s work involves multi-day expeditions mapping Baja’s as yet undeveloped mid coastline that take him from his headquarters in Imperial Beach, California through Tijuana’s gritty slums to the relative tranquility of fishing villages several hundred kilometres to the south.

In doing so, he passes from one "hotspot" to another, transitioning from an embattled city at the centre of Mexico’s drug war to Baja’s renowned ecosystem. Offering a roadside view of a region in trouble, he explains, "In Baja you never know what’s coming down the road."

Baja, Mexico’s 1,300-kilometre-plus peninsula is home to wintering gray whales, productive fishing grounds and breathtaking desert landscapes. It is also contested territory in a drug war that has taken the lives of thousands of people in Mexico, affecting many aspects of daily life such as where and when to travel.

Venturing south from California involves a draining commute that entails skirting a Mexican city under siege, passing abandoned cars and squatter camps in the presence of security forces, all within several minutes driving distance of the U.S.-Mexico border.

According to Plopper, the rules of the road when traveling in Baja are simple. Never drive at night, use the toll road whenever possible, and make sure WildCoast staff are informed of your whereabouts.

"It’s the Wild West," says Plopper, fretting over the boom and bust mentality and sense of lawlessness pervading the border region. "You’re never quite sure who you’re dealing with."

Neither do the federales. At designated checkpoints, soldiers armed with assault weapons make mandatory stops of northbound drivers. An armoured pursuit vehicle ensures they comply. Faces covered, a squad of nameless soldiers bearing no battalion insignias or ID ask drivers questions.

Traveling through Baja, it’s not uncommon to come across uniformed young men with blank stares. Sent on a mission to interdict the drug trade, the frequency of their stops has increased in recent years due to heightened security. "I’ve never had a problem with the federales," notes Plopper.

On the western fringe of the continent, WildCoast operates in the regional centre of a contested drug trafficking corridor. A river of drugs flows north across the 3,200-kilometre U.S.-Mexico land border, with an estimated 290 metric tonnes of cocaine smuggled each year into the United States, home to one of the largest drug markets in the world.

In 2007, Mexico’s then newly elected president, Felipe Calderon, vowed to wrest control of the border states from the powerful drug cartels destabilising the region.

In a public display of force, Calderon put soldiers onto the streets of border cities of Juarez and Tijuana, taking administrative control over police departments long thought to be compromised by drug traffickers. Thousands of additional troops and federal police officers were deployed elsewhere throughout the country.

The killings only intensified, as drug cartels fought amongst themselves for access to U.S. markets, and fighting with security forces escalated. According to reported accounts, the ensuing conflict has claimed an estimated 7,000 lives.

Given the cloak of secrecy under which security forces operate, the resulting bloodshed and mayhem has weaved its way into hair-raising accounts passed from one traveler to the next. The chaos ranges from daytime massacres of suspected drug rivals to drug-related reprisals targeting officers.

Conservation work often takes place in rough, remote and isolated locations. According to a new study published in the journal Conservation Biology, 80 percent of global conflicts occurring over the past 50 years have been in the world’s most biologically rich and endangered places.

Dr. Thor Hanson, a conservation biologist who co-authored the report along with members of Conservation International’s staff, asserts that poverty and conflict go hand in hand. Biological "hotspots" also happen to be home to 1.2 billion of the world’s poorest people.

The study notes that territory extending from Mexico almost to the tip of Latin America has been marred by similar violence, offering a who’s who of dirty wars and guerrilla insurgencies. Mexico’s current crisis is not without historical precedent when compared to Colombia’s vertiginous, verdant interior that has been both politically hot and biologically diverse.

Dr. Hanson is part of an emerging field of study called "warfare ecology" studying the net effects of conflict on ecosystems. Working in Uganda with mountain gorillas, he saw firsthand how "fragile conservation efforts can be in the face of political instability".

Although correlation does not equate with causation, the phenomena is worth investigating. In preserving biological diversity around the world, conservationists are going to have to consider the context in which they operate, he surmised.

Based on Hanson’s benchmark of one thousand deaths per year, Mexico meets the criteria of a regional conflict. But the drug war is less incendiary than ethnic hatred, or as prosaic as a territorial dispute.

Paradoxically, Tijuana’s close proximity to the U.S. border has made it a popular stomping ground and jumping off point for all manner of illicit thrills that in recent years have become increasingly lucrative and more dangerous.

According to a U.S. Government Accountability Office report published in 2007, drug cartels net as much as 23 billion dollars in revenue each year, a figure comparable to the profits enjoyed by the largest Fortune 500 companies.

The turbulence of Tijuana ripples throughout Baja. Adventurous naturalists and avid surfers no longer come here. Presiding over half-constructed villas and real-estate development deals gone sour, even a 75-foot Jesus statue looks lonely.

Driving along a deserted highway, Plopper laments the losses he’s witnessed. "First came the Spanish missionaries, then the miners, and now the land speculators, they all went bust," says Plopper.

Most Mexican residents and activists invested in preserving Mexico’s rich natural heritage hope the cartels meet with similar success.

*This story is part of a series of features on sustainable development by IPS and IFEJ – International Federation of Environmental Journalists ­- for Communicators for Sustainable Development (www.complusalliance.org ).