Talking of climate change, Jonathan Oppenheimer uses the analogy of the frog that will would jump out of hot water quickly if plunged into it, but doesn’t notice the heat when it’s slowly brought to the boil.
And there’s the rub: “If you don’t deal with the long-term the solutions become more radical. We might even come into a place where we can’t come back,” warns Oppenheimer.
An avid pilot, Oppenheimer borrows a metaphor from the world of aviation to illustrate his point. Whether you’re landing a plane or busy taking off, “you want runway in front of you . . . The worst thing is to have runway behind you… a classic mistake,” he says.
And right now, we are that hapless pilot who’s run out of runway: “We have to act with haste.”
The “Business of Conservation”
Oppenheimer was in one-on-one live-streamed interview with journalist, Bongani Bingwa, yesterday ((Subs: Wednesday)) at the 13th annual Oppenheimer Research Conference in Midrand, Johannesburg. They were talking about the “business of conversation” including the kinds of conversations that businessmen and environmentalists should be having with local communities, often left behind or neglected in conservation planning.
Yes, these were people who were impacted the most by conservation decisions, noted Oppenheimer.
Here and now realities
Oppenheimer said he was concerned that less than 5% of the general public appreciated the urgency to address climate change because they were too busy trying to survive in the here and now.
There was also the sense that it was something very much in the future, so communities weren’t motivated by it. This being the case, snaring or trapping game for bush meat or burning 300-year-old trees to make charcoal (a once-off use) made sense to many people who needed to become part of the solutions.
And that’s where the business of conversation can step up, offering more people employment, skills development and means to survive, said Oppenheimer.
Job creation
He cited Tswalu Kalahari, the private reserve owned by Oppenheimer Generations, as an example, offer its neighbouring communities something, and using the jobs that the reserve’s high-end tourist business created to tip the balance in favour of conservation.
Camps with luxurious tents had to be built, and other services provided. All these created jobs and it was not a charity. On this score, Oppenheimer noted charity and philanthropy never amounted to more than 1% of corporate and private money. So, what conservation really needed was access to this other 99%. This meant turning conservation efforts into viable businesses.
And for this to happen businesses needed a return on investment – “a cost of capital return of 7 to 10 percent”.
But money, he said was “the most immoral, fickle creature. Money is a coward and unless you can entice it to come in, it is running away,” said Oppenheimer.
So, models were needed to sustain investment.
“Capital is the enabler in main ways.”
South African conservation had come a long way in that respect, said Oppenheimer referring to changes to the law in the 1970s that opened the way for private ownership of game. Thanks to this, large antelopes had increased in numbers from the hundreds of thousands to millions, he said.
Thorny land issue
This prompted, Bingwa, a Radio 702 anchor and contributor to TV’s Carte Blanche to raise South Africa’s thorny land question.
The businessman conceded the country had fallen short when it came to building sustainable communities, but countered that “ownership of land is irrelevant if it is employing people, giving them opportunities”.
He pointed out that land restitution had not delivered these things to its beneficiaries, with the former commercial lands and wilderness areas given to communities turning “to nothing”.
Sword-fighting weavers
Turning to science and research and the kind of work that excited him, Oppenheimer said there was merit in science for its own sake. He gave, as an example, research done at Tswalu on white-browed sparrow-weavers and the “sword fights” they have with sticks of grass. This was addictively interesting, but “does not move the dial of conservation for preserving Tswalu”.
Challenged on this view by a member of the audience during a Q&A later, Oppenheimer withdrew the point conceding that somewhat similar research had done much to attract visitors. “I stand corrected,” he said among some mirth.
World leader
Bingwa also wanted to know whether the country was tapping into its indigenous knowledge systems. Although we needed to do better, Oppenheimer felt that South Africa wasn’t given its due when it was in reality a world leader in conservation and biodiversity preservation.
In affluent, developed countries it was fashionable to view places like Costa Rica as pillars of virtue because they were doing “exciting things” like replanting rainforest. But the Central American country was enjoying a “honeymoon period”, said Oppenheimer, quoting a conversation he had with a senior conservation official of that country.
And unlike South Africa, Costa Rica it has not had to deal with conflict. Out of fear of losing its funding, it wasn’t engaged in the active management of its wildlife. Instead it got kudos from ignorant people in developed countries where a “perspective dominates perception that wilderness is best served by live and let live”.
Oppenheimer spoke of his frustration at countries like the UK where bans on hunted goods were imposed over misguided public concerns about extinctions.
Action beyond policies
What about the role of policymakers, Bingwa asked. Shouldn’t we be looking to them to help get us out of our climate change pickle?
Yes, we might demand better legislation for out policy makers, but we need to go much further, the businessman replied.
“We need to own (the problem), not give it to someone else to solve,” said Oppenheimer, quoting Russell Ackoff, the late Wharton business school management scientist.
Ackoff famously said, “We fail more often because we solve the wrong problem than because we get the wrong solution to the right problem.” In other words, we identify the problem wrongly and create solutions for that wrong problem instead of addressing the underlying root cause and developing effective solutions tailored to the actual issue.
The end result: We trying harder and harder doing the same things when “what we have right now is broken”, said Oppenheimer.
Returning to the language of the landing strip, he said we were slowing the rate of descent, when what we needed was another trajectory.
“We need to put a new engine in the aircraft so it can fly.” – Roving Reporters
This story was produced with the assistance of Jive Media Africa – science communication partner to Oppenheimer Generations Research and Conservation.
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