Conservation: It is about People Too

"Did you know that the National Audubon Society is for people as well as birds and wildlife? I didn't. Then one day last August I received an email about an Audubon-sponsored trip to Ethiopia." So starts a piece written by one of my compatriots on the Berga site visit last November.

Ruth Ann Wiesenthal-Gold, a volunteer with Audubon in Florida, captures the perspective of the conservationist coming to better understand Ethiopia's overlapping economic, environmental, social, and political challenges by seeing them first-hand. In her piece for Big Cat Rescue, she weaves in first person narrative with statistics about Ethiopia's challenging conditions, highlighting particularly the tough roles of women and girls. Ruth Ann has been a great supporter of my Losing Pounds for Berga effort, loyally reading this points and sending notes of encouragement. It is great she is sharing her insights from having visited the Berga Wetland site with other U.S.-based conservationists who as she says, need to come to understand as she did that people and their development conditions are a key part of their conservation organization's work.

Blueberry Pancakes and All That

So a camping vacation should be a diet-friendly endeavor, yes? Lots of hiking, simple cooking, and an early bedtime to avoid those late night snacks.

Such were my hopes for our family vacation where we had six straight nights in Acadia National Park on Maine's rugged coast. Cadillac Mountain on Mt. Desert Island provides beautiful vistas when there are no clouds. Clouds being the operative word and what comes with them, rain being the true key.

So I am determined to learn how much it rained while we were in Maine for by any measure short of South Asian monsoon totals, it was a LOT! While the kids being half Danish helped - you just suit'em up in rain clothes and send them outside - we still ended up eating out much more than planned. Don't get me wrong, being stuck with Bar Harbor's lobster heavy restaurant menu isn't exactly hardship duty, it doesn't necessarily facilitate weight loss.

And the blueberries. The ones that go in the pancakes. We made the pilgrimage to Jordan's in Bar Harbor, the best blueberry pancakes I've ever had (the batter is in 3 gallon plastic drums that the cook bear hugs). And if that wasn't enough, there were ample blueberries just down at the end of our campsite. So when the rain did clear and we cooked in camp, it was a short commute to drop in the small but sweet blue nuggets.

This side alley (or more precisely) side trail digression is all prelude to saying that I gained back 3 lbs over the two weeks we were in Maine and visiting friends in Fairfield and Newport. I've lost 1/2 a pound in the first day back but still some making up to do.

Dinner with Sahlu

Greetings from Fairfield Connecticut where we are staying with friends on our way North, fleeing the heat and humidity of Washington in summer. Our ultimate destination is a week of camping in Acadia National Park, a camper and hiker's paradise. We will see how camping food and exercise is for the diet.

Before leaving we had my good friend Sahlu Haile over for dinner during his short trip to Washington for meetings with our mutual friend Heather D'Agnes. Sahlu and Heather are teaming up to support integrated population-health-environment development efforts in Ethiopia and East Africa more generally from their respective positions at the Packard Foundation and US Agency for International Development. It was wonderful for Sahlu to meet the family and tell Sofie, Emma, and Erik about Ethiopia

It was Sahlu who got me to Ethiopia the first time when he invited me, Heather, and our good friend and colleague Roger-Mark De Souza over early last year for a conference and study tour. The attached picture was from that trip that went south of Addis Ababa into the Rift Valley to see the magnificent (but often shrinking) lakes. The national parks in this area have tremendous scenery yet tremendous challenges as well. There are often more people, cattle, and crops in the parks than wildlife, the reality of a terribly poor country. I wrote "Seeing is Believing" about this trip south of Addis for our blog last year that starts...

The vista of Ethiopia’s ancient Rift Valley, speckled with shimmering lakes, stretches before me as our motorized caravan heads south from Lake Langano, part of a study tour on population- health-environment issues organized by the Packard Foundation. Sadly, the country’s unrelenting poverty and insecurity are as breathtaking as the view—Ethiopia currently ranks 170 out of 177 countries on the UN Development Programme’s Human Development Index. These numbers become quite personal when child after child sprints alongside the truck, looking for any morsel. Here, I don’t need to read between the lines of endless reports to see the country’s severe population, health, and environment challenges—they are visible in the protruding ribcages of the cattle and the barren eroding terraces in the nation’s rural highlands.

Population, Health, and Environment: Exploring the Connections in Video

I have often said on these pages that one thing that excites me about the Berga community is the dynamic nature of different ways these poor folks are trying to meet their needs. The people in the community live integrated lives with multiple challenges (education, health, livelihoods, security, sustainability of it all). They need, and are pursuing, integrated responses to meet these needs. They capitalize on resources from conservation organizations around protecting the endangered species to help pursue a basket of health, education, livelihoods strategies and programs.

I came to this village with a group of conservationists who wanted to learn about how these integrated efforts play out in local settings. One set of these programs is commonly called PHE programs for population, health, and environment where those fields connect in the field so to speak, and therefore groups that work in these areas see advantage in joined up efforts to address the community's multiple needs.

All this buildup is to say there is a great new video that explains the underlying logic of this approach. My Wilson Center colleague Sean Peoples has put together a 9 minute video featuring Dr. Lori Hunter of the University of Colorado at Boulder explaining how these issues are linked. Lori was speaking at the Environmental Change and Security Program here in Washington earlier this year and her talk is an excellent primer. Sean mixes in her powerpoint slides with her presentation so you can easily follow along as she uses photos and data from projects in the Philippines. Our hope is that the video will be useful on multiple levels and in the context of Losing Pounds for Berga, it is understanding the power of the Berga community's efforts.

Broke $500 for Berga

Slowly, slowly the pounds are coming off and the dollars are going up. Just wanted to flag the breaking of the $500 total pledged for the Berga wetland community project. It was only $600 plus that enabled the community to buy 66 sheets of corrugated steel to begin the school expansion project. So I'll keep losing weight but we need more people to pledge (or just donate a set amount now) to keep building up the pot!

On Sierra On Berga

Ethiopian population, environment and development issues came in for more attention on New Security Beat, the blog done by the Woodrow Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Program. The blog post flags the Sierra Club magazine piece I mentioned in an earlier post and adds some additional links. The picture on the story is another one from the health room portion of the Berga program.

2 > 1 or 0 but < 3

So I managed to lose two more this week which I will gladly take although it is one short of the goal of three. Fourth of July week is a tough spot for making such progress but some extra manual labor provided an unexpected exercise bonus. And in what has to be a positive sign, most of what I was looking for at the Casual Male Big and Tall store was actually too big.

And I found a sunrise rather than a sunset to symbolize the optimistic outlook on the diet and the fundraising. This one is the product of jet lag in Melbourne, Australia last year.