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VOICE OF SAN DIEGO
Saving the Whales:
Becoming Entrepreneurial in Environmentalism
By SERGE DEDINA
Contributing Voice
Published April 21, 2005
http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/site/pp.asp?c=euLTJbMUKvH&b=569543
On a sunny, windswept day in October 1993, my wife Emily and I
arrived in San Ignacio Lagoon in Baja California with our dog
Chip and a 14-foot travel trailer to study gray whales for our
doctoral research at the University of Texas at Austin. The lagoon
is famous for friendly gray whales that are known for seeking
out hugs and kisses from tourists.
During the months we lived at the lagoon, we came to know a group
of fishermen-turned whale-watching guides attempting to build
a future in which local livelihoods depend on preserving local
wildlife.
That group eventually formed a groundbreaking ecotourism company,
Kuyimá, and led a successful effort to prevent the Mitsubishi
Corp. from destroying the lagoon. Mitsubishi proposed building
a 500,000-acre industrial salt harvesting project on the edge
of the world's last undeveloped gray whale lagoon. After taking
his children to San Ignacio Lagoon to pet gray whales, former
Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo cancelled the project in 2000.
Zedillo experienced the wonder of San Ignacio Lagoon and the whales
that live there accompanied by guides from Kuyimá.
I have always been haunted by the fact that the world came close
to losing a unique natural treasure because the Mitsubishi Corp.
could lease land from impoverished campesinos, even if that land
is part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Due to changes in the
Mexican constitution, formerly off-limit land owned by ejidos,
or communal land cooperatives, are now for sale. Seeing Mitsubishi
in action gave me an idea: If large corporations could lease or
purchase land from poor ejido members to develop it, why couldn't
conservationists?
So when the leaders of Kuyimá who are also members of
the Ejido Luis Echeverria, a campesino association that owns a
significant portion of San Ignacio Lagoon, asked for help in protecting
their coastal lands from development in a way that would allow
local people to make a living from ecotourism and sustainable
fishing, I gladly accepted the offer.
Thanks to assistance from Pronatura, Mexico's leading conservation
organization, the Natural Resources Defense Council and San Diego's
International Community Foundation, we are on our way to protecting
120,000 acres of undeveloped lagoon coastline and watershed, as
well as providing a sustainable future for the 44 members of the
Ejido Luis Echeverria.
Under the Laguna San Ignacio Conservation Alliance, the interest
earned from a trust fund managed by the International Community
Foundation, will be reinvested back into the rural community of
Laguna San Ignacio. In return, the Ejido Luis Echeverria will
sign a conservation easement over all their communal use lands.
This will ensure that in the future local people will not be under
pressure to sell their lands to foreign corporations for shady,
ill-conceived development projects.
Last month, residents of San Ignacio Lagoon informed us that
speculators were offering to purchase lagoon lands from ejido
members in order to develop a future industrial salt project there.
Even though Mitsubishi has denied any interest in renewing the
salt project, Leonel Cota, the new head of Mexico's Revolutionary
Democratic Party and the former governor of Baja California Sur
is a strong proponent of industrializing the lagoon. Cota is an
ally of future presidential candidate Manuel Lopez Obrador, the
current mayor of Mexico City. Homero Aridjis of Mexico's Group
of 100, an environmental organization, believes that if Obrador
is elected president next year, he will immediately move to develop
San Ignacio Lagoon. These development rumors have only fueled
our effort to preserve the lagoon and the way of life of local
residents before it is too late.
For those who work in the developing world, conservation is as
much about social justice as it is about protecting wildlife.
Unless the social needs of rural people are met first, there will
never be that much wildlife around to preserve. In the conservation
field, we have to be as entrepreneurial as our private sector
competitors. Because unless we move quickly and strategically,
we will wake up one day and find out that our coast has been transformed
into an industrial park.
Serge Dedina is the executive director of Wildcoast and the author
of "Saving the Gray Whale: People, Politics and Conservation
in Baja California," published by University of Arizona Press.
