Published in International Wildlife
July 1999

CAN 'PEACE PARKS' HELP FEUDING COUNTRIES 'MAKE WILDLIFE, NOT WAR'?

by Paul Spencer Sochaczewski © 1999

Good fences make good neighbors?

Try telling that to the bison that live on the border between Poland and Belarus.

Two herds of rare European bison range in protected areas along the border of the two eastern European countries. The 270 animals in Poland and 300 in Belarus are separated by a 2 ½ meter high metal fence. Signs warn people to keep away. A ten meter wide dirt security road, patrolled by guards on sputtering motorcycles, slices through the forest. The scene reminds a visitor of a John LeCarré cold war spy novel.

The fence is a holdover from 1981, when Belarus, then part of the Soviet Union, constructed the barrier to stop the dangerous ideas of Poland's Lech Walesa and Solidarity from infiltrating the country.

* * *

Paradoxically, the fence along the "inner iron curtain" that prevents people and bison from crossing the frontier is nevertheless a symbol of a growing movement in nature conservation - the trans-frontier peace park.

Conservationists hope that the Bialowieza National Park on the Polish side, and the Belovezhskaya National Park on the Belarus side (B&B for short), will become an international peace park, an informal concept that describes trans-frontier protected areas which unite formerly mutually-distrustful neighbors in common conservation projects.

Poland was an architect of the peace park concept, which began with the Crakow (now Krakow) protocol of 1924 in which twin national parks were established along the then-disputed borders of Czechoslovakia and Poland.

There's no shortage of belligerent countries which might benefit from better cooperation in the name of nature. IUCN's World Conservation Monitoring Centre has identified 136 trans-frontier protected area complexes distributed among 98 countries.
Can protected areas heal centuries-old enmities that are often deeply rooted in political and ethnic mistrust? A look at several potential peace park matchups might frighten even Henry Kissinger: Czechoslovakia-Germany, Russia-Finland, Greece-Turkey, Bosnia-Serbia.

* * *

The B&B bison, Europe's largest land animal, once ranged throughout much of Europe. They were wiped out in England in the 12th century, from France in the 14th, from Germany in the 18th. The last wild animals, in the B&B forest, became extinct in 1919. The 3,000 animals that survive today in Poland, Belarus, Ukraine and Russia are descendants of a handful of animals that had been bred in captivity in German and Scandinavian zoos. Although some taxonomists argue the point, most scientists consider the B&B bison, also called the Lithuanian bison, to be a different species to American bison. The Lithuanian bison, the form found in B&B, is one of two sub-species; the other is the now-extinct Caucasian bison.

* * *
Europe is a great place to prospect for potential peace parks.
Nearly a third of the 50 existing and 26 projected bilateral parks in Europe lie along the line that demarcated the iron curtain that separated western Europe from the Soviet bloc.
And along the "inner" iron curtain, which marked the border between the former Soviet Union and its suspicious Eastern European client states, an additional several dozen nature reserves and parks straddle sensitive frontiers.
* * *
The inner sanctum of the Bialowieza National Park is a strict nature reserve, where visitors are only allowed with park guides, and the only vehicles permitted are bicycles and horse-drawn carts.

This is one of the most talked about forests in Europe - the "last remaining primeval forest," according to the conservation spin doctors, a rich ecosystem that once stretched from the Atlantic to the Urals.

Ancient oak, ash, linden, hornbeam, and elm trees are sometimes so large that two people with arms outstretched can't encircle the trunk. Dead trees are left to feed the fungi and termites, filling the air with the musk of decay. The forest glistens with a myriad of moss, and mushrooms sprout heedlessly - thin pale violets and broad-capped fire engine reds.

Our western culture is partly constructed out of a
push-pull relationship with the deep forests such as B&B. We are attracted to wilderness, in spite of its real and perceived dangers, almost like a boy will touch a hot stove. Yet our society is cautious about the dark forest, for this is a place of wolves, a shelter for partisans and revolutionaries, a terra incognita where Hansel and Gretel almost lost their innocent lives to a wicked witch, where Little Red Robin Hood almost succumbed to the wolf.

Above all, forests like B&B are the abode of goblins and spirits. Here live Leshy, the blue-blooded, green-whiskered native wood-fauns who lead their enemies astray.

* * *
Myths are dreams given substance, and it would be hard to find a more persuasive practical dreamer than John Hanks.

Hanks, a British citizen who has settled in South Africa, is executive director of the Peace Parks Foundation. In what he terms "the most ambitious wildlife conservation initiative of this century," his group encourages the creation of a series of trans-frontier peace parks in southern Africa.

Robert Mugabe, president of Zimbabwe, says "we find the [peace park] concept very appealing." Mugabe has recently proposed a new peace park linking protected areas where Zambia, Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe meet. This spectacular area would include Victoria Falls, Okavango Swamp, and numerous game reserves.
One of Hanks' main projects: a vast peace park linking Kruger National Park on the South African side and Banhine and Zinave National Parks in Mozambique. Together with the contiguous Gonarezhou National Park in Zimbabwe, the proposed conservation area will be about five times the current size of Kruger, itself the size of New Jersey.

* * *
It's unlikely that the B&B fence will come down soon.
Alexander Lukashenko, President of Belarus, is a Soviet-style dictator who ordered his military to shoot down two American balloonists who drifted across his territory during an international race. When foreign diplomats in Minsk, the Belarus capital, refused an order to vacate their homes, he ordered workmen to weld shut the American ambassador's front gate. As a result Lukashenko is barred from entering the United States, the European Union or Japan. Popular wisdom in Poland believes that the Belarus forest hid Russian missile silos, a rumor hotly denied by Belarus park officials.
Poland, on the other hand, looks to the west for its future, joined NATO in March 1999 and is eager to join the European Union. The Polish zloty is stable and freely exchangeable while the country's economy grows at 6 percent annually; the exchange rate of the Belarus rouble, during August 1998, was 60,000 to the dollar and tumbling fast. Polish TV viewers enjoy Bay Watch, Belarussians watch their president, a former collective-farm manager, repeat his mantra: "State regulation. I repeat, state regulation."

Fences work both ways, of course. As part of the price of entry into the EU, Western Europe is demanding that Poland create strict controls on its more than 1,6000-kilometer border through which thousands of Russians, Ukrainians and Belarussians pour monthly. Foreign Minister Bronislaw Geremek of Poland rejects such thinking, saying "One can't create barbed wire; that period is over."

* * *
Peace parks can help reduce regional enmities, Hanks suggests. He notes that five years ago an 80-kilometer electric "fence of fire" separated the no-man's land between Mozambique and South Africa. Since its construction in the mid-1980s, some 100 people have died attempting to cross the barrier, more than the number killed trying to cross the Berlin Wall.

Today, due partly to peace park initiatives, the electricity has been turned off and the fence will be removed when both sides are satisfied that appropriate conservation management practices are in place.

* * *
The B&B region has been a war zone for centuries, with dozens of invaders claiming control over the flat rich lowlands. Ironically, feudal control has been good for the wildlife.

B&B was first declared a hunting reserve for the protection of European bison as early as 1541.

Powerful dictators, whether they are kings, dukes, princes, nazis, or communist party leaders used the B&B forests as exclusive hunting grounds, a droit de seigneur which effectively eliminated poaching.

Just as the Indian tiger population survived because tiger hunting was
the prerogative of the Maharajas, the Lithuanian bison survived for so long because it was royal prey.

B&B has always been a great place for a party. One fine afternoon in 1752 King Augustus III of Poland and his buddies shot 42 bison which were herded in front of his grandstand by royal beaters. His wife Maria Jozefa glanced up from her French novel long enough to shoot 20 bison herself.

More recently, guests to B&B have included Tito, Nicolae Ceaucescu, Erich Honecker, Mussolini's wife, Herman Goering, Kurt Waldheim, Raoul Castro and Nikolay G. Basov, the forefather of the laser, who was shuttled directly from Stockholm, where he won a Nobel Prize in 1964, to B&B for a victory picnic.
Mikhail Gorbachev signed the document dissolving the Soviet Union at the Khruschev Center in the middle of the Belovezhskaya forest.
Khruschev was a frequent visitor and Viacheslav Semakov, Deputy Director for Science of the Belovezhskaya Pushcha National Park points out man-made lakes that Khruschev ordered built so that the good old boys in the politburo could enjoy some duck hunting.
Ironically, today the lakes provide productive habitat for waterfowl and significantly increase the biodiversity of the park.

Today the man who controls Belovezhskaya is Alexander Lukashenko, who personally controls the country's environment portfolio. When he first toured the forest he instructed "if a single live tree is cut heads will roll."

* * *
The peace dividend in the southern Africa peace park experiment will be prosperity, according to John Hanks.

He argues that the creation of the seven proposed trans-boundary protected areas along South Africa's borders could give the region's economy a huge boost.

His arithmetic: In 1996 tourism, much of it nature-related, accounted for some 480,000 jobs in South Africa. If current trends continue, this number will rise to 860,000 by 2000. At present, tourism only contributes 4% to the national GDP, but if it increased to 10% (as is the case in the United States) the result would be an income of 40 billion Rand annually and the creation of two million jobs.
Kruger National Park attracts some 800,000 visitors per year. A peace park in the area would spur considerable infrastructure expansion; already plans are being developed to construct an international airport that will accommodate direct jumbo jet flights from Europe. The multi-country vacation opportunities for tourists that will become available when the peace park is established could lead to a significant increase in visitors to the region, resulting in thousands of new jobs.

* * *
In Poland's Bialowieza today peace at home is an even bigger problem than cross-border brotherhood.

The conflict, like so many environmentally-linked disputes worldwide, pits local people against conservationists.

Currently the Bialowieza National Park, including the Strict Nature Reserve, covers just 10,000 ha. Conservationists and the Ministry of Environment want to expand the national park by five times, which they can do by simply changing the status of the state forests that surround the existing national park.

The conservationists say more land is needed for biodiversity and to encourage eco-tourism. The foresters in this poor region remind visitors that these rich woodlands enabled Poland to recover economically following the two World Wars and that foresters can work sustainably.

Or, as Bill Clinton said, "it's the economy, stupid."

* * *
Will the main beneficiaries of peace park initiatives will turn out to be the people of the respective countries who live near the nature reserves?

Consider the Si-A-Paz peace park complex along the San Juan river basin that forms the border between Costa Rica and Nicaragua.
The two countries had argued over land. There was a problem with illegal trade. And in Nicaragua, various rebel groups drifted into Costa Rica, disrupting social life in that country. The packaging of 33 protected areas in Costa Rica and 18 in Nicaragua as the Si-A-Paz ("yes to peace") peace park has "closed the business," according to Pedro Rosabal of IUCN's World Commission on Protected Areas, which promotes the peace park concept.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Oscar Arias, president of Costa Rica, and James D. Nations of Conservation International note that "The potential benefits of Central America's peace parks go far beyond their biological advantages. The most promising aspects of establishing peace parks in Central America is the movement to include rural families in the planning and development of the parks and the buffer zones that surround them."

* * *
The men who run B&B are a likeable odd couple.

Czeslaw Okolow, director of Poland's Bialowieza National Park, initially strikes visitors as gruff, a stern figure in his spotless green uniform. His manner is understandable - he's worked in Bialowieza for some 39 years and takes a keen interest in its future.

But Okolow, whose other passion is jazz, hasn't forgotten the past - he keeps one volume of the Bialowieza visitors' book locked in his private office and takes it out to show visitors. This is the record of visitors during World War II, and reflects how stomped upon B&B has been over the centuries. "Here's Ulrich Scherpring, Oberjagermeister for Goering," he says, referring to the game warden who first came to Bialowieza in November 1939 to prepare for the Nazi's hunting visits. He flicks through the book. A German commander came in June 1941, and then, three years later, a Russian commander of Red Army signed in, indicating that the spoils of war had shifted. "And here's the first soldier in the Polish army to come, just a month after the Russian," Okolow says proudly. You get the feeling that he never wants this land to be out of Polish hands again.

Viacheslav Semakov, 60, who runs Belovezhskaya, is more casual, more of a showman.

He is especially exuberant when explaining his role in helping the Poles expand the scope of their half of B&B. "My dream is that the whole forest on the Polish side will be protected," Semakov says.
According to Semakov, the Poles need outside support to expand the territory of the national park, explaining "The Poles encouraged us to write the Polish president asking him to declare the whole forest a protected area," he says.

"I've spoken in Poland about the need to expand their park and I was only one who received applause," Semakov says. Why? "The Poles think the Belarus side is better preserved. I'll give you an example. The campaigners who wanted to expand the park issued a postcard with the heading 'The decision is up to you' with two photographs. One photo, taken on the Polish side, showed barren tree stumps. The other photo showed a healthy forest. That photo was taken in Belarus."

* * *
Internal peace in southern Africa involves issues of basic social justice.

Many people living near the South Africa-Mozambique-Zimbabwe peace park are the poorest of the poor, according to Conrad Steenkamp, an environment and development consultant working with the Peace Parks Foundation. He recounts how every year thousands of Mozambicans leave their precarious subsistence existence, where they are at the mercy of floods, drought and rainfall, and walk several hundred kilometers through Kruger National Park to reach poorly-paying jobs on South African farms. "They're the bottom of the food chain," Steenkamp says, referring to both their social status and to the fact that dozens of these desperate refugees fall to Kruger's hungry lions each year.

Antonio Reina, director of the Endangered Wildlife Trust in Mozambique, says that the Zinave section of the peace park is already beginning to pay dividends by ensuring that people's ownership of land will be formally recognized by the government, one of the essential steps in restoring economic and social stability.
It's still early days, but Reina is optimistic. "We went through a bad time," he says. "We hit the bottom, now everything can only go up."

* * *
Jerzego Glada, a Polish forester, is against the expansion of the park. Serving visitors his wonderful honey made from bees which range in the Bialowieza forest, he argues that "foresters have looked after the state forest for more than sixty years and it's still there. The last time the park was enlarged we were promised things like a water treatment plant, which were never delivered. Of course people are uncertain about their future, but nobody's talking to us, there are no clear plans."

An expansion of the park would simply be "a waste of wood," according to Glada. "God gave the forest to us to use. We shouldn't leave it all to rot, but also we shouldn't cut it all. The forest is a great treasure and renewable resource and if managed right can remain."

* * *
In some cases, the greatest threat to ecological peace comes from internal conflict.

Kruger's history, since the creation of its precedent nature reserves in 1894 and 1898, has been rife with incidents of removals and forced labor.

James Stevenson-Hamilton, the first warden of the Sabi Reserve, which later was incorporated into what is now Kruger National Park, confessed that: "It had been impressed on me that the first difficulty would probably be with the natives, since these and the game could not be expected to exist together, and I had already decided in my own mind that...the Reserve would have to be cleared of all human inhabitants." He evicted some 3,000 people from the park in 1902. These policies earned him the name Skukuza, taken from the Tsonga word Ukuskukuzile, "he who sweeps away" or "he who turns everything upside down". Perhaps relishing the irony, the colonial authorities adopted Skukuza as the name for the first rest camp in the park, which today is Kruger's administrative headquarters.

In a more recent case the Makuleke community in northern Kruger claims the 23,000 hectares of land from which they were forcibly removed in 1969. Lamson Makuleke, one of the community leaders working to win back their land, and a supporter of the peace parks concept, notes: "Once the land claim has been granted our plan is to retain the conservation status of the area. We have to benefit from the land and the manner in which it can best benefit the community is through ecotourism activity."

* * *

Stefan Bajko, a teacher at a Polish forestry institute who also runs a small rustic-feel (bison skins on the wall) tourist hotel in Bialowieza town, tries to understand both sides. "In Poland foresters are attacked too much," he says. "They can be good keepers of the forest, but they're just afraid of earning less." His prediction: the park will be enlarged, "we just have to solve the logistics locally"

* * *
It's hard to imagine a more intriguing potential peace park than the wind-swept 98,400 ha demilitarized zone between North Korea and South Korea, which has been left relatively undisturbed since the end of the 1950-1953 Korean War. Largely because it is off-limits to people, the area forms a flourishing de facto nature reserve that provides habitat for threatened species that include red-crowned crane, white-naped crane, and Siberian musk deer.

Arthur H. Westing, an environmental consultant, predicts that the DMZ's conservation integrity could disappear rapidly following reunification, owing to the enormous social pressures, from both north and south, for agricultural, industrial and urban development. He argues that the establishment of a Korean Bi-State Reserve for Peace and Nature would not only protect biodiversity on the peninsula, but would facilitate the peace process and ultimate reunification.

North Korea's initial enthusiasm for the idea -- in 1991 the country asked the United Nations Secretary General to explore the possibility of a DMZ-centered nature reserve - has declined and North Korea now says it is not now interested in pursuing the project. The South Korean president, by contrast, while addressing the 19th Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly, specifically expressed his hope that the two Koreas would cooperate with each other to protect and preserve the DMZ, turning it into a zone for peace and ecological integrity.

* * *
Sitting in front of a woodburning stove in her sunflower bedecked wooden house, Joanna Matyse, a graphic designer in Bialowieza village, sees both sides of the local conflict over park expansion.

"Some people say that the forestry jobs that will be lost will be made up by the tourism sector. But seventy percent of the people here live directly from the forest," she says. "People are ready to change their professions from forestry-oriented to tourist services, but they don't believe tourists will come. Today only three to five percent live off tourism. People don't understand the logic and don't trust it."
She's relaxed and articulate -- "Coffee helps my English," she laughs. "The commotion about the protection of the forest is like a soup bubbling before it's cooked. Ninety-five percent of people can't see farther than their personal interests, including scientists. Intelligence doesn't mean having wide horizons," according to Matyse. "The scientist who sticks metal plaques on trees or radio collars on wolves can be just as narrow-minded as the forester."

Matyse thinks the big issue is that "people go crazy with fears over small things. They don't know whether they'll be able to collect mushrooms in the expanded national park. Some people are afraid they would be locked in like Indians on a reservation. Here we have a mixture of intellectual and simple people, and we have to talk to them in different ways. We have to help people see they can get something out of it."

* * *
The October 1998 peace accords signed by Benjamin Netanyahu and Yasser Arafat include provisions that three percent of the much-debated 13% of land that will be ceded to Palestine should form a protected area in the disputed West Bank territory. While this decision probably owes more to Israel's desire to secure a military buffer zone than it does to love of ducks and deer, the proposed nature reserve might alleviate some tensions by encouraging scientists to work together and enabling visitors from both sides to enjoy the area.

Echoing the opportunity to use conservation as a tool for cooperation, Queen Noor of Jordan said, "We in Jordan made equitable water sharing a cornerstone of our 1994 peace accord with Israel; and recently our two countries inaugurated a new project to increase the captured flow of natural runoff water from the Yarmouk River -- the same place where decades ago Jordanian and Israeli troops exchanged gunfire over that same water source."

* * *
In the absence of formal definitions, is it correct to call B&B a "peace park"?

Semakov think so. "The World Bank said that this is an example of how cooperation between two countries should be, an example for other parks. When Belarus needed bison, the Poles gave us bison. When the Poles needed rare pines, the Belarussians gave them trees."

Okolow isn't so sure. He acknowledges the scientific cooperation that exists, but concludes "No, this isn't a peace park in the sense of Waterton-Glacier [Canada-U.S.], or the parks on the border between Poland and Slovakia. Sure things are better now -- just three years ago Semakov's phone number was secret. Still, I'd like to be able to call Semakov and he would say, 'OK, let's meet in two hours.' But now I have to call ten days in advance if I want to meet him so that everything can be arranged. Our lives are in the hands of the politicians. That doesn't mean we have to tear down the border -- we can keep the frontier for politicians, but not for people."

* * *
What's the bottom line on peace parks? Are they better than the status quo of individual protected areas?

Certainly, they're better for biodiversity.
The Kruger/Banhine-Zinave/Gonarezhou peace park complex, for example, where animals can roam freely over a significantly larger area, will be a boon for nature conservation.

But will the peace park promote regional cooperation and reduce conflicts? Well, it can't hurt. Natarajan Ishwaran, a program specialist at Unesco's World Heritage Convention, which gave B&B world heritage site status in 1992, acknowledges that there are few clear examples of trans-border parks that have led directly to peace. Nevertheless, he agrees that peace parks can help build trust between countries and "demonstrate a principle. Peace, at least in the early stages," he says, "requires symbolic gestures."

Will the peace park generate income and "empowerment" for local communities? Depends who you talk to.

The major element in this movement, perhaps, is that peace parks are sexy and can unleash new funds for conservation. Committed conservationists who are also imaginative communicators, like John Hanks, have created a concept in which the sum is worth more than the parts. It's unlikely that the World Bank would have given US $5 million for the South Africa-Mozambique-Zimbabwe peace park if Hanks had not packaged the concept in such an innovative way. Ditto for the considerable support he's attracted from the private sector.

* * *
And for the bison of B&B? Semakov says that politics are irrelevant. The country is broke and there is no money to maintain the fence, he explains. "It will fall down on its own in a year or two."