The paper deals with an important issue: warfare is likely to affect biodiversity conservation. The authors state very correctly that “conservation efforts are only as sustainable as the social and political context within which they take place”. This essay-type paper deals with the implications war might have on biodiversity, both negative and positive and direct and indirect. Their main result is that over 90 % of armed conflicts between 1950 and 2000 took place within countries containing biodiversity hotspots. Some quantitative numbers on negative consequences by war on biodiversity are reviewed (decrease in forest cover and coastal mangroves in Vietnam, poaching in Virunga National Park) but otherwise the authors merely present possible links on how war potentially can affect biodiversity. Such examples include increased military expenditures at the expense of conservation budgets, or possible positive effects through buffer zones between opposing forces or reduced economic activity enabling recovery of exploited natural resources.

Finally, the authors draw some conclusions and make some recommendations for conservation policy. Of these I think it is worth mentioning two: 1. Conservation organizations should not only work in stable regions, but also develop programs in war-torn regions, if biodiversity is to be secured. 2. Biodiversity conservation should be integrated into military, reconstruction and humanitarian programmes in the conflict zones. In our discussion we touched upon this very important issue, which is something we have been discussing also related to other works (Smith et al. 2003. Nature 426: 67-70.): should conservation efforts be focused to regions where the success likelihood is greatest or should it also be directed to ameliorate root causes of the problems?

We also discussed some possible problems with the study in question and think that the issue could have been problemized more and the analysis itself could have incorporated some more aspects. One such thing could have been the duration of the armed conflicts or some temporal trend of funding: what happened to conservation funding when a conflict was initiated? Some of us were also concerned that some key references of war dynamics and war causes were missing. Another issue of concern was the choice of using biodiversity hotspots, and not for example protected areas, for the analysis. The Biodiversity Hotspots are based mainly on plant endemism and probably the taxa most affected by war are mammals and birds. However, the authors defend their choice by referring to the fact that also vertebrate endemism is high in the biodiversity hotspots. Another problem is that the authors couldn’t link consequences for biodiversity to the war, or at least did not aim at any analyses exploring this.

Generally, the paper inspired lively discussions on how warfare might affect biodiversity and we all agreed that the paper draws attention to an important issue.

Link to the paper:

Hanson, T., Brooks, T.M., Da Fonseca, G.A.B., Hoffmann, M., Lamoreux, J.F., Machlis, G., Mittermeier, C.G., Mittermeier, R.A., Pilgrim, J.D. 2009. Warfare in Biodiversity hotspots. Conservation Biology 23: 578-587.

doi: 10.1111/j.1523-1739.2009.01166.x