Page 16 - issue 19

16 Associations

Economic

development

through human/

biodiversity

nexus : Kalahari

Conservation

Society

roviding an enabling Such are the real human/wildlife partnership to address concerns
environment for economic instances of conflict, showcasing the about wildlife encroachment with
development through enormous costs in terms of monetary or energy infrastructure, with mutual
human/biodiversity nexus human capital, when large game species benefits.”It is estimated that the cost
PA working definition in encroach human space, willy nilly, in to ESKOM in terms of infrastructural
the human/biodiversity-friendly search of forage or prey leaving behind damage reparations and other
coexistence context explains biodiversity a trail of devastation. incidental expenses amounts to
as the foundation of human wellbeing. $100 million, annually.
While the latter dictates the health For instance, South Africa (SA) incurs
of the former, the true conservation US$100 million bill annually as a result “Over the past 22 years, the EWT/
impact can only be attained by working of wildlife damage to infrastructure. ESKOM partnership has combined
with people. Threatened large bird species die business and environmental
annually from collisions with energy management skills to develop and
When two elephants fight, the grass infrastructure, while flying. Resultant implement innovative solutions to
is trampled! Or taken in the human power outages through wildlife address the impacts to biodiversity
context; crossfire from superpower encroachments have a significant knock- and the economy. The cornerstone
conflicts utilizing weapons of mass on effect to domestic and commercial of the work is archived in central
destruction kill the innocent bystander. energy end-users alongside with database of incidents used reactively
financial and losses to utilities and the and proactively.
Since vast expanses of grasslands found broader economy.
in the wild, are to a greater or lesser ”Reactively; through the fitting
extent regarded as nature’s free forage Addressing a Kalahari Conservation of flappers and other marking
to animal and bird species, nobody Society Annual Dinner Dance hosted in devices to make them safe for the
would bother to quantify the damage. Gaborone recently, South African (SA)- birds to land on without the risk of
But who would forever hold their peace, based Carnivore Conservation Biologist electrocution. Proactively: in terms
when large herbivores such as elephant and Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT) of guiding the future placement and
and giraffe encroachment leads to, in NGO Head of Conservation Dr. Harriet design of distribution line networks
the worst case scenario, result in human Davies-Mostert said: “One of our longest and other energy developments,
catastrophe, infrastructural, fencing- and most important partnerships such as wind farms.”
cum-agricultural-produce-vandalism, initiated in 1996, in this respect has
electricity, water supply interruptions or been SA’s National Power Utility ESKOM.
temporary road closures? We established the EWT/ESKOM

Issue 19 Oct/Nov - 2018 www.engineermagazine.co.bw