Our Environment: Q&A with Jim Jarvie

Dr. Jim Jarvie. Photo: Mercy Corps

Dr. Jim Jarvie joined Mercy Corps immediately after the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, in Sri Lanka where he was based at the time. After two years working on tsunami response, he took on a role as the agency's Director of Climate Change, Environment and Natural Resource Management.

Dr. Jarvie is a biologist with more than 14 years of experience in Southeast Asia in natural resource management and conservation. His work with international donors, universities and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) focused on conservation has covered a range of topics including natural resource governance, forest-based conflict, ethical timber trading and protected area design.

He recently took some time to answer the following questions.

Mercy Corps: What's the distinction between the terms environmental protection, natural resources management and climate change?

Jim Jarvie: Environmental protection is any measure taken to protect any aspect of the environment. A measure could be as simple as fencing off an eroding slope to protect it from grazing while allowing vegetation to recover and bind the substrate, [or as complicated] as putting high-tech carbon dioxide scrubbers in the chimney stacks of power stations to reduce carbon emissions.
 
Natural resources management has a variety of definitions - I prefer it to mean the management of renewable resources occurring in nature. So soil, forest and fisheries all count; we aim to use them and manage them in such a way as to maintain their health as they renew themselves after we take a harvest. Oil, coal and metals don't [renew themselves] - there is a finite amount of each that won't be renewing harvested stocks.
 
Climate change is just as it says: a change in climate. This has happened numerous times in earth's history, even including mini-ice ages in the last millennium. However, now the meaning is taken to indicate anthropomorphic changes in climate, synonymous with global warming. It means that post-industrial humankind is introducing its own impacts on climate, specifically through emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that are rapidly warming the planet.

How do these three things relate to each other?
 
For me, the relationship is that humankind has a bad record in natural resource management - that has led to the resources we depend on being depleted. That is itself is a global challenge that agencies like Mercy Corps have to address, and in our case particularly so as we have identified it as a core part of our mission.

Climate change in the short term will make the impact of resource depletion a lot worse. Fishing stocks, already over-harvested, will reduce further as the [chemical composition] of the oceans change; forests, already depleted and exposed to increased fire risk, will burn ever more widely and fiercely as climate change worsens dryness.

Refugees and displaced populations - such as these women in Darfur - often present significant natural resource management challenges for host communities. Photo: Cassandra Nelson/Mercy Corps

On the longer term, climate change will warm and raise sea levels - this will alter coastlines and wreck coral reefs. And, if it becomes catastrophic, we may face in the coming generations a mass extinction on earth. These have happened before, but we'll be the first species to bring it on ourselves.

Environmental protection is the combined set of actions we'll need to take to mitigate current trends and restore ecological balance. The choice to do so or not is entirely up to our species and Mercy Corps' involvement in the topic is part of this debate.
 
So, what are some of Mercy Corps' goals for addressing these critical issues?
 
We have three themes to address: operations, programs and ideas that are catalytic or transformative. Operations mean putting Mercy Corps' house in order by making it a carbon-neutral organization, developing green building and transport policies, building staff capacity in sound environmental practices and incorporating environmental strategy into our disaster and development programming.

Programatically, we want to promote environmental programming to reduce the impacts of climate change, while also improving economic development and the quality of life [for the families we serve]. We also want to ensure that there are strong environmental components for all Mercy Corps programs.

We are also committed to approaches that catalyze and transform our constituents. These include:

• Mobilizing youth to work on environmentally sustainable projects promoting economic development,
• Promoting green technologies in parallel with livelihood and economic development, and
• Being a socially responsible agency for combining carbon reduction with livelihoods

 
How is Mercy Corps mitigating some of the larger global issues related to climate change, i.e. the impending water crisis in Asia as a result of Himalayan glacier disappearance?
 
We are starting by educating ourselves. We have engaged with a climate change unit at Edinburgh University and around ten [graduate] students are dedicating their thesis topics to assessing specific threats to countries we work in, caused by climate change. We are seeking funding to deepen these studies to include development of mitigation strategies around the risks and the chances of increased conflict they will induce.

We are also trying to engage with donors interested in finding and implementing large-scale strategic solution to such risks. Mercy Corps is a small part of the solution, but with the right partners we can try to be pivotal.
 
Where are some of the most vulnerable countries or areas in which Mercy Corps is implementing environmental programs?

There are many, but the ones that come immediately to mind are Afghanistan, Mongolia, Tajikistan and Niger. But, in reality, all countries are vulnerable to climate change. It's just that some will be hit harder and faster than others; vulnerability is worsened by a lack of national infrastructure for coping and adapting.
 
What is one of the smallest, yet most innovative and cost-effective ways you've seen a population addressing environmental issues?

When a common threat or nuisance is perceived, a campaign mobilizes the population to the extent it just makes common sense to do something about it. And entrepreneurs are always around to make money off it.

I remember the "Keep Britain Tidy" campaign to address a grotty, littered landscape [in the United Kingdom]. Growing up at school, it just made sense not to chuck out litter. And then the smarter folks made money in recycling. For me, that is a big "way" because I was caught up in it. I'm sure everyone has their own personal example.
 
What are some ways you'd like to see Mercy Corps - and its colleague organizations - address environmental challenges over the next five years?

Recognize, as Mercy Corps does, that environment cross-cuts all programming, and that addressing environmental challenges is natural and commonsensical. Added to that would be to develop a loud and strong advocacy voice that these issues are fundamental to our mission as well as the health of the planet; the two are intrinsically intertwined.
 
What are the ways that private citizens can protect their environment and address global challenges?

Be responsible.

Think about the implications of personal actions like leaving a computer on all night; owning an SUV; where garbage goes; where packaging comes from; where exotic flown-in foods come from.

Basically, wake up and be aware.

Dr. Jim Jarvie is Mercy Corps' Director of Climate Change, Environment and Natural Resources.