Description
Many regions possessing unexploited and highly-valued natural resources are often biodiversity-rich and home to traditional subsistence communities. Under these circumstances, development projects can pose serious threats to the integrity of valuable ecosystems and to the livelihoods and well being of local communities. Moreover, vast cultural and geographic distances frequently separate the beneficiaries of these projects from those who are directly impacted, and the latter are oftentimes politically or economically marginalized.
This combustible mixture of resource wealth, inequity and cultural contrast can be a recipe for conflict. In an effort to address such situations, IUCN and the Earth Council Foundation joined forces to establish the International Ombudsman Centre for the Environment and Development, (OmCED) in July of 2000. Above all, the Centre was a response to the long-perceived need for a non-adversarial, non-judicial, but well-respected international mechanism to prevent and resolve conflicts concerning environment, natural resources and sustainable development.
Information
- Author(s)
- Ambassador Frans van Haren, Dorothy Sleypan & Anne Hammill
- Publisher
- IUCN - World Conservation Union
- Place published
- Geneva
- Date / journal vol no.
- in “Environment & Security: Why Nature is a Matter of Survival”, Policy Matters, Newsletter of the IUCN Commission on Environmental, Economic and Social Policy, Issue No. 9, May 2002
- Pages
- pp. 13-14
