The following is a commentary written by Dr. Jennifer Lyman, outgoing dean of the American University of Armenia’s Agopian Center for the Environment, on the desperate need for Armenian officials to protect parks and reserves more seriously:

Understanding the human relationship to nature is not an abstract concept for Armenians.

They learned the immense value of forests during the energy crisis of the early 1990s, when thousands of families survived harsh winters by using trees to heat their homes.  Today, these same Armenians also benefit from the Armenian Tree Project’s efforts to replace and restore trees.  Trees planted by ATP after the energy crisis are now bearing fruit, providing food for the table and for the market.  The trees that resulted from careful soil preparation, regular watering and careful nurturing 20 years ago are gifts and blessings to new generations of Armenians.

Preserving Armenia’s environment is, to many of my friends and colleagues, an activity far down on the country’s list of priorities.  What about poverty and pensions, employment and education, health care for women and children?  What about traffic deaths, emigration of intellectuals and capable working people? What about having enough to eat?  What about the banking system and economic development, and finally, what about corruption?  Environmental concerns, they say, are far less important than any of these other problems.

But I argue that the list is upside-down.    If humans learn to truly respect and protect nature, many of our social and economic problems will disappear. Nowhere is this more important than creating Nature Reserves that are truly protected and respected.

Armenia’s Nature Reserves set aside as much as 50 years ago, most notably the Khosrov Nature Reserve located east of Garni village to Vedi continue to offer benefits and services to Armenia.

What does Khosrov offer to us today?  Not only is it the habitat of rare and unusual species, it is a place where Armenians can relax, observe and photograph animals and flowers, and simply connect to nature.  The new visitor center at Garni is a wonderful place to learn about Khosrov’s natural areas, to arrange hikes, and to picnic.  Forward-thinking Armenians worked with iInternational development groups such as the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the Norwegian government to design and build a modern and beautiful visitor center for today and for the future.  They understand that the large undisturbed habitats of Khosrov provide ecosystem services that ecologists have only recently described.

Healthy forests, in fact, aren’t just something beautiful to be admired. They reduce the intensity and frequency of floods, they hold soil in place, help to clean the air and water, provide food for wildlife, protect rivers from erosion, and contain plants that have medicinal uses.  In fact they are a “natural capital”, a warehouse of goods, an insurance policy, and they provide all these essentially free of charge.

Lake Sevan National Park is another important reserve, containing the largest strategic fresh water storage in Armenia. Its Hrazdan River drains to the Araks River which supplies water to Turkey, Nakichivan, and Iran.   Certainly Lake Sevan ranks as one of the most beautiful in the Caucasus.  If these waters become severely polluted then Armenia is truly lost.  With 28 rivers flowing into the lake and only one flowing out, the protection of the lake basin is vital to the whole country. 

Fortunately, Article 10 of the Law of Sevan protects the lake by prohibiting activities that would have negative direct or indirect impact on the lake’s ecosystem. This includes any pollution that might be brought to the lake by rivers or heavy industrial air pollution.  This law is the first line of defense in the protection of the waters of Sevan for today and for Armenia’s future.  Those who created this law and those who passed it were thinking not of today, not of themselves, not of short-term profit for a few, but of their children and their children’s children. 

Yet the government is often not the watchdog that it should be when it comes to respecting those reserves. For example, Parliament recently changed well-established laws protecting Khosrov Reserve to allow lands to be taken out of the reserve system and rented indefinitely to private  groups as elite hunting grounds of the bezoar goat and the mouflon sheep that are listed internationally as threatened species.  Protection of these spaces must be taken seriously.

In the early days of America’s famous Yellowstone National Park, then US President Theodore Roosevelt assigned the Army to guard the animals and the natural environment and to teach tourists how to conduct themselves properly in the natural wild.  Now, thriving eco-tourism businesses have developed along the park boundaries.

In the case of Lake Sevan, it is the government’s responsibility to retain Article 10 of the Law of Sevan, whose authors had the foresight to protect its lifve-giving and valuable fresh water supply and the ecosystems that sustain it.  Activities such as cyanide processing of gold ore are activities prohibited by Article 10 and for very clear reasons.  In this case clean fresh water is more valuable and more sacred than gold that would result from a proposed gold processing plant in Sotq village. 

A second argument for protecting and caring for Nature Reserves is that there is an alternate conservation option for almost every human activity.  The choice is not simply jobs and economic security vs. protection of the natural environment.  This is always a false choice used to scare citizens into agreeing to minor short-term gains without thinking beyond the present.  Old technologies and development schemes of the 19th and 20th centuries are just that – old!

All countries are racing to find new and effective methods of production that minimize energy use and waste and minimize our impact on natural resources.  These will be job-producing activities, not job reducing ones. Why not look for solutions that produce jobs and reduce public poaching by working with villagers to find alternative livelihoods that will reduce the need to poach for food or profit?

Poverty reduction and healthy and well-educated Armenians, along with rigorous protection of the natural environment, should be the goal of any post-Soviet society.   Regular visits to nature centers where children and adults can learn about nature and how it makes human life possible and beautiful should become an inherent part of Armenian life.  Armenians can lead the south Caucasus region in implementing eco-solutions for the 21st century rather than stagnating in an economic model that never worked sustainably for any society.