McKinley Conway, Global Environmentalist

M c K I N L E Y C O N W A Y

McKinley Conway,
Global Environmentalist

The name McKinley Conway is well known in the field of development. Not so well known is his wide experience in environmental matters. Although he claims no training in the science of ecology, he has maintained a lifelong interest in harmonizing physical developments with their natural surroundings.
His credentials are impressive. Starting with two engineering degrees from Georgia Tech and seven years on the prestigious NASA/NACA scientific staff, Conway has spent 50 years planning, analyzing, observing or reporting on projects around the world. Few individuals have had the opportunity to visit as many varied and geographically scattered sites and meet with so many different project officials, planners and implementers. This extraordinary background has enabled him to see the big picture while serving as chairman of the World Development Federation.
Thus, when Conway offers an opinion on a development/environment situation, he's not just repeating something he's heard or read. No matter what type of project is under study, he has probably visited a prototype.
One of the reasons Conway has a unique viewpoint is that he has looked at much of the world from the cockpit of his own airplane. He learned to fly in 1940 in one of the first training programs for WWII. His logbook now shows some 7,000 hours. Last year he was inducted into the United Flying Octogenarians (UFOs) - an organization of rare pilots still active beyond the age of 80.

A Pilot's View

"Flying at low altitude in a slow airplane may be uncomfortable, but you see a lot of things that are significant from an environmental viewpoint," Conway says. "You see scars left by those who are invading the rain forests, the dark stains of pollution entering rivers, and the uncontrolled emissions from smokestacks." In his book Disaster Survival, Conway detailed many hazards, both natural and man-made.
Pilots also learn a lot about climates. Conway has seen such varied environments as the Greenland ice cap, the Amazon rain forest, the Gobi desert, the atolls of the South Pacific and the lifeless cold of Antarctica. His Weather Handbook, published in 1962, was acclaimed by the New York Public Library as one of the best reference books of the year. It is now in its 3rd edition and 4th printing.
Conway has his own personal philosophy about travel for the sake of learning. "It's a trade-off," he says. "You take personal risks in return for unique opportunities to see and observe." He has made pioneering flights in small aircraft where few have ventured. In 1960, he flew a single-engine Cessna around the Caribbean, across South and Central America. In 1965, he made a fantastic trip across the Amazon rain forest from the Pacific to the Atlantic. There were no radio aids and he refueled at remote airstrips from muddy drums brought upriver by canoe. Twice he flew a single-engine Mooney aircraft across the North Atlantic by way of Baffin Island, Greenland, Iceland and Scotland.
On the surface, Conway has used many modes of transport to get to sites. He has ridden a Jeep across the desert in Baja, survived a blizzard on a snowmobile in the Rockies, crossed a dangerous reef in a dugout canoe off Haiti, ridden an airboat into tributaries of the Amazon, and climbed aboard camels, elephants or horses at various locations.
Conway has made a practice of avoiding stylish tourist destinations and going out into the hinterlands. "You have to get your shoes muddy if you want to learn," he asserts. He has written some 500 field reports, research studies and magazine features based on his observations.
Not surprisingly, Conway has taken a special interest in agriculture. He was born in Hackleburg, Alabama, and spent his early years living in a rural farming community. "It was much like the third world of today - no telephones, no paved roads, little concern about the outside world," he says. "We were poor," he adds, "but I didn't know it. As far as I was concerned, life was good."
Throughout most of his life, Conway has kept a home garden. Typically, he has grown tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, peppers, okra, onions and greens. His berry crops include blackberries, blueberries, strawberries and mulberries. His fruit trees have included figs, persimmons, apples, peaches and plums.
For more than a decade he experimented with tropical plants in his greenhouse in Atlanta. He enjoyed success with lemons, limes, kumquats, and tangerines. He had some luck with pineapples and babako. There were disappointments with banana, pepino, carambola, acerola, and others. "Trying to move plants into new locations teaches you how sensitive many plants are to microclimate as well as to the populations of insects and other factors" he reports.

Watching Things Grow

Throughout his life Conway has taken many opportunities to visit plantations and farming projects in various parts of the world. Among the more significant operations he has seen are:

Tea plantations in Japan and Indonesia.
Rubber plantations in Burma and Thailand.
Pineapples in Hawaii.
Coconuts in the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean and on Mexico's Pacific coast.
Cotton in California's Central Valley.
Tomatoes in California's Imperial Valley and in Mexico's State of Sonora.
Papayas in Hawaii and Mexico's state of Tamaulpais.
Grape vineyards in Germany, Romania, France, and Switzerland.
Olives in Spain and Greece.

Of all the areas he has seen, Conway says the most impressive is the Nile valley. "From the air it is a green ribbon stretching across a brown tapestry from horizon to horizon. On the ground it is the righest farmland imaginable" he observes. Other areas that he noted with special interest included the terraces of the Philippines, the Chinese farms in the Pearl River delta above Hong Kong, the fishponds near Port Said in Egypt, and the "total" green of Ireland.
Conway is also a keen observer of local markets. "In fact", he says, "one of the best ways to get to know an area is to visit the local fruit and vegetable market early in the morning. You will be surprised to find lush markets in some very poor countries and sad markets in nations you thought were strong". Among markets he found especially interesting were the huge "Mercado central" in Mexico City, and the thriving boat markets in the Klongs (canals) of Bangkok. He was surprised by good markets in such locations as Aden, in Yemen; Aqaba, in Jordan; and Tunis, in Tunisia - all surrounded by arid lands. He was frustrated to discover an abundance of exotic fruits and vegetables in the market at Papeete in Tahiti, but not one of them on the menu of a major international hotel there.
As a futurist, Conway believes one of the world's most critical problems is supplying adequate good water for people and agriculture. Thus, he has taken a special interest in the prospects for large-scale desalting of seawater. He has toured huge installations in Saudi Arabia and has visited related projects along the Arabian Peninsula in Kuwait, Bahrain, Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Oman. In 2000, he chaired a major conference at Jubail in Saudi Arabia. (http://www.conway.com/wdf/jubail2000)
Conway foresees the construction of huge new desalting plants using new energy sources as a solution to water shortages and political conflicts throughout the Middle East. He predicts "new rivers" of good water for many desert regions. "There are good sites near abundant salt water in many parts of the world," he points out. Promising areas are in the Sahara, the Atacama, and the Sonoran deserts.
While much of Conway's experience has involved the location of construction projects, he is a strong advocate of nature preserves, botanical gardens, and similar conservation efforts. He has enjoyed visits to some of the great gardens of the world - including those in Rio de Janeiro, Singapore, Yalta, and Kuala Lumpur. Closer to home, he has admired Callaway gardens in Georgia, Fairchild in Miami, Bellengrath, in Alabama, and others in San Diego and Saint Louis. "They are an important not only for their beauty but for scientific programs," he notes.

Ocean Sciences

One of the environmental fields of special interest to Conway has been oceanography. As a member of the Georgia Senate, he introduced the bill to create the state's noted oceanographic research center on Skidaway Island near Savannah. It has become a key facility in the study of the Blake Plateau - a shallow ocean region extending some 100 miles offshore. It has also contributed to the development of aquaculture projects, such as catfish farming.
In addition to many fish farms, Conway has visited a research station at Palau in the central Pacific where giant clams are grown, a turtle farm in the Cayman Islands, an eel farm on Guam, and a station for study of deepwater species at Lake Baikal in Siberia. He has gathered information on thermal energy recovery at Nauru in the Pacific and at Kona in Hawaii. He has studied marine zoning along Australia's great barrier reef, great dunes on the island of Lamu off the East Coast of Africa, and tourism impact at Ibiza in the Balearic Islands. The Conway family has a rather extensive shell collection made up of specimens found while walking the debris lines of many miles of beaches around the world.
Conway is also a bird watcher, but not in the usual sense. He doesn't carry binoculars and keep a log on sightings. What he observes in a casual way are the number and variety of birds at different locations. "That's an environmental barometer everyone can read," he states.
For many years Conway has vacationed at a small hotel on the beach at Punta Pescadero near the tip of Mexico's Baja peninsula. One of his favorite pastimes has been sitting on a terrace and watching flocks of pelicans diving for fish in a small cove. After several visits he made a discovery. Almost every time a pelican rolled over and dove for a fish, the pelican turned left or counter-clockwise. They also never turned clockwise.
On subsequent trips South of the equator, Conway tried to find flights of pelicans fishing, suspecting that they might turn clockwise. He has not yet managed to confirm this and hopes that an observer in Australia or South American can help. "There are a million little things like that to attract you to environmental studies" he says.
Conway has a particular fascination with reefs and atolls. He has visited Oahu, Maui, Kauai, and Hawaii, as well as Johnson Island in the Eastern Pacific; Majuro and Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands; Ponape, Truk, Yap, and Palau in the Carolines; Guam and Saipan in the Mariannas. South of the equator he has visited Nauru, New Caledonia, Fiji, and Raratonga, plush Tahiti, Huahine, Raiatea, and Bora Bora. In many cases, he has walked on the reefs at low tide and paddled an outrigger canoe across the lagoons at high tide.
"Travel certainly provides many opportunities to discover the fantastic variety of habitats we have on this planet" Conway exclaims, asking "how can one not be an environmentalist after witnessing the amazing diversities of the rain forests of the Amazon basin, the Yucatan, along Queensland's York Peninsula, in the Darien region between Panama and Colombia, and throughout Southeast Asia."
"Compare these habitats with those of the Polar Regions," he says. "Look at the tundra in Northern Canada and Alaska, scan the Greenland ice cap, walk through the fields of wild flowers of Tierra del Fuego. Conway also expresses his awe at the diversity of animal life he has seen. He has handled a 16 foot Anaconda at a snake collection compound at Leticia in the upper Amazon basin, strolled among 30,000 penguins on Anvers Island hundreds of miles south of Cape Horn, photographed giraffes at a game park in Kenya, and examined krill dipped from the sea off Antarctica.
Conway's kaleidoscope of forest observations include redwoods in California, cedars in Lebanon, baobabs in Senegal, Norfolk pines in New Zealand, bamboo in Burma and literally thousands of species he will never be able to identify. "When you have a chance to see the world as I have the scope and range of the natural growths are absolutely overwhelming," he says.

The Disaster Risk

Not every facet of the natural environment is an asset. There are many natural causes for disasters as Conway has described in his book "Disaster Survival". He has studied these phenomena "because we need to include them in our planning processes," he asserts.
For example, there are several dormant volcanoes in the continental United States. When one of them, Mount St. Helens, in the state of Washington, showed signs of awakening in 1980, Conway decided to take a look. On a Saturday afternoon he flew low over the summit, snapping photos from his cockpit. A few hours later the mountain exploded in an historic eruption. Conway had the last "before" photos.
In Nicaragua and Costa Rica Conway has flown through the fumes of active volcanoes. He has seen lava flows on snow-capped peaks in Iceland. In Antarctica he climbed to the summit of a dormant cone with a Japanese photographer and British geologist to make observations.
Conway's travels have left him with great respect for those who began conservation programs centuries ago. He has seen ruins of projects in China and Egypt when began before recorded civilization. He has visited more recent projects such as aqueducts built during the Roman empire, medieval dikes built by the Dutch, salt ponds in the early days of western visitation to the Caribbean.
Conway does not see himself in the image of the world's great pioneers but he has done his share of pioneering quietly and effectively. For example, in the early 1950's he conducted a regional conference to call attention to the need for controlling the pollution of streams in the South, particularly at pulp and paper mills. That was many years before there was any Federal program with such objectives. In the 1970's he established an environmental planning award for corporate planning executives who made the most outstanding contributions to harmonizing new facilities with the natural environment.
Conway has worked at home and abroad to promote professional approaches to environmental planning. For several years he served as Chairman of the DeKalb County Planning Commission, pushing that body to adopt its first master plan for what was then the fastest-growing part of metro Atlanta. Later he chaired a legislative study commission which resulted in the formation of a regional planning entity of Atlanta.
Conway was a leading advocate of locating new business and industrial facilities in well-planned parks. His concepts were detailed in his book "Business Parks - An Environmental Success Story" published in the 1980s. He carried his thinking to a global level while serving as Chairman of the World Development Federation in the late 1990's. Pointing out that there was no global planning board to review and approve new projects, he urged project sponsors around the world to plan their new projects as part of a new world system. For some years he has been promoting global systems for energy, water, transport, green infrastructure and other elements of infrastructure.
"While global strategies are important," Conway says, examples of good conservation thinking are found at all levels. Witness what creative men and women have done to adapt their homes to widely different conditions. There are the yurts which withstand the winds in Mongolia, the igloos which provide warmth in the Arctic, and the stilt houses which offer security over tropical waters. Conway has visited all of them and found them surprising habitable.
Conway has always had a special interest in innovative projects which may change the future. He was impressed by the synthetic gasoline plant SASOL in South Africa. Of special interest was a halophyte farm in Saudi Arabia where plants growing in a salt environment were producing salad greens for marketing in Europe. In a Russian research center he learned of techniques for growing edibles in spacecraft.
In the 1970s, Conway saw an opportunity to reduce the frustration, cost and pollution of travel to and from the airport for people using private aircraft extensively. He designed and developed the world's first complete fly-in community at Spruce Creek near Daytona Beach, Florida. Today, hundreds of resident pilots enjoy the benefits of "unimodal transportation" - parking their aircraft at their door. (http://www.conway.com/sprucecreek)
A few years ago Conway arranged to have a paper on terraforming Mars to be presented at a major world conference in Singapore. "It's not too early to be giving serious thought to creating livable habitats on other planets" Conway says. "We know it will be done."

What Next?

Conway's latest project is his "Eco-Site" which he hopes will provide a prototype of a plan for providing a better quality of life while protecting and enhancing the natural environment. Perhaps we should title the next chapter of his life "How to live with a gopher tortoise and enjoy it."