Why do so many environmental protection schemes end in conflict with local communities? What are the professionals doing wrong? A recently-published volume of collected articles critically probes conservation programmes worldwide. It concludes that they are only commendable and sustainable when they have the dual objectives of protecting and improving local livelihoods as well as optimising ecological conditions. Their effectiveness should be measured by their capacity to reduce poverty and promote long-term rehabilitation of habitats and neighbourhoods both. This dual perspective requires a complete overhaul of current conservation thinking and practice.

Conservationists and bureaucrats have too often set up national parks and game reserves as officially protected areas, while ignoring both the needs and capabilities of local communities. Commercial uses of protected areas for extraction (for instance) of biological materials, or for 'green tourism' projects, often exclude local people. Or they draw on the fruits of local knowledge and resource management know-how without due recognition or recompense. In particular, indigenous peoples' struggle for their rights to land and self-determination is made more difficult in the power structures of conservation, which are increasingly affected by processes of globalisation. Conservation agencies, funded from the North and influencing state policy in the South, show little understanding of their plight.

Conventional methods of conservation tend to be based in Western-oriented science, which often leads to application of a solution that is correct in one situation as a universal strategy. Structures are centralised and relationships based on top-down controls. A new professionalism is required to break this deadlock, based on resource management practices which meet the diverse, complex and long-term needs of local people in a complex, changing environment. It should recognise that:

• Solutions are never complete, problems are endemic to situations of constant change and uncertainty.
• The vital ingredient of progress is for all concerned to learn continually from changing circumstances.
• Participation and collaboration are essential pre-requisites for understanding multiple perspectives.

The book's main premise is that social development and natural resource conservation are different sides of the same coin, and livelihood activities of rural communities need not be incompatible with conservation of biological diversity. Putting radical principles into practice is not easy, however, especially in view of current patterns of economic growth and nation-building, which tend to run counter to participation. Ideal attributes of a progressive alternative conservation practice would be scope to:

• build upon local systems of knowledge and management that actively maintain biological diversity
• strengthen, empower, local institutions and organisations within civil society
• spell out and preserve local rights to resources and benefits.
• use locally available resources and technologies to meet basic human needs
• urge genuine and functional participation by local people in planning, management and evaluation
• run process-based and flexible projects based on local needs, knowledge, capacities and time-scales.

Steps that governments could take to bolster this new, more integrated conservation order include:

• recognise historical claims to land and political authority, such as ancestral lands or homelands
• adhere to international agreements on human rights, including those affecting indigenous peoples
• ease legal or constitutional constraints local access, land control or co-management partnerships
• decentralisation responsibility for protected areas, with appropriate institutional linkages
• honour intellectual property rights, and improve access to biological information and funds.

Source(s):
`Social Change and Conservation. Environmental Politics and Impacts of National Parks and Protected Areas`. K.B. Ghimire and M.P.Pimbert (Eds.), Earthscan Publications, London (1997)

Funded by: UNRISD, various regional collaborating organisations and the World Wide Fund for Nature (1992-1995)

id21 Research Highlight: 1998-September-15

Further Information:
K.B. Ghimire and M.P.Pimbert
c/o Earthscan Publications
120 Pentonville Road
London N1 9JN
UK

Tel: +44 (0) 171 278 0433
Fax: +44 (0) 171 278 1142
Contact the contributor: earthinfo@earthscan.co.uk

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