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Conservation and human displacement: what should conservation NGOs do?

Kent H. Redford and Eva Fearn, from the Wildlife Conservation Society Institute, respond to recent criticism of the role conservation NGO's have played in human displacement from protected areas.

Millions of rural and indigenous people are displaced from their lands each year. Indigenous advocates and social scientists criticise conservation organisations for promoting protected areas for biodiversity conservation, which can cause displacement. The conservation community must respond.

Protected areas (PAs) limit local people’s access to land and sea; they now cover approximately 20 million square kilometres of the globe. However, whilst this may seem a lot, many PAs have people living in them - less than nine percent of terrestrial PAs strictly limit people’s access.

However, local communities have been relocated from these PAs, which may cause impoverishment. In these cases, conservationists must balance the multiple benefits of protecting species against local economic or cultural losses.

Some critics claim that conservation projects have displaced tens of millions of people. Published numbers are often speculation, based on disparate case studies. For example, Cernea and Schimdt-Soltau (2006) report that the creation of 12 parks in Central Africa displaced 54,000 people. This was based on assumptions of human population densities applied across diverse regions and has been contested (for example by Maisals et al, 2007).

In fact, there is little data on what displacement has actually been caused by conservation (for example the numbers of people asked to move, the overlap between actual displacement and limits on resource use). Also, few studies provide careful information about the impact of PAs on local people. Conservation non-governmental organisations (NGOs) need to fill this information gap.

A working paper from the Wildlife Conservation Society identifies several cases where, despite accusations of conservation-induced displacement, local people either never lived in a PA or were still allowed to live there. The history of each PA differs in terms of how people and conservation co-exist. For example, in the Pacaya-Samiria National Reserve in Peru, Cocama-Cocamilla Indians co-manage the park, set sustainable hunting quotas and help control poaching. However, the paper also found that some protected areas are overwhelmed by agriculture or poaching, making human habitation incompatible with long-term biodiversity conservation.

Conservation organisations have four potential paths to deal with human displacement and PAs:

• Ignore it and promote strict wildlife protection – this will cause even more displacement.
• Continue ‘business-as-usual’ – this requires no change in conservation strategy, but conservation NGOs will ultimately be forced to compensate displaced people.
• Develop policies to avoid involuntary displacements, and, if displacement is necessary, organise adequate compensation – this is politically and ethically attractive.
• Compensate people for past displacements – this would be extremely expensive, and impossible to determine who was displaced from where, when, and by whom.

If conservation organisations move forward with the third option – the preferred one - they must consider several questions:

• How will a proposed protected area affect the people living in and near it?
• Will moving people truly improve conservation?
• How can informed consent from local people be obtained before they are moved?
• How can they help to provide incentives to make movements voluntary?
• How can they work with development agencies to fully and meaningfully compensate people for losses?
• Who is responsible for bearing these costs?

Kent H. Redford and Eva Fearn

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Further Information
Kent Redford
Wildlife Conservation Society Institute
Wildlife Conservation Society
2300 Southern Blvd. Bronx, NY 10460
USA

Tel +1 718 2205889
Email kredford@wcs.org

Eva Fearn
Wildlife Conservation Society Institute
Wildlife Conservation Society
2300 Southern Blvd. Bronx, NY 10460
USA
Email efearn@wcs.org

See also
‘Protected areas and human displacement: a conservation perspective’ WCS Working Papers No. 29, edited by Kent H. Redford and Eva Fearn, 2007 (PDF)

‘Central Africa’s Protected Areas and the Purported Displacement of People: A First Critical Review of Existing Data’ by F. Maisels et al., in ‘Protected Areas and Human Displacement: A Conservation Perspective’ Wildlife Conservation Society Working Paper No. 29, pp.75–89, 2007

‘Poverty Risks and National Parks: Policy Issues in Conservation and Resettlement’ World Development 34, 10, pp.1808–1830, by M. Cernea and K. Schmidt-Soltau, 2006

Useful links
Wildlife Conservation Society, USA

September 2007

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