Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
3.
Integrated conservation and development
projects: a positive role for forest
conservation in tropical Africa?
1
Neil Burgess, David Thomas,
Shakim Mhagama, Thomas Lehmberg,
Jenny Springer and Jonathan Barnard
Background
A debate has been going on for a number of years on the best ways to
achieve conservation in Africa (and elsewhere). Two elements of the
debate involve those espousing 'fortress conservation' and those promot-
ing 'people-focused conservation'. In some circles this debate has become
highly polarized, with a considerable divide on the best ways to achieve
conservation opening between biologists (Spinage, 1996, 1998; Kramer et
al., 1997; Oates, 1999; Attwell and Cotterill, 2000; Bruner et al., 2000) and
social scientists (Grove, 1995; Neumann, 1996, 1998; Borrini-Feyerabend
and Buchan, 1997; Ghimire and Pimbert, 1997; Hackel, 1999; Leach et
al., 2002). However, for those involved with implementing conservation
projects on the ground in the developing world, the polarized views often
represent impractical extremes. Moreover, for the people living in the
rural areas of developing countries, the divide between 'development'
and 'conservation' is often quite artii cial. The third element of the debate
involves attempts to merge human development and wildlife conservation
issues within a single integrated programme, ideally where all sides benei t,
the basis of Integrated Conservation and Development Projects (ICDPs).
These kinds of projects can be considered to fall between 'fortress conser-
vation' and 'sustainable resource use for rural development'. The ICDP
has become one of the dominant approaches to i eld implementation
of conservation in the developing world over the past 30 years. In this
chapter we look at where ICDPs have come from, what their successes and
failures have been and where they are heading.
Where have ICDPs come from?
In the earlier part of the twentieth century, national governments in
African countries (often the colonial power, but in some cases African
royalty) tended to take a preservationist approach to the conservation of
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