Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
because it always contains a core area protected for conservation reasons
(either government or community-managed), whereas community-focused
approaches may or may not contain core conservation areas (Dubois and
Lowore, 2000; Songorwa et al., 2000; Roe and Jack, 2001). However, in
some of the developing models of community-based forest or community-
based wildlife management the villagers are taking over the management
of former government forest or wildlife reserves. Hence, there is a blend-
ing of the ICDP model and that of community-based natural resource
management - which is perhaps not surprising as many of the management
and implementation issues are the same.
The advantages of ICDPs
There are a number of ways in which ICDPs have been seen as advanta-
geous implementation models in the context of poor African societies. A
major advantage to the poor is that these projects aim to be socially just
(Carney, 1999; Koziell, 2000; Franks, 2001). They do not aim to work to
further the interests of elites, but instead are trying to achieve a long-term
solution to poverty alleviation and natural resource management with the
participation of local communities.
The fact that ICDPs have aimed to address the needs of the rural poor
has also been a major advantage in terms of their acceptability to agencies
engaged in poverty alleviation (Wells and Brandon, 1992). The attention
of ICDPs to development issues has allowed the approach to be main-
streamed within the portfolio of development assistance agencies, which
provide by far the largest source of external funding to poor develop-
ing countries (see, for example, Wells et al., 1999). Stricter conservation
approaches can be funded using private foundation money, or by money
collected by NGOs from wealthy individuals in northern countries, but
this represents a signii cantly smaller pool of resources.
The declarations from the World Summit on Sustainable Development
in South Africa in September 2002 focused heavily on the alleviation of
poverty and the benei ts of good environmental management to achieve
this aim (WSSD, 2002). This was regarded as especially important in
Africa where there remains the greatest levels of global poverty (UNDP,
2001). The potential of the ICDP approach to tackle both poverty and
natural resource management issues provides signii cant advantages over
other conservation approaches.
The problem with ICDPs
Over the past ten years there have been increasing critiques of ICDPs,
from both the development and the conservation communities. These cri-
tiques arise from a perception that ICDPs have not performed as well as
