Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
expected in delivering either conservation or development results. ICDPs
have also been criticized for their focus on dei ning problems and under-
taking solutions at local levels, when many local problems are driven by
powerful social, economic and political forces external to project sites
(Sanjayan et al., 1997; Larson et al., 1998). Critics have also noted the high
level of funding required for ICDPs, and dii culties in achieving long-term
sustainability. The fact that ICDPs place natural resource conservation
as a central goal is often seen as privileging an international conservation
agenda while the local communities bear the local costs of that conserva-
tion (Leach et al., 2002). For those involved with human development
work, projects should focus exclusively on the needs of poor local people,
rather than i nd ways in which development activities can be devised to
maintain the status quo of established protected areas (for wildlife or
forest conservation).
On the other side, some conservationists have advocated returning to
the 'core values' of conservation - that of protecting wild habitat in oi -
cial conservation areas (generally government owned in Africa), that will
ensure the survival of species and habitats valued at a national or interna-
tional level. It is stated that ICDPs put too much ef ort into the develop-
ment interests of local communities, to the detriment of the conservation
work (Oates, 1995, 1999).
Among economists there have also been critiques of the ICDP approach
as not being sui ciently direct to create incentives for conservation
(Ferraro and Kiss, 2002). It is argued that direct payments to local com-
munities for the costs they incur from conserving natural resources would
create a direct link between the receipt of money and the conservation
of a resource value. ICDPs do not make such a direct link as the natural
resource benei ts are a more indirect product of multiple programme
interventions, including human development.
One dii culty with much of the debate on the value of the ICDP
approach is that it rel ects the political and social perspectives of those
framing the debate, what their goals are, and where in the world they
live (Adams and Hulme, 2001). Management approaches for conserva-
tion interventions exist along a gradient from strict protection through
to community management (see matrix on p. 34). Strict Nature Reserves
and most National Parks would come on the left, and community-based
management approaches to the right. As ICDPs have a philosophy of
integrating their management approach, they fall somewhere near the
centre of this gradation. For those people favouring a protectionist
approach to conservation, ICDPs are too 'social' in their approach, and
for those focusing on community management, ICDPs represent a means
to support the established government and 'outsider' elites.
