Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
an ICDP, measuring perceptions and attitudes of the local population
over time can also indicate conservation trends. Local populations are
often reported to have a negative perception of protected areas. However,
our Bamenda Highlands case study provides evidence that ICDPs can
change these negative perceptions over time. Such changes go a long way
to making the interventions sustainable in the long term.
Other management options
Given the long-term funding input to our two example ICDPs, and the
relatively low level of impact, it is relevant to consider whether other
forms of conservation might have been more successful. In many parts of
the world National Parks or Strict Nature Reserves are regarded as the
most secure means for conserving wild areas. Would these have worked
in the case of the Ulugurus or the Bamenda Highlands? The possible sce-
narios for these two sites are highly dif erent. For the Ulugurus, most of
the forest remains in two large central government Forest Reserves and
the boundaries are fairly well marked. As the national government already
controls the forest area, then changing the Forest Reserves into a National
Park would only involve a transfer of control within the government, from
the Forest Department to Tanzania National Parks. An alternative that
is now being pursued in Tanzania is to upgrade the status of these Forest
Reserves to a Nature Forest Reserve, which would make the reserves more
secure but keep them under the authority of the same part of government.
For Kilum-Ijim in the Bamenda Highlands, any protected area would be
strongly resisted by local people - for example, previous attempts to des-
ignate a Forest Reserve failed. The creation of a National Park or other
form of government reserve would be highly problematic, strongly resisted
by the local people, and dii cult to implement in a meaningful way.
Other models of conservation management that have been advocated
in recent years include direct land purchase, purchase of concessions for
conservation purposes and direct payments to communities. Direct land
purchase and concession purchase models cannot easily work in these two
project areas, although legal changes are making this more possible (see
Wily and Mbaya, 2001 for Tanzania). Current ideas about making direct
payments to communities in return for specii c conservation targets (area
of forest, population of a species, number of annual i res and so on) may
help to focus attention on making conservation interventions as direct as
possible (Ferraro and Kiss, 2002). A relevant question is whether if all the
funds placed in ICDPs had instead been used for direct payments, would
the communities have been better of ? The total funds used in the Uluguru
Mountain ICDPs since 1993 are around US$2.5m. If all that funding
had been available in Tanzania at the project site it would represent less
