Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
6.3.1 Setting and enforcing rules
Society imposes rules about most aspects of life, and biodiversity conservation
is no different. Members of society are expected to comply with rules imposed
for the benefit of society, and to face sanctions if they do not. The issue
of whether conservation rules are fair and equitable is important, but the under-
lying assumption that social goods like biodiversity should have rules of use
associated with them is one that is widely accepted. However, there is then the
issue of who has the moral and the actual right to impose rules and sanctions on
resource users. Non-governmental conservation organisations do not have
these rights.
Enforcement of regulations is usually associated with top-down management
by government, and has a heavy-handed and unfashionable reputation. It is often
associated with prohibition of any kind of use. However, this is a narrow point of
view that fails to recognise the range of types of regulation that can be used in con-
servation. Even a highly participatory community-based wildlife management
association still needs to have rules by which members must abide, and sanctions
for those who violate these rules. It is also not necessarily the case that individual
resource users are the main target of regulations. Companies that export illegal
timber on a large scale also need to face effective and well-designed sanctions, not
just small-scale fuelwood collectors in National Parks.
The main key to the success of regulations is their social acceptability . Only if
society at large buys into the necessity of controlling undesirable activities will it be
possible to institute rules that are actually applied, and accepted, in practice. The
threat of social opprobrium and ostracism can be a strong force discouraging
people from breaking the rules. This can be seen in the case study of fuelwood gath-
erers in Lake Malawi National Park, discussed in Section 3.3.1.2—because the
prevailing view was that fuelwood gathering was the local women's right, people
did not buy permits to gather, and the Park Authority was unable to enforce the
rule that all gatherers should hold one (Abbott and Mace 1999). In the UK, it is
considered unexceptional to break speed limits but it is socially unacceptable to
drink and drive, despite both being major causes of road mortality. This shows the
power of public opinion—a campaign against drink-driving in the 1980s was
effective in shifting society's norms.
The second key to success is ensuring that each actor is facing the correct
incentives . This includes the potential violators of the rules, those who monitor
them, and those who impose sanctions. There is a barrier to breaking rules imposed
by social opprobrium, but once past this, we would expect people to weigh up
the costs and benefits of their actions, and behave accordingly. Conservation
projects often provide incentives to abide by the rules at the community level, for
example, by providing clinics or schools. These benefits can help to make the
community overall more positive about conservation, but individual hunters and
monitors also need to see that the benefits to them personally outweigh the costs of
working within the rules. So a monitor who does not see continued benefits from
monitoring, even when there is no illegal activity going on, will stop monitoring,
 
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