Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
opening the way for illicit resource use to start again (Mesterton-Gibbons and
Milner-Gulland 1998).
Analysis of the best way to structure regulations to ensure compliance uses tools
from game theory (Section 5.4.2), cost-benefit analysis (Section 3.2.5.1), and the
psychology of how people perceive risk. Game theory is important because people
are acting strategically, and the best option depends on how other people behave.
Managers need to try to avoid allowing free riders to get away with their activities.
These are people who obtain the community-level benefits of a conservation pro-
gramme along with everyone else, but do not bear the costs of cutting back on their
resource use. This means that others bear the cost of the free-rider's activities. Risk
perception is important because people's psychology varies depending on their
personality and circumstances, and this affects their behaviour.
6.3.1.1 Prohibition of use
This means addressing over-exploitation by instituting and then enforcing regula-
tions to prohibit people from carrying out environmentally damaging activities.
The
steps
are:
Make rules
Monitor compliance
Apply sanctions
Users comply
The
underlying philosophy
is that biodiversity is a social good, so society should
decide on its use. Members of society should comply with rules imposed for the
social good, and face sanctions if they do not.
Scope of the approach
. Prohibition of use is just one extreme of a continuum of
restrictions, going from no use, through limitations on use, to free access to
resources for all. Despite its unsavoury reputation, prohibition of use is probably
still the most widely used and identified-with approach in conservation. Protected
areas with regulations governing public access, banning international trade in
endangered species, bans on the use of particular gear types or on commercial sale
of particular species are all ubiquitous management tools.
Keys to success
. Because prohibition of use is an extreme measure, it is likely to
require a particularly high level of
social acceptability
in order to ensure that com-
pliance is high. It is also important that people perceive that there will be
serious con-
sequences
if they break the rules. Law enforcement can become ineffective if people
start to realise that they will not actually face sanctions; this is what happened with
market patrols in North Sulawesi, when the reduction in illegal babirusa sales was less
marked with each patrol because people were not being arrested (Box 3.2).
The
framework for analysis
of prohibition is the same as for setting and enforcing
rules more generally (covered in Section 6.3.1). Cost-benefit analysis allows us to
weigh up the costs and benefits that individuals face, and predict whether resource
use is worthwhile or not. For example, in the Luangwa Valley in the 1980s, the
benefits from elephant and rhino hunting far outweighed the costs for commercial
poachers with good weapons, but hunting was not worthwhile for local people
who could not reliably kill an elephant with their muzzle-loading guns (Leader-
Williams and Milner-Gulland 1993; Box 6.2).
