Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
7.6.1.1 Ecological issues
A key ecological issue is
climate change
. Is the conservation programme in an area
which is particularly likely to be affected by climate change? Is it possible to plan to
adapt to climate-related changes? If the answer to the first question is yes, and the
second no, then perhaps the conservation intervention is not viable in the longer
term, and needs to be reconsidered. Other external threats include
invasive
species
. These can disrupt sustainable conservation planning. For example, in
Biligiri Rangaswamy Temple Wildlife Sanctuary, India, an invasive mistletoe par-
asite is damaging wild fruit trees, threatening the livelihoods of local harvesters
(Sinha and Bawa 2002).
Pollution
can have a significant impact on conservation
success, and yet be diffuse and hard to deal with if the conservation intervention
has a limited remit. Finally,
land use
outside the management area can have an
impact on the success of conservation—for example, siltation and eutrophication
from cultivation on land damaging coral reef ecosystems, or deforestation in the
mountains affecting the dynamics of whole watersheds. This needs to be dealt with
by expanding the focus of the intervention to include the area of the damaging
activity—which may not easily be achieved.
7.6.1.2 Institutional issues
In order for conservation interventions to succeed, the
governance
regime needs
to be robust. Governance is the act of governing, of running a country, project or
organisation. It includes not only the government, but all who have power and
influence, from individual people to organisations. The
institutional context
of an intervention (the organisations which have power to affect outcomes—
local people, central government, international treaties, NGOs) determines the
governance regime it is under.
A common pattern in conservation, particularly in developing countries, is that
part of the reason for the conservation problem in the first place is poor governance
and a weak institutional context. Perhaps a National Park is under heavy poaching
pressure because park management is underfunded and has low morale, so cannot
enforce the law. Or the lack of an ownership regime allows itinerant fishermen to
come into a region and over-exploit fish that once sustained local villagers. Or cor-
ruption means that there is no attempt by the authorities to clamp down on illegal
timber extraction from an area. Then an international NGO gets concerned and
comes into the area, and this intervention improves the situation for a short time,
because the NGO takes on the governance role and sets up institutions for resource
management. It's as if the NGO is providing a '
governance bubble
' that protects
the particular area from the prevailing conditions for the duration of their project.
Then the NGO leaves, and fairly quickly the new local governance regime suc-
cumbs to the underlying institutional problems that had been there all along.
Conservation-minded local officials are replaced, or management practices that
