Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
are not immediately profitable or require technical skills gradually degenerate. The
situation is soon back to where it was before the intervention started.
Tackling this problem is the reasoning behind many international donors' recent
strategy to prioritise
capacity-building
in government administrations, run money
through national institutional structures rather than directly to independent pro-
jects, and fund projects that national government sees as priorities. For example,
much aid is now run through the 'Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper' approach
(Piron and Evans 2004). These documents are prepared by the governments of coun-
tries receiving aid, and are meant to reflect their development needs and priorities.
This matters for conservation and sustainable use, because rural development and
poverty reduction are intertwined with sustainable resource use (Davies and Brown
in press), and because this funding approach is likely to become more wide-spread. It
can be frustrating for conservationists, though, because conservation usually comes
low on government priority lists. Often small-scale independent interventions can be
much more successful, in the short term at least, than bigger projects run through the
government administration, especially if there is significant corruption.
The institutional context of a management intervention is a fundamental deter-
minant of its long-term sustainability, and interacting effectively with the existing
governance structure (be it local administrators, tribal chiefs or the responsible
Ministry) is part of ensuring success.
7.6.1.3 External trends
Small-scale conservation interventions are often fighting to hold back the tide. As
human population pressures increase, the sustainable output per individual from
wildlife declines, and wildlife habitat is eaten up for agriculture. Trends for
increased urbanisation, infrastructural development and international demand for
goods affect communities and natural habitat. Projections for bushmeat con-
sumption suggest that with current human population growth rates in the Congo
basin, there will be a major protein deficit in the region and a collapse in popula-
tions of bushmeat species within the next 50 years (Fa
et al
. 2003). The Amazon
basin is under pressure from the major infrastructural project of paving the Trans-
Amazon Highway, which is likely to allow substantial increases in colonisation rate
by subsistence farmers, and also from European demand for non-GM soya, which
has allowed Brazil to take trade from the USA and become a major international
soya producer (Laurance
et al
. 2004). There is little point trying to shield a small
area from these powerful processes—instead conservationists must fight to be part
of the wider planning process, so that environmental concerns are part of main-
stream decision-making, rather than being seen as side-issues to development.
The only way to tackle the external threats to conservation action discussed in
Section 7.6.1 is to internalise them. This requires conservation to be treated as a
component of planning across all governance sectors. Rather than being considered
