Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
As Adams writes, 'fortress conservation' invariably reflects the values and priorities
of the national and international agencies, governments, experts and businesses
involved. Thus, African hunting damaged wildlife populations, and conservation
strategies that excluded and pathologized local people were soon recognized by critics,
as well as by local people, as contradictory, undesirable and ineffective. The BINGOs
- that is, the big international conservation organizations such as Conservation
International, the Nature Conservancy and the WWF - have been criticized for their
exclusionary policies and for their extremely close relationships to their major funders
- the World Bank, big corporations, USAID, the multilateral banks and private
foundations. Such measures and their possible alternatives were also perceived quite
rightly at scales ranging from the global to the local, and as extremely political too.
Thus, with fortress conservation came development aid but conservation, whatever
form or forms it takes, engages the political, the economic, the environmental and
the social. Thus, Mac Chapin writes:
Indigenous peoples, on whose land the three conservation groups have launched
a plethora of programs, have for their part become increasingly hostile. One of
their primary disagreements is over the establishment of protected natural areas,
which, according to the human inhabitants of those areas, often infringe on their
rights.
Sometimes the indigenous people are evicted, and the conservationists frequently
seem to be behind the evictions. On other occasions, traditional uses of the land
have been declared 'illegal,' resulting in prosecution of the inhabitants by
government authorities. Coupled to all of this has been the partnering of con-
servationist organizations with multinational corporations - particularly in the
businesses of gas and oil, pharmaceuticals, and mining - that are directly involved
in pillaging and destroying forest areas owned by indigenous peoples.
(2004: 18)
An alternative approach to conservation and economic development is associated
with community engagement and participation initiatives developed in response.
These initiatives by contrast needed to be locally conceived, flexible and participatory,
and based on sound information about the local ecology and local economy. How-
ever, participation can take many forms and, far from being a panacea to all the
ills of imposed top-down solutions, can also be fraught with and plagued by political
interests, power plays and vested economic and other sectional interests (Cooke
and Kothari, 2001). In the 1960s, Sherry Arnstein (1969) developed the 'ladder of
participation', showing that participation can in practice range from manipulation
by powerful groups at one end of the ladder to, more rarely, full citizen power at
the other. However, this participation/conservation from below, together with a very
effective and sometimes fierce resistance from indigenous peoples, such as the Kayapo
in Kenya, to forced expropriation and exclusion has led to a greater respect for
traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), respect for local conditions, skills, cultures
and values and respect for the rights of indigenous peoples that were acknowledged
at Rio in 1992 but little acted upon until quite recently. As well as involving local
people in conservation policy and practice, the community-led approach also saw
the national parks being integrated into economic development planning processes,
resulting in education and healthcare schemes, and local people contributing to
