Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
management decisions and activities. Community rangers replaced anti-poaching
patrols in some locations and, following the Fourth World Congress on National
Parks held in Venezuela in 1992, partnership became a key feature in the future
policy developments. As journalist Mark Dowie (2009: 266) has written: 'If we really
want people to live in harmony with nature, history is showing us that the dumbest
thing we can do is kick them out of it' (2009: 266).
Thus, Kent Redford (2011: 235), Director of the Wildlife Conservation Society
Institute, recognizes that human beings are 'legitimate elements in nature', but as
Helen Kopnina (2012a) qualifies, the traditional practices of indigenous peoples may
no longer be as innocent as they are presumed to be given the inevitable influence
of global capitalism. McNeely (1996) argues that, apart from national parks, other
protected areas are also important to conservation and socio-economic development.
The IUCN recognizes eight different types of protected areas, ranging from scientific
reserves to resource reserves and multiple-use management areas, including what
have become known as 'biosphere reserves', which allow for the sustained production
and consumption of natural resources such as fish, water, timber, wildlife and outdoor
recreation. The idea is that sustainability and development, conservation and
production are compatible and complementary rather than contradictory and opposed,
although in practice this is hard quite hard to achieve practically and conceptually.
Erich Hoyt sums up the essence of the biosphere reserve according to three aspects
or roles:
1
A conservation role including the conservation of genetic material, ecosystems
and species.
2
A logistic role providing interconnected facilities for research and monitoring
within and internationally co-ordinated scientific programme.
3
A development role fostering a connection with human populations near
the protected area through the rational and sustainable use of ecosystem
resources.
(2005: 25-6)
Nature conservation and accommodating the interests of disadvantaged groups
are often quite distinct: biologists are concerned with wildlife preservation and main-
taining biodiversity while local people are concerned with earning a living and
protecting their crops from whoever may decide to feast on them, including elephants
and gorillas or other endangered species. One way of squaring this particular circle
has been to apply a market mentality to wildlife resources. The motivation behind
ecotourism, for example, whether it is expensive big game safaris on the African
savannah or whale watching in Alaska, is to make the wildlife 'pay their way'. This
non-consumptive use of wildlife does not always pay the environmental dividends
expected, as local people are not always major beneficiaries of such business ventures,
and also because the tourism industry is subject to fashion, taste and the caprice of
the affluent (France, 1997; Lavigne, 2006; Honey, 2008). On the other hand, wildlife
may need to pay its way through 'consumptive-use', which may involve the harvesting
or hunting of animals for their economically valuable tusks, meat or fur, or being
the targets for vacationing European monarchs and other rich people. The most con-
troversial aspect of this economically based conservation policy has been around the
legal harvesting of elephants as opposed to the illegal poaching of them, and similarly
 
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