From Parks to Landscapes: Reading of a Long Process

Abstract

This chapter deals with the history of the biodiversity conservation landscape in Central Africa. Principally, it covers the background information on both political and biological practicalities of the landscape as a vision, while comparing them with traditional biological methods that defined such concepts as hotspots of biodiversity. Processes-wise, the chapter also presents the rationale that led to the current concept of landscape conservation in Central Africa, how their initial geographic configurations came to be drawn and, politically, the landscape approach had attained its current predominance in the conservation of the Congo Basin. As an historical documentation, the chapter goes in a step-wise procedure, commencing from the conceptualization of the ‘biodiversity conservation landscape’ to funding mechanisms and the implementation of activities via the mapping exercises that set out to define these priority conservation areas in Central Africa.