Policies and Practices of Nature Conservation in Africa: Ideological Challenges, Bottlenecks and Strategic Vision and Options for Protected Areas Sustainable Management

Abstract

Africa is the continent of nature conservation per excellence, the testing ground for conservation policies and the symbol of degradation of protected areas worldwide. Though the internalization of international conservation policies and standards has had positive impacts on the extension of protected areas networks, these ones are undergoing increased pressure that considerably threaten biodiversity. Such evolutions call for a revision of the management systems on the basis of preliminary in-depth and rigorous analysis of conservation policies and practices. The study aimed to: (1) explore and synthesize the state of art on conservation policies and practices, (2) identify and analyze the gaps existing between management standards and field practices and (3) detect challenges and bottlenecks and define innovative strategic options for efficient and sustainable management. The research relies on the interpretative synthesis and analysis of the hudge literature available on the nature conservation. The results showed that the dominant model of inhabited protected areas and social exclusion broke the historical harmony between populations and natural resources, disrupted traditional ways of life and generated devastating and continuous social conflicts. They revealed that the lack of management tools, the limits of eco-tourism, the inefficiency of participatory programs and the financial gaps lead to increased anthropic pressures and degradation that have transformed most of protected areas into open agro-pastoral parks. More specifically, the lack of management goals, categories and plans for most of protected areas and the absence of appropriate and regular assessments generate visual navigations and improvisations in management systems that result into glaring discrepancies between theoretical management categories and field practices that have globally failed to maintain original situations or to induce progress. Finally, the poor performance of the management systems results from conflicts of ideologies, interests and agendas between actors having strongly imbalanced means, positions and powers. Such conflicts come from the primacy of powerful external actors, the central role of national governments and the democratic deficits in the management mechanisms, the preeminence of ecological interests over socio-economic benefits, the selective international funding, the emerging privatization of conservation and the marginalization of local communities. To address these ideological and practical challenges, prior and deep assessments of management systems are needed for strategic declassifications, reclassifications and classifications of protected areas before the promotion of rebalanced powers between actors in favor of local communities, administrative and financial autonomies, community based joint shareholdings, double universal mechanisms for compensatory financing and domestic patriotic tourisms.