Community Conservation Initiatives Research Articles

Extractivism triggering new forms of governance for the rights of nature: The case of Northwest Ecuador

The intensification of resource extractivism around the world poses multiple challenges and fosters the development of new governance structures, especially among communities on the frontlines of resource extraction. Through a narrative inquiry based on narrative interviews with local actors and experts, this article centres on governance as a resistance strategy of local, frontline, communities in the Ecuadorian Northwest Pichincha and Imbabura provinces. The narratives give insights into: a) How new processes of governance are triggered by mining conflict and, in particular, how governance is shaped and manifested; b) Governance challenges faced by local governments and communities; and c) Lessons and recommendations for governance and how these contribute to the discussion of post-extractivism alternatives. New governance processes are shaped through socio-organisational processes and the strengthening of associations and civil society organisations; the institutionalisation of private, civil society, and community conservation initiatives; as well as the actions of the organised community to successfully invoke the Rights of Nature (RoN) through legal litigation. Institutional gaps that reflect competing visions of development are seen as governance challenges by local government and community members. Overall, this study highlights the critical role of governance structures and instruments rooted in frontline community perspectives, offering pathways for the development of post-extractivism alternatives.

Community enforcement and tenure security: A fuzzy-set qualitative Comparative analysis of twelve community forest management initiatives in the Peruvian Amazon

The interest of policymakers in community management of tropical forests is ever growing. Yet, a large research body shows varied levels of success of community conservation initiatives. While policymakers often prioritize legal forest ownership, mostly land titles, consensus exists that success rather depends on a broader set of local institutional arrangements and their fit with the forest context. In this paper, we contribute to building theory on these institutional arrangements and their interaction. We apply a fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis to case study data on 12 voluntary community conservation initiatives in northern Peru to explore the relationship between local enforcement, legal and alternative property rights, and conservation effectiveness. As recommended for QCA our case selection was intentional and the cases exhibit diverse conservation successes, geographic characteristics, legal and customary property rights, and enforcement mechanisms. We conclude that strong community enforcement mechanisms are indispensable for effective conservation in voluntary initiatives. Furthermore, we find for cases with strong enforcement mechanisms, that some government back-up, i.e., local government support for enforcement and/or legal rights to conserve the forest, significantly increases conservation effectiveness. Strong conservation enforcement tends to be present in communities with strong forest rules, leaders, and pre-existing community institutions. Our findings suggest the importance of paying close attention to community characteristics during project design and refraining from one-size-fits-all-solutions, such as focusing mainly on the presence of legal ownership rights over the forest. Instead, more focus needs to be placed on understanding existing community institutions and supporting communities to strengthen and adapt these for conservation enforcement, rather than imposing new arrangements. Finally, policymakers can help community enforcement institutions become even more effective, by providing them with legal rights to conserve the forest and by strengthening their relationship with local governments so that they receive support in situations they struggle to handle alone.

Conservation, extraction and social contracts at a violent frontier: Evidence from eastern DRC’s Itombwe Nature Reserve

Conservation efforts must develop strategies to perform at violent frontiers where environmental values, mineral extraction and conflict intersect. Using war-torn eastern Democratic Republic of Congo's Itombwe Nature Reserve as an illustrative example, this article explores how community conservation is implemented and received at a violent frontier. Taking inspiration from an emerging body of literature which portrays conservation as a form of ‘social contract’ in regions where the nation state is weak or absent, it explores some of the expectations and obligations that surround community conservation initiatives. It draws the conclusion that conservation social contracts are likely to produce unintended consequences when left unfulfilled or broken. Conservation actors perceived to be breaking the terms of (implicit) social contracts can inadvertently encourage local communities to embrace alternative contracts with other actors seeking to extract value from the resources located in frontiers, such as industrial mining companies.

Would community conservation initiatives benefit from external financial oversight? A framed field experiment in Namibia’s communal conservancies

It is commonly asserted that the successful management of common property resources (CPR), and by extension, the provision of public goods such as biodiversity and carbon, requires the devolution of control to local communities. However, where trust in community institutions is low, the intrinsic motivation to co-operate may be diminished. In this study, we carried out surveys and framed field experiments on the introduction of payments for ecosystem services (PES) to Namibia’s communal conservancies, established under the community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) programme. We used a threshold public good game where income from conservation efforts would require cooperation in terms of investing in conservation management and thereby also sacrificing opportunities to use designated wildlife areas. Our study found that households had low confidence in the conservancy management institutions and were more willing to co-operate when external financial oversight was provided. In fact, addressing the risk of financial mismanagement was more important than the payment level. Participants with a low level of confidence in the conservancy management contributed significantly less, but the gap narrowed when oversight was introduced. This suggests that initiatives to incentivise conservation of communally-owned land may require the close involvement of trustworthy external organisations to ensure their effectiveness.

Conservation on contested lands: the case of Namibia's communal conservancies

Community Conservation initiatives have become widespread in several Southern African countries and have also been increasingly involved in disputes over land claims, control of resources and territorial authority. The aim of this paper is to analyse how Communal Conservancies in Namibia are being used by rural communities as tools for gaining or securing access to and control of communal land in a moment when it is perceived as increasingly scarce. Peasants, Traditional Authorities, the State and conservationists all try to influence the use that will be given to contested lands. The paper will focus on two cases: King Nehale Conservancy, a heavily populated mixed agricultural land in North-Central Namibia (Owamboland) and Nyae Nyae Conservancy, a semi-arid land inhabited by a historically marginalised population, the Ju/’hoan San. In both cases Conservancies contribute to an increased control by communities over their land, but also imply the reinforcement of the presence of the State and private capital in communal areas, and become part of the internal struggles among sections of the communities themselves.

The Abundance of Avifauna in an Agricultural Landscape: A Benefit of Community Conservation Initiatives in Haryana, India

Agricultural practices have the potential to negatively impact local ecosystems. Further, the clearing of native vegetation to make way for farming land could give rise to the loss of various faunal species. If properly managed, such practices have the potential to adopt a holistic approach combining agricultural produce and local species conservation. To examine such a prospective approach, the community conservation initiatives started by the agricultural village of Kanalsi, Haryana was the focus of attention. To begin with, the land use within the village and nearby areas was considered to examine the forest and agriculture dominated areas. Secondly, a survey was conducted in the month of December, 2012 to record the number of avian species present within this landscape. In total, 79 species of birds were recorded. Despite being an agriculture dominated region, the ecosystem conservation initiatives started by the local village communities had played a positive role for the protection of local avifauna.

The Abundance of Avifauna in an Agricultural Landscape: A Benefit of Community Conservation Initiatives in Haryana, India

The Abundance of Avifauna in an Agricultural Landscape: A Benefit of Community Conservation Initiatives in Haryana, India

Community-Based Conservation and Traditional Ecological Knowledge: Implications for Social-Ecological Resilience

Our review highlights how traditional ecological knowledge influences people's adaptive capacity to social- ecological change and identifies a set of mechanisms that contribute to such capacity in the context of community-based biodiversity conservation initiatives. Twenty-three publications, including twenty-nine case studies, were reviewed with the aim of investigating how local knowledge, community-based conservation, and resilience interrelate in social-ecological systems. We highlight that such relationships have not been systematically addressed in regions where a great number of community conservation initiatives are found; and we identify a set of factors that foster people's adaptive capacity to social-ecological change and a number of social processes that, in contrast, undermine such capacity and the overall resilience of the social- ecological system. We suggest that there is a need to further investigate how climate variability and other events affect the joint evolution of conservation outcomes and traditional ecological knowledge, and there is a need to expand the current focus on social factors to explain changes in traditional ecological knowledge and adaptive capacity towards a broader approach that pays attention to ecosystem dynamics and environmental change.

Coupling Community Heterogeneity and Perceptions of Conservation in Rural South Africa

Concerns about the impacts of national parks and protected areas upon local populations have generated significant interest in community conservation initiatives that attempt to include local knowledge and participation in natural resource decision-making. While there has been much interest in the institutional frameworks and livelihood impacts of community conservation, emerging research is documenting the various factors that shape local perceptions. This paper uses a case study of the Mahushe Shongwe Game Reserve in South Africa to examine the key variables shaping community perceptions of community conservation. We employ multinomial logistic regression models to understand views of the benefits and future direction of the reserve. These models are coupled with information collected from semi-structured interviews that assists in providing a detailed, and more complex, understanding of the diverse ways that community conservation is perceived by local residents. The paper demonstrates that multiple factors, particularly household history, education, and gender contribute in shaping views of the reserve. While these variables are often identified in the academic literature as important, we argue that the combination of qualitative and quantitative methods helps reveal the interplay between them in shaping perceptions of community conservation.

Conservation Geographies in Sub‐Saharan Africa: The Politics of National Parks, Community Conservation and Peace Parks

AbstractSub‐Saharan Africa has been the location of intense conservation planning since the colonial era. Under the auspices of wilderness protection, colonial authorities established national parks largely for the purpose of hunting and tourism while forcibly evicting indigenous populations. Concerns about the ethical and economic impacts of protected areas have generated interest in community conservation initiatives that attempt to include local participation in natural resource management. In recent years, the anticipated loss of biodiversity, coupled with the integration of ecological concepts into planning processes, has generated interest in larger‐scale initiatives that maximize protected habitat. Central to this shift are transboundary conservation areas, or Peace Parks, that involve protected territory that supersedes national political borders. This study provides a review of national parks, community conservation, and Peace Parks, in order to understand the development politics and governance challenges of global conservation. Although these approaches are not mutually exclusive, the study asserts that they represent major trajectories to conservation planning in Sub‐Saharan Africa and other parts of the developing world. In considering the histories of these models in Sub‐Saharan Africa, I argue that conservation planners often prioritize economic and ecological factors over the political circumstances that influence the effectiveness of these approaches. The study concludes by suggesting that an analysis of these three models provides a lens to examine ongoing debates regarding the employ of conservation as an economic development strategy and the challenges to environmental governance in the 21st century.

Political Deadlock and Devolved Wildlife Management in Zimbabwe

Since February 2000, Zimbabwe has been experiencing an unparalleled period of political, economic, and social uncertainty. The most prominent features are the political deadlock generated by (a) confrontation between the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union–Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party; (b) the illegal invasion of private land; (c) hyperinflation; and (d) the withdrawal of bilateral donor funds. Generally, a culture of impunity exists that compromises the rule of law. Within this crisis, very little attention has been given to the impact that this political deadlock and uncertainty have on natural resource management in the communal lands of Zimbabwe. Between 1990 and 2000, Zimbabwe's Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE) was considered one of the leading community conservation initiatives attracting considerable international interest and analysis. This article analyzes the changes that are taking place within Nenyunga Ward, Gokwe North Rural District Council (RDC), since 2000. By comparing selected natural resource management activities before and after 2000, the article demonstrates how the larger macroeconomic and political processes are undermining natural resource management at the ward level.

Update on the study and management of human-elephant conflict in Africa/ Mise en courant de l'etude et la gestion du conflit hommes-elephants en Afrique

Reviews focus and work of the Human-Elephant Conflict Working Group since its inception in 1996. Initial identification and investigation of specific aspects of human-elephant conflict (HEC) problems focused on management related outputs led to 'the production in 2001 of a 'decision support system' for managing conflicts'. 'A network of AfESG collaborators' continues to contribute towards a growing understanding of the HEC phenomenon which manifests itself in complex social and spatial dynamics across many bio-geographical landscapes in Africa. On the ground assessments have brought common characteristics and themes to bear on the application of management principles for human and other wildlife conflicts as well as those involving elephants. Thus 'HEC has become not a problem in isolation but a topic strongly linked to many fundamental conservation issues, especially community conservation initiatives'. Hoare summarizes HEC knowledge in 10 points, four under human-elephant conflict plus 6 under other key points to keep in mind. The first set includes: the fact that HEC is widespread in Africa, and can be politically important on a local scale; it involves agricultural loss and social problems for affected people; it has complex spatial dynamics across the landscape; and the communitiy may perceive quite differently than illustrated by gathered information.

Entrepreneurs, Elites, and Exclusion in Maasailand: Trends in Wildlife Conservation and Pastoralist Development

Maasai pastoralists in Kenya are rapidly diversifying. Maasai may now derive their main livelihoods (and sometimes considerable income) from farming, wildlife tourism, and/or the leasing of land for large-scale cereal cultivation. The spread of large-scale commercial cultivation competes with wildlife for grazing land, and wildlife populations around protected areas are rapidly declining as a result. This paper presents new data to analyse the way returns from different land uses, and the social structures affecting their distribution, influence the land-use choices being made by Maasai around the Mara National Reserve in Kenya. Returns to different interest groups from livestock, cultivation, and wildlife enterprises, seen in the light of current social, economic, and political trajectories, can help to clarify likely future land-use trends in the Mara. In particular, community conservation initiatives that seek to make conservation worthwhile to reserve-adjacent dwellers inevitably have a strong economic dimension. However, the choices made by Maasai landowners are not a simple function of the economic returns potentially accruing from a particular enterprise. They are as much or more influenced by who is able to control the different flows of returns from these different types of enterprise. These findings are relevant not only for the wider Serengeti-Mara Ecosystem, but also for pastoral livelihoods and wildlife conservation elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa.