Conservation Development Projects Research Articles

INTEGRATED NATURAL RESOURCE AND CONSERVATION DEVELOPMENT PROJECT: A REVIEW OF SUCCESS FACTORS FROM A SYSTEMS PERSPECTIVE

AbstractIntegrated Natural Resource and Conservation Development (INRCD) Projects is an umbrella term for a variety of Integrated Conservation and Development Projects (ICDPs), a concept first introduced by the World Wide Fund for Nature in the mid 1980s to target practice-oriented efforts in developing countries; and Integrated Natural Resource Management (INRM) research and development projects introduced as adaptive management for fisheries, wildlife, forest, and rangeland to target analysis-oriented efforts in developing and developed countries. Both efforts seek to balance economic development and natural resource conservation. This paper reviews the literature over the past four decades in an attempt to determine which planning and execution methods lead to greater success. A thematic analysis revealed three broad areas of importance: community inclusion and income diversification, inadequate training and management, and inability to properly quantify data. A systems design optimization approach for such projects is advocated to support project decision making in these areas of importance.

Effects of integrated conservation–development projects on unauthorized resource use in Volcanoes National Park, Rwanda: a mixed-methods spatio-temporal approach

Abstract This study supplements spatial panel econometrics techniques with qualitative GIS to analyse spatio-temporal changes in the distribution of integrated conservation–development projects relative to poaching activity and unauthorized resource use in Volcanoes National Park, Rwanda. Cluster and spatial regression analyses were performed on data from ranger monitoring containing > 35,000 combined observations of illegal activities in Volcanoes National Park, against tourism revenue sharing and conservation NGO funding data for 2006–2015. Results were enriched with qualitative GIS analysis from key informant interviews. We found a statistically significant negative linear effect of overall integrated conservation–development investments on unauthorized resource use in Volcanoes National Park. However, individually, funding from Rwanda's tourism revenue sharing policy did not have an effect in contrast to the significant negative effect of conservation NGO funding. In another contrast between NGO funding and tourism revenue sharing funding, spatial analysis revealed significant gaps in revenue sharing funding relative to the hotspots of illegal activities, but these gaps were not present for NGO funding. Insight from qualitative GIS analysis suggests that incongruity in prioritization by decision makers at least partly explains the differences between the effects of revenue sharing and conservation NGO investment. Although the overall results are encouraging for integrated conservation–development projects, we recommend increased spatial alignment of project funding with clusters of illegal activities, which can make investment decision-making more data-driven and projects more effective for conservation.

Fixing the ecosystem: Conservation, crisis and capital in Rwanda's Gishwati Forest.

Conservation-development projects are increasingly enacted across large expanses of land where human livelihoods hang in the balance. Recent initiatives–often called ‘landscape approaches’ or ‘ecosystem-based’ conservation–aim to achieve economic development and conservation goals through managing hybrid spaces. I argue that the landscape/ecosystem approach is a socioecological fix: an effort to resolve social-environmental crises through sinking capital (financial, natural, and social) into an imagined ecosystem. Rwanda’s Gishwati Forest has been the locus of diverse crises and fixes over the past 40 years, including an industrial forestry and dairy project, a refugee settlement, a privately managed chimpanzee sanctuary, a carbon sequestration platform, and, most recently, an “integrated silvo-pastoral conservation landscape.” This paper considers how these governance schemes have intersected with broader processes of agrarian change to generate crises that subsequent conservation/development projects then attempt to resolve. I demonstrate how visions for ecosystems privilege certain forms of governance around which imagined socioecological histories are mobilized to frame problems and legitimize certain solutions, technologies, and actors. The Gishwati ecosystem and its fixes are repeatedly defined through an imaginary of crisis and degradation that engenders large-scale landscape modification while foreclosing reflection about root causes of crises or how these might be addressed. Thus, even while conservation/development paradigms have shifted over the past 40 years (from separating people and nature to integrating them in conservation landscapes), this crisis-fix metabolism has consistently generated livelihood insecurity for the tens of thousands of people living in and around Gishwati. Imagining and enacting more just and inclusive social-environmental landscapes will require making space for diverse voices to define ecosystem form and function as well as addressing deeply rooted power imbalances that are at the heart of recurrent crises.

Ground-truthing Sahelian Greening: Ethnographic and Spatial Evidence from Burkina Faso.

Historically, the Sahel of West Africa has been considered synonymous with desertification. In recent decades, however, satellite images reveal patterns of enhanced vegetation termed the "greening of the Sahel." This greening is well-documented but its mechanisms remain poorly understood. The Sahel is also a region emerging from a thirty-year period of reduced rainfall in which several severe droughts occurred. As a response to droughts and land degradation, farmers have rehabilitated thousands of hectares of degraded soils by constructing low barriers of rock through widespread soil and water conservation (SWC) development projects. Remote sensing analyses suggest that these extensive soil conservation projects may explain greening in northern Burkina Faso. This study combines ethnographic fieldwork with the analysis of Geographic Information System (GIS) and remote sensing (RS) data to test whether SWC investments contribute to greening. Ethnographic data reveals a tension between the perceptions of rural producers who feel that their SWC efforts contribute to greening and those of state officials who contend that SWC has only local impacts and that the regional landscape continues to degrade. Our analysis of GIS and RS data suggest that both perspectives are valid but contingent on particular spatial and temporal scale used for analysis.

Protected areas for conservation and poverty alleviation: experiences from Madagascar

Protected areas for conservation and poverty alleviation: experiences from Madagascar Charlie J. Gardner*, Martin E. Nicoll, Tsibara Mbohoahy, Kirsten L. L. Oleson, Anitry N. Ratsifandrihamanana, Joelisoa Ratsirarson, Lily-Arison Ren e de Roland, Malika Virah-Sawmy, Bienvenue Zafindrasilivonona and Zoe G. Davies WWF Madagascar and Western Indian Ocean Programme Office, BP738, Antananarivo 101, Madagascar; Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (DICE), School of Anthropology and Conservation, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent CT2 7NR, UK; D epartement de Biologie, Facult e des Sciences, Universit e de Toliara, Toliara 601, BP 185, Toliara, Madagascar; Blue Ventures Conservation, Level 2 Annex, Omnibus Business Centre, 39-41 North Road, N7 9DP London, UK; ESSA-D epartement Eaux et Forets, Universit e d’Antananarivo, BP 175 Antananarivo, Madagascar; and The Peregrine Fund, BP 4113 Antananarivo, Madagascar

Public preferences in irrigation and conservation development projects: Does simultaneous consideration of substitutes in choice sets matter?

This study relates to the Mackenzie Basin case study in New Zealand that exhibits many characteristics of public goods that requires government involvement and covers issues of efficient resource allocation decision-making between irrigation and conservation development in the basin. Many parties have different views on the proposed irrigation project and the policy debate was about whether to support the irrigation given that there are some environmental losses or to support further conservation programmes that forgo economic growth or leave the basin unchanged. The main objective of this paper was to evaluate environmental and social factors associated with irrigation and conservation development in the basin. The study applies choice experiment method by modelling realistic choice processes in ways that frame the issues of Mackenzie Basin within competing substitutes which have opposite environmental outcomes. This framing required an alternative specific experimental design for constructing the choice sets that allow respondents to consider the substitution effects directly giving them a more realistic decision-making context. This approach was compared with the traditional generic design to observe differences in terms of model parameters and willingness-to-pay (WTP) distributions. The results show that the alternative specific design has better predictive power in terms of statistical as well as behavioural interpretation.

Notions of rationality and value production in ecotourism: examples from a Mexican biosphere reserve

In this paper, two unique ecotourism projects in the Sierra of Manantlán Biosphere Reserve in west central Mexico are analyzed in terms of the economic and ideological discourses they reflect. In this region, ecotourism is promoted as (1) a sustainable development platform that is purportedly (2) different from traditional tourism in terms of the socioeconomic and environmental impacts. Economic programs and initiatives with explicit goals of sustainable development and conservation can directly influence local productions of value of forest resources and ethnicity. Weber's ideas on formal and substantive rationalizations are used as points on a continuum, and taken together with Kapp's Theory of Social Costs, the economic and ideological values of ecotourism projects can be compared and analyzed. Using anthropological methods, the two examples illustrate distinct types of ecotourism projects found within a single biosphere reserve. The discourse of ecotourism and integration into global markets through ecotourism are shown to be iterative processes. Production of value in conservation and sustainable development projects is situational; no universal model of value or rationality accounts for the two ecotourism projects presented. Ecotourism schemas should not be viewed as strictly modes for conservation because of the complex social strategies that they embody.

Tsunami and tropical island ecosystems: a meta-analysis of studies in Andaman and Nicobar Islands

Tropical islands are special and sensitive ecosystems which are subjected to various disturbances imposed by human activities and natural disasters. A detailed study about the changing landscape scenarios of these fragile island systems induced by various driving factors could be used for setting up measurements in support of conservation and sustainable development projects. The current research is a meta-analysis of the studies carried out in Andaman and Nicobar islands which analyzed the impact of tsunami of 2004 using geospatial tools. Based on the analysis, it was observed that the Nicobar islands were more affected compared to the Andaman islands. The majority of the researchers used pre- and post-tsunami satellite imagery and adopted visual interpretation method to delineate the changed classes. The study infers uplift of land in Andaman (exposing) and subsidence in Nicobar islands (inundation) with severe damage to the coastal elements like mangroves, coral reefs, plantations and in few cases interior forest. The analysis showed there were no records of the damage for some small islands. Finally, it is concluded that utility of microwave satellite data for change analysis will prove better in regions like Andaman and Nicobar where it is difficult to get cloud free optical data because of the high monsoon periods in these islands. It is also suggested that future work utilizing suitable temporal satellite imagery should focus on the extent of recovery of vegetation and other coastal elements which suffer the impact of disaster.

Community Forestry as Perceived by Local People Around Cross River National Park, Nigeria

The prior identification of local people's preferences for conservation-development projects will help gear nature-conservation strategies toward the needs of different groups of local people. This will help policy-makers in designing a more acceptable and effective conservation strategy. This article reports a study of local perceptions of a community forestry project that aims to help improve the design as well as local acceptance of the project. The data originated from personal interviews conducted in communities around Okwangwo Division of the Cross River National Park in southeast Nigeria and were analysed using ordered logit and binary logit models. The results showed that >50% of the respondents were satisfied with the community forestry project. The respondents' perceptions were mainly influenced by education, age, gender, and willingness to contribute money to tourism as well as the contributions of cocoa, banana, and afang (Gnetum africanum) to the respondents' income. The results from this study have important implications for nature conservation in Nigeria and potentially other conservation contexts across the developing world.

Conservation Development Practices, Extent, and Land-Use Effects in the United States

Conservation development projects combine real-estate development with conservation of land and other natural resources. Thousands of such projects have been conducted in the United States and other countries through the involvement of private developers, landowners, land trusts, and government agencies. Previous research has demonstrated the potential value of conservation development for conserving species, ecological functions, and other resource values on private lands, especially when traditional sources of conservation funding are not available. Nevertheless, the aggregate extent and effects of conservation development were previously unknown. To address this gap, we estimated the extent and trends of conservation development in the United States and characterized its key attributes to understand its aggregate contribution to land-conservation and growth-management objectives. We interviewed representatives from land trusts, planning agencies, and development companies, searched the Internet for conservation development projects and programs, and compiled existing databases of conservation development projects. We collected data on 3884 projects encompassing 1.38 million ha. About 43% of the projects targeted the conservation of specific plant or animal species or ecological communities of conservation concern; 84% targeted the protection of native ecosystems representative of the project area; and 42% provided buffers to existing protected areas. The percentage of protected land in conservation development projects ranged from <40% to >99%, and the effects of these projects on natural resources differed widely. We estimate that conservation development projects have protected roughly 4 million ha of land in the United States and account for about 25% of private-land conservation activity nationwide.

It′s like herding monkeys into a conservation enclosure: The formation and establishment of the Jozani-Chwaka Bay National Park, Zanzibar, Tanzania

This manuscript examines a project that is representative of an emerging trend of new generation Integrated Conservation Development Projects in parts of Africa that combine socio-economic development with an emphasis on local institutional change. These 'local' projects are interlinked with global networks of conservation interests that provide technical expertise and resourcing. In the Jozani-Chawka Bay area, project planners brokered a community governance and benefit sharing agreement that has been lauded as a watershed moment for conservation policy in Zanzibar. Key hurdles for establishing Zanzibar's first national park, the Jozani-Chwaka Bay National Park, were limiting community access to customary forest resources, farmer-red colobus monkey conflict, and setting up a supportive institutional arrangement. The conflict resolution and institutional strategies adopted by the conservation planners with the aid of international funding provide insights that help explain why the project has been able to maintain a 'fragile' localised compliance with conservation goals at the Jozani-Pete village. This has been achieved despite lingering resentment over red colobus crop damage claims, and perceptions of insignificant conservation related benefits flowing to individuals and communities. This finding raises broader concerns about whether containment strategies to ground fragile project arrangements are conducive to engendering the longer term support of local communities for new generation Integrated Conservation Development Projects.

Innovating through commons use: community-based enterprises

Community-based enterprises are of interest to commons researchers because they offer a means to study how local institutions respond to opportunities, develop networks, new skills and knowledge, and evolve. Nevertheless, the relationship between commons and community-based enterprises has received little attention, with a few exceptions (<a class="bibr" href="/index.php/ijc/article/view/206/107#r7">Bray et al. 2005</a>; <a class="bibr" href="/index.php/ijc/article/view/206/107#r5">Berkes and Davidson-Hunt 2007</a>). Therefore, we decided to organize a conference session and explore this relationship in more detail. We invited a diverse array of scholars and practitioners active with indigenous enterprises, community development, community forestry, ecotourism and conservation-development projects. This Special Issue includes peer-reviewed and edited versions of seven of the papers (plus two additional invited papers) presented at the two panels on “Innovating through commons use: community-based enterprises”, at the 12th Biennial Conference of the International Association for the Study of the Commons (IASC 2008) in Cheltenham, England.

Innovating through commons use: community-based enterprises

Community-based enterprises are of interest to commons researchers because they offer a means to study how local institutions respond to opportunities, develop networks, new skills and knowledge, and evolve. Nevertheless, the relationship between commons and community-based enterprises has received little attention, with a few exceptions (<a class="bibr" href="/index.php/ijc/article/view/206/107#r7">Bray et al. 2005</a>; <a class="bibr" href="/index.php/ijc/article/view/206/107#r5">Berkes and Davidson-Hunt 2007</a>). Therefore, we decided to organize a conference session and explore this relationship in more detail. We invited a diverse array of scholars and practitioners active with indigenous enterprises, community development, community forestry, ecotourism and conservation-development projects. This Special Issue includes peer-reviewed and edited versions of seven of the papers (plus two additional invited papers) presented at the two panels on “Innovating through commons use: community-based enterprises”, at the 12th Biennial Conference of the International Association for the Study of the Commons (IASC 2008) in Cheltenham, England.

Cutting the trees to save the forest: The Finch Pruyn working forest

AbstractThe past two decades have seen sales of millions of acres of commercial forest land in the United States. Changed ownership often results in altered forest management, parcelization or development. Such changes have profound implications for forest species and ecosystems, as well as the timber industry, recreational opportunities, and local and regional economies. An emerging strategy seeks to protect lands through complex public-private partnerships involving state agencies, conservation organizations, and commercial investors. By definition, these partnerships have both environmental and socioeconomic goals; as such, they represent contemporary experiments in sustainable development applied to forested landscapes. As this approach is a recent innovation, its benefits for nature and people have yet to be demonstrated, and the general applicability of this integrated approach to conservation is unknown. Our objective is to identify context-specific objectives and indicators to support integrated monitoring and adaptive management for the former Finch Pruyn lands, which encompass 161,000 acres in the Adirondack region of New York State. This interdisciplinary project involves social science faculty and students from Cornell University and cooperation from conservation scientists from The Nature Conservancy. Through a review of the literature on criteria and indicators for sustainable forestry, we developed an analytical framework for measuring ecological, social, and economic implications of forest management practices. Through key informant interviews, we identified context-specific objectives and indicators for the Finch Pruyn lands, including forest health, species protection, expanded recreation opportunities and community economic vitality. Our approach allows us to compare existing commitments to collection of monitoring data to ideal data sets as defined by actors occupying various structural positions. Identification of potential gaps in monitoring represents an opportunity for dialogue, reallocation of resources and enrollment of new strategic partners. Over time, these global and local indicators can support an adaptive framework through which flows of information inform management in an iterative process. Preliminary results indicate that this project entails several innovations that may contribute to its success, including the development of a comprehensive ecological baseline and the explicit engagement of local claims to livelihoods and access. We make several recommendations for future working forest agreements, such as the need to define clear environmental and socioeconomic goals at the outset, and, when private philanthropy is central to project viability, the incorporation of monitoring costs into initial fundraising targets. We believe these lessons are applicable to conservation development projects in the Northern Forest region and beyond.

Cutting the trees to save the forest: The Finch Pruyn working forest

The past two decades have seen sales of millions of acres of commercial forest land in the United States. Changed ownership often results in altered forest management, parcelization or development. Such changes have profound implications for forest species and ecosystems, as well as the timber industry, recreational opportunities, and local and regional economies. An emerging strategy seeks to protect lands through complex public-private partnerships involving state agencies, conservation organizations, and commercial investors. By definition, these partnerships have both environmental and socioeconomic goals; as such, they represent contemporary experiments in sustainable development applied to forested landscapes. As this approach is a recent innovation, its benefits for nature and people have yet to be demonstrated, and the general applicability of this integrated approach to conservation is unknown. Our objective is to identify context-specific objectives and indicators to support integrated monitoring and adaptive management for the former Finch Pruyn lands, which encompass 161,000 acres in the Adirondack region of New York State. This interdisciplinary project involves social science faculty and students from Cornell University and cooperation from conservation scientists from The Nature Conservancy. Through a review of the literature on criteria and indicators for sustainable forestry, we developed an analytical framework for measuring ecological, social, and economic implications of forest management practices. Through key informant interviews, we identified context-specific objectives and indicators for the Finch Pruyn lands, including forest health, species protection, expanded recreation opportunities and community economic vitality. Our approach allows us to compare existing commitments to collection of monitoring data to ideal data sets as defined by actors occupying various structural positions. Identification of potential gaps in monitoring represents an opportunity for dialogue, reallocation of resources and enrollment of new strategic partners. Over time, these global and local indicators can support an adaptive framework through which flows of information inform management in an iterative process. Preliminary results indicate that this project entails several innovations that may contribute to its success, including the development of a comprehensive ecological baseline and the explicit engagement of local claims to livelihoods and access. We make several recommendations for future working forest agreements, such as the need to define clear environmental and socioeconomic goals at the outset, and, when private philanthropy is central to project viability, the incorporation of monitoring costs into initial fundraising targets. We believe these lessons are applicable to conservation development projects in the Northern Forest region and beyond.

Self-Organization in Integrated Conservation and Development Initiatives

This paper uses a cooking metaphor to explore key elements (i.e., ingredients for a great meal) that contribute to self-organization processes in the context of successful community-based conservation (CBC) or integrated conservation and development projects (ICDP). We pose two major questions: (1) What are the key factors that drive peoples' and/or organizations' willingness to take responsibilities and to act? (2) What contributes to community self-organization? In other words, how conservation-development projects originate, evolve, survive or disappear? In order to address these questions we examine trigger events and catalytic elements in several cases among the Equator Prize finalists and short-listed nominees, from both the 2002 and 2004 awards. The Prize recognizes efforts in integrating biodiversity conservation and poverty reduction. We use secondary data in our analysis, including data from several technical reports and scientific papers written about the Equator Prize finalists and short-listed nominees. We observed common ingredients in most projects including: (1) involvement and commitment of key players (including communities), (2) funding, (3) strong leadership, (4) capacity building, (5) partnership with supportive organizations and government, and (6) economic incentives (including alternative livelihood options). We also observed that CBC and ICDP initiatives opportunistically evolve in a multi-level world, in which local communities establish linkages with people and organizations at different political levels, across different geographical scales and for different purposes. We conclude that there is no right 'recipe' to promote community self-organization but often a mix of some of these six ingredients need to come together for 'success' and that one or two ingredients are not sufficient to ensure success. Also the existence of these six ingredients does not guarantee a great meal - the 'chef's' creativity also is critical. That is, the success of a project results from its ability to use the available resources and ingredients creatively or perhaps wisely.

Conserving Biodiversity and Ecosystem Function through Limited Development: an Empirical Evaluation

Suburban, exurban, and rural development in the United States consumes nearly 1 million hectares of land per year and is a leading threat to biodiversity. In response to this threat, conservation development has been advanced as a way to combine land development and land conservation while providing functional protection for natural resources. Yet, although conservation development techniques have been in use for decades, there have been few critical evaluations of their conservation effectiveness. We addressed this deficiency by assessing the conservation outcomes of one type of conservation development project: conservation and limited development projects (CLDPs). Conducted by land trusts, landowners, and developers, CLDPs use revenue from limited development to finance the protection of land and natural resources. We compared a sample of 10 CLDPs from the eastern United States with their respective baseline scenarios (conventional development) and with a sample of conservation subdivisions--a different conservation development technique characterized by higher-density development. To measure conservation success, we created an evaluation method containing eight indicators that quantify project impacts to terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems at the site and in the surrounding landscape. The CLDPs protected and managed threatened natural resources including rare species and ecological communities. In terms of conservation benefits, the CLDPs significantly outperformed their respective baseline scenarios and the conservation subdivisions. These results imply that CLDPs can offer a low-impact alternative to conventional development and a low-cost method for protecting land when conventional conservation techniques are too expensive. In addition, our evaluation method demonstrates how planners and developers can incorporate appropriate ecological considerations when designing, reviewing, and evaluating conservation development projects.

A Framework for Understanding Conservation Development and Its Ecological Implications

ABSTRACT Suburban, exurban, and rural development is a leading cause of biodiversity loss and natural resource degradation in the United States. In response to this threat, conservation development has been advanced as a way to combine land development with functional protection for conservation resources. This article provides a review, analysis, and ecological critique of the four principal types of conservation development: (1) conservation buyer projects, (2) conservation and limited development projects, (3) conservation subdivisions, and (4) conservation-oriented planned development projects. Each approach can contribute to landscape-scale conservation, with benefits that include reducing the off-site impacts of development, buffering and connecting protected areas, and conserving imperiled species and ecosystems. However, the benefits of these approaches depend significantly on project density, design, and context. Accordingly, this article offers a framework for differentiating and analyzing these...

New challenges facing traditional nature reserves: Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) conservation in China

Traditional conservation strategies can effectively preserve biodiversity within nature reserves, but may fail to mitigate the conflicts between rural development and wildlife conservation. This paper discusses the magnitude of the conflict and its development over time, focusing on elephant conservation and land resource management within and around nature reserves. We suggest that regulations alone can satisfy neither the demands to maintain biodiversity and ecosystem services nor the demands to achieve human welfare. More innovative tools such as informed land-use planning and integrated conservation development projects are called for to reduce the agricultural interface with elephant range, and therefore to alleviate the damage caused by the conflict.

Expectations, impacts and attitudes: conservation and development in Cross River National Park, Nigeria

Integrated conservation–development projects (ICDPs) have been widely developed and adopted in sub‐Saharan Africa as a new approach to protected area management. Earlier studies have examined the conceptual foundations and performance of ICDPs at the macro scale. This paper uses household‐level data to review experience with the ICDP approach in the Cross River National Park in southeast Nigeria. The paper argues that the failure of the project to meet local expectations precipitated arguments about resource tenure in this part of Nigeria which has a long history of community forest resource use and management. The implications for the sustainability of the conservation initiative are discussed. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.