Defining Community Conservation Projects

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Defining Community Conservation Projects
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Can Communities Conserve?

• Community-Based Conservation Projects
• Developed over the past two decades
• Based on ethical, theoretical, and practical
  arguments of conservation practitioners and
  social scientists
• Are important alternative SOLUTION to the
  traditional protected areas that exclude humans

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Integrating Conservation and Development

• Conservation is the priority
• Holistic program integrating financial and social
  incentives
• Community members were seen as potential
  conservationists
• Trust between practitioner/NGO and the community
  is important

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A Controversy
Community conservation practitioners are caught
between biology and sociology academics

• Many biologists/ecologists want a return to
  traditional conservation excluding people
• Many sociologists accuse practitioners of
  misrepresenting communities
• This controversy is a distraction that blinds
  both to the power of small successful community
  conservation projects

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CCPs or ICDPs?

• Critics have unfortunately grouped Community
  Conservation Projects (CCPs) and Integrated
  Conservation and Development Projects (ICDPs)
  together
• In reality, the criticism has been against
  (ICDPs)
• CCPs have been overlooked
• Practitioners of ICDPs are now looking to learn
  from their failures
• from McShane Wells 2005 Rhoades Stalling
  2001

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Criticism of Large ICDP Projects

• Criticism of ICDPs has also focused on their
  lack of ability to address the underlying root
  causes of biodiversity loss, as well as the
  financial and technical sustainability of such
  initiatives
• (McShane and Newby 2004)
• ..it seems that more than a decade of
  substantial investments in ICDPs has not
  delivered the anticipated biodiversity
  conservation benefits. (Wells et al. 2004)
• A surprisingly large number of ICDPs never do
  provide significant benefits to local
  people. (Sayer and Wells 2004)

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High Budgets of ICDPs

• ICDPs have attracted the lions share of the
  relatively large investments in conservation
  projects by bilateral development
  agencies. (McShane and Wells 2004b)
• Despite this high level of investment and
  effort, we can only point to some
  individualized successes. Taken as a whole, we
  have had little impact on stemming or even
  slowing the rising tide of biodiversity loss.
  (Kiss 2004)
• And the end result has been a generation of
  ICDPs that are so locked into a rigid
  donor-driven framework that they have little
  relevance to the changeable real world in which
  protected areas and their managers have to
  survive. (Sayer and Wells 2004)

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Community Conservation Projects "Below the
Conservation Radar"

• ICDPs became the norm
• ICDPs failed study why
• ICDPs stuck in outdated paradigm (Shepard 2004)
• CCPs are small and perceived as less significant
• CCPs are succeeding - study why
• Similarly, ignored community forestry successes

Conservation organizations themselves form their
own international environment in which they talk
to and argue with one another. Because they
spend so much of their time in this company,
there is too little exchange of ideas with those
engaged in the forestry and poverty worlds. -
Shepard 2004
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Why are Small CC Projects Successful?

• Few measured conservation projects
• Scale of size and
• These projects are holistic
• Economics are not primary but are well integrated
• We see rural people as potential conservationists
• Empowering rural people, leaving them in charge
• Models create regional influence

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Rural People are the Solution Not the Problem

• Local people use and thus value Natural
  Resources (NR)
• Local people are onsite can better protect NR
  (or can poach them)
• Locals know more about local area and NR
• Many outside forces compete for NR
• By giving locals responsibility and benefits
  they will protect them
• If treated as problem they will be it

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Community Participation Continuum

Empowerment
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Incentives for Community Participation

• Economic
• Legal
• Social

While maintaining that we need an integrated
balance of these three values to induce
conservation, Uphoff and Langholz (1998) make a
strong case for the extreme importance of social
values in leading to stewardship of natural
resources.
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Working at the Community Scale

• Community is the functional unit
• The first step in empowering them is asking for
  their help
• Want to promote positive incentives
• Large-scale, large money projects can promote a
  mentality of greed

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Funding and Project Length

• Modest funding
• Money went into implementation not planning
• Although project implies an end, CC projects
  were considered in perpetuity
• CCPs built in termination of catalyzing NGO with
  empowerment of CBO
• NGO monitors and is ready to re-catalyze

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Flexibility and Adaptability

• Experimental - be ready to change
• Some planning but not too much
• Small budget necessitates flexibility
• Complexity of community necessitates adaptability

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Project Sustainability

• Financial sustainability
• Social sustainability