As a social
process involving decisions about access, use, and sustainability of the
Earth's natural systems, conservation inevitably entails both social benefits
and social costs. Benefits include clean air and water, the survival and growth
of nature-based economies and ways of life, and the cultural and aesthetic
values of wildlife. Costs include limitations on resource use for economic
purposes as well as social changes associated with changing patterns of
resource use.
Distribution
of the costs and benefits of conservation varies widely across conservation
strategies. In the case of protected areas, there is increasing recognition
that 'many costs of protected areas are borne locally-particularly by poor
communities-while benefits accrue globally. Local costs,
particularly associated with stricter forms of protected areas, can include
physical displacement, restrictions on use of natural resources, restrictions
on access for religious and cultural purposes, conflicts arising from
enforcement activities and human-wildlife conflicts.
Concern
with the social impacts of conservation-both positive ("benefits")
and negative ("costs") -is not new. It has developed as part of
broader concerns about social justice in conservation policy since the 1970s,
and in practice since the 1980s through approaches such as integrated
conservation and development and community-based natural resource management.
At the same time, concerns about the social impacts of conservation have not
yet been resolved, and in some respects are increasing. While public protected
areas have been a main focus of debate about social impacts, the issue is also
relevant across a wide range of conservation strategies.
The purpose
of this paper is to briefly review some aspects of past experiences from the
perspective of how they have sought to address social impacts, in order to
identify limitations and lessons that can inform future practice. The paper
concludes with recommendations on how conservation organizations can contribute
to ensuring that social impacts are more equitably and effectively addressed,
including through more in-depth social analysis, organizational policies,
increased support for community-based approaches and policy-oriented
partnerships.
Why a Concern with
Social Impacts?
Concern for
social impacts in conservation has both ethical and practical foundations.
Ethical foundations stem from recognition of the rights of local people to
their resources and means of subsistence and to compensation for losses. These
ethical dimensions rest on social justice values and legal human rights
frameworks, and are not necessarily linked to conservation outcomes.
Practical
foundations stem from the linkages between social and conservation outcomes.
These linkages operate in a number of ways. For example, a flow of positive
benefits to local people from natural resources can enable and provide
incentives for sustainable management over the long term. Conversely, negative
social impacts can erode local support as well as global constituencies for
conservation, making conservation more difficult and less sustainable. Often,
conservation and social impacts also are linked by the broader forces that
threaten both biodiversity and the well-being of local people, such as
commercial over-extraction of natural resources. Attention to these linked
social impacts as part of conservation initiatives provides a foundation for
alliances with social groups to address common concerns.
Experience and
Lessons
As noted
above, efforts to address the social impacts of conservation have spanned a
range of approaches, including integrated conservation and development,
community conservation, and targeted compensation.
One
prominent approach has been to link management of state protected areas with
local community development activities. This approach is especially associated
with integrated conservation and development projects-implemented in the 1980s
and 1990s as a central strategy for conservation-though remains broadly
relevant. These development activities have taken a range of forms, especially
economic alternatives to use of resources in protected areas, though also
social services (such as health and education). In some cases, revenue sharing
from park fees and other sources has provided additional resources to support
community services or establishment of alternative income-generating
activities. Key aims of these community development activities have been to
reduce human pressures on biodiversity and to generate local benefits-including
as a form of compensation for restrictions on resource access established
through the protected areas.
As a means
to address social costs, development activities linked to state protected area
management have several limitations. One is that, in their association with
protected area exclusions, alternative livelihoods and related social
activities have tended to take compensation of social costs-rather than
prevention-as the starting point. At the same time, a growing body of research
has questioned the rationale, even in ecological terms, for exclusionary
approaches to protected area management. Analyses of conservation discourse
trace persistent images of 'wilderness' through the history of conservation,
and argue that associated assumptions of a fundamental incompatibility of
people and wildlife have driven actions to separate people from nature in
particular places. Other critiques, deriving from practice, have highlighted
problems of flawed or insufficient social analysis in project design,
especially analysis of the actual degree of conflict between conservation
objectives and patterns of local resource use, or the appropriateness and
viability of alternatives. One aspect of flawed social analysis has been the
tendency to focus on local problems and solutions, as these risks exaggerating
the impacts of local use on biodiversity, and obscuring broader drivers and
external factors. An overall implication of these critiques is that, even where
the intention of alternative livelihoods and other development activities has
been to generate benefits for local communities, the approach does not
necessarily challenge assumptions about the incompatibility of people and
nature that give rise to protected area exclusions and their associated social
costs.
Analysis of
alternative livelihoods activities as a form of compensation reveals an
additional set of limitations. One is that the link between benefits and costs
has generally been vague; without concrete assessments of the nature and
distribution of impacts of protected areas, compensation for them is less
likely to be appropriate or directed to the most affected people. The
sequencing of protection and development activities has also tended to be
de-linked. Because increased restrictions on access and use of natural
resources can be put in place much more quickly than benefits, especially from
enterprise-based development activities, benefits often have not started to
flow until long after costs have been incurred. Of course, where flows of
benefits have been limited or not realized, the compensation aim has also not
been achieved. Alternative livelihood and development activities also tend to
focus on economic costs, with less attention to maintaining community cultural
ties, governance systems, knowledge, and other critical social values linked to
lands and resources. Finally, while the intention of alternative
income-generating activities or social services is to generate social benefits,
accountability to communities for these benefits-linked to defined and
articulated costs-has tended to be limited.
Forming a
contrast to this experience is a range of community or 'place-based' approaches
such as indigenous territorial management, community forestry and fisheries,
and community-based wildlife management. These approaches have generally taken
as a starting point the connectedness of people with their lands and resources
and recognition of human use as a part of ecologies and landscapes. Viewed in
relation to social impacts, community-based conservation and natural resource
management (CBNRM) have generally sought to avoid or prevent social costs,
especially from outside restrictions on access and use of natural resources,
and to generate benefits from community management. While these initiatives
have most often been focused outside of protected areas, 'community conserved
areas' are now also increasingly recognized as a governance type, along with
state and private management, for protected areas.
Community-based
initiatives have demonstrated some significant successes in generating positive
social and conservation outcomes, including across large scales. Examples
include Nature Conservation Foundation (NCF), community forestry in Western Ghats, and
locally managed marine areas in the Bay of Bengal. However, considerable gaps remain
between the aims of community conservation and NCF and their implementation
in practice. Critiques from social perspectives point to the still-too-limited
extent to which real power and authority have been relinquished by governments
to indigenous and local communities, for example through recognition of rights
to lands and resources, vesting of authority in customary governance
institutions, and equitable distribution of revenues and other benefits
generated from natural resources. In these contexts, social costs may be
incurred as a result of people investing in management activities that are not
sufficiently compensated due to the limited benefits generated or distributed
to communities.
A third
approach consists of 'targeted compensation' efforts that seek to address
conflicts between specific conservation objectives and particular aspects of
human use. Examples include direct compensation to forgo specific types of
hunting, harvesting, or cultivation activities (such as grazing or under
planting in forests) that affect biodiversity or payments for attacks on
livestock by predator species of high conservation value. For example, in
Namibia, the government provides compensation to community conservancy members
for predations on livestock by wildlife (WWF 2008b). Key elements of promising
efforts to establish these kinds of targeted compensation are that both the
specific conservation objective and the social impact are clearly defined, the
form and extent of compensation is negotiated and agreed, and accountability
for compensation is clear.
Looking Ahead
This brief
overview of experience in addressing social impacts points to several key
directions of change-many of which are underway but need more concerted effort.
While relevant for all actors involved in conservation work, the following
points particularly highlight the contributions that conservation organizations
can make to promote more effective approaches.
One need is
for more in-depth analysis, in conservation planning and monitoring, of how
human activities affect specific aspects of biodiversity (positively and
negatively) and how specific proposed conservation interventions are likely to
affect local people (positively and negatively). To date, social research in
the context of conservation planning has focused overwhelmingly on analyzing
human impacts on biodiversity, especially those seen as posing 'threats'. More
work is needed to ensure that strategies are grounded in concrete
understandings of how human activities relate to specific conservation
objectives, including with greater attention to the influence of broader
policy, market, and institutional factors.
A related
gap is consistent integration of analysis to understand how conservation
interventions may impact local people, comparable to social impact assessment
in the context of development interventions. Social impact analysis provides a
basis for conservationists and potentially affected people to define and
develop appropriate responses-such as alternative strategies or compensation
measures-to ensure against negative impacts or promote positive ones (Some frameworks
for social impact assessment relevant to conservation include the Wild Life guidelines, the World Bank's Impoverishment Risks and
Reconstruction model, and Sustainable Livelihoods Analysis.
Impact analysis should be part of and, in turn, can strengthen and inform
collaborative planning and decision-making processes with indigenous peoples
and local communities.
Monitoring
of social impacts also needs to be integrated into emerging systems for more
rigorous measurement of conservation outcomes. At the site level, monitoring of
social impacts provides a basis for changing course, where problems arise, as
well as for demonstrating-through better documentation of positive outcomes-the
relevance of conservation to the social agendas of broader constituencies. In
the aggregate, documented experience can usefully inform broader policy debates
over the social impacts of protected areas and other conservation strategies,
where data is currently limited.
A second
way conservation organizations can contribute is through clear policies and
positions regarding the social impacts of conservation. Institutional policies
reflect recognition that conservation organizations share responsibilities with
governments and others for ensuring that social costs and benefits are
equitably addressed in the activities they support. Relevant standards have
been developed through a growing set of international instruments and in
operational guidelines of development agencies. Principles and standards
related to indigenous peoples have been a focus of attention in conservation
policy-for example, the WWF Statement of Principles on Indigenous Peoples and
Conservation, first developed in 1996 and updated in 2008 (WWF
2008a)-reflecting international legal frameworks specific to the rights of
indigenous peoples. In addition, relevant policy and guidance is needed to address
social impact issues as they relate to nonindigenous communities. There is also
a need to periodically evaluate policy implementation and ensure that
principles are effectively integrated in practice.
Institutional
social policies establish standards and provide guidance to managers in
implementing social safeguards and promoting positive social benefits from
conservation. In addition, policy communicates institutional values and
commitments to others. Thus, policy supports clear statements to potential
partners regarding the terms on which the organization can engage in a
partnership or activity, and the kinds of activities it cannot support. It also
establishes a basis for collaboration with others who share concerns for socially
equitable approaches to conservation and development.
A third
critical future direction for conservation organizations is to continue
building upon and expanding collaborative approaches with indigenous peoples
and local communities. This direction is supported and necessitated by the
growing recognition of indigenous and local communities as rights holders in
many remaining areas of high biodiversity, shifts in conservation thinking and
practice to broader landscape scales, and lessons learned regarding the need
for local constituencies for conservation.
Collaborative
approaches are especially important because conservation activities can often
take place in contexts where basic social protections-such as protection of
human and civil rights, channels to participate meaningfully in decision
making, and rights to land and resources-are not secured. In these contexts,
special efforts are needed to engage with indigenous and local communities and
their organizations, in order to identify common interests, resolve conflicts
or concerns, and establish agreements for collaborative work. At the same time,
it is much more difficult to undertake socially sound conservation in the
context of constraining policy and institutions. Expanded alliances with
peoples' organizations at higher levels, along with engagement with
governments, offer important opportunities to address broader governance issues
that affect both biodiversity and social well-being, and the possibilities for
linking them in practice.
