Since the Rio Conference of 1992, which declared the conservation of biodiversity and the creation of national parks to be priorities, resettlements resulting from conservation projects in Central Africa have been on the increase, as people living inside protected areas are relocated. Hardly any of these resettlements have been successful. There has been resistance to moving in the first place, and even returns to former villages inside the national parks.
Sanderson & Redford's (2003) correct insistence that poverty alleviation programmes ought more actively to include conservation would be well matched by an awareness of the impacts of some conservation policies, particularly the establishment of strictly protected areas, on local livelihoods.
Lands protected as wilderness
require the removal or exclusion of people and are
locally costly. Wilderness protection requires, we argue,
far more awareness of the nature and extent of these costs
wherever conservation interests have to be served by
people's absence.
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