Falling “fortresses”: Unlocking Governance Entanglements and Shifting Knowledge Paradigms to Counter Climate Change Threats in Biodiversity Conservation

Abstract

Biodiversity conservation is facing unprecedented challenges at the intersection of rapidly changing climates, widespread ecosystem degradation under the influence of global warming and resultant human tragedies over livelihood, habitation, adaptation and coping needs. These challenges are more acute across biodiversity hotspots in the Global South. This study disentangles the complex interplay to propose alternative paradigms of governance and policy thinking necessary for sustainable biodiversity conservation. Climate change impacts are exposing critical deficiencies of 'scientific forest management' pursued for over a century. For example, recurrent disasters and ecological shifts are increasingly obfuscating cognitive and physical boundaries between the reserve forest and human habitations; putting additional stress on livelihoods which in turn escalate pressures on the forest commons and fuel further conflicts between conservation governance and local communities. Instead of assisting in adaptation, the existing conservation governance mechanisms are producing further conflicts between humans and non-humans; livelihoods and conservation; disaster management and development. Conducted in the Sundarbans Biosphere Reserve -world's largest mangrove forest ecosystem and a climate change hotspot located along the Bay of Bengal across India and Bangladesh -the study finds an urgent need of rethinking and recalibrating biodiversity conservation in the times of climate change. However, institutional and market-based approaches such as promoting ecotourism or mangrove plantations may have little impact in this regard, the study finds. Instead, integrating cultural ecosystem services and co-producing knowledge will be critical to tackle the entanglements of climate change and its impacts on local lives, livelihoods and biodiversity conservation.

Understanding constraints to adaptation using a community-centred toolkit

“…Despite intentions to balance community well-being with conservation, community-based approaches to conservation have sometimes infringed upon both people's self-determination and adaptive capacity [12][13][14][15][16]. Since the 1870s, the dominant discourse within international conservation has been 'fortress conservation'-a top-down form of sustainability policy barring local communities from accessing resources in protected spaces [17][18][19]. While these efforts are designed to preserve the beauty and ecosystem health of natural spaces, they often uphold colonial power structures that disempower and displace LID peoples, limiting their access to resources and endangering human health [20][21][22][23][24].…”

“…While these efforts are designed to preserve the beauty and ecosystem health of natural spaces, they often uphold colonial power structures that disempower and displace LID peoples, limiting their access to resources and endangering human health [20][21][22][23][24]. In response, initiatives to decolonize conservation call for the co-production of protected area planning and management with LID communities [17,18,25]. Alongside calls for community-centred approaches to conservation, there is a large social science literature on participatory methods to facilitate community-generated ideas for projects that address natural resource management.…”

“…While these efforts are designed to preserve the beauty and ecosystem health of natural spaces, they often uphold colonial power structures that disempower and displace LID peoples, limiting their access to resources and endangering human health [20–24]. In response, initiatives to decolonize conservation call for the co-production of protected area planning and management with LID communities [17,18,25].…”

Health threats of climate change: from intersectional analysis to justice-based radicalism

“…It is a "backward region," as defined by the Government of India, with half the population earning under the $1/day (World Bank 2014). From being a subsistence economy based on agriculture, fishing, and natural resources such as honey (Ghosh et al 2022), the region's economy has seen some growth with remittances by migrant wage laborers and more recently with domestic tourism (Ghosh and Ghosh 2019).…”