When Agendas Collide: Human Welfare and Biological Conservation

Abstract

Conservation should benefit ecosystems, nonhuman organisms, and current and future human beings. Nevertheless, tension among these goals engenders potential ethical conflicts: conservationists' true motivations may differ from the justifications they offer for their activities, and conservation projects have the potential to disempower and oppress people. We reviewed the promise and deficiencies of integrating social, economic, and biological concerns into conservation, focusing on research in ecosystem services and efforts in community-based conservation. Despite much progress, neither paradigm provides a silver bullet for conservation's most pressing problems, and both require additional thought and modification to become maximally effective. We conclude that the following strategies are needed to make conservation more effective in our human-dominated world. (1) Conservation research needs to integrate with social scholarship in a more sophisticated manner. (2) Conservation must be informed by a detailed understanding of the spatial, temporal, and social distributions of costs and benefits of conservation efforts. Strategies should reflect this understanding, particularly by equitably distributing conservation's costs. (3) We must better acknowledge the social concerns that accompany biodiversity conservation; accordingly, sometimes we must argue for conservation for biodiversity's sake, not for its direct human benefits.

Where does biodiversity go from here? A grim business-as-usual forecast and a hopeful portfolio of partial solutions

“…Such programs are crucial-not only for the long-term success of the given conservation effort, but also for the augmentation and transmission of biodiversity knowledge. Efforts to ''engage'' local communities in conservation and land management can and have gone awry, and there are often important tradeoffs between conservation and development (88). None of this alters the fact that, without local acceptance of biodiversity and the rationale for its conservation, any gains will be ephemeral.…”

“…Yes, ecosystem services have enormous value in traditional economic terms for their role in sustaining and enriching human life, and efforts to ascertain these values are important. No, ecosystems and their biodiversity cannot compete on the open market as service providers alone (88). To subject ecosystems to all of the same demands and risks that commodities and corporations face in capitalist economies would be to ensure their eventual diminution and demise.…”

A Dynamic Simulation Model of Land-Use, Population, and Rural Livelihoods in the Central Rift Valley of Ethiopia

“…Furthermore, Robbins et al (2006) and Romero and Andrade (2004) suggested that the exclusion of communities from conservation ultimately leads to social conflict and noncompliance with conservation-related regulations (Chan et al 2007). The combining of participatory modeling and livelihood studies could contribute to sustainable natural resource management and livelihood improvement by building shared understanding of critical issues and helping to focus on conservation and development interventions .…”

Ten principles for a landscape approach to reconciling agriculture, conservation, and other competing land uses

“…13,14); and metapopulation theory for maintaining viable populations (15). "People" and "society," however, were notably absent from such considerations, and, as a result, conservation has been beset by disappointments and failures (16)(17)(18). Thus, although conservation theory provided a stimulus and foundation for landscape approaches, their further development has come from the recognition of the need to address the priorities of people who live and work within, and ultimately shape, these landscapes (19).…”