DEFORESTATION AROUND THE WORLD - India Environment Portal

14
Preserving Biodiversity and Ecosystems:
Catalyzing Conservation Contagion
Robert H. Horwich1, Jonathan Lyon1,2, Arnab Bose1,3 and Clara B. Jones1 1Community Conservation,
2Merrimack College,
3Natures Foster
1,2USA 3India 1. Introduction
The natural world is in a chronic state of crisis and under constant threat of degradation,
primarily by anthropogenic factors. In general, current conservation strategies have failed to
effect long-range solutions to the rapid loss of biodiversity (Persha et al., 2011).
Deforestation continues despite efforts by mainstream (top-down) conservation programs
(Persha et al., 2011; Schmitt et al., 2009), and the effectiveness of large-scale protected areas
has, at best, a mixed record of success (Brockington et al., 2008; Persha et al., 2011). Scientific
disciplines, in particular, ecology and conservation biology, continue to emphasize threats to
biodiversity (Schipper et al., 2008), to debate conservation priorities (Brooks et al., 2006), to
advance unproven strategies (SSC, 2008), and to offer no more than hypothetical solutions to
pressing problems (Milner-Gulland et al., 2010; Turner et al., 2007). The bulk of the scientific
community remains tangential to the conservation needs of communities in habitat
countries, with a critical lack of input and connectivity between the extensive scientific
literature and ground-level practices (Milner-Gulland et al., 2010).
Resurgence of the “fortress conservation”, “protectionist” narratives (commitment to
conservation programs at the expense of indigenous and other local people) promoting a
19 th century wilderness ideal free of humans remains a cornerstone of much conservation
thought, policy, and planning. As pointed out by Brockington et al. (2008), commitment to
community-based conservation “has been downplayed from being an approach to
conservation to becoming a component to justify and legitimate interventions to create new
protected areas or interventions to conserve specific species”. This “back to the barriers”
movement (Hutton et al., 2005), supported by many conservation biologists (Kramer et al.,
1997; Oates, 1999; Terborgh, 1999), has been accompanied by an increase in conservation
funding, with large conservation organizations reverting back to protectionist landscape
conservation and away from community-based (ground-level or bottom-up) resource
management (Hutton et al., 2005).
In his discussion of the ongoing conflicts between indigenous peoples’ movements and
conservation organizations, Dowie (2009) noted: “When, after setting aside a ‘protected’
land mass the size of Africa, global biodiversity continues to decline and the rate of species
extinction approaches one-thousand times background levels, the message seems clear that