Indigenous Peoples and Conservation Organizations

6 Conservation and Indigenous Peoples
the difference it makes when the state encourages
rather than discourages community involvement
in managing natural resources. Another example
is petroleum development. In the case of Napo,
Ecuador, local communities are scrambling to
cope with the side effects of unbridled development
by multinational firms in partnership with
the state. In PNG, a petroleum consortium is trying
to minimize its intrusiveness and share the
benefits of newfound wealth with local communities.
One might also note the role that tenure
plays in the two cases, since indigenous peoples
in PNG enjoy customary ownership and usage
rights unparalleled in most areas of the world.
A final example is the role conservation organizations,
particularly WWF, played in these case studies.
In some, WWF was a peripheral collaborator
in a cobbled-together coalition. In others its goal
was to be an active partner. Sometimes, this difference
reflected a disparity in resources between
partners whose primary focus was socioeconomic
development and those whose long-term focus
was conservation. Other times, it reflected where
a project fell on WWF’s learning curve. The
Brazil and Ecuador projects, for instance, date
from WWF’s first experiences with communitybased
conservation and development, while the
examples from PNG and Namibia began later and
benefited from what was learned before.
Lessons from the case studies are also relevant to
new conservation contexts. During the past two
years, WWF and other conservation organizations
have widened their focus to target conservation
resources on ecoregions—large geographic
areas that contain tightly integrated sets of
ecosystems and important ecological interactions
and evolutionary mechanisms that generate and
maintain species. The new strategy grows out of
heightened concern that successfully protecting
isolated patches of wilderness and specific
species is not enough to ward off accelerating
threats to the planet’s biodiversity. A new scale
of thinking, planning, and acting is needed to
meet the scale of the biological challenge.
Collaboration of diverse stakeholders is a primary
strategy for achieving these ambitious goals
(Dinerstein et al. 1999). Examples of emerging
partnerships with indigenous peoples and other
issues involved in working at this larger scale are
provided in the conclusion.
References
Dinerstein, Eric, George Powell, David Olson,
Eric Wikramanayake, Robin Abell, Colby
Loucks, Emma Underwood, Tom Allnut, Wes
Wettengel, Taylor Ricketts, Neil Burgess, Sheila
O’Connor, Holly Strand, and Melody Mobley.
1999. Workbook for Conducting Biological
Assessments and Developing Diversity Visions
for Ecoregion-Based Conservation, Part I:
Terrestrial Ecoregions. Washington, D.C.: World
Wildlife Fund.
Hitchcock, Robert K. 1994. Endangered
Peoples: Indigenous Rights and the Environment.
Colorado Journal of International Environmental
Law and Policy 5 (1):11.
Larson, Patricia S., Mark Freudenberger, and
Barbara Wyckoff-Baird. 1996. WWF Integrated
Conservation and Development Projects.
Washington, D.C.: World Wildlife Fund.
Wilson, Edward O. 1992. The Diversity of Life.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.