Agroecology and the Struggle for Food Sovereignty ... - Yale University

zimmerer
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An Expanding Interface with Agriculture
Will Change Global Conservation
Karl S. Zimmerer
The growth and evolution of conservation is resulting in a much-expanded interface
with agriculture and other forms of resource use (livestock-raising, forest extraction,
fishing, hunting). The widespread commitment to protected-area conservation is
argued to offer a number of similarities and some key differences with respect to
other main dimensions of environmental globalization (see Mol 2001; Speth 2001).
Rapid growth of the interface 1 of conservation with agriculture and resource use is
driven by both the profusion of designated protected areas and the management
characteristics of enlarged conservation efforts. The worldwide coverage of
designated protected areas has expanded more than ten times in area during the past
few decades (Zimmerer et al. 2004). Measuring less than 1 million km 2 in 1970, and
estimated at 5.2 million km 2 in 1985, the area of publicly designated protected areas
grew to more than 12.2 million km 2 in 1997 and has been estimated to cover 14.2
million km 2 by 2003.
Incorporation of agriculture and resource use into conservation programs is an
important characteristic of the expansion of global conservation and protected areas
(Zimmerer 2005). By 1997, nearly 60 percent of protected areas were classified as
zones of agricultural or resource use (Zimmerer et al. 2004). Equally or more
persuasive than this quantitative measure, since it sums up the often inaccurate
estimates of the global conservation databases, is the rhetorical purpose that is served
by presenting and publicizing these numbers. Certain influential segments of the
global conservation movement badly want to incorporate resource and land uses,
such as agriculture, into the main agenda (McNeely and Scherr 2003).
The increased interface of conservation areas with agriculture and resource use is
an integral part of a sustainability emphasis in conservation that gained prominence
in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The term “sustainability,” which refers to the
expanded attention to land use that is environmentally sound and adequately
remunerative from an economic viewpoint, has become one of the defining goals of
much conservation worldwide. The goal of sustainability has been granted a level of
priority similar to strict preservation in certain conservation circles.
1 The term “interface” highlights
the fact that the interaction
of the large expansion
of designated conservation
areas may present any one of
several relations to agriculture
that range from conflict to
incorporation.
yale school of forestry & environmental studies