Ethnoecology, Resource Use, Conservation And Development In A ...

10.2 Research findings and their implications
This study contributes to filling the observed gap in empirical data on ethnoecology
that can serve to advance its integration with conventional approaches to resource
management and development. The research findings are generally consistent with
the established ideas on this theme identified in the literature (chapter 1.2), and
serve to enhance and develop many of these.
Current patterns of subsistence entail an interest among the Wapishana people in
biological conservation (cf. Droste zu Hulshoff and Gregg 1985; Clay 1988; Fisher
1994). Local attitudes demonstrate an interest in the utilitarian aspects of
conservation, in a broad sense incorporating elements of cultural conservation,
identity, independence, freedom of lifestyle choice and recreational and aesthetic
criteria as well as realised and potential direct use (cf. Alcorn and Toledo 1998;
Kaimowitz et al. 2000; Zimmerman et al. 2001). This demonstrates a significant
measure of common ground among the Wapishana people and conservationists,
though western concepts of conservation are not universally endorsed (cf. Ellen
1986; Conklin and Graham 1995; Brosius 1997; Oviedo 2001). In practical terms,
conservation initiatives in the region will have the greatest chance of success if they
are consistent with the local perception that conservation should be, from start to
finish, employed as a tool for the safeguarding and improvement of local lifestyles,
and with the need for local control over the decision making process that this implies.
The nature of such a locally determined and beneficial conservation strategy is
illuminated by the study of cultural ecology presented here (chapter 4). The analysis
combined the theoretical perspective of the social-ecological system (Berkes and
Folke 1998a) with a consideration of the subsistence strategies of individual actors
(Vayda 1996). Individual behaviour appears to operate such as to maximise expected
direct returns from subsistence activities (cf. Hames and Vickers 1982; Hawkes et al.
1982; Alvard 1993, 1995). However, this takes places within various constraints of
technology (cf. Hames 1979), access to resources and symbolically mediated
restrictions on consumption (cf. Gadgil and Vartak 1976; Joshi and Gadgil 1991; Price
1995; Gadgil et al 1998), which may serve to help maintain levels of exploitation
within the limits of sustainability (cf. Reichel Dolmatoff 1971, 1976; Ross 1978;
Balée 1994; Descola 1994). The emergent properties of the social-ecological system
appear to be such that the habitat modifications resulting from subsistence activities
generally lead to local enhancement of both biodiversity and the proportion of
ecological production available for human consumption (cf. Posey 1985; Balée 1989,
1993).