The cultural context of biodiversity conservation - Oapen

The discursive context
entific credibility of such notions be recognised, the common logic of conventional
conservation management continued to deny the complexity of interfering factors that
contribute to any given environmental situation. Howitt argues that the weakness of
many resource management systems is »their failure to address the social, cultural and
political complexity as competently and comprehensively as they tackle ecological and
engineering complexities« (2001: 71). In pursuing simplicity, he writes, scientific thinking
underlying conservational practices »minimises the extension of interaction to a
relatively narrow range of direct causes and effects« (2001: 69). Likewise, Berkes
(1999: 10) refers to the limitations of scientific paradigms inherent in conventional resource
management, which are based on an instrumental attitude towards nature. In
the same way, Chatty and Colchester (2002: 7) assess the positivist or rationalist principle
of conservation science that assumes the existence of only one single reality. This approach,
they argue, reduces complex aspects of problems into discrete parts to be analysed
with the goal to discover, predict and control this reality and to summarise the
obtained knowledge in universal laws or generalisations. These expressions concerning
the inadequacies of scientific thinking and inherent ethnocentric values underlying
conventional conservation practice came along with the quest for an »entirely new
ecological paradigm« (Kalland 2000: 321) to identify and promote social processes that
enable local communities to conserve and enhance biodiversity as part of their livelihood
systems. In the search for alternative conservation and development approaches,
it became increasingly clear that protected areas had almost always been created on
the top of areas inhabited and used by existing populations. This perspective involves
the growing awareness that the biodiversity that parks are designed to protect is in fact
a »social good« (Redford et al. 2006: 240).
3.2.2 From conflict to cooperation
In their account on Building Alliances with Indigenous Peoples to Establish and Manage Protected
Areas, Oviedo and Brown (1999) observe that significant changes in the way protected
areas are currently conceived, established and managed indicate the emergence
of the claimed new ecological paradigm. Apparently, as a result of changing political
perspectives within the environmental movement, there has been a broadening of understanding
with regard to cooperation in natural resource management over the past
decade. As it became increasingly clear that conservation and development initiatives
that pay attention to local perceptions instead of merely being imposed from above
were more likely to be relevant to people's needs and to generate sustainable intervention,
the major international conservation agencies responded increasingly to the call
for collaborative approaches in the planning and implementation of protected areas. 17
This way of thinking is mirrored in the definition of a protected area as provided by
17 Among other multilateral lending organisations, even the World Bank has recognised the crucial
role of community-based and people-oriented approaches as key issue in sustainable development
and environmental protection, as Davis (1993) indicates.
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