Environmental Conservation 34 (4): 276–279 © 2008 Foundation for Environmental Conservation
1017/S0376892908004438
COMMENT
Conservation and development in tropical forest landscapes: a time to face
the trade-offs?
It is widely acknowledged that conservation cannot be
undertaken without the support and participation of local
people, and that livelihood concerns and future development
goals need to be at the centre of any viable conservation
strategy that involves people (Pimbert & Pretty 1995; Hulme
& Murphree 2001; Arnold 2002; McShane 2003; Barrett et al.
2005). Nevertheless, for several years a contentious exchange
has been waging regarding the legitimacy of local peoples
involvement in conservation efforts and protected areas (PAs)
(Oates 1999; Terborgh 1999; Pimm et al. 2001; Wilkie et al.
2006) and the impacts of PAs on local communities (Adams
2004; Chapin 2004; Hutton et al. 2005; Brockington & Igoe
2006; Cernea & Schmidt-Soltau 2006). Yet, despite scores
of publications supporting different view points, the global
debate continues to be highly dichotomous, with repeated
cycles of ‘irresistible dialectic’ (Redford & Painter 2006,
p. 3) pitting strict conservation against human well-being.
As in most disagreements, this exchange is characterized in
great part by polarized one-sided presentation of arguments
by conservation biologists and social scientists, where both
sides selectively use information to support their viewpoints.
This debate could be regarded as a regular scientific
squabble with minor impacts on the world. However, it is
important to acknowledge the power that such conceptual
debates have in shaping policies, institutional programmes and
funding streams for conservation and development efforts.
Therefore, we take the opportunity in this comment to
examine some aspects of this debate in further detail, and
to suggest a way of examining and evaluating conservation
and development outcomes.
Protectionism and poverty
The dominant colonial approach to conservation was the
establishment of PAs from which people were essentially
excluded or resettled, often forcibly (Adams 2004; Hutton
et al. 2005), and there are still many ‘protectionist’ views in
the conservation field (Gartlan 1998; Oates 1999; Terborgh
1999; Terborgh et al. 2002). The PA network is extensive;
there are presently more than 100 000 PAs, constituting
11.5% of the terrestrial surface of the Earth (Naughton-
Treves et al. 2005). However, considerable social conflicts
result from conservation initiatives and, despite protection
measures, in most areas human impacts continue relatively
unabated and local non-compliance is customary (Robbins
et al. 2006). At the same time, tropical forest landscapes
are often marked by dire poverty. For example, in the vast
Tri-National de la Sangha area of Cameroon, Congo and the
doi:10.
Central Africa Republic, an estimated 75% of the population
live below the poverty line of US$ 1 per day (Sayer et al. 2007).
Undertaking conservation in such landscapes is not tenable if
it further contributes to marginalization and impoverishment
and disregards the development needs of local people, as
has been previously argued (Cernea & Schmidt-Soltau 2006;
Campese et al. 2007). There are valid ethical and biological
arguments for biodiversity conservation at the regional and
global levels, but it is clearly unreasonable to expect the
rural poor to incur the opportunity costs, restrictions and
potential harm that are often imposed by global conservation
programmes (Arjunan et al. 2006).
Integrated conservation and development
In recognition of the diverse problems associated with pro-
tectionism, traditional means of conserving biodiversity have
made way in the past twenty years to a more participatory and
people-centred approach to what became known as integrated
conservation and development projects (ICDPs; McShane &
Wells 2004). ICDPs were ‘designed’ to reduce poverty and
improve incomes levels, nutrition, health care and education,
as well as to conserve biodiversity (Christensen 2004). Despite
virtually no field testing, and flush with funding that had
traditionally gone to development projects, ICDPs quickly
became the standard approach in attempting to combine the
conservation of biodiversity with community development in
PAs (Western & Wright 1994; Wells et al. 2004).
However, a number of reviews have suggested that
ICDPs have not reconciled conservation and development
agendas (Alpert 1996; Chapin 2004; Christensen 2004). While
positions have varied tremendously, both conservationists and
social scientists have harshly criticized ICDPs, contributing
to their declining popularity and a disenchantment with
community-based approaches (Neumann 1998; Agrawal &
Gibson 1999; Wells et al. 2004). While conservationists have
complained that community-based approaches do not provide
enough protection for endangered species and environments
and fail to achieve conservation goals (Kremen et al. 1994;
Oates 1999), social scientists have argued that ICDPs function
in the same moulds as conventional development projects and
result in highly inequitable outcomes that severely limit local
people’s rights (Schmidt-Soltau 2004) potentially becoming
poverty traps for local communities (Dove 1993). Chapin
(2004, p. 20) suggested that one key reason for this was that
‘on the ground, ICDPs were generally paternalistic, lacking
in expertise and one-sided: driven by the agenda of the

conservationists with little indigenous input’. The large non-
governmental organizations (NGOs) involved in biodiversity
conservation and, by implication, the nation states they
support in land-use management, found themselves under
scrutiny as never before (Chapin 2004; Romero & Andrade
2004). While large NGOs have become increasingly powerful
and outspoken in the last decade owing to their access to
financial capital, they have also been targets of strident critique
and have needed increasingly to demonstrate that they operate
with greater equity and include local stakeholders in a mean-
ingful way (Romero & Andrade 2004; Alcorn & Royo 2007).
Several authors question the inherent assumptions within
ICDPs, which focus on local people as the agents of
environmental destruction while disregarding larger-scale
extraction of resources by loggers, mining, cattle ranching
and industrial agriculture (Dove 1993; Nepstad et al. 2000;
Christensen 2004; Sayer & Campbell 2004). This failure
of ICDP managers to address the larger issue surrounding
conservation in the tropics by focusing only on local, and
arguably minor, threats has contributed to their lack of success
(Christensen 2004) and further alienates local constituent
support for conservation activities (Schmidt-Soltau 2004).
However, many of these authors also underplay the impact
of human use on forest environments at a local scale, adhering
to notions of local conservation agency (for example Cernea &
Schmidt-Soltau 2006).
Polarized debates
Despite the clear paradigm shift to attempt to take human
welfare into account, considerable debate has recently
resurfaced regarding the impacts of conservation on human
welfare and human rights (Cernea & Schmidt-Soltau 2006;
Brockington & Igoe 2006; Campese et al. 2007). Such polarized
views are hard to reconcile. For example, it has recently been
reported that there are up to 170 000 ‘conservation refugees’
in Central Africa alone (Cernea & Schmidt-Soltau 2006), yet
conservationists working in the region emphatically refute
these figures (Maisels et al. 2007). Likewise, a global review
of ‘conservation evictions’ presented a table of demographic
figures from the 13 newly-created national parks of Gabon
(Brockington & Igoe 2006). While the Wildlife Conservation
Society stated there were no people settled within the
boundaries of these parks an independent researcher was
quoted as suggesting there were almost 7000 people living
within these new PAs (Brockington & Igoe 2006).
A similar dichotomy has characterized heated debate over
the legitimacy of local people in Amazonian PAs, where
extractive reserves have been used as an example of both
the failure and success of people-based conservation. In a
resurgence of the protectionist paradigm, several authors
(Terborgh 1999, 2000; Redford & Sanderson 2000) have
challenged the conservation capacity and resource-use rights
of local communities, focusing on a local scale and arguing
for more extreme measures because of smallholder threats
to biodiversity, namely wildlife (Pimm et al. 2001), while
Comment 277
ignoring larger-scale threats to conservation. Defenders of
local people’s involvement in conservation argue on a larger
scale that people-based PAs fulfil their conservation objectives
by preserving forest cover and serving as deforestation buffers
(Schwartzmann et al. 2000a, b; Zimmerman et al. 2001;
Almeida 2002; Nepstad et al. 2006). At the national level,
the criticism of extractive reserves becomes even harsher
and almost solely based on hearsay; Brazilian conservationists
polemically write about the ‘unbearable lightness of extractive
reserves’ (Costa 2004) that ‘suffocate the forest’ (Correa
2004), without having actually having set foot in an extractive
reserve to collect evidence. These examples underline how
polemic argumentation and often anecdotal evidence are
selectively used by both sides of the debate to support a
hypothesis or ethical standpoint without sufficient on-the-
ground verification.
Given the huge volume of articles in the conservation
arena significant advances should have been made, yet
there is a continued reluctance for social and biological
scientists to engage in a meaningful way, with few
exceptions (Brosius & Russell 2003; Adams et al. 2004;
Agrawal & Redford 2006), despite encouragement towards
interdisciplinary approaches to conservation and development
(see Campbell 2005). A rich body of literature has been
produced on techniques and approaches for integrated natural
resources management, participatory resource management
and evaluation of conservation success (see Sayer & Campbell
2004). Mulder (2007, p. 904) suggested that social scientists
had the tools and expertise to ‘predict the kinds of inequities
that so frequently result from conservation projects and
make recommendations for wiser and forward looking
interventions’. Yet, these tools are not used in most projects,
as conservation biologists generally do not encourage their
integration into project planning and implementation.
Which way forward?
As researchers who drive the debates which influence
intervention strategies, we have a responsibility to contribute
to this subject by moving beyond polemic, anecdotal
evidence and prolonged argument, towards a common
framework in which all parties can examine and appreciate
the multiple perspectives of conservation and development
efforts. For this, careful field-based, in-depth and multi-
disciplinary research are needed to provide a contextualized
analysis of conservation scenarios from multiple and balanced
perspectives (Chan et al. 2007; see also Sayer et al. 2007). We
make four suggestions for further research development.
Firstly, systematic comparison of a large(r) number of
cases is required. While case studies are important to the
understanding of the complexity of each situation and the
issues involved, they provide a limited basis for broader
generalizations regarding the success and failure of integrated
conservation and development strategies. To move beyond
this, more systematic comparative information needs to be
gathered on different conservation and livelihood outcomes
278 Comment
in a larger number of different types of PAs (for example
Agrawal & Redford 2006; Nepstad et al. 2006).
Secondly, to evaluate external versus internal threats to
conservation and human well-being, it is important to examine
PA trajectories within their historical and spatial context.
Conservation and livelihood outcomes often depend most on
contextual factors (such as a peripheral or central location,
proximity to cattle ranches, oil palm plantations or duration
of migration process). Blanket statements about ICDPs or
particular types of PAs working or not working are therefore
problematic. Analyses of the structure and design of PA efforts
need to be disentangled from location and context factors.
Thirdly, in order to achieve a better spatial contextual
analysis and a broader comparative basis, more remote sensing
analyses should be conducted to assess how effective PAs are
at conserving forest cover and functioning as deforestation
buffers against external and internal threats to conservation
(see Schwartzman & Zimmerman 2005; Nepstad et al. 2006).
In association with this, in-depth ecological, ethnographic and
economic analyses of the most debated aspects, such as impacts
on game populations, displacement of local inhabitants and
opportunity costs of local inhabitants are needed. Here again,
comparing realities inside PAs to those immediately outside
PAs is essential if PA impacts are to be accurately evaluated.
Finally, analysis of ICDP and PA success needs to
move beyond either looking at conservation outcomes or
livelihood benefits as competing criteria for evaluation.
PA analysis needs to encompass a series of criteria that
address a number of dimensions of conservation and
development. For example, the Centre for International
Forestry Research (CIFOR) has developed a toolbox aimed
at assessing environmental and development outcomes
in conservation landscapes (Sayer et al. 2007; see
also http://www.cifor.cgiar.org/conservation/_ref/home/
index.htm), using outcome tracking methods and visioning
tools that require considerable input from a wide range of
stakeholders within a project, or landscape.
With such multi-disciplinary and wide-ranging contri-
butions, hopefully the debate can be based on more solid
common ground. It is only simultaneously considering these
dimensions, that the costs and benefits, losers and winners,
and the trade-offs of particular conservation approaches can
be made explicit and more honestly negotiated in academia
and conservation practice.
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T . C . H . S U N D E R L A N D 1 ∗, C . E H R I N G H A U S 2 A N D
B.M.CAMPBELL1
1
Centre for International Forestry Research, PO Box 6596
JKPWB Jakarta 10065, Indonesia
2
Centre for International Forestry Research, Convênio
Embrapa-CIFOR CEP 66.095-100, Bélem, Pará, Brazil
* Correspondence: Dr T. Sunderland e-mail: t.sunderland@cgiar.
org