Who Gains From Community Conservation? Intended and Unintended Costs and Benefits of Participative Approaches in Peru and Tanzania

• DOI: 10.1177/1070496508316853
• Author: Patrick Meroka,Marc Galvin,Jamil Alca,Tobias Haller,Alex Alvarez
• Published date: 01 June 2008
• Date: 01 June 2008
• Subject Matter: Articles

118

Authors’ Note: The authors acknowledge support from the Swiss National Center of Competence in

Research North–South: Research partnerships for mitigating syndromes of global change, cofunded by

the Swiss National Science Foundation and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation. Please

address correspondence to Tobias Haller, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Zurich,

Andreasstr. 15, 8050 Zurich, Switzerland; Tel 0041 44 635 22 32/11; e-mail: thaller@ethno.uzh.ch,

hallerto@yahoo.com.

The Journal of Environment

& Development

Volume 17Number 2

June 2008 118-144

© 2008 Sage Publications

10.1177/1070496508316853

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hosted at

http://online.sagepub.com

Who Gains From Community

Conservation?

Intended and Unintended Costs and

Benefits of Participative Approaches in

Peru and Tanzania

Tobias Haller

University of Zurich

Marc Galvin

Graduate Institute of International and

Development Studies, Geneva

Patrick Meroka

University of Zurich

Jamil Alca

Alex Alvarez

Graduate Institute of International and

Development Studies, Geneva

Who are the beneficiaries from participative approaches in conservation? The authors

compare two protected areas Amarakaeri Communal Reserve in Peru and Selous Game

Reserve in Tanzania and show how in similar institutional settings local interest groups

react very differently to the possibility of participation. The difference, however, does not

regard economic benefits. In the case of Peru, local groups defining themselves as indige-

nous peoples see a political gain in participatory conservation, which seems to offer the

possibility for securing land rights in their area. In Tanzania, however, local actors oppose

participative conservation strategies or passively resist those forced on them because they

cause high-economic costs and no political gains. By comparing both cases based on a new

institutionalism analysis, the article reveals how intended and unintended costs and bene-

fits can explain different attitudes of local groups to participative conservation.

Keywords: protected areas; participatory management; cost–benefit analysis; new

institutionalism; indigenous people; community-based conservation

Haller et al. / Who Gains From Community Conservation? 119

Since the past decade, many scholars have described the paradigmatic change in

“conservation policy” characterized by the switch from a fortress vision to the

participatory approach. The fortress approach is understood as conservation that

excludes local people from a protected area, managed top-down, and involving a

military-style control system. By community conservation, we mean approaches that

seek more or less intensive involvement of local people, to gain local support for a

protected area and to reduce management costs and allowing decentralization (see

also Hulme & Murphree, 2001; Pimbert & Pretty, 1997; Rodary, Castellanet, &

Rossi, 2003). Following Hulme and Murphree (2001), our hypothesis is that this

change can be analyzed as an “institutional change.” The paradigmatic change from

fortress to community conservation is said to have been initiated by epistemic com-

munities (Haas, 1992) and fixed at the international level through legal conventions.

Its application can be observed at the national and local level in concrete case stud-

ies implying participatory experiences. But why does such a change happen and who

are the real beneficiaries of such a process? Is it really the economic gains from par-

ticipation that triggers local stakeholders to be active or are there other more politi-

cal processes at work?

We decided to illustrate this process with two examples of local attitudes and

strategies in two World Heritage Sites, one in Peru (Manu National Park; MNP) and

the other in Tanzania (Selous Game Reserve; SGR). The reason for selecting these

two areas from the research is that they share many structural characteristics. The

MNP and SGR are both recognized as World Heritage Sites by the UNESCO and as

biosphere reserves. They both are the largest protected areas in their countries and

are based on the same logic of fortress conservation that has changed because of the

paradigm shift to community conservation (Hulme & Murphree, 2001). This includes

the installation of buffer zone areas and new small participatory projects in an effort

to combine both conservation and development. International cooperation supported

the creation of both the Amarakaeri Communal Reserve (ACR) in Peru in 2002, and

Wildlife Management Area (WMA) and Community Conservation Resources

Management (CCRM) in the Rufiji Environment Management Project (called IUCN

REMP) in Tanzania in 2001. According to the IUCN classification,1both areas cor-

respond to Category II (National Park) for the MNP and IV (Habitat/Species

Management) for the SGR.

It was observed that local communities adopt participative approaches to commu-

nity conservation in very different ways. In 2001, the indigenous groups of the

Harakmbut on the border of the MNP organized a manifestation urging the state to

set up a communal reserve within their territory. In 2002, this reserve known as the

ACR was officially established. But the promised economic gains did not material-

ize, and as a result, the local indigenous organization Federación Nativa del Río

Madre de Dios y Afluentes (FENAMAD) is presently faced with political problems.

Nevertheless, indigenous groups such as the Harakmbut and the Machiguenga are

generally sticking with the strategy of the communal protected area.