4.12 Social concerns in population resettlement
Michael M. Cernea
Resource stewardship or replacing the stewards? Impoverishment through displacement is not justifiable on conservation grounds: the two goals of protection of livelihoods and conservation of vital natural resources are compatible and must be harmonized.
Population resettlement processes result from different causes and take multiple forms, but one broad way to categorize them is to distinguish between: a) voluntary resettlement processes (e.g., voluntary migration, settling of new lands); and b) involuntary resettlement processes (e.g., flight from war, relocation caused by infrastructure programmes or by the creation of protected areas). My focus in this brief article is on the second category, particularly on relocation caused by development or nature conservation programs. I will summarize the key social and environmental concerns that must be recognized and addressed in such situations.
Avoid or minimize displacements
The sheer magnitude of involuntary population displacements has increased considerably over the last few decades. Recent estimates indicate that in every single year during the 1990s, at least 10 million people enter a process of involuntary displacement and relocation. This is caused by a cohort of programmes such as in dam construction, urban infrastructure and transportation facilities. In comparison, resettlement caused by conservation programmes (parks, biosphere reserves, etc.) is much more limited, but this should not mean that less attention should be paid to its complexity and possible negative impacts.
National parks are collective goods. The creation and protection of collective goods should not occur, however, at the expense of the individual livelihoods of the resident people. Removing the resident population has too often been standard practice in park creation; even today such decisions are sometimes taken too easily, without sufficient consideration of alternative forms of resident co-management and on-site protection.
We know that, throughout human history, changes in land- and water-use patterns have made resettlement necessary. Such resettlement will be needed in the future as well. While involuntary relocation must be avoided whenever possible, the need for resettlement cannot be eliminated completely. Irrigation for thirsty fields, wider roads in clogged downtowns and protection of biosphere reserves from consumptive overuse are all necessary. If involuntary displacements are, to a certain extent, inevitable, they must be minimized whenever they cannot be completely avoided. This includes conservation schemes. Most important, displacements must be carried out in a way that will protect the livelihoods of those displaced and prevent secondary environmental damage as well.
Concerns and risks impoverishment
What is still insufficiently understood, both by government officials and by many in the environment and conservationist community, is the long-term socio-economic impact of displacement on resident people.
The main risk of forced displacement is impoverishment of the displaced people, many of whom are poor to begin with. This risk is not abstract: social research has documented that inequitably planned and irresponsibly implemented resettlement causes increased poverty. Therefore, the main social concerns in involuntary resettlement must revolve around the inherent risks. Policy-makers, planners, and conservationists should focus on such risks and translate their concerns in commensurate mitigating actions.
What should be the main concerns of conservationists, as well as of all development practitioners, when relocation processes are undertaken? I have examined a vast body of empirical data and compared field findings of sociological studies about the basic socio-economic processes that occur when people are forcibly displaced. These comparisons have revealed recurring characteristics. I identified a pattern of eight main potential risks which, if not counteracted specifically and systematically, lead to a painful reality.1 Avoiding these risks should be the main concern of policy-makers, NGOs, planners, environmentalists.
Taken together, these eight processes represent a risk model that captures the economic, social and cultural impoverishment of displaced people. The model predicts that the displaced people are at risk to lose natural capital, human-made (physical) capital, human capital, and social capital. These processes and risks are:
1. Landlessness. Expropriation of land removes the main foundation on which people build productive systems, commercial activities and livelihoods. This is the main form of de-capitalization and pauperization of the people who are displaced, because both natural and man-made capital are lost.
2. Joblessness. Loss of wage employment occurs both in rural and urban displacement. People losing jobs may be landless agricultural labourers, service workers, or artisans. Creating new jobs for them is difficult and requires substantial investment. Therefore, the unemployment or underemployment among resettlers lingers long after physical relocation.
3. Homelessness. Loss of housing and shelter may be only temporary for many people, but for some it remains a chronic condition. In a broader cultural sense, homelessness is also placelessness, loss of a group's cultural space and identity, or cultural impoverishment.
4. Marginalization. Marginalization occurs when relocated families lose economic power and slide down towards lesser socio-economic positions: middle income farm-households become small land-holders; small shopkeepers and craftspeople lose business and fall below poverty thresholds, and so on.
5. Increased morbidity and mortality. Vulnerability to illness is increased by forced relocation, which tends to be associated with increased stress, psychological traumas, and the outbreak of parasitic and vector-born diseases. Serious decreases in health levels result from unsafe water supply and sewage systems that proliferate epidemic infections, diarrhea, dysentery, etc.
6. Food insecurity. Forced uprooting diminishes self-sufficiency, dismantles local arrangements for food supply, and thus increases the risk that people will fall into chronic food insecurity. This is defined as calorie-protein intake levels below the minimum necessary for normal growth and work.
7. Loss of access to common property. Poor farmers, particularly those without assets, suffer a loss of access to the common property goods belonging to communities that are relocated (e.g., loss of access to forests, water bodies, grazing lands, etc.). This represents a form of income loss and livelihood deterioration that is typically overlooked by planners and therefore uncompensated.
8. Social disintegration. The dismantling of community structures and social organization, the dispersion of informal and formal networks, local associations, etc. is a massive loss of social capital. Such elusive disintegration undermines livelihoods in ways uncounted and unrecognized by planners, and is among the most pervasive causes of enduring disempowerment and impoverishment.
The risks discussed above differently affect different categories of people: rural and urban, tribal and non-tribal groups, children and the elderly. Significant research findings show that woman suffer the impacts of displacement most severely
For a forestry project in Côte d'Ivoire, West Africa, co-financed by the World Bank, the requirements of the Bank's resettlement policy were applied. The project was intended to prepare and introduce forest management plans for several high-priority areas. Before the project, the country's Forestry Department initiated a crash campaign to recover control of forests. It used forestry staff trained as a paramilitary force, with no compensation and little concern for forest communities that were to be evicted. Learning through an appraisal process that the policy of the Forestry Department was to evict up to 200,000 residents in a similar manner, the World Bank's mission opposed and rejected this approach. The Bank sought and received agreement on a different course of action which would reduce overall displacement from about 200,000 people to less than 40,000; provide better conditions for resettlers; consolidate existing scattered populations into "agroforestry zones" within the legal limits of classified forests; and integrate resettlers into forest management plans. This approach, much more socially and culturally sensitive, is new for Côte d'Ivoire and was never considered before this project. What could have been a massive and violent uprooting for tens of thousands of people was averted.
The ongoing Côte d'Ivoire project is still far from being problem-free; the new government policy of relocation has been drafted, but its implementation has been postponed repeatedly. In addition, the "forest-farmers" commissions established for finding alternative areas are only partly active and forest management plans have taken a long time to prepare. Because of this, the World Bank has kept the initiative on its "problem project" list and monitors it closely. Forest authorities and the agency managing the project have renounced violent, uncompensated displacement, but learning new ways has not been easy. Currently, the staff are learning how to carry out constructive relocation, how to provide better conditions for the forest people scheduled to move to agroforestry zones, and how to integrate resettlers effectively into forest management plans. On completion, the experience of this project, with its successes and weaknesses, will contain many lessons about what should be replicated and what should be avoided in managing the relationships between resident people and park resources.
The potential for violating individual and group rights under domestic and international law makes compulsory resettlement unlike any other development activity. The fact that appeal courts frequently and significantly raise compensation levels for lost assets reflects the recognition in legal systems that people cannot be arbitrarily displaced without just compensation, regardless of national need. However, not all affected parties have access to legal remedies to enforce those rights.
Worldwide resettlement experiences show that, in many countries, the single most damaging factor of relocation is the absence of policy and legal frameworks that define the rights and entitlements of people affected by state-imposed displacements. Within such policy vacuums, standards are disregarded, arbitrariness sets in, and the powerless are victimized once again, rather than being allowed to share in the benefits of development and good environmental management.
Resettlement and demography
Social concerns in resettlement, as in most domains, are inextricably linked to environmental concerns. Relocation out of parks, for instance, suddenly increases population densities in host areas to levels that may exceed their carrying capacity and entail the overuse and abuse of natural resources. After losing access to common property natural resources, displaced people tend to encroach on reserved forests and generally increase the pressure on common property resources of the host area. Thus, relocation may become a source of increased social tensions and host-resettler conflicts. Involving residents in co-management on a profitable and sustainable basis is the best alternative to relocation, because it enables at-risk people to avoid displacement risks and share in the benefits of the conservation programme.
From preventing impoverishment to reconstructing livelihoods
The risk model that I proposed above should be seen as a working tool for preparing relocation plans (only when relocation becomes inevitable) that would be responsive to the concern for the welfare of the affected people, and would monitor how such plans are implemented. Indeed, risk recognition and analysis are crucial for sound planning and for the argument that impoverishment through displacement can be counteracted.
The eight characteristics of impoverishment described above provide a warning model that captures the lessons of many real processes and clearly point to what must be avoided. The predictive capacity of such a model helps adopt timely counteractive or compensating measures for risk management. The basic policy message embodied in the above model is that these intrinsic socio-economic risks must be brought under control through an encompassing strategy. They cannot be tamed through random piecemeal measures based solely on cash compensation for lost assets.
Most important, if this risk model is reversed, it provides an action model for constructively reestablishing those displaced.
In conclusion, it is crucial to emphasize that there are trade-offs and alternatives to displacement, particularly in nature conservation programs. The primary effort should be in preventing the displacement of resident people; mitigation only becomes an issue when relocation is unavoidable. If resident people must be relocated, the conditions under which this takes place should be carefully defined. Impoverishment through displacement is not justifiable on conservation grounds: the two goals of protection of livelihoods and conservation of vital natural resources are compatible and must be harmonized. Equitable, socially fair and workable approaches to planning, financing and implementing relocation can defeat all the impoverishment risks described in the model above.
Notes
1. Cernea, M. M., "Understanding and Preventing Impoverishment from Displacement:
Reflections on the State of Knowledge", Keynote Address presented at the
International Conference on Development-Induced Displacement, Journal of
Refugee Studies, Vol. 8, 3, 1995.
See also, as general references
West, P. C. and S. R. Brechin (eds.), Resident People and National Parks,
University of Arizona Press, Tucson, 1991.
4.13 Poverty, wealth and environmental degradation
Anil Agarwal
It is not enough to preserve biological diversity in just those areas of our country where the flora and fauna are genetically rich and diverse by setting up biosphere reserves and national parks; biological diversity must be preserved and/or recreated in every village ecosystem.
The environment is more than just trees and tigers, threatened plants and ecosystems. It is the entity in which we all subsist, and on which our entire agricultural and industrial development depends. Development can take place at the cost of the environment only up to a point. Beyond that point it will be like the foolish person who was trying to cut the very branch on which he was sitting. Development without a concern for the environment can only be development for the short term. In the long term, it will become anti-development and can go on only at the cost of enormous human suffering, increased poverty and oppression. That point may be rapidly approaching.
Simply speaking, the major environmental problems in the West are due to waste disposal: problems of air and water pollution and of disposal of highly toxic industrial and nuclear wastes. Although problems of acid rain have definitely increased and there does not yet seem to be any solution to the problems of toxic wastes, it is true that some cities and rivers do appear to be cleaner.
Environmental destruction by the rich
In the Third World, as industrialization increases, waste disposal problems are getting worse day by day, but they are still not the major or the only environmental problems; those clearly arise out of the misuse of natural resources, soils, forests and water. To a great extent these problems are created by the pressure to produce raw materials for modern industry.
The food needs of the West have also played havoc with the lands of the Third World. More than a quarter of all Central American forests have been destroyed since 1960 for cattle ranching; 85 to 95 per cent of the beef produced has gone to the U.S. while domestic consumption of beef in Central America has fallen dramatically. In the U.S., this beef has mainly been used to make pet food and hamburgers.
Beef from Central American is half the price of grass-fed beef produced in U.S, although the price of Central American beef does not represent its actual ecological cost. Cattle ranching has proved to be the worst form of land use for the fragile soils of these tropical moist forests. Within five to seven years their productivity drops dramatically and cattle ranchers have to move on.
In India, the first major attack on the forests of the northeast came with the establishment of tea plantations. The current over-fishing on India's coasts, and those of almost all southeast Asian countries, is due to the heavy demand for prawns in Western and Japanese markets. This over-fishing is leading to considerable tensions between traditional fisherfolk and trawler owners; violent encounters between the two are regularly reported. Recently, Indonesia completely banned trawlers from its coastal waters, and several countries, including India, have set up regulations to prevent trawler operators from fishing in areas near the coast. This zone is reserved for the traditional fisherfolk. But policing trawlers over such an extensive coastline is an expensive proposition and regulations are therefore seldom observed or enforced.
The pattern of environmental exploitation that we see on a global scale simply reproduces itself on a national scale. What Western industry does to the Third World environment, Indian industry does to the Indian environment. Nearly half of the industrial output in India is accounted for by operations that can be termed biomass-based industries; that is, cotton textiles, rayon, paper, plywood, rubber, soap, sugar, tobacco, jute, chocolate, food processing and packaging. Each of these industries exerts an enormous pressure on the country's cultivated and forest lands. They need crop lands, they need forests, and they need energy and irrigation.
The first lesson is therefore clear: the main source of environmental destruction in the world is the demand for natural resources generated by the consumption of the rich (whether they are rich nations or rich individuals and groups within nations). Because of this gargantuan appetite, it is mainly these wastes that contribute to the global pollution load.
The poor and their environment
The second lesson is that it is the poor that are affected the most by environmental destruction. The field experience of voluntary groups shows clearly that eradicating poverty in a country like India is simply not possible without the rational management of our environment; conversely, environmental destruction will only intensify poverty. The reason is simple, though seldom recognized. The vast majority of the rural households meet their daily household needs through biomass or biomass-related products which are mostly collected freely from the immediate environment. In short, they live within a biomass-based subsistence economy. Food, fuel (firewood, cow-dung, crop-wastes), fodder, fertilizer (organic manure, forest litter, leaf mulch), building materials (poles, thatch), herbs and clothing are all biomass products.
Water is another crucial product for survival. Water is not biomass itself, but its availability is closely related to the level of biomass available in the surrounding environment. Once the forest disappears, the local pond silts up, the village well dries up, and the perennial stream becomes reduced to a seasonal one. The water balance becomes totally upset with the destruction of vegetation: in a monsoon climate like that in India, with highly uneven rainfall over the year, environmental degradation means greatly increased runoff and floods during the peak water season and greatly increased drought and water scarcity in the lean dry season.
The magnitude of India's dependence on biomass for meeting crucial household needs can be appreciated by looking at the country's energy situation. Indians love to point out that India has the world's tenth largest industrial output. But even so, over 50 per cent of the fuel consumption in India is for a fundamental activity for survival like cooking. In developed countries, cooking consumes less than ten per cent of total national fuel consumption. Even more important for India is the fact that over 90 per cent of the cooking fuel in India is biomass: that is, firewood, cow-dung and crop wastes.
Biomass resources not only meet crucial household needs, they also provide a range of raw materials for traditional occupations and crafts and therefore are a major source of employment. Firewood and cow-dung are important sources of fuel for potters; bullock carts and catamarans are made from wood; bamboo is a vital raw material for basket weavers, and so on. Traditional crafts are threatened not only by the introduction of modern products but also by the acute shortage of biomass-based raw materials. A study from the Indian Institute of Science — the first in India on the changing market of bullock carts — reports that people in Ungra village in Karnataka can now no longer afford to buy new bullock carts with traditional wooden wheels because wood has become extremely expensive. A recent report from the Murugappa Chettiar Research Centre in Madras states that traditional fisherfolk now find it very difficult to make new catamarans because the special wood they use is so scarce and expensive.
Social activists in Saharanpur have pointed out the travails of the baan-makers who have now been deprived of their source of bhabhar grass. The Uttar Pradesh Forest Development Corporation's discrimination in favour of paper mills has turned thousands of these baan workers into destitute, landless labourers and urban migrants. Wood is now difficult to get even for making agricultural implements like ploughs, especially the wood that has been traditionally used for these implements. Few people know that one of the factors that led to the Chipko movement was the anger of the local people over the forest department's refusal to provide ash wood for making ploughs to them, allocating it instead to sporting goods manufacturers.
Fodder is another vital resource that suffers acute shortages. With less than three per cent of the world's land mass, India supports 15 per cent of its cattle, 52 per cent of its buffaloes and 15 per cent of its goats. These animals play an extremely important role in the integrated system of agriculture and animal husbandry that Indian farmers practise. As a study from the tribal areas of Gujarat shows, shortage of fodder, especially from public lands, means that poor landless households and marginal farmers do not benefit very much from the milk cooperatives and animal improvement schemes in the region.
The transformation of nature
The natural environment in India has steadily undergone an extensive transformation. There are two major pressures operating on the country's natural resources. The first, generated by population growth and thus by increased household demand for biomass resources, has been widely talked about. The poor often get blamed for the destruction of the environment. But the second set of pressures, generated by modernization, industrialization and the general penetration of the cash economy, are seldom talked about, even in policy-making circles.
Modernization affects nature in two ways. First, it is extremely destructive of the environment in its search for cheap biomass-based raw materials and for cheap opportunities for waste disposal. There is no attempt being made to internalize environmental costs; both public and private industrialists prefer to pass them on to society. State governments also give away large tracts of forests for a pittance and ignore water pollution control laws to get a few more factories.
Modernization affects nature in another way: by steadily transforming its very character. The tendency is to reduce diversity in nature and replace it with high-yield monocultures. The ecological role of the original environment is usually disregarded in this transformation. In social terms, the change is generally away from a nature that has traditionally supported household and community needs and towards one nature that is geared to meet urban and industrial needs: a nature that is essentially cash generating. Excellent examples of such transformations are the pine forests in place of the old oak forests in the Himalayas, the teak forests in place of the sal forests in the Chottanagpur Plateau, eucalyptus plantations in place of natural forests in the Western Ghats and now the proposals to grow oil palms in place of the tropical forests in the Great Nicobar Islands. Both these phenomena — the destruction of the original nature and the creation of a new, commercially oriented nature — have been taking place simultaneously in the Indian environment on a massive scale.
The effect of this massive environmental change has been disastrous for the people. In India there is an extremely high level of poverty and high population density. There is hardly any ecological space left in the physical environment which is not occupied by one human group or another for its sustenance. If human activity results in the destruction of an ecological space, or in its transformation to benefit the more powerful groups in society, then inevitably those who were dependant on that space will suffer. Development in this case leads to displacement and dispossession and will inevitably raise questions of social injustice and conflict.
The planting of eucalyptus on farmers' fields, and even on so-called barren fields, is an excellent example of this. What happens to the poor people when eucalyptus is planted on a farmer's field? We have an example from a village in Punjab where a rich farmer, a former governor with over 100 hectares of land, stopped growing cotton and has switched to eucalyptus. As long as he grew cotton, enormous quantities of crop waste was available for landless labourers in the village to use as fuel. Because of the shortage of firewood, these crop wastes were the major and almost the only source of fuel. Now, with eucalyptus being grown, their main source of fuel is gone, putting them in a precarious position. This is a case where afforestation has actually created a fuel famine for the neediest community. Foresters all over the country complain that women even take away dry eucalyptus leaves for use as fuel, thus destroying any chance of the leaves breaking down into humus and enriching the soil. But what else can these women do?
What we see in India today is a growing conflict over the use of natural resources — biomass in particular — between the two sectors of the country's economy: the cash economy or modern sector on the one hand and the non-monetary, biomass-based subsistence economy or traditional sector on the other. The destruction and transformation of the environment are already having an immediate and daily effect on the following groups (as well as others): artisans, nomads, tribes, fisherfolk, and women from almost landless, marginal and small farming households. These groups add up to nearly three-quarters of the country's entire rural population. And unlike the situation in the West, the question of environmental destruction is now not only an issue related to quality of life, it is a question of survival.
Towards holistic management
If these are the problems, then what do we do about them? First of all, there must be much more holistic thinking regarding the management of land and water resources. It is not enough to preserve biological diversity in just those areas of our country where the flora and fauna are genetically rich and diverse by setting up biosphere reserves and national parks; biological diversity must be preserved and/or recreated in every village ecosystem. Concentrating on the production of a few commodities (cereals, for instance) is totally inadequate in a society which is only partly monetized and where the vast majority still have to depend on access to free biomass resources from the immediate environment. Every village has to become a biosphere reserve.
4.14 Common property, communal property and open access regimes
Marshall Murphree
Resource-use rights are socially determined. This social determination arises from a variety of standards including formal legislation, tradition and cultural norms, and socio-economic interaction.
The terms "common property", "communal property" and "open access regimes" relate to resources used by humankind and to the social conditions that regulate such use. These terms, and the definitions given to them, are central to the body of study known as common property theory which has become increasingly important for the understanding of social sustainability in conservation and resource use. We should keep in mind, however, that they represent intellectual abstractions and types which may over-generalize or fail to adequately reflect on-the-ground social or ecological realities.
Before examining the three terms, it is useful to grasp a few related concepts: resources, resource use and ownership.
Resources and resource use
Natural resources are those components of nature which are used or are estimated to have use for people. Behind this deceptively brief and utilitarian definition are certain factors which are important to consider:
Resources are often thought of as property: things exclusively owned by a person or group of persons. Ownership, however, is never absolute. It is rather a set of rights to use the resource with certain limitations regarding the rights of others. The strength of ownership is determined by its time-frame and the conditions attached to it. The longer its duration — its "tenure" — the stronger it will be. The fewer conditions attached to it, the stronger it will be. As Alchian says, the strength of ownership "can be defined by the extent to which the owner's decision to use the resource actually determines its use" (Alchian, 1987: 1031).
Ownership is thus better understood as a set of entitlements to use resources. It involves relationships between people as well as relationships between people and resources. Resource-use rights are socially determined. This social determination arises from a variety of standards including formal legislation, tradition and cultural norms, and socio-economic interaction. These multiple sources of legitimization and enforcement explain the frequent discrepancy between the de jure and de facto resource rights of users; i.e., between what is prescribed by norms and laws and what actually happens in real life.
Common property
The term "common property" can be used to define a resource (or bundle of resources) or to define an ownership or use-rights regime. To avoid this confusion, some scholars refer to common property resources when dealing with the resources concerned and common property regimes when dealing with arrangements which regulate their use.
In the first use, common property resources are technically defined as "a class of resources for which exclusion is difficult and joint use involves subtractability" (Berkes, 1989: 7). Riverine water resources are a good example. Expectations would preclude prohibitions of use, particularly by riparian users for domestic and livestock purposes. Exclusion is therefore difficult, but extraction by any user may affect availability for others. By contrast, certain types of natural resources are more adaptable to exclusive use by the right holder or owner. Subtractability for others does not arise except possibly in the context of ecosystem concerns. A piece of arable land serves as an example.
The second use of the term relates not to the nature of the resource concerned but to the regime which regulates it. In this sense common property is often contrasted to state property and private property. In effect, common property resources, as defined earlier, can and often are managed by a state regime and thus are also considered state property. But not all common property is managed by the state, since it can also be regulated by a communal regime. Communal regimes can be considered private if we take "private" to mean "resource rights owned by non-state entities, whether individually or as groups" (Lynch and Alcorn, 1994: 375).
Communal property
Communal property resources are common property resources which are under the jurisdiction of a community of users. The term "community" can be defined spatially, socio-culturally or economically. Usually, although not always, it is used to refer to a residential group small enough for the sanctions of tradition and peer pressure to be significant in self-regulation, with spatial and social boundaries that set it apart from others. Certain resources may be individually used within these boundaries, but the common property resources are regarded as collective assets and fall under communal management.
To be sustainable, the communal property regime must have a defined membership with rules for inclusion and exclusion. It must have rules regarding access to resources which regulate internal competition. It must have the institutional means to ensure that the collective good is not eroded by specific interests. Finally, it must have appropriate legitimacy both internally and externally. In other words, it must have strong ownership. Many communal resource regimes are weak because they do not have the appropriate backing of the state or of their own constituencies.
Open access regimes
While this term is often used, it is better to speak of open access resources. Open access resources are those which are available to anyone and effectively the property of no one. This condition can arise when there is no demand for or perceived scarcity of the resource concerned and thus no collective attempt to control its use. More frequently, however, open access situations are the result of ineffective resource rights regimes which claim authority over a resource but lack the means to fulfil the responsibilities involved. This can apply to individual, communal or state regimes but is particularly true of state bureaucracies which typically base their legitimization on legislation rather than capacity. "Unfortunately, most state property regimes are examples of the state's reach exceeding its grasp" (Bromley and Cernea, 1989). The vacuum in control and management thus leads to unconstrained exploitation, which is highly threatening to sustainability. Recognition of this is largely responsible for the advocacy of state devolution of proprietorship to individual or communal resource rights regimes.
References
Alchian, A. A., "Property Rights" in New Palgrave Dictionary
of Economics, MacMillan, London, 1987.
4.15 Conflicts in conservation
Connie Lewis
A successful conflict resolution process is one in which stakeholders (individuals or groups who are directly involved in the conflict, or who may be affected by how the conflict is resolved) have the opportunity to really understand each other's needs, develop a range of alternatives to address those needs, and reach a mutually agreeable solution.
Areas of environmental conservation are refuges of tranquillity and peace. They are also places where conflict occurs. Conflicts relating to these areas are often related to enormous and intractable problems like poverty and global environmental degradation. In a world with so many problems and in which the biophysical environment and socio-cultural systems are changing rapidly, conflicts involving protected areas are inevitable.
It is important to remember that, to the extent that conflict represents the productive interaction of competing interests and values, it is a useful and ever-present function in a dynamic society. Conflicts that are properly addressed can be opportunities for problems to be identified and solved, and progress achieved. However, as we all know so well, many conflicts become counterproductive and destructive, leading to bad results and hostile relationships. Conservation professionals face the challenge of trying to address conflicts so that unproductive consequences are avoided, while human well-being and the natural environment are protected.
A successful conflict resolution process is one in which stakeholders (individuals or groups who are directly involved in the conflict, or who may be affected by how the conflict is resolved) have the opportunity to really understand each other's needs, develop a range of alternatives to address those needs, and reach a mutually agreeable solution. The emphasis is on communication. Another way to think about this kind of conflict resolution approach is as joint problem-solving or decision-making where there is a disagreement. This is something we all do every day, with our families, friends and co-workers. Many of the same common-sense approaches we use in those settings can be applied to conservation area conflicts.
Causes of conflicts in conservation areas
The term "conflict" can be taken to mean just about any situation in which there is a clash of interests or ideas. In the context of a conservation initiative, it usually suggests that there is a group or groups whose interests are in opposition to those of the protected area. It is often very difficult to precisely define the limits of conservation area conflicts because they are frequently rooted in issues like poverty and overpopulation. The only way to resolve some of these conflicts in the long term is to promote economic development while simultaneously trying to conserve the natural resources of the area concerned. In cases where a conflict is particularly intractable and long-standing, it may be necessary to think about conflict management rather than conflict resolution: to focus on minimizing the damage from the conflict and to try to take incremental steps toward resolution.
There are many reasons why conflicts arise in conservation areas. The primary cause is usually either:
Conflict resolution efforts that deal with only one of these dimensions are not likely to succeed.
Characteristics of conflicts in conservation
Understanding several important characteristics of conflicts in conservation areas may help in the search for ways to manage and resolve them. Many of these characteristics apply to other conflicts as well, but they are especially critical in the context of conservation initiatives.
One characteristic of many conservation area conflicts is that they involve a large number of stakeholders (i.e., individuals or groups who are directly involved in the conflict, or who may be affected by how the conflict is resolved); all with their own needs, perspectives, values and goals. They may include people who live within the boundaries of the conservation initiative (sometimes indigenous groups with long-standing claims to the land); people living in nearby communities (who may have a tradition of using the land within the conservation area for firewood collection, pasture, building materials, medicinal plants, hunting or other uses); and people from near and far whose interest is in the conservation values of the area (for example tourists, hunters, and local, national or international NGOs who value the area for its wildlife, scenery and wilderness characteristics).
The managers and staff of the conservation initiative are also stakeholders, as are scientists who may utilize the area for research projects. There also may be local, regional, and national government entities that benefit from or suffer from the protection of the natural resources. In some cases the stakeholders of a conservation area may include guerrillas or other warring factions who use the area as a refuge. The variety and number of stakeholders and the interplay among local, national and international interests present a challenge to anyone attempting to understand, manage or resolve these conflicts.
A second characteristic is that many of the factors that affect the management and resolution of conservation area lie outside the boundaries of the area concerned and are largely beyond the control of the conservation initiative's management. These include institutional, legal, political, and economic influences (e.g., changes in political leadership, new institutional protocols, economic problems, and environmental impacts that degrade the environment of the area, such as air/water pollution, water scarcity, etc.). Consequently, managers must often broaden their horizons far beyond the conservation area itself to respond effectively to conflicts which threaten the initiative.
A third characteristic is that conservation area conflicts involve both scientific and socio-cultural phenomena. Conflicts are often complicated by scientific uncertainty or by tension between scientific and traditional/anecdotal or local knowledge. The need to make recommendations in the face of missing or contradictory data is often one of the most frustrating aspects of conflict response in conservation areas.
Finally, most conservation areas are faced with a shortage of financial resources. This inhibits the ability of the managers to deal with conflict situations, (e.g., to pay compensation, obtain the data that could help settle the conflict, hire outside expertise, pay for vehicles, guns and other supplies that are necessary for enforcement, etc.).
Lessons for managers of conservation initiatives
Conservation area managers are likely to find themselves in a variety of roles in the conflicts that affect their areas. They may be mediators, negotiators, experts, advisors, defenders, or decision-makers. Often they find themselves in more than one of these roles at once. Regardless of the role the management of the conservation initiative plays at any particular time, he or she will obviously be a critical person in the conflict and may be in a position to help achieve a resolution.
Address conflicts in ways appropriate to the local situation. Conflicts occur, and must be addressed, within a particular cultural, political and social context. Any conflict management approach must be appropriate for the context in which it occurs and must take local conflict-resolution customs and institutions into account. This notwithstanding, there are three general principles that should be applicable to the majority of conservation area conflicts (see also subsection 6.4 of this resource set):
Support the process with enforcement measures. In some instances, conflict resolution may reduce the need for enforcement, especially when conflict resolution addresses the real interests that underlie the conflict. In most cases, however, enforcement will continue to be a necessary compliment to the conflict resolution effort. Enforcement is important and necessary to:
Enforcement can be labour-intensive and costly. There are a number of ways, however, in which enforcement can be integrated with the ongoing function of the conservation initiative, and its effectiveness can be enhanced. Options include strengthening incentives and minimizing disincentives for compliance; trying to get as much understanding as possible and 'ownership' by local people of the rules that are being enforced; entering into collaborative efforts/partnerships with the local people to design and conduct enforcement efforts; and, if possible, using local community members as enforcement personnel.
Box 14 Resettlement in Cote d'Ivoire
2. See the gripping story written by anthropologist Colin Turnbull about the disastrous displacement of the Ik tribe in Uganda for the purpose of creating a natural park (Turnbull, C., The Mountain People, New York, Simon & Schuster, 1972).
3. Fernandes, W., "The Impact of Displacement on Women from the Weaker Sections in India", paper presented at the International Conference on Development-Induced Displacement, Oxford, January, 1995.
4. Cernea, M. M., Eight Main Risks: Impoverishment and Social Justice in Resettlement, The World Bank, Environment Department Papers, 1996.
Wells, M. and K. Brandon, with L. Hannah, People and Parks: Linking Protected Area Management with Local Level Communities, World Bank, WWF-US and USAID, Washington D.C., 1992.
Ownership
Berkes, F. (ed.), Common Property Resources, Ecology and Community-Based Sustainable Development, Belhaven Press, London, 1989.
Bromley, D. W. and M. M. Cernea, The Management of Common Property Natural Resources, Some Conceptual and Operational Fallacies, World Bank Discussion Paper, No. 57, The World Bank, Washington D.C., 1989.
Lynch, O. J. and J. Alcorn, "Tenurial rights and community-based conservation" in Western, D. Wright, M. and S. Strum (eds.), Natural Connections: Perspectives in Community-based Conservation, Island Press, Washington D.C., 1994.
When appropriate, involve NGOs in the process. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) can play a tremendously important role in conflict resolution. Their role and power in society varies a great deal around the world, but increasingly, many NGOs wield considerable influence. The ability of an NGO to play an effective role and what exactly that role might be in a conflict situation depends a great deal on what the NGO is set up to do, on its credibility with local people and the government, and on its vision and resources. Many NGOs have been created expressly for the purpose of providing advocacy and support for particular protected areas. For obvious reasons, it makes sense for conservation area managers to cultivate relationships with these NGOs and to utilize the resources they can provide. As legitimate entities with real interests at stake, they should be included fully in conservation area participatory processes, both at the creation of the area and in ongoing management.
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