Communities and The Environment: Ethnicity, Gender, and the State in Community-Based Conservation - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 081352914X ISBN 13: 9780813529141

Publisher: Rutgers University Press, 2001

Synopsis

For years environmentalists thought natural resources could be best protected by national legislation. But the poor outcomes of this top-down policy have led conservation professionals today to regard local communities as the agents of conservation efforts. According to a recent survey, more than fifty countries report that they pursue partnerships with local communities in an effort to protect their forests. Despite the recent popularity of a community-based approach, the concept of community rarely receives the attention it should get from those concerned with resource management. This balanced volume redresses the situation, demonstrating both the promise and the potential dangers of community action.

Although the contributors advocate community-based conservation, they examine the record with a critical eye. They pay attention to the concrete political contexts in which communities emerge and operate. Understanding the nature of community requires understanding the internal politics of local regions and their relationship to external forces and actors. Especially critical are issues related to ethnicity, gender, and the state.

About this title

About the Author

Arun Agarwal is an associate professor of political science at Yale. He has written Greener Pastures: Politics, Markets, and Community among a Migrant People.

Clark C. Gibson is an associate professor of political science at Indian University, Bloomington. He is the author of Politicians and Poachers: The Political Economy of Wildlife Policy in Africa. 

From the Back Cover

For years environmentalists thought natural resources could be best protected by national legislation. Poor outcomes associated with this top-down approach, however, led many policymakers and practitioners to turn to local communities for better management of the environment: according to a recent survey, more than fifty countries report partnerships with communities in the forestry sector alone. But the assumptions and implications of making local communities the managers of natural resources have rarely been explored. What constitutes a "community"? Who and what should be included in framing and implementing conservation policies? What are the important political linkages between communities and the state?

This balanced volume interrogates this unexamined acceptance of community-based conservation policies. Although the contributors to this volume generally advocate the inclusion of local people in decisions about their natural resources, they also offer a much-needed corrective to the prevailing view, and give a more nuanced and realistic assessment of both the contexts and outcomes of community-based policies. Covering a wide variety of natural resources in South Asian, African, and North American countries, the case studies in this volume focus especially on how the roles of ethnicity, gender, and the state can be pivotal to the success or failure of community-based conservation.

Edition details

• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 081352914X
• ISBN 13: 9780813529141
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224
• Editor: Agrawal Arun, Gibson Clark C.