Political ecology of Biodiversity conservation

Once I asked a bunch of students what would come in their mind when they heard the word "biodiversity". They answered me that it was the loss of biodiversity and conservation of certain flagship species like rhinos and tigers. Similar tone is also echoed in the given readings: biodiversity is being lost and what it needs is protection. By this, it sounds like biodiversity is a dominion of bio-environmentalists. To certain extent, it's true. But there are several interpretations, which are closer to the perspectives of social greens, on causes of loss and approaches of conservation with respect to human system.

Ramachandra Guha and Madhav Gadgil (1995) proposed a framework of ecology and equity that divided India's population into three categories: ecosystem people, ecological refugees and omnivores (Guha and Gadgil 1995: 3-4). Ecosystem people, that constitute more than half of India's population, depend on the natural environments of their own locality to meet most of their material needs.  As the natural world recedes or faces human encroachment, for example due to mine extraction or dam construction, the capacities of local ecosystems gets shrunk and some of ecosystem people flee to live in the margins of islands of prosperity. They are called ecological refugee, constituting almost one third of Indian population. There is a third category of handful but powerful group of people, also termed as biosphere people (as they can enjoy the produce of the entire biosphere from anywhere, in contrast to the ecosystem people who have a very limited resource catchment). Since the biosphere people devour everything produced all over the earth, they are called omnivores. Based on this framework, ecosystem people should be at the center of assessment of impact and benefits of biodiversity conservation.

Similarly, Escobar (1999) brings four major perspectives around biodiversity: resource management based globalocentric perspectives, sovereignty based third world national perspectives, bio-democracy based southern NGO perspectives and cultural autonomy based social movement's perspectives. Not all perspectives are equally emphasized in the current politics of biodiversity conservation. The last perspective brings an alternative perspective to the current dominant knowledge and process of biodiversity conservation. With increasing criticisms of the first two perspectives, the later two are now making strong presence in the mainstream conservation discourses. As a result we see more socially just approaches of biodiversity conservation. It will help to address the tension like one indicated by an Egyptian bird-seller's question. Unlike the past interpretation (considering conservation as a Western agenda), now local people are participating and benefiting directly from the conservation. There are several success stories. We need more such alternative approach to conservation which bridges nature-culture divide. Therefore we need more engagement of so called social greens in biodiversity conservation.

I have many interesting experiences of natural world. More than 10 years ago, right after my undergraduate study, I was part of a resource mapping project. We were in a field trip to the Nepal's one of the remotest area, north-west mountainous region bordering to Tibet. The region was quite far, almost 8-10 days of walking, from any areas that had road linkage. We spent almost 3 months in those areas by walking around settlements and forest areas doing ecological assessments. Sometime we walked almost two or three days in the rugged landscape without seeing any human settlement. The settlements in those areas were highly sparse. We wondered why people would live in such remote areas. We thought that government should resettle them in accessible plain areas so that they would get government's services and attain easier lifestyles and government could declare those areas as any sorts of sanctuaries or protected areas. Based on our knowledge of that time, doing so would be the best approach for benefit of both, people in those areas and biodiversity of the region. Do you have any ideas about such approach? However, only later on, I was convinced by the fact that people's livelihood and cultural systems are closely associated with the natural environment they live. That is their niche. Consequences of resettling people in different eco-cultural region would be disastrous. Biodiversity is part of cultural diversity of the region. We also see that biodiversity hot-spots in the world are those regions which usually have higher cultural diversity. Therefore we need conservation efforts that puts interests of ecosystem people, not that of omnivores, at the center.

References:

Gadgil, Madhav and Guha, Ramchandra. 1995. Ecology and equity: Use and abuse of nature in contemporary India. Routledge.

Escobar, Arturo. 1998. Whose Knowledge, Whose nature?  Biodiversity, Conservation, and the Political Ecology of Social Movements. Journal of Political Ecology, volume 5: 53-82.