The Journal of Environment & Development

This article argues that conservation agendas need to be informed by a landscape aesthetics that embraces the cultural and material richness of people’s relationship to place to better inform conservation agendas. Historical and contemporary views of landscape aesthetics and their relationship to nature conservation and notions of wilderness need to be included to complement a scientific expert assessment of conservation needs and approaches. Recent examples of conservation projects in Zanzibar are used to reveal how representations and symbols in nature are deeply embedded in biodiversity conservation aspirations and practices promoted by conservation experts. The article posits that an embodied and pluralistic approach to landscape aesthetics can more profoundly contextualize the specificity of interaction between people and between people and their environments and lead to more viable conservation and development outcomes. This would provide a contingent perspective that would to help elucidate nuanced understandings of social relations and place, thereby better serving both conservation and development agendas.

Using a survey of communal conservancies in Namibia, we find that they provide some direct economic benefits to conservancy members, but that indirect benefits promoting development for all residents have not materialized. This partially explains why a high level of discontent with community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) as a development strategy remains, which would need to be addressed with policies that promote a more equitable distribution of benefits from CBNRM. Advocates of CBNRM draw on theories of comparative advantage and collective action to argue that communal conservation efforts enhance the viability of nature tourism as a rural development strategy. We employ a mixed-methods approach to test to what extent CBNRM generates direct and indirect economic benefits, and if these benefits induce participation in communal conservation.

Protected areas occupy about 27% of Tanzania’s land of 945,000 sq km and contribute 17.5% of its GDP. But who benefits from and pays for the cost of conservation? This study provides insights into these issues based on a survey conducted in the Serengeti ecosystem, involving 20 villages in Serengeti and Loliondo. The results show that villagers received insignificant benefits from conservation compared with the costs they are incurring. Governance of income at the village level was also a major challenge. There was a lack of capacity to handle large amounts of money and little or no planning, transparency, and accountability. It is recommended that income allocation to the communities is increased and external audits of village funds are conducted. Communities should furthermore be allowed to extract resources sustainably in protected areas. Youth should be encouraged to attend higher education and wildlife technical colleges to learn about the values of wildlife. Finally, the governance structures must be improved to make them gender equitable, participatory, transparent, and fully accountable to the communities and all citizens.

This article examines how household property claims over forest land used for economic production were established in communes bordering Tam Dao National Park in northern Vietnam under the decentralized implementation of forest land allocation policies. Using data from surveys of households living on the edge of Tam Dao National Park, this study examines “who got what” when household access to forest land used for production was established. This demonstrates the community interests that constitute the local power structures affecting distribution of access to forest land. In this case, household access to forest land used for production is determined greatly through entrepreneurial and institutional factors. If decentralized forest land allocation policies have any hope of circumscribing land use so that it corresponds to the uses laid out in land use plans, we must first understand how local power structures affect household access to forest land.

There is currently limited knowledge about the effects of introducing genetically modified (GM) crops into smallholder farming or about how biosafety requirements are interpreted and adopted by smallholders. A case study was conducted on introduction of GM (Bt) maize to South African smallholders. The results reveal low general awareness about agricultural technology among smallholders and an incompatibility between smallholder practices and biosafety requirements. The implications are low understanding of biosafety measures and low compliance. Therefore, essential prerequisites for the safe introduction of GM crops to smallholders are increased smallholder knowledge on modern plant varieties and improved agricultural advisory services that better match the smallholder context. In addition, information about GM crops and biosafety implementation must be modified to better suit smallholders.