Evidence-based Conservation

Lessons from the Lower Mekong

Terry C.H. Sunderland, Jeffrey Sayer, Hoang Thi Minh Ha

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781136469220
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Ecology
• Index: Biological Sciences

There is a considerable gap between the science of conservation biology and the design and execution of biodiversity conservation projects in the field. Science is often failing to inform the practice of conservation, which remains largely experience-based. The main reason is the poor accessibility of evidence on the effectiveness of different interventions. This is the basis for this book adopting an 'evidence-based approach', modelled on the systematic reviews used in health sciences and now being applied to many policy arenas.

Evidence-based Conservation brings together a series of case studies, written by field practitioners, that provides the evidence-base for evaluating how effective conservation and poverty alleviation strategies can be better implemented. A series of systematic reviews uses experiences and data from fifteen integrated conservation and development projects conducted in the Lower Mekong region, specifically in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. They provide wide-ranging overviews of the effectiveness of protected areas and how innovative tools and methods for monitoring and evaluation can be utilised for more effective outcomes. Results are in the form of management and policy recommendations, based on the quality of evidence and the cost-utility of the intervention. By bridging the gap between field practice and conservation, the analysis should lead to more effective integrated conservation and development interventions. The book represents one of the first attempts to apply the evidence-based approach to conservation and development.

Part 1
Introduction

1
Introduction

Evidence-based conservation from the Lower Mekong

Terry C.H. Sunderland, Jeffrey A. Sayer and Minh-Ha Hoang

Sixty million people live in the Lower Mekong Basin. They have emerged from decades of wars and civil conflict to confront a struggle of a new kind. The minerals, agricultural lands and especially the hydropower potential of their landscapes are eagerly coveted by governments and corporations from around the region. There are now nineteen dams on the Mekong river and countless more on its tributaries – Laos alone has seventy-seven active dam projects. Mines are springing up everywhere – both large industrial mines and small artisanal ones. Plantations of oil palm, rubber, fibre trees and numerous other crops are expanding rapidly. A region that until recently retained vast tracts of relatively undisturbed natural rain forests is rapidly being sliced up by expanding networks of roads.

With each passing year, increasing areas of forests, wetlands, and species come under threat from these escalating pressures of increases in human populations and associated development. To mitigate these threats billions of dollars are being spent on conservation and development initiatives in the last few areas of high biodiversity that remain. Conservation has to be achieved while simultaneously satisfying the livelihood demands of the ever-growing populations that depend on natural resources. This is certainly the case in the forests of the three Lower Mekong countries (Vietnam, Lao PDR and Cambodia). Demand for land for subsistence agriculture and for commodity crops to feed the growing economies of China, Vietnam, Thailand, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan is already making rapid inroads into the last remaining forests. As markets open further, pressures on the last remaining wildlife populations will intensify. The ability of conservation initiatives to counter these pressures is very limited, and many challenges remain. Thus it is vitally important that every dollar available for conservation is spent in the most effective way possible. Most of the larger conservation organizations and development assistance agencies are investing in projects that seek to both conserve the environment and to improve the livelihoods of the rural poor. Attempting to integrate biodiversity conservation and local economic development in this manner, as we will discuss below, has become the pervasive form of project implementation model for conservation organizations throughout the tropics.

Many conservation interventions make unjustified and unsupported claims about the links between conservation and development, about the nature of the development outcomes that local people really seek and about the real values of biodiverse natural areas to poor local people. Most conservation agencies now claim to be operating at larger spatial scales, e.g. the “landscape scale”¹ and are in effect attempting to achieve outcomes at the scale of large natural resource systems. One of the biggest challenges for conservation activities that are conducted at this larger landscape scale is that of measuring progress in improving the conservation performance of the landscape and providing an evidence base on what works and what does not. Similarly, development projects often focus on the areas of crops planted, and on quantifying the number of roads and schools built, children inoculated, but they often neglect the impacts of these interventions on sustaining the environmental values that underpin rural development. Thus a major challenge is to integrate the measurement of livelihood outcomes with the achievement of conservation outcomes and to provide clear and explicit linkages between the two. In addition, we have to identify, articulate and negotiate possible trade-offs that may exist between these two, often differing, objectives. This is important as there is a clear need to be able to assess the performance of conservation and development interventions that attempt to improve the outcomes at the scale of complex mosaic landscapes in which biodiversity of global concern often coexists with people living in extreme poverty.

The literature now recognizes that there are often severe trade-offs between conservation and development and seldom do we achieve “win-win” situations (Sayer and Campbell, 2004; Sunderland et al., 2008, McShane et al., 2011). However, many practitioners still fail to acknowledge these trade-offs, either through inexperience, a lack of in-depth scrutiny, a lack of monitoring, or a lack of honest reporting to donors or the wider community. In this book we attempt to highlight the evidence-base generated from on-the-ground integrated conservation and development initiatives and use this experience to analyse how such evidence can be used to achieve more successful outcomes for both the conservation and development of the Lower Mekong ecoregion. Access to such information is important in increasing the effectiveness of conservation practice. Linking field practitioners and academic scientists in this way essentially “bridges the gap” between the two. The intention is frequently stated (Shanley and López, 2009; Sunderland et al., 2009) but this rarely happens in a meaningful way.

When we embarked upon this project several years ago we expected to be able to develop sets of simple metrics that would enable us to make statements about the conservation and development performance of projects. However, all of the projects that we describe in this book operate in the complex, messy, real world where even obtaining clarity on shared goals among such diverse stakeholders is difficult. All of the locations are subject to intense change driven by the appetites of governments and corporations for minerals, land for agro-industries and hydropower. Attributing any particular change to a project intervention is often difficult. Even defining what development is for the isolated, marginal populations that occupy most of these areas is problematic. According to such international measures as the Millennium Development Goal indicators, the rural people of the lower Mekong are among the world’s poorest. They do indeed lack many of the material goods against which we measure development. But they have rich cultures and strong family bonds, and they inhabit rich and diverse landscapes where they still have freedom to pursue a wide range of activities. Amarty Sen has defined development as “Freedom” and according to this definition the rural people of the lower Mekong may be more developed than many of their compatriots who have been drawn into the vice of the globalized economy. The relentless pursuit of economic efficiency and specialization has provided opportunities in simple manufacturing for many urban people in the lower Mekong countries. The material condition of urban people has improved – but they may have lost many of the elements of their livelihoods that came from the rich natural environment in which the rural population lives.

Our studies struggle to demonstrate improvements in material well-being stemming from the integrated conservation and development projects (ICDPs) that we review. But as the following chapters show, many hundreds of thousands of rural people have been touched by these projects. They have been empowered to engage in the planning of their landscapes. They have, in many cases for the first time, been able to engage in the process of determining their own futures. In terms of the formal metrics of development it is difficult to demonstrate the impact of these projects. In terms of giving people new power, choices and “freedom”, many of the chapters that follow suggest that significant progress has been made.

The Lower Mekong ecoregion

The Mekong River Basin possesses arguably one of the most diverse biological and cultural landscapes in the world (Azimi et al., 2000, Myers et al., 2000). Long periods of conflict and civil war have meant that much of the unique biodiversity of the region has not, until recently, been studied, (Sterling et al., 2006). With the end of conflict and a gradual transition from socialist command economies to market-oriented policies, the countries of the Lower Mekong have, over the past thirty years, opened up their borders to outsiders. Major biological discoveries have been made during this period, leading the Lower Mekong ecoregion to be identified as a “hot spot” of global significance (Myers et al., 2000). And now expanding infrastructure and land conversion are creating unprecedented threats to this biodiversity.

The description of many new species has created considerable excitement among the conservation community. The discovery of the saola (Pseudoryx nghetinhensis) in Vietnam in 1992 (a small deer that is the sole member of a new genus) sparked an exciting period of discovery of new species in the Mekong. This has been unparalleled worldwide in the twentieth century. The new species include five additional large mammals, a primate, the grey-shanked douc (Pygathrix nemaeus cinerea), and a lagomorph, the Annamite striped rabbit (Nesolagus timminsi). The re-discovery of the Javan rhinoceros (Rhinocerus sondaicus annamiticus) in Cat Tien National Park in 1999 (Poleti et al., 1999) also high lighted the conservation value of the region. Other large mammals of significance include a number of species of wild buffalo; the gaur (Bos gaurus), the banteng (Bos javanicus) and the kouprey (Bos sauveli), which are classified as Vulnerable, Endangered or Critically Endangered respectively (Nguyen, 2009). The Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) is also present in each of the three countries, but crop raiding and retaliatory hunting is having a significant impact on the remnant wild populations (Webber et al., 2011). There are many Endangered primates in the region, including the Cao Vit gibbon (Nomascus nasutus) and Hainan gibbon (Nomascus hainanus), with respectively about 120 individuals remaining, making the latter the most Endangered primate in the world (Sterling et al., 2006).

In the Mekong River itself, more than 250 fish species were identified in the mid-1990s, with five new species described between 1991 and 1996 (Sterling et al., 2006). The Lower Mekong region hot spot is also home to a remarkable diversity of endemic birdlife, with around 1,300 different bird species (BirdLife International, 2001). The local and regional conservation importance of the Lower Mekong is further discussed in considerable detail within each of the case studies presented in this book.

Unfortunately much of this biodiversity is under significant threat. Economic growth is pursued with minimal regard for the environment in each of the three countries that are the focus of this study. Economic expansion has led to widespread deforestation for agriculture, pollution of waterways, declining fish and wildlife populations, dislocation of human populations and poor air quality in urban areas (Azimi et al., 2000). Where forests remain, the areas are often home to chronic poverty and low standards of living (Chape, 2003; Morris and Vathana, 2003; Sunderlin, 2006). The urgent challenge is to improve the livelihoods of local people, but to do so in ways that maintain the biodiversity values of their landscapes. However, scholars argue (e.g. McShane et al., 2011; Salafsky, 2011) that it may not be possible to integrate both conservation and development goals in a single programme. There are often major trade-offs involved. I...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Notes on contributors
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• List of acronyms and abbreviations
• Part 1 Introduction
• Part 2.1 Experiences from the field Lessons learned in the implementation of integrated conservation and development projects: Vietnam
• Part 2.2 Experiences from the field Lessons learned in the implementation of integrated conservation and development projects: Laos
• Part 2.3 Experiences from the field Lessons learned in the implementation of integrated conservation and development projects: Cambodia
• Part 3 Analysis of conservation and development initiatives in the Lower Mekong Possibilities, prospects and policy
• Part 4 Conclusions and recommendations
• Index