Case Summaries

These case studies and discussions were drawn from a chapter within the book Common Ground, Common Future: How Ecoagriculture can Feed the World and Save Wild Biodiversity, by Jeffrey McNeely and Sara Scherr, 2003, Ecoagriculture, Island Press. Any citations on this page refer to bibliographic notes in said book and can be found by referring to the book or emailing us with a specific reference question.

Introduction: Creating Biodiversity Reserves that Benefit Local Farming Communities

Large protected areas are a central feature of ecosystem management for biodiversity. Large mammals, birds, and trees require large territories for effective reproduction, as do “interior species”, that is, those that do not flourish on the edges or in fragments of habitat, but are dependent on extensive areas of closed-canopy forests. Some conservationists have established the goal of maintaining at least 10 percent of each major habitat type in fully protected reserves. This figure has already been exceeded in some habitat types. A recent study of 93 parks in 22 countries found that 83 percent had been largely successful in controlling encroachment, especially land clearing. In more than 60 percent of the parks studied, hunting and grazing pressures were better controlled than in surrounding areas (Bruner et al. 2001). A larger sample might not give such a positive result, but it is clear that even countries with low per capita GNP have accepted the value of protected areas.

Finding ways for local people to benefit from protected areas has become standard practice, as a strategy to compensate them for lost access to resources or to ensure their continued willingness to comply with access restrictions (Borrini-Feyerabend 1997). While the model remains widely appreciated, there has been considerable debate about how to make these “integrated conservation and development projects (ICDP)” effective in delivering both livelihood and conservation benefits (ref). In most cases, local people still have little say in establishing the boundaries and rules of protected areas, and many reserves are established in areas over which local communities have prior claims. This ecoagriculture strategy builds on lessons learned in successful ICDPs.

Ecoagriculture places local food security and livelihood concerns at the center of its conservation strategies. Thus, in establishing new protected areas, it emphasizes choosing sites jointly with local people, and in places where there are clear benefits to local agricultural populations. While some individual landowners may be disadvantaged, the benefits to others should be sufficiently substantial to justify their support for protection, and even to provide some compensation. This is likely to be the case where:

the planned site clearly helps to make farming more productive or sustainable (for example, by protecting valued pollinators);
the reserve helps to protect locally valued environmental services (for example, good water quality);
· the site offers attractive alternative livelihood options (for example, by enhancing fishing income or attracting tourists);
farmers are adequately compensated for the loss of land or helped to make the transition to an equally attractive livelihood option (with payments for biodiversity services, for example);or
local communities themselves value the aesthetic, cultural, or recreational aspects of the habitat or of particular species (leading them, for example, to protect sacred groves from development by outsiders).

Most protected areas have been established in and around lower-intensity rainfed agricultural systems, where land values and productive potential were relatively low. Even in these areas, however, the value of the agricultural land for local people may be significant, and without their “buy-in” the boundaries between agriculture and conservation may not be respected. Biodiversity conservation initiatives are increasingly being targeted at lands with much higher value for agriculture. In such cases, a much clearer analysis of trade-offs is needed, and evidence of potential benefits of conservation for the surrounding farmers must be rigorously produced. Otherwise, mechanisms must be found to fairly compensate local people for giving up valuable resources.

For example, even some areas with existing or potential irrigation are more suitable as protected areas than might be expected. While the value of production per ha in irrigated systems is typically high, costs of production and of infrastructure construction and maintenance per ha are also high. These costs are often not reflected in input pricing, nor are the economic values of biodiversity and habitat preservation reflected in decision-making about land use. In particular, the value of natural fisheries, an important source of food in many rural areas in developing countries, is ignored when allocating water to irrigation. Also, while some irrigated agricultural areas have been sustainably farmed for millennia, others are at high risk due to water scarcity (from groundwater depletion or competition from nonagricultural demands), or due to salinization (usually from poor water management or naturally saline soils). Strong economic, as well as ecological, arguments may thus be mobilized for retiring some of these lands from irrigated farming (Ahmed and Hirsch 2000).

In some cases, wild species actually require the open habitat found in settled farming or the rotational land patterns of shifting cultivation. Yet abandonment of agriculture for economic reasons may convert open space to forest or woodlands (OECD 1998), while other farmland habitats are threatened with urban or residential development. Conservationists in many countries are working to provide such farmlands with some type of “protected” status. For example, Plieninger and Wilbrand (2001) have proposed that the dehesa system of Spain (see Box 7) be protected as part of a Biosphere Reserve project. The Nature Conservancy, an international conservation organization based in the U.S., has been working with farmers and ranchers to protect prime agricultural lands in the state of Virginia and ranching ecosystems in the states of Arizona and New Mexico from urban development (OECD 1997a).

Other agricultural areas may be protected for in situ conservation of genetic diversity. Such conservation will help conventional breeding and biotechnology improve crop characteristics. Traits such as pest and disease resistance, for example, are to be found in wild relatives of domesticated plants. Although large ex situ genebanks play an important role in conserving such germplasm, in situ conservation allows species to continue to evolve in relation to their natural environment and their pests.

Some in situ efforts to conserve wild relatives have led to the establishment of protected areas that include working farms (Amaral, Persley and Platais 2001). The basic principle behind genetic reserves of this sort is to conserve enough diversity to enable the species to co-evolve with associated pest and other species. Gadgil et al. (1996) developed landscape-based conservation plans for several important taxa of plants. Reserves currently exist for maize in Mexico, wheat in Israel, and a countrywide program funded by the Global Environment Fund (GEF) in Turkey (Hodgkin and Arora 2001). India has established a “gene sanctuary” in the Garo Hills for wild relatives of citrus and further sanctuaries are planned for banana, sugarcane, rice, and mango (Hoyt 1992). The Chatkal Mountain Biosphere Reserve in Kirgizstan conserves important wild relatives of walnuts, apples, pears, and prunes. These programs seek to preserve farming areas and nearby wildlands, usually with some restrictions on management and harvest to protect wild biodiversity.

Local willingness to support protected areas will depend in large part on the perceived benefits. Thus, planning for protected areas should include local people in decision-making about boundaries. The participation of local people will ensure that they maintain access to those resources they consider most important economically and culturally, and that they negotiate reasonable compensation. Such compensation may include opening up access to non-protected sites for hunting and gathering or farm settlement, or providing alternative employment. In most cases these agreements will not compromise the main conservation goals.

Planning requires an understanding of the “threshold values” of the intensity of disturbance, beyond which genetic diversity is rapidly lost. For example, research from Malaysia, Thailand, and India found that imposing total prohibition on access and use of tropical forests was not necessarily the best way to benefit species or conserve resources. Disturbance did negatively affect “climax” species (those species characterizing fully rehabilitated natural vegetation), but had no effect or a positive effect on the “pioneer” species that moved in quickly after disturbance. Some of the negative impacts of logging on the diversity of the logged and non-logged species were only transitory. While heavy harvesting of non-timber forest products (NTFPs) can threaten their species’ populations, others are little disturbed. Thus sustainable exploitation regimes can be developed for the high-value NTFPs, and genetic diversity can be maintained even with resource use by local people (Boyle 1997).

Communities themselves sometimes take the lead in establishing wildlife reserves. Tonda Wildlife Management Area in Papua New Guinea contains a unique savanna interspersed with riverine gallery forest that provides a globally significant wintering ground for migratory species of waterfowl. It covers 590,000 ha under customary tenure, with about 1,200 inhabitants distributed among 16 villages. It was established in 1975 at the request of the customary landowners for the conservation and controlled utilization of wildlife and other natural resources. The population is mobile and shifting cultivation, with a fallow period of 15-30 years, remains an important part of the local economy. Customary landowners are allowed to hunt freely, but have agreed that the region between the Bensbach and Morehead Rivers will be closed to hunting, and that no vehicles or boats can be used for hunting anywhere within the site (Alcorn 1993).

In Indonesia, “community conservation agreements” have been developed to give rights of use to local communities for buffer zone areas and allow them to prevent outsiders from opening new lands within Sumatra’s Kerinci National Park. Villagers are encouraged to grow indigenous tree species after harvesting existing tree crops within the national park; they are also granted 20-year rights of use to the land in order to slow further encroachment (Barber et al. 1995). In Cameroon, community wildlife management systems provide commercial hunting rights to local people, under their own management (Olsen, et al. 2001).

Below we describe six examples in which local farmers have actively cooperated in the management of state protected areas, established community-managed protected areas, or designated areas of their own farm as protected for wildlife. In all of the cases, both wild biodiversity and the community have benefited.

Example 1. Buffer Zones to Protect Rhinos and Tigers in a National Park in Nepal

Royal Chitwan National Park is located on Nepal's border with India, along the flood plains of the Rapti, Reu, and Narayani rivers. It covers 93,200 ha and its ecological value is greatly extended by the adjacent Parsa Wildlife Reserve (49,900 ha). The alluvial terraces laid down by the flood plains provide a very productive habitat for grazing mammals, most notably the Indian rhinoceros (population around 450) and several species of deer that provide prey for Nepal's tiger population (now estimated at 107). The riverine/tall grass habitat there is more extensive than that reported anywhere else in Asia. The 1991 census recorded 275,000 people in 36 Village Development Committees settled around the park's vicinity, and conflicts between the park and local people were a major management problem (Lemkuhl et al. 1988). Three to five local people were killed each year by rhinos and tigers in the park, domestic cattle constituted up to 30 percent of tiger kills in settled areas on the periphery of the park, rhinos could significantly damage rice and other crops, and local villagers cast covetous eyes on the park's rich resources (Mishra 1982). People living in the buffer zones around Royal Chitwan National Park derived up to 80 percent of their needs for firewood and fodder from the forest, leaving some of their needs unmet. The resulting competition between humans and rhinos, tigers, and other large mammals caused significant conservation problems.

Pioneering legislation in 1993 empowered the Government of Nepal to declare areas surrounding Chitwan as a buffer zone, and for local User Group Committees to use 30-50 percent of park revenues for managing community forests (Sharma and Wells 1997). In the locally managed forests within the park, one community group constructed nature trails for elephant-back safaris through the riverine grasslands and a wildlife viewing tower where tourists can stay overnight to view rhinos and other wildlife. Within the first six months of operation, nearly 8,000 tourists visited the Baghmara wildlife viewing area, generating nearly US$200,000 in revenues and providing enough money to enable the Baghmara Group to refurbish three schools and a health clinic. An area that had been largely deforested and supported little wildlife prior to this conservation investment has now become one of the most popular tourist destinations in Nepal (83,000 visitors per year). Moreover, the village-managed forests to the north of Chitwan help to protect villagers from Rapti river floods and provide a shelter against rhinos raiding their crops. Some 1240 ha of park land have been given by the Forest Department to local forest user groups for production of fodder, fuel and building materials. Villagers receive income of 10,000 rupees per elephant per year ($200) plus $3 per trip. The income has enabled them to build biogas plants and smokeless stoves, provide training to local women's groups, and carry out numerous other activities that reduce human pressure on the park. The local villagers are now convinced that rhinos are a critical tourism attraction and they claim to do whatever they can to support conservation (McNeely 1999).

Del Oro is a Costa Rican company focused on the growing, production, and processing of oranges, and the marketing of orange juice concentrate, mostly sold on the international market. The company owns 7000 ha of land, of which 3339 ha are planted with oranges and other citrus fruits and the rest are located in a variety of habitats, ranging from grassland to primary forest, but bordering on the orange orchards. Each year the company produces an estimated 3 million boxes of orange juice concentrate weighing 90 kilograms each. The Del Oro property shares approximately 12 kilometers of common boundary with the 120,000-ha Guanacaste Conservation Area (GCA). A large portion of the Del Oro plantation is interspersed with patches of rare dry tropical forest lying within the farm property or adjacent to the GCA.

The presence of forest has contributed to keeping the population of insect pests at levels low enough that, unlike most orange plantations, little or no pesticide applications are required. Pesticide use is limited to controlling leafcutter ants (Atta cephalotes) in specific areas and controlling outbursts of citrus leaf miner (Phylloenistis citrella) in nurseries. Del Oro benefits from reduced costs of pesticide application, and from the ECO-OK certification of their concentrate by the Rainforest Alliance. By differentiating their product as environmentally friendly, Del Oro obtains added value in the market.

An innovative contract was agreed upon between Del Oro and GCA whereby the farm purchased a number of environmental services provided naturally by the state conservation area over a 20-year period. The company committed $480,000 to purchasing these services. Specified services include biological control, water supply and watershed protection, natural decay of organic material from orange residues discarded in forest areas (avoiding expenses for waste removal or burning), and research support. The environmental services were paid for by the transfer of 1200 ha of remnants of rare dry tropical forest patches from Del Oro to the GCA, thus expanding the area and biodiversity quality of the reserve (Gamez 1999).

The Landcare movement in Australia is premised on farm planning that keeps both production and conservation goals in mind (Campbell 1991). Groups of farmers support one another in seeking land improvements and coordinate their actions when necessary at a landscape scale (Campbell 1994). To date, around 4500 active community groups are working in partnership with government, nongovernmental organizations, and corporations to address soil, water, and biodiversity degradation. In the late 1990s, several provinces established Community Nature Conservation Extension Networks to assist landholders and community groups with wildlife conservation planning and management, under programs such as “Bushcare”, “Land for Wildlife” and “NatureSearch” (Millar 2001).

The Genaren Hill Landcare Group, for example, includes 14 farming families in the heart of the wheat/sheep belt of New South Wales. Their activities focus on nature conservation, but their landscape modifications also tackle farm profitability, soil structure decline, gully erosion, feral animals, and introduced weeds. With community and government support, the Group erected an 8.4-kilometer-long fox- and cat-proof fence around an area of good-quality remnant native vegetation. All livestock and introduced predators were removed and two marsupial species were reintroduced to the area—the threatened brush-tailed bettong (Bettongia pencillata) and the endangered Bridle nail-tailed wallaby (Onychogalea fraenata). Another 85 kilometers of fencing are being laid and 35,000 trees planted across a 50,000 ha farmscape that will strategically link existing remnants of wildlife habitat. Covenants have been negotiated with government agencies to enhance the value of these projects (Sutherland and Scarsbrick 2001).

Example 4. Livestock And Wildlife Coexisting In A World Heritage Site: The Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Tanzania

The grazing ecosystems that are favored by livestock are also often those especially productive for large mammals (and their predators). The Ngorongoro Conservation Area in Africa, one of the few protected areas in eastern Africa established explicitly to promote multiple-land use including grazing of domestic stock, demonstrates that coexistence is not only possible, but productive. Inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1979, this vast area of 828,800 ha is contiguous to the much larger Serengeti National Park and to Maasai Mara National Park in Kenya. One of the great wildlife spectacles in the world is the annual migration of about 1.8 million wildebeest, 300,000 zebra, and 450,000 gazelles (though the actual numbers vary considerably from year to year), along with their predators (lions, hyenas, and cheetahs). The Ngorongoro Crater attracted over 200,000 visitors in 2000, including 125,000 foreigners. Some farms adjacent to the site host tourists for bird-watching, while the rest of the site is shared by wildlife and livestock (cattle, sheep and goats) tended by some 40,000 Maasai herders. Pastoralism is an ancient practice in the Ngorongoro region, stretching back at least 2,000 years, though the Maasai have lived in the area for only two centuries (Kijazi, 1996; Homewood and Rodgers, 1991).

Maasai settlements dot the region outside the crater, with the herdsmen actively protecting their livestock from predators. The site is specifically designed under the Ngorongoro Conservation Area Ordinance of 1959, revised in 1975, to ensure that appropriate benefits are provided to the Maasai, along with conserving wildlife populations, and promoting tourism. While permanent agriculture is discouraged, grazing is actively supported. The forested parts of the site also need to be protected to ensure permanent water flow to downstream farmers who grow high-value crops such as coffee.

To ensure that the Maasai have a voice in the management of the protected area, a reasonable understanding of its management objectives, and a platform for presenting their interests, the conservation area agency set up an extension unit and a community development department. As a result of negotiations, food security has been improved by subsidizing grain sales, veterinary services have been provided, water resources have been further developed or rehabilitated, employment by tourism agencies (including as guides for walking tours) and income from tourism has been returned to the Maasai. A livestock marketing system, dairy industry and tsetse fly eradication programs have been established, all of which are highly popular with the Maasai. This has greatly improved the relationship between the protected area management and the local people, who now themselves help to control poaching, though land ownership by the Conservator of Ngorongoro remains an issue for the Maasai. Lessons learned from Ngorongoro Conservation Area on joint management of wildlife, tourists, indigenous people and domestic livestock are already being applied elsewhere in Tanzania, including around Selous Game Reserve and the Ruaha National Park (Leader-Williams et al., 1996).

Example 5. Agricultural Gene Sanctuaries Protect Wild Biodiversity in Turkey

Agriculture was born over 10,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent, which encompasses modern-day southeastern Anatolia, the Asian part of Turkey. Today, more than 8,700 species of vascular plants are found in Turkey, about 30 percent endemic. In the early 1990s a project funded under the auspices of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) was established to conserve plant genetic resources in their natural habitats, that is, in situ. In situ conservation maintains interactions between plants and their natural pests, predators, and environmental conditions, and is thus crucial to efforts to provide resistance to new pest and pathogen mutations as they arise. The GEF project in Turkey was the first of its kind in the world to protect multiple wild crop relatives—both woody and non-woody—using an integrated, multi-species, multi-site approach.

A key feature of the project was the establishment of Gene Management Zones (GMZs) based on ecogeographic surveys and inventories of state-owned land. Protected areas with specific management requirements adapted to individual plant species and environmental conditions, GMZs serve as reserves for one or more endangered or economically important plant species, and are large enough to encompass considerable genetic variation within populations. The GMZ concept was first used in California in the 1960s, but is a new concept to most of the rest of the world. Based on findings on genetic diversity, project planners designated 22 GMZs. Kazdagi National Park was home to 10 GMZs covering five target species, including wild plum, chestnut, Turkey red pine, Anatolian black pine, and Kazdagi fir. Seven GMZs were designated at Ceylanpinar State Farm, containing five species of wild wheat relatives. The Bolkar Mountains contained 5 GMZs covering Anatolian black pine, Turkey red pine, two types of Taurus fir, and Taurus cedar.

A vital element of GMZ management is local community participation, which preserves local people’s access to the GMZ and enables them to practice traditional activities important to local livelihoods. Grazing in many cases can continue with some modifications. During some parts of the year, grazing animals actually enhance a GMZ’s desired vegetation pattern by shattering the seed and trampling it into the soil for germination the following year (“natural seeding”). Similarly, the local practice of harvesting chestnuts was incorporated into the management plan for the GMZs for this target species. Lessons learned in this project are informing the development of a large GEF biodiversity project in Turkey and other projects elsewhere (Diversity 2000).

Example 6. Marine Reserves Help Both Fish and Fishermen in the Philippines

Fisheries scientists have learned that by banning fishing completely in certain areas, the overall fish catch in adjacent areas can increase. A survey of 100 “no-take” reserves around the world with complete bans on fishing found average increases of 91 percent in the number of fish, 31 percent in the size of fish, and 23 percent in the number of fish species present. Those increases occurred within two years of starting the protection scheme. The beneficial effects spilled over into areas where fishing was still permitted. In St. Lucia, for example, a third of the country’s fishing grounds were designated no-take areas in 1995. Within three years, commercially important fish stocks had doubled in the seas adjacent to those reserves. A benefit of the reserve approach is that rules are simpler to enforce than with traditional regulations, as inexpensive global positioning systems can be used to monitor compliance (Economist 2001).

This concept has been applied in community-level marine source management in several island villages in the Philippines, where overexploitation of coral reef fisheries has become a major problem. In 1985, Marine Management Committees (MMCs) were formed to design new coral reef protection and management schemes that reflected the interest of local people. As marine reserves began to function and illegal fishermen were repelled, community support for the MMCs increased. Apart from village-based patrolling of the coral reefs, activities included growing giant clams in the fish sanctuary areas for the community to manage and harvest. MMC members were trained to manage tourism and establish alternative income schemes such as mat weaving and sea cucumber mariculture. Marine reserve guidelines were refined into a legal document adopted by the municipal town councils. Each of the three protected areas now has a fish-breeding sanctuary and a surrounding buffer area for ecologically sound fishing. Destructive fishing methods, such as using dynamite, cyanide, or small-mesh gillnets, have been effectively banned. Species diversity and abundance have significantly increased for certain families of fish, especially the favorite targets of fishermen. Mean percentage increases in species diversity ranged from 20 to 40 percent, while increases in the numbers of all food fishes ranged from 42 to 293 percent over the three sites. Total fish yield for the fishermen also increased, providing them important economic benefits (Savina and White 1986; McNeely 1988). Recognizing the success of such community initiatives, the government of the Philippines has decentralized fisheries management, giving municipal and city governments responsibility for their marine waters out to 15 kilometers off shore. The MMC model has spread throughout the Philippines and into Indonesia (White and Vogt 2000).

The examples above are drawn from a wide range of ecological zones and agricultural systems. In the Tanzania example, extensive livestock activities continued within the protected areas, as did extensive livestock and gathering in Turkey, and low-impact forestry in Nepal, while economically important local ecosystem services motivated local people in the more intensive production systems in Costa Rica, Australia, and (through fish reproduction) the Philippines. Non-agricultural income opportunities were important supplements in Nepal and Tanzania. The success of these systems depended upon proactive and participatory protected area management institutions. In the Landcare and fisheries examples, local institutions took the lead, while elsewhere, national conservation organizations did so. All have been subject to political pressures from within local communities, from their economic competitors outside the project, and/or from within conservation organizations. Land ownership issues are sensitive and may need to be re-negotiated. The costs to establish and maintain protected areas themselves are sometimes fairly high. Evolving technical knowledge has enabled a high degree of compatibility between these relatively extensive productive activities and conservation. These examples suggest that the model of designing protected area management systems to benefit local people is a viable one that could be extended widely.