Student: Zoe Webb
Graduation date: May 2018
Type: Concentration (single major)
Date approved: November 2015
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Summary
For my concentration project I would like study the socioeconomic and ecological outcomes of community-based conservation in East Africa. Community-based conservation is based on the idea that if conservation and development could be simultaneously achieved, then the interests of both could be served. Community-based conservation is a conservation movement that “emerged in the 1980s through escalating protests and subsequent dialogue with local communities affected by international attempts to protect the biodiversity of the earth” (Berkes, 2007). It is controversial because community development objectives are not necessarily consistent with conservation objectives. Within the ecological outcomes, I would like to focus on biodiversity loss of terrestrial vertebrates. I would like to address the effects that land-cover change has on biodiversity loss. Within the socioeconomic outcomes, I would like to look at the connections between community-based conservation and poverty. Studying the connections between poverty and biodiversity conservation may be challenging because of the complexities that the terms poverty, biodiversity and conservation have.
Biodiversity is a term that was developed as a means of describing the variety of life at a time when concern was increasing about the loss of such variety. Threats to this diversity are driven by an increasing array of homogenizing forces including the spread of introduced species, the rising impact of human land use and agribusiness, and the dominance of humans as principal structures of ecosystems (Ruiz-Mallén et al., 2013). Primack (2006) defines biodiversity as the natural variety and variability among living organisms, the ecological complexes in which they naturally occur, and the ways in which they interact with each other and with the physical environment. Approaches to defining poverty have included the identification of non-income dimensions such as longevity, literacy, and health because “the poor usually live shorter and less healthy lives and are usually less well educated than the rich” (Wilk, 2002). More recently, a new set of factors including vulnerability, lack of access to opportunities, exposure to risk, powerlessness, and lack of voice have also become part of the definition of poverty. Poverty is not simply “about having a low income: it is multidimensional deprivation — hunger, undernutrition, dirty drinking water, illiteracy, having no access to health services, social isolation, and exploitation” (Newmark et al., 2000). The broad meanings of the terms community and conservation also make community-based conservation hard to pin down. Is the word community defined by ethnicity or traditions, by the length of a group’s residency, by a sense of common purpose, or by a geographical context? Throughout my research, I have decided that I will look at communities in terms of a geographic area. These complexities in the conceptual understandings of these terms will make studying community-based conservation less concrete, and up for interpretation.
I would like to situate my concentration in the Coastal Forests of Eastern Africa. Here I would like to examine communities’ perceptions of setting aside reserves for land vertebrate conservation and the connections that this has with development and poverty. “East Africa has experienced tremendous land cover changes with an increase of cropland by 200% between 1900 and 1990” (Newmark, 2002). “Rapid population growth and low per capita income growth” contribute to forest loss in East Africa (Brown, 2002). I would like to study abroad on the East Africa program to better understand land-coverage in this area, to learn about biodiversity in this part of East Africa, and to study the community and cultural perspectives on terrestrial vertebrate conservation. In Kenya “nearly half of the country’s 43 million people live below the poverty line or are unable to meet their daily nutritional requirements”(Newmark, 2002). Also, more than three quarters of the population lives in rural areas, and rural poverty in Kenya is strongly linked to environmental concerns, including land degradation.
I am interested in comparing the Coastal Forests of Eastern Africa to the Eastern Afromontane region in East Africa and to the Philippines. These regions are all categorized as biodiversity hotspots, “biogeographic regions that are both significant reservoirs of biodiversity and are threatened with destruction” (Meyers et al., 2000). I would like to compare these two habitats in East Africa because they are distinct hotspots in Eastern Africa that are notably fragmented habitats. Agricultural encroachment, timber extraction and charcoal production are among the greatest threats to these habitats. I would like to look at how East Africa compares to the Philippines because the Philippines is one of the few nations that is, in its entirety, both a hotspot and a megadiversity country, placing it among the top priority hotspots for global conservation. I would also like to examine the Philippines because, similar to Eastern Africa, “poverty in the Philippines remains a mainly rural phenomenon” (Woodruff, 2010).
References
Berkes, Fikret. 2007. “Community-Based Conservation in a Globalized World.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 104 (39): 15188–93. doi:10.1073/pnas.0702098104.
Brown, Katrina. 2002. “Innovations for Conservation and Development.” The Geographical Journal 168 (1): 6–17. doi:10.1111/1475-4959.00034.
Myers, Norman, Russell A. Mittermeier, Cristina G. Mittermeier, Gustavo AB Da Fonseca, and Jennifer Kent. 2000. “Biodiversity Hotspots for Conservation Priorities.” Nature 403 (6772): 853–58.http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v403/n6772/abs/403853a0.html.
Newmark, William D., and John L. Hough. 2000. “Conserving Wildlife in Africa: Integrated Conservation and Development Projects and Beyond: Because Multiple Factors Hinder Integrated Conservation and Development Projects in Africa from Achieving Their Objectives, Alternative and Complementary Approaches for Promoting Wildlife Conservation Must Be Actively Explored.”BioScience 50 (7): 585–92.http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.1641/0006-3568(2000)050%5B0585:CWIAIC%5D2.0.CO;2.
Newmark, William Dubois. 2002. Conserving Biodiversity in East African Forests: A Study of the Eastern Arc Mountains. Vol. 155. Springer Science & Business Media.https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=WobSzDGhzToC&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=wildlife+and+biodiversity+conservation+in+eastern+africa&ots=VUd3QHP85c&sig=Ry8NYhhhR9V4TSeRi0ykVTIFfdU.
Primack, Richard B., et al. 2006. Essentials of Conservation Biology. Vol. 23. Sinauer Associates Sunderland, MA.http://www.ise.virginia.edu/syllabi/s12/Lawrence_BIOL3450_Biodiversity.pdf.
Ruiz-Mallén, Isabel, and Esteve Corbera. 2013. “Community-Based Conservation and Traditional Ecological Knowledge: Implications for Social-Ecological Resilience.” Ecology and Society 18 (4). doi:10.5751/ES-05867-180412.
Wilk, Richard. 2002. “Consumption, Human Needs, and Global Environmental Change.” Global Environmental Change 12 (1): 5–13. doi:10.1016/S0959-3780(01)00028-0.
Woodruff, David S. 2010. “Biogeography and Conservation in Southeast Asia: How 2.7 Million Years of Repeated Environmental Fluctuations Affect Today’s Patterns and the Future of the Remaining Refugial-Phase Biodiversity.”Biodiversity and Conservation 19 (4): 919–41.http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10531-010-9783-3.
Questions
- Descriptive: What is happening currently with biodiversity conservation among terrestrial vertebrates in low-income communities? Is there a difference between which communities are able to successfully apply biological conservation to terrestrial vertebrates? What are the economic and cultural struggles with terrestrial vertebrate conservation? Do certain communities value biodiversity conservation more than others? How has land coverage and habitats in East Africa changed over time? How have attitudes toward animals in East Africa changed over time? What conservation policies are in place in East Africa and how have they changed over time? How does terrestrial vertebrate biodiversity in East Africa compare to the Philippines and that of other parts of the world? How have populations of terrestrial vertebrates changed in East Africa, the Philippines, and other parts of the world over time?
- Explanatory: Why is biological conservation when situated in low-income countries less successful? Why do certain communities value biodiversity conservation more than other communities? Why have conservation policies in East Africa and the Philippines been put in place?
- Evaluative: How does biological degradation affect communities and to what extent should it be considered a problem? What species are suffering threats to reproduction from biodiversity loss? In what ways are people who are living in these areas benefiting or losing from changes in these animal populations?
- Instrumental: How can we support the needs of humans while leaving habitats for terrestrial vertebrates? In what ways do community-based conservation projects in East Africa successfully address human needs while protecting terrestrial vertebrate habitat? What habitats must be left or re-created in order to prevent biodiversity loss and extinction? With a growing world population, how will we need to set aside land to maintain biodiversity? What are the long-term effects of community based conservation?
Concentration courses
- GEOL 340 (Spatial Problems in Earth Systems Science, 5 credits), spring 2017. This course will help me better recognize and interpret spatial patterns that we face on Earth. This course will also help me to understand the costs and benefits behind certain land-use choices.
- SOAN 265 (Critical Perspectives in Development, 4 credits), spring 2016. This course will help me gain a better understanding of global development projects aiming to improve living standards. This course will also help me understand how "development" has been defined, measured, and understood over the past century, from colonial conceptions to post-development rejections of the term.
- SOAN 349 (Indigenous Peoples: Identities and Politics, 4 credits), spring 2017. This course will help me better understand how indigenous identity is defined, constructed, and maintained, and the rights that indigenous people have and can claim. It will also help me to understand the relationship between international organizations and indigenous movements.
- SOAN 305 (Environmental Sociology, 4 credits), spring 2017. This course will help me to understand how contemporary patterns of industrial production, urbanization, and consumption intensify ecological problems. This course will also help me to understand what can be done to protect ecosystems and human communities from environmental degradation. If I use this course for one of my four concentration courses, I plan to use IA 257 for my social science breadth course.
Arts and humanities courses
- HIST 261 (Global Environmental History, 4 credits). Pre-approved A&H course; no justification required.
- HIST 198 (Modern African History, 4 credits). Background for concentration research situated in Africa and overseas program to East Africa. This course gave me a better understanding of the relationships between countries, the geography of Africa, the current political issues in Africa and background as to how and why these issues arose.