Rights-based Approaches and Conservation

1. Rights-based Approaches and Conservation Prepared for ABCG/CCC meeting on Parks and People June 29, 2005

2. Why a Focus on Rights in Conservation? • 1. Ethical issues • Conservation brings benefits but also entails costs • Costs are often borne disproportionately by local communities • Must address equity issues in distribution of costs and benefits for their own sake • Also to increase sustainability and build constituencies for conservation

3. Why a Focus on Rights in Conservation? • 2. Communities are conservation managers -- land and resource rights are fundamental to effective community-based conservation. Dimensions of community-based conservation

4. Needs-based approaches • Focus on livelihoods, other foundational elements not always in place • Grounded in “win-win” assumptions, but benefits may not be realized, or uses sustainable • ICDPs often designed implicitly around idea of compensation for costs, but not defined/calculated and limited accountability for them • Subject to criticisms re expectations/capacity of conservation to provide for needs

5. Rights-based approach • Addresses foundational issues of rights and tenure security • Does not depend upon win-win outcomes – may be trade-offs (perceived as legitimate) • As stance towards communities is as rights-holders -- impacts/costs to people must be defined and addressed, and support organizations are accountable • A key element is power of people to negotiate and have voices heard in decision-making • Right to participation • Free, prior informed consent

6. Rights in relation to conservation/protected areas • “Do no harm” – e.g., rights not impinged upon in creation of government-managed PA • Shared rights/responsibilities with government, other -- co-management • Community tenure rights • use and ownership rights • land and resource rights • security and legal recourse

7. Community-managed Protected Areas: Community Conserved Areas • Governance types, in relation to IUCN PA Categories • Government-managed protected areas • Co-managed protected areas • Private Protected areas • Community Conserved Areas

8. Governance issues in CBD Programme of Work on Protected Areas • Element 2: Governance, Participation, Equity and Benefit-sharing • Resettlement of indigenous communities only w/free, prior informed consent • Remove barriers to adequate participation • Establish mechanisms for equitable sharing of costs/benefits of protected areas • Recognize and promote range of governance types including community conserved areas

9. Large-scale Conservation: Strategies and Emerging Issues • Networks of protected areas: government PAs must be recognized as socially legitimate, meet DNH standards • Community-based conservation: • Large-scale conservation requires increased attention to community-managed areas as constituents of large landscapes • Multi-level approach also directs attention to policy/institutional context and supports scaling up

10. Strategies and Emerging Issues • Addressing land/resource rights at multiple levels, scaling up • Policy context to support tenure security, community conserved areas • Supporting institutions for protection/enforcement of local resource rights • Lateral linkages: Networks of CBOs

11. Strategies and Emerging Issues • Large-scale conservation planning and management: • Representation in negotiations/decision-making re conservation/NRM across larger scales • Empowerment of local communities in the context of multi-stakeholder management • Engaging “power actors”/major influences: Empowering communities in advocating their interests and concerns