Assessing the Impacts of Conservation and Commercial Forestry on Livelihoods in Northern Republic of Congo
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[Downloaded free from http://www.conservationandsociety.org on Friday, January 10, 2014, IP: 129.79.203.216] || Click here to download free Android application for this journal Conservation and Society 11(3): 199-217, 2013 Article Assessing the Impacts of Conservation and Commercial Forestry on Livelihoods in Northern Republic of Congo Michael Riddell Bioclimate, Research and Development, Edinburgh, UK Research undertaken at: Oxford University Centre for the Environment, Oxford, UK E-mail: [email protected] Abstract Researchers often attempt to understand the social impacts of conservation interventions in isolation of broader socioeconomic, political and institutional change. However it is important to understand the variety of forces structuring livelihood impacts, and to identify how different social groups respond and adapt to changes. This article uses a case study from northern Republic of Congo, where rural livelihoods are shaped by a combination of conservation and commercial forestry activities, to understand the differential livelihood impacts of these activities on the two principal social groups, the Aka hunter-gatherers and Kaka and Bondongo farmer-fi shers. The study results indicate that livelihood change is most striking in conservation-forestry villages compared to control villages, and this change is most evident among the Aka. Although commercial forestry is the principal driver of livelihood change, the enforcement of conservation regulations reduces households’ access to natural capital and alters social relations. In this context the impacts of conservation were exacerbated due to the dramatic transformation of the livelihood space into which people were either economically displaced or chose to move to. Conservation interventions in similar contexts should involve people in the project design and initiate context-specifi c livelihood assessment and monitoring prior to and during the intervention. Keywords: livelihoods, conservation, commercial forestry, Aka, Kaka, Bondongo, Republic of Congo INTRODUCTION order to continue making a living (De Haan and Zoomers 2005). Nowhere are these challenges greater than in sub-Saharan Africa Researchers often attempt to isolate the social impacts where high rates of poverty in rural areas mean households often of conservation from other factors driving livelihood have low or diminished household asset bases, limiting their change (Ashley et al. 1999; West and Brockington 2006; ability to adapt (Devereux et al. 2008). Rural households not Foerster et al. 2011). In reality, conservation activities rarely only face climatic and political change, and sometimes confl ict, occur in isolation (Adams and Hutton 2007). Rural peoples’ but also a renewed surge in large-scale infrastructure projects, livelihoods are structured by many forces, some of which land acquisitions for commercial agriculture and biofuels, are linked to external factors such as changes in the broader resource exploitation such as mining and forestry, and emerging economy. Individuals and households respond to the challenges terrestrial carbon markets in the form of REDD+ (Cotula et al. such changes create by adapting their livelihood strategies in 2009; Roe et al. 2009). These forces are representative of the Access this article online extension of capitalist markets into rural economies, and can lead to substantial shifts in land tenure, labour relations, and Quick Response Code: Website: modes of production (Harvey 2010). www.conservationandsociety.org The argument advanced in this article is that the livelihood and social impacts of conservation can be better understood DOI: if the conservation impacts are situated within the range of 10.4103/0972-4923.121002 different factors infl uencing rural livelihoods. This prevents falsely attributing impacts to conservation alone. In addition, in Copyright: © Riddell 2013. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use and distribution of the article, provided the original work is cited. [Downloaded free from http://www.conservationandsociety.org on Friday, January 10, 2014, IP: 129.79.203.216] || Click here to download free Android application for this journal 200 / Riddell regions where peoples’ livelihoods are undergoing signifi cant with Curran et al. (2009) criticising Schmidt-Soltau’s (2009) and rapid change, conservation practitioners will be in a better reliance on qualitative case study data. There is clearly a need for position to support sustainable livelihoods. In this article I context-specifi c case studies that provide objective information aim to assess the livelihood impacts of conservation in the to inform this debate, and illustrate where and how economic context of commercial forestry and a rapidly transforming or physical displacement has occurred. However, this article socioeconomic context. I use a case study from northern does not focus purely on the issue of displacement, but takes Republic of Congo (Congo hereafter) where, like elsewhere in a holistic look at not only any displacement that may have Central Africa, conservation activities and commercial forestry occurred, but also an understanding of the livelihood impacts occur together. In order to illustrate the differential impacts of of this displacement and the effects of other land-use and these activities on different social groups, I disaggregate the economic changes occurring in the broader landscape. Other analysis between the region’s different ethnic groups – Kaka studies in Central Africa, as we would expect, have shown that and Bondongo farmer-fi shers, and Aka hunter-gatherers. there is a lot of variation in the degree to which conservation activities infl uence livelihoods. For example Hodgkinson (2009) Conservation-livelihood research showed that local communities, particularly Aka hunters, suffer high opportunity costs from reduced access to hunting due Research on the social impacts of conservation has illustrated to the enforcement of hunting regulations by a conservation a range of impacts related to peoples’ livelihoods, including project (Hodgkinson 2009). In contrast Foerster et al. (2011) wildlife crop-raiding, involuntary displacement due to reduced recently presented evidence from Gabon suggesting that there access to land1, rent-seeking behaviour of park staff, and are no systematic differences in a range of livelihood indicators exacerbation of existing economic inequalities, power and between those households that previously had claims over gender relations (Brockington 2002; West et al. 2006; Adams natural resources within national parks and those with no claims, and Hutton 2007; Roe et al. 2009). These impacts are seldom situated further from parks. distributed evenly within rural communities, as factors such as Throughout Central Africa rural dwellers must, to varying ethnicity, relative wealth, and gender infl uence an individual’s degrees, confront other major challenges, including the susceptibility to change (Brockington et al. 2006). For example, socioeconomic transformations related to commercial forestry, Coad et al. (2008) argue that poorer, more resource-dependent expansion of commercial palm oil plantations, immigration, groups bear the greatest opportunity costs of protected areas. large-scale mining projects, and civil unrest (CBFP 2006). There Conservation activities can affect household assets or capital. are multiple impacts of commercial forestry, but these are rarely In many cases, new regulations restrict access to particular holistically examined from the perspective of the individual and natural resources. Igoe (2006) suggests that, combined with household. They include both direct and indirect impacts, such as the provision of conservation-related employment, the effect depletion of hardwood tree species with multiple local livelihood is often to replace households’ natural capital with fi nancial uses, the acceleration of road network development, the provision capital. Where on-the-job training occurs, conservation can of employment and local services, the knock-on creation of new also build capacity and therefore contribute to human capital, economic opportunities, infl uxes of in-migrants and immigrants, while conservation projects can also alter or reinforce local and as a result, overexploitation of wildlife and other forest social and power relations (Vorlaufer 2002). However, as resources (Wilkie et al. 2000; Poulsen et al. 2007; Logo 2010). biodiversity conservation is a multi-faceted concept, only The most rapid expansion of any road network in Central Africa site-by-site assessments allow exact livelihood impacts to be is currently occurring in northern Congo (Laporte et al. 2007). understood (Agrawal and Redford 2006). Forestry roads facilitate the expansion of the monetary economy, which has knock-on effects in previously isolated Livelihood impacts of conservation and commercial rural communities. Roads have been shown to affect forestry in Central Africa hunter-gatherer (‘Pygmy’) communities, who often become sedentary, tend towards individual rather than communal In Central Africa, the debate surrounding the social impacts of activities, become heavily indebted to their farming conservation in published literature has focused on involuntary neighbours, and suffer from increasing alcoholism (Bahuchet displacements. Researchers argue that the formation of and Guillaume 1982; Kitanishi 2006). national parks has led to a series of compulsory