Investing in Biodiversity

Investing in Biodiversity PDF

Author: Michael Wells

Publisher: World Bank Publications

Published: 1999-01-01

Total Pages: 136

ISBN-13: 9780821344194

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"Indonesia is one of the two most biologically diverse nations on earth. The country's thousands of islands include 10 percent of the world's known plant species, 12 percent of its mammals, 16 percent of reptiles and amphibians, 17 percent of birds, and 25 percent of fish." In a country where conservation awareness or support for nature conservation and Protected Areas (PAs) is lacking throughout the society, efforts to promote ICDPs (Integrated Conservation and Development Projects) will work only if the Government of Indonesia and provincial governments first demonstrate a strong commitment to protecting conservation areas and their surroundings. Current ICDP components, based on simplistic ideas of making limited short-term investments in local development and hoping this will somehow translate into sustainable resource use and less pressure on PAs, need to be abandoned. The objectives of this study are: 1. to consider the ICDPs' overall contribution to conserving Indonesia's biodiversity; 2. to assess their cost-effectiveness, sustainability, and replicability; and 3. to identify lessons for future conservation efforts. This study emphasized the use of qualitative information, supplemented by limited quantitative analysis from case studies, interviews, and an extensive review of project documentation (mainly plans, progress reports, and evaluations).

Conserving Biodiversity

Conserving Biodiversity PDF

Author: National Research Council

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 1992-02-01

Total Pages: 138

ISBN-13: 0309046831

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The loss of the earth's biological diversity is widely recognized as a critical environmental problem. That loss is most severe in developing countries, where the conditions of human existence are most difficult. Conserving Biodiversity presents an agenda for research that can provide information to formulate policy and design conservation programs in the Third World. The book includes discussions of research needs in the biological sciences as well as economics and anthropology, areas of critical importance to conservation and sustainable development. Although specifically directed toward development agencies, non-governmental organizations, and decisionmakers in developing nations, this volume should be of interest to all who are involved in the conservation of biological diversity.

Assessing Integrated Conservation and Development in Indonesia

Assessing Integrated Conservation and Development in Indonesia PDF

Author: Candice Carr Kelman

Publisher:

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 399

ISBN-13: 9781109691252

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This dissertation investigates the linkage between biodiversity conservation and sustainable development. It seeks to discover ways that the practice of tropical biodiversity conservation can be socially just and meet its goals of habitat and species preservation. By assessing four Integrated Conservation and Development Projects (ICDPs) conducted in Indonesian National Parks during the 1990s, this qualitative research describes the lasting impacts of each one, and seeks to explain which aspects of these projects were successful and sustainable and why. Although ICDPs are often regarded as failures, a closer look reveals some more nuanced results, providing insights regarding best practices for reconciling the conservation of biodiversity with the improvement of human well-being. As a small-N case study comparison, this study combines positivist and interpretivist approaches. Field research was conducted mainly through open-ended, semi-structured interviews and review of archival records. The process of implementation of each ICDP was traced and compared with the other case studies to evaluate the relative success of each project. The four major findings and contributions of this dissertation address three overarching themes: effectiveness of biodiversity conservation efforts, socially just biodiversity conservation, and sustainable rural development. First, small-scale and community-level development projects are inadequate (and relatively ineffective) conservation tools. They can be helpful incentives, but only in a context where there is rule of law, effective and sufficient law enforcement, and good governance. Incentives are not sufficient for protection of biodiversity. Local communities do not present the main threat to biodiversity or ecosystems, and focusing on them can be a distraction from more pressing threats to conservation, such as ineffective systems of governance. Second, good governance is the best protection for biodiversity and people. The best model in the context of parks is one of adaptive co-management where all stakeholders have a seat at the table, and policies and solutions are reached collaboratively. Third, short-term donor-driven conservation projects are unsustainable by nature. There is an urgent need in conservation for greater commitments of time and continuity of actors on the ground. Finally, human development and certain types of infrastructure development are more compatible with biodiversity conservation than economic development.

Wild Profusion

Wild Profusion PDF

Author: Celia Lowe

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2013-10-31

Total Pages: 218

ISBN-13: 1400849705

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Wild Profusion tells the fascinating story of biodiversity conservation in Indonesia in the decade culminating in the great fires of 1997-98--a time when the country's environment became a point of concern for social and environmental activists, scientists, and the many fishermen and farmers nationwide who suffered from degraded environments and faced accusations that they were destroying nature. Celia Lowe argues that biodiversity, in 1990s Indonesia, implied a particular convergence of nature, nation, science, and identity that made Indonesians' mapping of the concept distinct within transnational practices of nature conservation at the time. Lowe recounts the efforts of Indonesian biologists to document the species of the Togean Islands, to "develop" Togean people, and to turn this archipelago off the coast of Sulawesi into a national park. Indonesian scientists aspired to a conservation biology that was both internationally recognizable and politically effective in the Indonesian context. Simultaneously, Lowe describes the experiences of Togean Sama people who had their own understandings of nature and nation. To place Sama and scientist into the same conceptual frame, Lowe studies Sama ideas in the context of transnational thought rather than local knowledge. In tracking the practice of conservation biology in a postcolonial setting, Wild Profusion explores what in nature can count as important and for whom.