CConservation constituencies increasingly need to
confront the history of “nature” and a variety of local
cultural practices and rights. In the so-called global
North, historically marginalised groups won at least
some of their struggles and can today speak their con-
cerns loud and clear. The same cannot be said for the
so-called global South. The shouts of traditional pas-
toralists in Burkina Faso confronted with a protected
area that curtails their historical grazing rights... do not
yet ring quite as loud as the shouts of a group of
Colorado ranchers denied access to public land. For
how long, however?
In this issue of Policy Matters we collected papers that
deal with the interplay among history, culture and con-
servation. We have several examples from the South
and a few—quite revealing ones—from the North. In
both cases, it is striking to read about the powerful
ties between biodiversity and people, and we can
appreciate the intelligence and craftiness that support
those ties. Also striking, however, is how widespread
insensitivity to social concerns in conservation still is,
and insensitivity to cultural concerns in particular.
There are some distinctions to be made between the
South and the North. As discussed in Section IV
(Understanding and measuring bio-cultural diversity),
the areas in the South with the largest concentration
of biodiversity are also endowed with a rich cultural
diversity. We’d miss a major element, however, if we
did not take note that they are also the areas
endowed with a colonial past, where people have been
historically disenfranchised and marginalised. This
oppression has shaped, modified and often impover-
ished what we call their “cultures” today. After all, cul-
ture is a product of history. And, for that matter, con-
temporary history is busy at work in front of our eyes,
affecting the North and the South alike with its enor-
mous power of flattening and homogenizing differ-
ences...
In some circles it has almost become passé to point
out that conservation agencies ignore history and cul-
ture at their peril. Ignoring local practices, institutions
and knowledge systems seems only too clearly a way
to waste precious resources and generate local opposi-
tion. For many it is obvious that conventional, bureau-
cratic, institution-driven conservation practices serve
neither the interest of biodiversity nor those of com-
munities. Yet, it is exactly those types of practices that
continue to be promoted in the field. And the philoso-
phy behind this continues to be forcefully expressed at
international meetings and in professional debates and
literature: “...the protection of parks requiresa top
down approach.”^1 “Let us not ‘politicise’ conservation!”,(^2) “We need impartial research and detached scepti-
cism, not advocacy!”.
Why so much resistance to embedding conservation in
history, culture and social concerns? Why so little
attention to people? Why so little research and action
about the fundamental links between nature and liveli-
hoods, systems of knowledge and values, languages,
and habits? Part of the explanation has to do with the
plurality, ebullience and ‘messiness’ of people’s ways,
and with the fact that cultural diversity is, by its own
nature, difficult to control. The politics of knowledge
has created neat compartments, consolidated though
time by the power of money. The dominant develop-
ment discourse has separated biodiversity from people
and cultural diversity in universities, research institu-
tions, literature and the popular media, and made the
separation appear “natural” and respectable to most of
us. From that, it follows that physical barriers, com-
mercialisation and disneyfication of nature are also
natural and acceptable. “Culture” is appreciated as a
side dish of the “big five”^4 (...at the end of the jeep
wildlife tour you can stop and get a picture of the
jumping Maasai...).
But there is more. The social sciences, which could
attempt to cast a critical look upon processes of
destruction in the name of conservation, are controver-
sial in different ways with respect to the physical and
biological sciences. They are easily misunderstood and
labelled as troublesome and ineffectual. In addition,
too large a number of social scientists employed in
conservation initiatives have demonstrated myopic
vision and accepted to play marginal and ineffectual
roles. For decades they have confined themselves to
administering questionnaires to “extract” information
from people or been content with tinkering at the
fringes of large projects, taking on “environmental
education” roles. Few have had the resolve to say that
the emperor has no clothes, that conservation projects
can hurt, that they can trample upon rights, generate
poverty, shatter cultural identities.^5 Few have made it
clear that conservation initiatives that do not place
people, history and culture at their coreare doomed to
resort to violence or fail.^6
Not many may have said it, but this is what is happen-
ing. For those who perceive biodiversity as onewith
cultural diversity and livelihoods it is painful to see how