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Date: April 30, 2024 Tue

Time: 12:42 am

Results for natural resource management

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Author: Booker, Francesca

Title: First line of defence? A review of evidence on the effectiveness of engaging communities to tackle illegal wildlife trade

Summary: Illegal wildlife trade (IWT) in wild species and products is at the top of the international conservation agenda. But it is not just a concern for conservationists - it also has implications for economic and social development, and security. The level of international concern about IWT is reflected by the level of investment that has been made in tackling it - more than US$1.3 billion since 2010 (Wright et al. 2016). It is well recognised that tackling IWT requires a multi-pronged approach and that, beyond reducing demand for illegal products and increasing anti IWT law enforcement along the entire wildlife value chain, a third critical strategy is engaging local communities in conservation. By virtue of their proximity to and knowledge of wildlife, local people are well placed to participate in or support poaching and IWT. The same characteristics mean, however, that they are equally well placed to detect, report on, and help prevent it - if the appropriate incentives are in place. But community engagement has received far less attention and investment than law enforcement or demand reduction to date. Only about 15 per cent of the US$1.3 billion has been allocated to initiatives intended to support sustainable use and alternative livelihoods. Part of the problem is that there is no blueprint approach. While global and regional policy commitments to engaging communities abound, details of how these should be implemented and how they impact IWT remain vague. This report attempts to take a first step in addressing that vagueness. It does so by reviewing existing evidence on the effectiveness of different approaches to engaging communities in efforts to tackle IWT. Through a literature review and through submissions to IIED's Conservation, Crime and Communities (CCC) database (www.communitiesforwildlife.iied.org), we identified 49 different examples of community-based initiatives for tackling illegal wildlife trade from Africa (25 initiatives), Asia (18 initiatives) and Latin America (6 initiatives). The most common approach to community engagement in the 49 initiatives was direct involvement in anti-poaching activities - as guards/rangers or informants. Another common approach was the introduction of alternative livelihoods (both wildlife and non-wildlife based). Wildlife tourism development was the most common form of livelihood support activities deployed specifically to engage poachers in one case, but more commonly used to generate conservation incentives for the broader community. Human wildlife conflict mitigation was also employed in over 20 per cent of the initiatives. Very few (four) initiatives involved community members benefiting from sustainable harvesting and legal trade as a conservation incentive. Of the 49 initiatives identified, only 26 (53 per cent) reported on their effectiveness (either in terms of reducing poaching or maintaining or increasing wildlife populations), although a further six noted that the initiatives were at too early a stage in their development to report on effectiveness. For the 26 that reported on effectiveness, 19 (73 per cent) reported that they were effective - although in four cases effectiveness was partial (it varied over time or was site specific); two were not effective; and five were unclear (either they did not provide an assessment of the community engagement component of a broader anti-IWT initiative, or they showed contradictory results). Of the 26 initiatives with a reported impact on poaching/wildlife numbers, only seven (8 per cent of the total dataset) provided details of how this impact had been assessed - including through interviews with local community members, through analysis of records on reported poaching incidents, and through visual assessments. Of these seven, four found that illegal activities (poaching, logging, illegal plant collection) had declined and one found no change; one found that target populations had increased and one found no change.

Details: London: IIED, 2017. 60p.

Source: Internet Resource: Accessed May 8, 2017 at: http://pubs.iied.org/pdfs/17591IIED.pdf

Year: 2017

Country: International

URL: http://pubs.iied.org/pdfs/17591IIED.pdf

Shelf Number: 145348

Keywords:
Community Engagement
Crime Prevention
Illegal Wildlife Trade
Natural Resource Management
Natural Resources
Wildlife Conservation
Wildlife Crime
Wildlife Management

Author: Mahler, Annegret

Title: Conflict Prevention through Natural Resource Management? A Comparative Study

Summary: Natural resources are often held responsible for intrastate conflicts. As a consequence, both national and international measures to avoid the detrimental impact of resource endowments have increasingly been discussed and implemented in resource‐rich countries. These measures include stabilization funds, subregional development programs, revenue‐sharing regimes, and transparency initiatives. However, comparative empirical studies of the actual impact of these measures, particularly regarding their contribution to conflict prevention, are scarce. This paper contributes to the filling of this gap: combining a medium‐N sample of oil‐ dependent countries and three in‐depth case studies (Algeria, Nigeria, and Venezuela), we evaluate different instruments of resource management and their effects on conflict risk fac‐ tors. On the one hand, the findings do not show any systematic connection between the countermeasures and a reduction in resource‐related risks; on the other, the paper highlights common causal factors for the lack of implementation of resource‐related countermeasures.

Details: Hamburg, Germany: GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies, 2011. 34p.

Source: Internet Resource: GIGA Working Paper No. 158: Accessed May 27, 2017 at: https://www.giga-hamburg.de/en/system/files/publications/wp158_maehler-shabafrouz-struever.pdf

Year: 2011

Country: International

URL: https://www.giga-hamburg.de/en/system/files/publications/wp158_maehler-shabafrouz-struever.pdf

Shelf Number: 145833

Keywords:
Conflict-Related Violence
Natural Resource Management
Natural Resources
Oil-Related Conflict