Community Conservation in Zanzibar: Not Just Mangroves and Monkeys

An article in Science Daily yet again shows how conservation should reflect the connection between resource users and specific resources.  The study examined community conservation in Zanzibar and how successful its goals were.  The results revealed how "community conservation projects commonly fail because they are too mired in concern about regulating, or perhaps more accurately constraining, the 'direct' relationship between resource use and users."  Accounting for the relationship between humans and the non-human environment falls directly under environmental justice.  While preservation fails to incorporate any connection between the two, conservation places regulations on the connection between humans and the use of resources.  Conservation should, however, recognize this connection in order to create better policies for the environment and the people interacting with that environment.  By understanding the varied interests of resource users, community conservation should be "seen not just as 'local rational resource users', as they largely are now, but as people with differentiated socio-economic and cultural interconnections and interests," as the article states.  This approach also acknowledges the indigenous cultural connections with nature that are largely ignored by most conservations schemes.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111229091640.htm