Conservation, Markets and Justice: a comparative study of local and global conceptions

Forest conservation initiatives are often driven by motives that arise at national and even global levels. These include the preservation of valuable resources for the national economy, the conservation of biological diversity and, increasingly, the mitigation of climate change through enhanced storage of carbon in forest biomass. Whilst conservation is largely framed in terms of global goods, including for future generations, there is increasing agreement that these interests should not prejudice the needs and rights of current people who live within or adjacent to those forests targeted for conservation.

This is a very important challenge that is currently being faced by all those governments, NGOs and public policy-making institutions that are implementing forest conservation in the tropics through support for protected areas, REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) and other conservation mechanisms. The UK government is itself strongly involved in REDD+, as are many international conservation NGOs such as Fauna and Flora International and WWF. This research project will seek to contribute to the challenge to reconcile forest conservation for all, with social justice for local people in developing countries. To do so, the project will generate new empirical data about what social justice means to these local people and work with donors, NGOs and policy-makers at national and international levels to bring this new knowledge into practice.

The project will conduct research in three countries, China, Tanzania and Venezuela. In each country we have selected study sites that represent two different categories of forest conservation intervention: those that are community-oriented and those that have also taken on more market-oriented approaches. Thus we have comparisons across different countries and across different governance models of forest intervention. In each site we will research local conceptions of environmental justice, for example what different groups of local people consider to be the fairest way of making decisions about forest management options, and what they consider to be the fairest way of distributing the costs and benefits associated with any intervention. Because so little is known about local conceptions of justice, and there are no established methodologies for researching this, we will employ a combination of methods that provide us with opportunities for comparing findings and for validation of results. We will test for the presence of some well known principles of justice using surveys and experimental economic games. But we will also employ more open, ethnographic methods, inlcuding interviews and participatory video, for a more inductive approach to identifying justice norms. During year 1 we will hold a field-based methods inception workshop to pilot and finalise all methods as a team.

In addition to comparisons across countries and across intervention type, a central thrust of our research will be to compare local conceptions of justice with those that are evident in the conservation interventions in that particular site. In that way, we will be investigating any areas of divergence and seeking to understand how this impacts on local receptivity to the intervention. In other words, we will be looking at divergence and convergence between different stakeholders' conceptions of justice and fairness, as a basis for understanding conservation conflicts and cooperation.

The demand for this research has arisen through previous collaborative engagement with NGO actors in the the field sites themselves and through UK-based events we have organised, bringing together academics and practitioners interested in justice-oriented approaches to forest and biodiversity conservation approaches. We will continue this engagement with key conservation stakeholders such as IUCN and WWF to ensure that this new knowledge informs new practices.

Who will benefit?

Our research will impact three main user groups including (1) donors, NGOs and policy-makers at national and international level, (2) relevant in situ NGOs, and (3) local communities. All of these user groups are already engaged with us in one way or another and thus have contributed to the demand for this research and to its design. Engagement to date with national and international practitioners has involved a public debate on international forestry and justice organised by Sikor in July 2011, and a scholar-practitioner exchange event on conservation and justice organised by Gross-camp and Martin in March 2012. Engagement with local NGOs has taken place in the context of pre-existing research project collaborations in each site. Local NGOs, and global NGOS, notably WWF, have contributed directly to research design through response to a concept note.

How will they benefit?

The group of national and international actors includes UN policymaking forums, including for REDD+, UK government, including its support for the Convention on Biological Diversity, REDD+ and other conservation mechanisms; and international environmental NGOs, including those with UK bases such as WWF and Fauna and Flora International (FFI) who are signatories to the Conservation Initiative on Human Rights. All these policy and practitioner actors struggle with the tensions arising between global and national interests and those of local stakeholders. All are looking to reconcile conservation with social justice, for example through rights-based approaches, compensation protocol and systems for Free, Prior and Informed Consent. The current research will generate improved understanding of the meaning of justice to local communities, of how global attempts to frame and implement justice principles are often misaligned with these local meanings, and how we can work to resolve these mis-matches. This will be achieved by continuation of the engagement we have already begun, and through two policy engagement forums to be held in the UK during the second and third years of the project.

Engagement with local NGOs will be through the specific projects located within the research sites. For example, the Mpingo Conservation and Development Initiative and FFI in Tanzania, and The Nature Conservancy and Conservation International in China. Important components of these projects will include the development of a benefit sharing procedure and the further development of an existing programme for monitoring social impacts. Understanding local conceptions of what constitutes fair outcomes and governance procedures can inform both these tasks. At the same time, these pilot carbon projects entails very real opportunities for dissemination of best practice beyond the local sites - there is huge international interest in learning from active pilots such as these. In addition to the international engagement forums in the UK, we will also hold national level engagment forums in each country to connect local experience to national policy makers.

Engagement with local communities within our study sites will involve further consultations about the benefits that they wish to gain from the project. Aside from the general benefit of better aligned policies and interventions, there are specific agendas in each site that we are aware of but which require further elaboration during preliminary visits. For example, the Pemon people in Venezuela have an ongoing initiative to develop a 'life plan' for their people and a process of reflecting upon their conceptions of justice can contribute to this. The project will support the production of a pamphlet in each site that documents the findings of the research and these documents will serve as the basis for a cross-cultural workshop in the UK, bringing together representatives from different sites to compare findings and analyse cultural and other explanations for difference.