Central Africa’s protected areas and the purported displacement of people: A first critical review of existing data

Citation

Maisels F, Sunderland T, Curran B, von Loebenstein K, Oates JF, Usongo L, Dunn A, Asaha S, Balinga M, Defo L & Telfer P (2007) Central Africa’s protected areas and the purported displacement of people: A first critical review of existing data. In: Redford K & Fearn E (eds.) Protected areas and human displacement- a conservation perspective:. WCS Working Papers, 29. Bronx, New York, USA: WCS, pp. 75-89.

Abstract
First paragraph: In the past several years a large body of literature has been published on the involuntary displacement of local communities living in or around protected areas in Central Africa (Brockington 2004; Brockington et al. 2006; Cernea and Schmidt-Soltau 2003, 2006; Schmidt-Soltau 2000, 2001, 2003, 2004, 2005a, 2005b; Schmidt-Soltau and Brockington 2004; Schmidt-Soltau et al. 2001). These papers call into question what they see as the practice of biodiversity conservation projects to designate conservation lands without discussion with or compensation to these displaced people. They point out that people do not have to necessarily be physically displaced for their access to resources to be affected. Writ simply, they see the creation of certain national parks in Central Africa as reducing the standard of living of local communities, as they believe local people's access to their traditional lands has been restricted. These restrictions are then translated into economic losses, or more seriously, local impoverishment, caused directly by the creation of protected areas. We wish to make clear at the start that contrary to the conclusions of many of these papers, we can find no unequivocal evidence of people having been forcibly or involuntarily displaced from the protected areas cited by the authors. We will address the issue of what the authors define as economic displacement below, and we will demonstrate that the majority of the case studies are based on incorrect or inappropriate data, or at the least, data which have been interpreted incorrectly by people who have spent very little time at the majority of the protected areas in question.

People

Professor Fiona Maisels

Honorary Professor, Biological and Environmental Sciences