Article

Are Central Africa’s Protected Areas Displacing Hundreds of Thousands of Rural Poor?

Details

Citation

Curran B, Sunderland T, Maisels F, Oates JF, Asaha S, Balinga M, Defo L, Dunn A, Telfer P, Usongo L, von Loebenstein K & Roth P (2009) Are Central Africa’s Protected Areas Displacing Hundreds of Thousands of Rural Poor?. Conservation and Society, 7 (1), pp. 30-45. https://doi.org/10.4103/0972-4923.54795

Abstract
An ongoing debate over the impacts of protected areas on rural communities in central Africa has become increasingly polarized in recent years, even as deÞ nitions of displacement have shifted from outright expulsion to economic dislocation precipitated by lost access to natural resources. Although forcible removal of communities to make way for the creation of National Parks has certainly occurred in the past in some parts of the world, we contend that not a single individual has been physically removed from any of the protected areas created in central Africa over the past decade, despite claims to the contrary of hundreds of thousands of .conservation refugees.. Furthermore, we recognize that a scarcity of data precludes impartial evaluation of the potential impacts of economic displacement of local communities living adjacent to protected areas, and we call for a concerted effort by conservationists and the social scientists who criticize conservation efforts, in order to measure the effects of protected areas on livelihoods, and to work towards a more socially responsible conservation paradigm.

Keywords
biodiversity conservation; Central Africa; displacement; protected areas

Journal
Conservation and Society: Volume 7, Issue 1

StatusPublished
Publication date31/12/2009
URLhttp://hdl.handle.net/1893/19720
PublisherMedknow Publications and Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)
ISSN0972-4923

People (1)

People

Professor Fiona Maisels

Professor Fiona Maisels

Honorary Professor, Biological and Environmental Sciences