Conservation and Neocolonialism

Conservation and Neocolonialism refers to the conservation movement as taken up today by international organizations such as the World Wide Fund for Nature, which has inadvertently set up a neocolonialist relationship with underdeveloped nations in a manner consistent with Immanuel Wallerstein’s World Systems Theory (Wallerstein, 1974) and Andre Gunder Frank’s
Dependency Theory (Frank, 1975).

Neocolonialism, with its attempts to create dependency through indirect control, demonstrates Andre Gunder Frank’s theory in a modern situation. In terms of conservation, foreign powers in the form of international conservation organizations exert pressure on underdeveloped nations to create protected areas. The national governments of these underdeveloped nations agree to do this because of the economic incentives they are given by the World Bank and donor nations. In Madagascar, for example, the World Bank actively participates in creating national parks by relieving national debt in exchange for establishing wilderness areas (Harper, 2002:97). The World Bank created, and continues to fund, the National Association for the Management of Protected Areas, which the Malagasy government runs, to manage national parks in Madagascar.

Within the underdeveloped nations, the conservation movement has become a form of internal colonialism. By agreeing to created wilderness areas that exclude people, the national governments force the local, often already marginalized, people off their territory. This creates a state of dependence on the state by the local people for their socioeconomic well-being. In the late 1980s, the conservation movement attempted to alleviate this dependency situation by developing community-based conservation (c.f. Drijver, 1992; Brockington, 2001). This utopian vision has not been quite as successful as planned, however. As Anthropologist Carol A. Drijver notes, “the local rural population may be used as informants and sometimes consulted for their opinions. However, this does not necessarily give them any real control or participation in the direction of the project” (Drijver, 1992:133). While international conservation organizations promise social and economic improvement to local communities as a direct result of the creation of national parks and protected areas, the outcome is seldom successful. Jobs created by the parks are more often given to people from outside the area with more education or connections than the local people often have.

ee also

* Conservation movement
* Community-based conservation

References

*cite book
first = Dan
last = Brockington
authorlink =
coauthors =
year = 2001
title = Fortress Conservation: The Preservation of the Mkomazi Game Reserve, Tanzania
publisher = James Currey
location = Oxford
id =
*cite book
first = Carol A.
last = Drijver
year = 1992
title = Bush Base: Forest Farm. Culture, Environment, and Development
chapter = People’s Participation in Environmental Projects
editor = Elisabeth Croll and David Parkin, ed.
pages = 131-145
publisher = Routledge
location = London
id =
*cite book
first = Andre Gunder
last = Frank
year = 1975
title = On Capitalist Underdevelopment
publisher = Oxford University Press
location = Bombay
id =
*cite book
first = Janice
last = Harper
year = 2002
title = Endangered Species: Health, Illness and Death Among Madagascar’s People of the Forest
publisher = Carolina Academic Press
location = Durham, NC
id =
*cite book
first = Immanuel
last = Wallerstein
year = 1974
title = The Modern World System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World Economy in the Sixteenth Century
publisher = Academic Press
location = New York
id =