Book Review

The biodiversity conservation Network (BCN) is a component of the Biodiversity Support Program(BSP), a USAID-funded programme working in the Asia/Pacific Region to provide grants for community - based enterprises that directly depend on biodiversity.

In "Getting Down to Business", its annual report for the year 1997, BCN documents the successes and failures of these enterprises to serve as lessons for the future. As Hank Cauley, Director of BCN puts it "the journey is the destination" because the insights gleaned from such ventures will help future conservation agendas.

The report points out that the first steps in ensuring success of a biodiversity project is to delineate the area to be protected, identify and mobilise a group of stakeholders in the area and then put forward an enterprise which is directly linked with the biodiversity of the region. This project must have the potential to be self supporting.

Probably the most important step in achieving success is for the community to get resource governance rights.

Jack Croucher, who initiated a Tasar silk and honey project in the mountains of Garhwal, writes: "The major problem remains one of tenure. The ultimate control of the forests rests in the hands of the government and not of the people... this means that funds generated from forest produce are not at the disposal of the local Van Panchayat but are under the control of the Revenue Department".

BCN’s advice is that communities should work with NGOs who are well versed in the laws of the land and its political climate. NGOs in India have been fighting to secure such rights for communities.

A second catalyst is to develop a strong leadership in the community with a vision for conservation. Good relations and recognition from government officials helps in a big way. Generating short term benefits for the community stakeholders is also a powerful incentive for stakeholders.

So are small early successes in the project. These build a great deal of confidence.

But all success stories have a flip side as well. The "challenges" which these projects have to encounter are formidable. Governments are often somnolent or, worse, the agenda of public officials may be diametrically opposite to the communities interests. Often the government supports activities like mining within the forest or hands out land for road building, logging or for collecting forest produce. Communities are confronted with a powerful nexus between government and industry.

In such a situation BCN’s advice is to identify other stakeholders in the project and be prepared to deal with them by building a large enough constituency to ensure the subservience of individual interest to group interest.

Social rivalries often stymie the project as do logistical problems, lack of business skills and natural disasters. The report outlines all these problems and tries to find solutions in dealing with them.

The success stories are interesting and instructive. The projects cover a wide range of activities from eco-tourism in Nepal to butterfly farming in the rain forest of Irian Java. The trails and tribulations of the communities are carefully described from their point of view.

But the tricky question of sharing knowledge and resources with local industry or with multinational corporations has been left out. This is a question which needs to be addressed.

BCN is also summarising the policy impact of these efforts at the local, regional and national level. These range from decisions to curtail certain local fishing practices in Fiji to national export license policies for butterflies in Indonesia. The impact such projects have had on conservation policies also needs to be documented. The final analysis of these efforts will be communicated back to the communities by BCN.