Hearing the human voice in biodiversity

It is one of the very few books, if not the first, on biodiversity that transcends disciplines. The book, Biodiversity and Human Livelihoods in Protected Areas interfaces conservation biology, social science and political ecology -- putting into perspective, multi-disciplinary and disparate views in protected areas that are the most critical arenas of tropical conservation.

Featuring case studies conducted in the Malay Archipelago, the book, edited by Drs Navjot S Sodhi, Alan Tan Khee Jin and Maribeth Erb of the National University of Singapore (NUS) with Gregory Acciaioli of the University of Western Australia, is dedicated to the memory of the 19th century naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace who gave the name, Malay Archipelago, to the region covering the extent of islands stretching from the Malay Peninsula in the west to New Guinea in the east.

For Dr Sodhi, Professor with the NUS Department of Biological Sciences, working on the book has actually opened up his "close-mindedness" as a biologist. "More than just conservation of wildlife and species, we also need to understand how we can mitigate with the people, and to make good a loss, so that it would benefit people to some extent ... and wildlife too," he said.

As a biologist, he is concerned with 34 biodiversity hotspots worldwide, covering 16 per cent of the planet's surface that are in critical need of conservation. "These biodiversity hotspots are defined as the regions that harbour a high diversity of endemic species and, at the same time, have been significantly impacted and altered by human activities (Myers et al 2000)..." he wrote in his introduction to Part I: Conservation needs and priorities.

Though 20 per cent of the forested land is protected in the Malay Archipelago and exceed the global average of 12 per cent, countries like Malaysia are below the average. "The further worry is that less than 0.05 per cent of the marine area is protected regionally or in individual countries. Clearly, more marine protected areas are needed in this region," he wrote.

Traditionally, "protected areas" means building fences, observed Dr Tan, Associate Professor and Vice-Dean at the NUS Faculty of Law. But separating areas and places completely from the human community would pose a lot of challenges. Instead, a multi-disciplinary approach that incorporates the "voice" of people from the surroundings, can offer perspectives that would help reconcile competing intentions and conflicts, he said.

Excluding people from protected areas is not always feasible, biologist Dr Sodhi also conceded, as local communities have been relying on the resources contained within these areas for centuries. Looking from an anthropologist's viewpoint, Dr Erb, Associate Professor with the NUS Department of Sociology, could not agree more. In Part II: Conservation with and against people(s), she and other contributors attempt to present the perspectives of local communities whose members were confronted with the concept of conservation that is often alien to them.


"Unlike the other parts presenting views from conservation biologists and lawyers, this part presents the perspectives of mainly anthropologists, who have worked closely with local communities in an attempt to understand both their knowledge of their environment and the social institutions that form the framework of their practices in regard to it. While conservation biologists tend to look at the problem of conservation from the planetary perspective of maximising biodiversity, including avoiding species extinction, and lawyers tend to look at the problems of the legal frameworks put in place to safeguard protected areas, hence often concentrating upon the national context of these laws (though in the context of global conventions and frameworks), anthropologists are concerned with the ecological and political-cultural consequences of the global and the national at the level of the local," she wrote in her introduction.

Dr Erb and authors in Part II of the book, argued for the inclusion of local people in decision-making about protected areas and conservation agendas. Chris Majors, author of the chapter, Seas of discontent: conflicting knowledge paradigms within Indonesia's marine environmental arena, observed that designated protected areas are increasingly the thrust of conservation efforts in protecting the world's marine biological diversity. But he pointed out that environmentalists are also beginning to recognise that the management of such areas cannot ignore the "broad array of human interests and needs" often associated with densely populated coastal regions.

"This understanding has led to the development of so-called 'integrated' approaches to marine management that environmentalists believe will enable important conservation goals to be achieved, whilst also accommodating the diverse needs of different user groups," he wrote.

The chapters in Part III: Legal and governance frameworks for conservation examine what it takes for laws, policies and institutions to be successful for protected-area management in Indonesia and Malaysia. Wrote Dr Tan in his introduction: "At its core, the problem is one of governance. The integrity of designated protected areas, be these terrestrial or marine areas, depends on the sanctity of their boundaries and the accommodation of competing uses. These are only possible if potentially conflicting priorities such as local communities' livelihoods, natural-resource extraction and spatial planning can be equitably and predictably reconciled."

He advocated that protected-area management and biodiversity conservation must be conducted in a manner that takes into account the "myriad economic activities (both legal or otherwise) that occur outside such areas, the encroachment that may take place into protected areas and the buffer zones around them and the legitimate customary rights of access enjoyed by communities living off the resources in these areas. Such issues, if and when regulated by law, require the following prerequisites: certainty in the content of laws, certainty in enforcement and certainty in impartial adjudication for resolving disputes."

Though conservationists and environmentalists face grave complexities, an optimistic mood prevails. For Dr Sodhi, disciplines coming together and looking at issues with a coordinated approach may sound clichéd, but it is the best operative approach. He noted that a study by Lian Pin Koh shows that there should be a concerted effort in Singapore to keep butterflies proliferating. Urbanisation, unlike other kinds of habitat disturbance such as logging, often causes irreversible damage to the natural ecosystem. Lian Pin's study showed that forest reserves have the highest number of species of butterflies as well as unique species -- and urban parks adjoining forests have higher numbers and density of species than forest fragments or isolated urban parks. Thus protected forests have been the key persistence of butterflies in heavily urbanised Singapore. However, reforestation using plants needed by the butterflies and reconnecting previously isolated forests may give the butterfly tale a happier ending. Such studies are important in showing that biodiversity can (and should) be protected in degraded areas.

There are of course success stories, one of which is the Berau District Marine Protected Area in East Kalimantan. It is an excellent example of many different stakeholders from a variety of disciplines coming together to create a Marine Protected Area based around the reality of the existing legal system, the local communities' goals, biological data and biodiversity conservation initiatives. In the chapter, Indonesia's protected areas need more protection: suggestions from island examples, authors David Bickford (now Assistant Professor in NUS) et al. outlined the most important core ingredients for success -- decentralisation, innovative collaboration and public education. Indonesia can capitalise on new and innovative collaborative relationships to conserve protected areas, by bringing together the different skill sets from local government agencies, NGOs and conservation workers.

With proper management and governance incorporating science, community aspiration and political views, various pressures on the environment are not insurmountable, said Dr Tan, summing up the views of the other editors and authors.