Conservation practitioners increasingly recognize the potential impacts and opportunities of the complex contexts in which they work. Anthropologists can support a positive process of increasing the inclusivity and conflict sensitivity of appropriate conservation projects.
Paper long abstract:
Environmental conservation work has traditionally focused on protecting specific flora, fauna, or biological landscapes while excluding sociopolitical landscapes from direct consideration. More recently, however, conservation projects and practitioners have begun to recognize the potential impacts and opportunities of the conflict and historical contexts in which they work. These impacts include the possibility of either exacerbating or contributing to the amelioration of historical inequities and exclusions as well as contemporary violent and non-violent conflicts. Anthropologists can support the development of conflict- and context-sensitivity in environmental conservation by providing frameworks with which conservation practitioners can view, explore, and respond to the histories and sociopolitical dynamics in which they work. This includes such applied practices as context analysis, stakeholder mapping, root causes analysis, and monitoring, evaluation, and learning processes that rely on common anthropological methods. Through these, anthropologists can contribute to more inclusive, appropriate, empowering, and thus effective conservation work that engages the voices of historical marginalized and disempowered groups who have not traditionally had space to engage in decisions about their natural environments.