Parks in the Congo Basin: Can Conservation and Development Be Reconciled
Author(s)
Tutin, Caroline E. G.
Abstract
The large size of many parks in the Congo Basin of western equatorial Africa combined with generally low levels of direct threats such as hunting, agricultural encroachment, and the like indicate high potential for effective long-term biodiversity conservation. However, serious indirect threats exacerbated by the current socioeconomic status of the region and by unexpected perverse effects of attempts to reconcile conservation and development are of increasing concern. The obstacles to making parks work and to potential solutions can be broadly classified into five categories: (1) The lack of appreciation of the need for strictly protected parks by politicians and civil society makes them a very low priority; (2) Parks in the Congo Basin face management problems similar to those faced by other tropical regions (i.e., lack of trained management staff, lack of functioning management plans, lack of relevant biological information, and insufficient financial resources); (3) The opportunity costs of maintaining forested parks are much too high for national governments with pressing economic concerns to bear on their own, and therefore it is essential for the international conservation community to share the responsibility of maintaining parks in the region; (4) Integrated conservation development projects create opportunities for employment and improved livelihoods, thereby serving as focal points for the migration of economic refugees; (5) The growing belief among politicians that sustainable management of forests reduces the need for parks is by and large the most serious threat faced by parks in the region and is exemplified by an increasing number of timber concessions within parks.
