Conceptual Background

To understand the BCN and its context, we first must look at three different paradigms for conservation that were developed over the course of the last century.

Paradigm 1: Parks and Protected Areas

The first conservation efforts began by developing National Parks and other protected areas. As shown in the following diagram, the key feature of these Parks is that they restrict human use of the core biodiversity area. These "hard-edged" parks are generally surrounded by fences or other boundaries that are supposed to keep people out. People are supposed to only use resources outside of the park, leaving the interior for wildlife - and wildlife are meant to only stay inside the Park, leaving the exterior for people. This Park and Protected Area paradigm began with the creation of Yellowstone Park in the late nineteenth century and was replicated with some success throughout North America, Europe, and parts of Africa.

Unfortunately, when people began to try to replicate this model in the developing world, they ran into numerous problems. In many cases, given the desperate economic situation of people living around the park, it was not possible to build a fence high enough or to hire enough guards to keep the people from getting in to use the park's natural resources. Furthermore, in many places - for example in Papua New Guinea and other parts of the Pacific - the local people owned the land and had managed its resources for generations, making it impractical or even immoral to suddenly declare parts of it as off-limits to human use. Thus, the hard-edged park paradigm began to crumble.

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Paradigm 2: Integrated Conservation and Development Projects (ICDPs or ICADs)

In the mid-1970s as a result of the problems in implementing parks and protected areas in the developing world, a new paradigm was born. As shown in the following diagram, the key feature here was the development of a buffer zone area around the core natural habitat. Under this initial Biosphere Reserve concept, a conservation project no longer focuses just on the biodiversity in the center of the reserve. Instead, project teams also try to use the buffer zone to provide for the economic well-being of the residents surrounding the reserve. For example, the project might help local residents grow coffee in the buffer zone to supplement their income. Over time, the simple buffer zone concept became expanded into larger income generating projects. For example, the project might set up a shoe factory in one of the villages to provide income. These broader efforts involving combining conservation and economic development became known as (surprise, surprise) Integrated Conservation and Development Projects which are abbreviated as ICDPs or ICADs.

The key feature of the ICDP paradigm is that there is an indirect link between the habitats and the surrounding human populations. The ICDP tries to focus effort in the buffer zone area or in an alternative income generating strategy in order to protect the interior natural areas. There are, however, a number of theoretical and practical problems with this model. First, it assumes that local people will not both plant their coffee or work in the shoe factory and still continue the internal threats such as hunting or expansion of farms that are harming biodiversity in the core reserve. Second, it has the problem of creating an incentive for expanding the buffer zones into the core area as shown in the diagram with the small arrows. For example, if I'm making money growing coffee in the buffer zone, I will probably expand my coffee garden at the expense of the forest. Finally, the model does not take into account external threats to the biodiversity. For example, the problem may not be just the local people hunting or expanding their farms, but also a large logging company that is coming in to clear-cut the forest from the other side of the reserve. Unfortunately under the ICDP model, there is no local constituency to monitor the development of these threats and take action on behalf of the forest.

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Paradigm 3: Directly Linking Conservation and Economic Development

In the late 1980s, when these problems with ICDPs started to become more and more apparent, a third paradigm was developed. As shown in the diagram below, the key feature here is that there was no longer an attempt to divide the landscape into areas for biodiversity and areas for humans only. Instead, conservationists began to look at the entire landscape as an integrated whole. The goal here is to try to develop direct links between the biodiversity and the surrounding human populations. The theory is that if humans can directly benefit from the biodiversity, they will then have the incentive to identify and take action against both internal and external threats to the biodiversity.

Although this idea seems to make sense in theory, at this point, it is not clear whether it will work in practice. The BCN was thus developed to test this idea. It is thus extremely important to understand that we are not saying that we think that direct linkage is a great idea that should be done everywhere. Instead, we think that it is an interesting idea that needs to be tested. The information in the remainder of this web site shows the work that we have done to date in this regard. We hope that you find it interesting.

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