Project Proposal

Mobile Peoples and Conservation: Crossing the Disciplinary Divide
Wadi Dana, Jordan, 3-7 April 2002

A conference hosted by the Refugee Studies Centre, Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford,

in collaboration with: the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology, University of Kent at Canterbury;

the World Commission on Protected Areas (IUCN); and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).

Conference Summary

In 1999 the Refugee Studies Centre held an open conference, Displacement, Forced Settlement and Conservation which identified a need to bridge disciplinary divides between social and natural scientists. Settled communities have been the focus of most debate concerning conservation and sustainable development. Mobile communities have not been widely explored in these discussions. With Rio Plus 10 and the IUCN-WCPA World Parks Congress both on the horizon, it is urgent that concerns about mobile communities enter into the on-going conservation debates and discussion.

The aim of this follow-up conference is to stimulate an open and frank discourse relating to the current impact of wildlife conservation on the lives and livelihoods of mobile peoples, who generally inhabit remote and marginal areas¹. Our goal is to define areas of common interest, tease out the differences in priorities and true areas of conflict, and begin a constructive dialogue on sustainable, biodiversity-rich land use by mobile peoples. The conference will critically examine current popular concepts of community management and the current conservation-preservation debate, as well as areas of conflicting theory and practice as related to mobile communities.

Background and Justification

The 1999 conference, Displacement, Forced Settlement and Conservation brought together a wide range of specialists concerned with the indigenous human populations affected by conservation projects. The conference helped raise a number of important issues which needed further discussion. Among these were two major philosophical threads: preservationism, which, in spite of much debate and international policy shifts towards sustainable development in recent years, is still the predominant philosophy behind many conservation projects; and the historical, and still contemporary, sentiment that mobile people constitute a threat to settled communities and national governments. Here wildlife conservation has often been used as a justification for forcing people into permanent settlements. A third, more positive factor that also emerged from this conference, was the recognition of the progress that had been made over the last decade in bringing indigenous people into the management of conservation areas. The conference participants, though benefiting from the opportunity to present their research to each other, recognised that, for there to be progress, disciplinary divides needed to be bridged, social and natural scientists needed to engage with each other over the issues and controversies in conservation and biodiversity.

Aims and objectives

The aim of this follow-up workshop is to set into motion a productive dialogue between social and natural scientists to examine the impact that wildlife conservation and other environmental protection projects have on the lives of the mobile and marginal people who inhabit the same areas. It is hoped that such a dialogue will promote a multi-faceted approach to people, plants and animals in conservation and biodiversity protection issues. A further objective is the promotion of conservation research and practice which is multi-disciplinary and participative.

Issues which will be tabled and discussed at this workshop are:

the need to establish a common understanding of key terms like the meaning of biodiversity, conservation and protected area on the one hand and sustainable development on the other.
the importance of promoting a multi-disciplinary approach in conservation which ensures that conservation biologists are fully aware of the needs of indigenous peoples, and which recognizes that the State is often unable to take on the role of >honest broker'.
the recognition that the conservation and biodiversity discourses are not transparent, but rather are ways of looking at the world with various purposes and objectives.
the colonial heritage of conservation and development and the way in which colonial histories have tended to obscure indigenous histories and usufruct resulting in distrust between such populations and national authorities.
that women and women’s roles in conservation tend not to be studied although they are, as a social group, often leaders in modernization and community mobilization.
the recognition that conservation and sustainable development are often addressed through a paradigm of economic growth and capital investment.
the recognition that representation, participation and empowerment are issues which need to be considered in all future policy making, programming, and project development in the area of conservation.
the rapid transformation of livelihoods among many indigenous peoples and its significance for determining sustainable biodiversity conservation.
the need to promote sound empirical studies in order to either justify displacing people for conservation or integrating them into the planning and management for sustainable livelihoods and conservation.

Workshop Process

The conference organisers have invited twenty-five representatives to spend a period of five days discussing empirical research presentations as well as theoretical papers. Selected participants come from both social science (anthropologists and sociologists) and natural science (ecologists and biologists) backgrounds. A third group of institutional policy makers have also been invited to attend. The conference organization is being managed by a four-person steering group with representatives from each of these areas. A pilot film of about twenty-five minutes length is being prepared looking at conservation and mobile peoples in Jordan and addressing a number of the issues raised above. The film will form part the conference introduction and will set the stage for constructive dialogue, by giving a face and a voice to mobile peoples at the sharp end of conservation and development issues. During the conference there will be both plenary presentations and discussion as well as smaller issue-orientated working groups. Sessions will also be organized on a geographical basis with the following regions being represented: Australia, East and Southern Africa, Europe/ Mediterranean, Latin America, Middle East, South and East Asia.

Dissemination

The workshop will have the following outputs:

A workshop report outlining the proceedings and debates will be made available to all donors and participants of this conference.
A film series for television which focuses on mobile people and conservation and disseminates the multi- disciplinary understandings generated by this conference to a popular audience. The pilot film produced as an introductory video for the conference will be an important step in the process of further fundraising and securing a broadcast commission.
A web-site/email forum for on-going discussions and information exchange will be established to discuss mobile peoples, conservation and sustainable development.
A special edition of the journal Nomadic Peoples will contain an edited version of the conference presentations. This issue will also be prepared for publication as a book
Numerous articles for peer reviewed journals will be stimulated by the conference.
A further workshop around these themes will be investigated, to be part of the next World Parks Congress, South Africa, 2003.

Further Information

Dawn Chatty, Deputy Director and
Dullverton Senior Research Fellow
Refugee Studies Centre,

University of Oxford
Oxford OX1 3LA,

United Kingdom
Tel: 44 (0)1865 270432
E-mail: dawn.chatty@qeh.ox.ac.uk

1. By mobile peoples, we mean a subset of indigenous and traditional peoples whose livelihoods depend on extensive common property use of natural resources over an area, who use mobility as a management strategy for dealing with sustainable use and conservation, and who possess a distinctive cultural identity and natural resource management system.

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