Actors in paradise : negotiating actors, landscape and institutions in the Nagarahole Ecodevelopment Project, India

Abstract

Conservation theory and practice have seen important changes in recent decades: biodiversity has become the focus of international agreements and concerted international action, and earlier notions of strict protection have been challenged with ideals of 'sustainable development' through community involvement. Conservation professionals grappling with these new challenges have shown a widespread interest in approaches like the integrated conservation and development project (ICDP) during the 1990s. But recent analyses claim ICDPs have fallen far short of delivering the expected conservation and development outcomes. This study addresses the question of why, as suggested in recent analyses, the equity and conservation goals of ICDPs have proved so elusive. It explores an idea from parallel research in rural sociology, that the process of negotiation amongst actors in a rural development intervention exerts more influence over intervention outcomes than predetermined plans, objectives and strategies. Drawing on the adaptive theory framework, the actor-oriented approach is extended to the 'contextual actor framework', focusing on the interactions between actors, landscape and institutions in an intervention. This framework has informed analysis of an ICDP Southern India at Rajiv Gandhi (Nagarahole) National Park, and comparisons with other ICDPs. Several issues are highlighted for attention in conservation interventions. The study finds a key underlying problem in the limited attention to the process of negotiating the complex layers of agendas and relationships amongst actors, landscape and institutions that internationally financed interventions in biodiversity typically face. Given the significance of these processes to intervention outcomes, the thesis argues that proponents need to focus on negotiation as a central rather than subsidiary part of the intervention process. Specifically, the study builds on recent analyses that emphasise the importance of heterogeneity in communities, by highlighting the need to also understand and work with heterogeneity in organisations involved in an intervention, and an understanding of the historical and broader social context in which these actors are functioning. This is particularly crucial if such interventions are to promote equity, and work effectively with the diversity of perspectives and relationships amongst actors they must necessarily address. Apart from a process of negotiating agendas and relationships, the thesis also suggests the intervention process is one where proponents engage a network of supportive actors for the ideas and praxis they aim to promote. The original concept undergoes transformation as the network expands, and the progress of the intervention ultimately rests on the complicity of this network of actors. Those actors commonly perceived as powerless, such as program beneficiaries, are thus shown to have a degree of power in the intervention process. Failure by intervention proponents to positively engage and build this network of actors may lead to a dysfunctional intervention process. Conservation interventions set out to change the interactions between society and landscape. The Nagarhole analysis highlights that these interactions are complex, historical, and non-linear, while approaches to managing the interaction in interventions such as ecodevelopment assume linearity. Newer learning-oriented modes of management advance on this approach. However, these need to address the 'politics of learning', to share the costs and benefits of learning between stakeholders, and to adopt monitoring approaches suited to non-experts. Institutions are now widely regarded as an important focus in resource management interventions. This study adopts a process-oriented view of institutions, where, rather than fixed, deterministic structures, institutions are viewed as dynamic mechanisms, open to interpretation, questioning and change. Individual and social actors can take an important role in these institutional processes. In view of this, the decision to take either an active or passive stance on the existing institutional setting has important political implications, and may become particularly charged where international agencies attempt to influence national policy. The thesis suggests that proponents must therefore base their intervention on thorough analysis of institutional process at various scales, and develop institutional strategies on an understanding of the costs and benefits for various actors in their proposed approach. Finally, the thesis highlights that interventions need to be conceived of not as linear means of promoting specific objectives, but as negotiated processes. Internationally financed interventions in particular face many complex layers of actors, relationships and institutions. These interactions are likely to confound the objectives of project proponents, and thus are a key reason for ICDPs falling short of meeting their objectives. It highlights that the negotiated nature of interventions might instead be embraced as an integral facet of the intervention process, and given a greater degree of emphasis. A negotiated approach to conservation programs might accommodate more diverse concepts of conservation and development, and enable a wider ownership of the strategies and incentives used to realise agreed conservation outcomes. Such an approach may reduce the emphasis on biodiversity protection versus resource use, but the results could ultimately be more equitable and sustainable. Show more