







































Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal 2 (1): 9–26, January 2019 

 
THEMATIC ESSAY  
 

Ecological Critiques of Exclusionary Conservation 
 

Asmita Kabra   
 

The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those 
who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a 
pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. 
An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental pretence but an idea; and an 
unselfish belief in the idea—something you can set up, and bow down before, 
and offer a sacrifice to.  
(Joseph Conrad, 1899, The Heart of Darkness, Blackwood’s Magazine) 

 
1. INTRODUCTION 

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) defines a 
protected area as “a clearly defined geographical space, recognized, 
dedicated and managed through legal or other effective means to achieve 
the long-term conservation of nature with associated ecosystem services 
and cultural values” (IUCN n.d.). The IUCN protected area categorization 
varies based on specific management objectives, and includes strict reserves, 
wilderness areas, national parks and protected areas with sustainable use of 
natural resources, among others (IUCN n.d.).1 The creation of protected 
areas (PA) involves placing strict restrictions on its use by humans 
(especially local people) in order to enable non-human species to flourish 
without human disturbances. In the most extreme cases, the creation of 
these reserves involves evicting the human populations living in a 
biodiversity-rich landscape, and creating institutional mechanisms for 
preventing their access to the area. This strategy is commonly referred to as 

 
 Professor, School of Human Ecology, Ambedkar University Delhi, Lothian Road, 

Kashmere Gate, Delhi-110006; asmita@aud.ac.in 

Copyright © Kabra 2019. Released under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 
4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC 4.0) by the author.  

Published by Indian Society for Ecological Economics (INSEE), c/o Institute of Economic 
Growth, University Enclave, North Campus, Delhi 110007.  

ISSN: 2581-6152 (print); 2581-6101 (web). 

DOI: https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v2i1.51  

1 Various national governments use other legal and management categories, which can be 

mapped with varying degrees of ease against the IUCN categories. 

https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v2i1.51


Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [10] 

“fortress conservation” (Brockington 2002), and in recent decades it has 
become a widespread driver of displacement of human populations across 
Africa, Asia and Latin America (Dowie 2009).  

The rate at which forest land is being set aside under protection regimes has 
been accelerating rapidly in the twenty-first century (WWF 2004). In view 
of global environmental challenges like species extinction and climate 
change, the drive to create protected areas has gained widespread 
acceptance among governments and civil society across the world. The 
consensus around the concept of expanding protected areas among national 
governments spans ideologies and continents, as can be seen from the 
diverse categories of nations that are signatories to the Aichi Biodiversity 
Targets. As a part of these commitments, expansion of the network of 
protected areas to 17 per cent of terrestrial areas and inland waters and 10 
per cent of marine areas by 2020 is an accepted goal for almost all national 
governments (UNEP-CBD 2010). 

Fortress conservation and the resultant population displacement and their 
loss of access to natural resources has attracted strong criticisms for causing 
severe impoverishment among millions of poor, indigenous rural people 
who depend on land-based livelihoods (Adams et al. 2004; Brockington and 
Igoe 2006; Cernea and Schmidt-Soltau 2006; Dowie 2009). At the same 
time, conservationists stress the fact that the loss of species diversity is 
accelerating and a large number of protected areas notified by national 
governments continue to remain “paper parks”, whose actual contribution 
to biodiversity conservation has been significantly below expectations 
(Gaston, Jackson, Cantú-Salazar, and Cruz-Piñón 2008; Juffe-Bignoli et al. 
2014; WWF 2004). This evidence is often deployed to argue for bigger and 
better managed protected areas (Karanth 2018; WWF 2004). 

Exclusionary conservation and human displacement from protected areas 
thus presents a moral dilemma, as in many cases it calls for a choice 
between two “big ideas” or moral imperatives — conservation and social 
justice. Since exclusionary conservation is carried out to support the moral 
imperative of protecting biodiversity, it enjoys support from a diverse range 
of actors like the state, conservation agencies, corporate entities, NGOs and 
civil society groups (Hayes and Ostrom 2005). On the other hand, by 
generating widespread social and economic distress for poor, marginal and 
indigenous people dependent on forests, fisheries or pastures, it 
simultaneously elicits trenchant critique from supporters of social justice 
and human rights.  

More often than not, the critiques of this strategy of conservation through 
creation of “inviolate” protected areas are positioned as contestations 



[11] Asmita Kabra 

between the natural sciences and the social sciences, or between 
conservationists and human-rights activists (Agrawal and Redford 2009; 
Rangarajan and Shahabuddin 2010). In this article, I argue that the 
“conservation versus human rights” binary tends to obliterate important 
debates within the ecological sciences over the theoretical foundations of 
exclusionary conservation. 2  I highlight the internal critiques within the 
ecological sciences of the advisability of creating inviolate protected areas as 
the best strategy for “doing” conservation, especially in the present context 
of large-scale species extinction, climate change, urbanization  and growth 
of human population. It must be clarified that while interrogating the 
ecological justifications for creating “inviolate” protected areas, this paper 
strongly supports the imperative of protecting biodiversity-rich areas from 
large-scale destructive activities like mining or establishment of cities or 
industries. Given the urgency of finding workable conservation solutions in 
the Anthropocene, an analysis of multiple discourses within the ecological 
sciences can inform more robust, evidence-backed and effective 
conservation policies among a wider set of stakeholders. 

 

2. THE ECOLOGICAL RATIONALE FOR EXCLUSIONARY 
CONSERVATION 

The creation of protected areas was originally informed by the idea of 
nature as “wilderness” or pristine areas, untouched by human influences3. 
Starting with the creation of the first protected areas in the USA, strong 
ethical arguments were made by influential conservation biologists and 
ecologists in favour of preserving natural landscapes and biodiversity for 
their inherent value (Leopold 1970; Naess and Rothenberg 1990; Soule and 
Wilcox 1980). With the growth of conservation biology as a field-based and 
practice-oriented discipline, these arguments gained further traction and 
scientific support. Over the years, the arguments for exclusionary 
conservation have become more anthropocentric, highlighting the 
importance of “inviolate” protected areas for human survival and focusing 
on the cultural, economic, aesthetic and intrinsic values of pristine nature 
for humans(Brandon, Turner, Schroth, and Bakarr 2008). The Millennium 
Ecosystem Assessment undertaken in 2005 brought to the forefront the 

 
2  Interestingly, not all social science critiques of exclusionary conservation and human 
displacement from protected areas question its ecological necessity (see, for instance, Cernea 
and Soltau-Schmidt, 2006) 
3  It may be noted that the idea of setting aside land and minimising human 
disturbances/human use predates the 20th century conservation discourse, and was driven by 
diverse concerns including hunting (game reserves) and religious/cultural practices (sacred 
groves), to name a few.  



Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [12] 

discourse of ecosystem services and the critical role played by wilderness 
areas in human survival, and raised the issue from the local to the planetary 
scale (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005). In recent years, there has 
been a renewed focus on conservation of nature for its intrinsic value, 
especially in response to the intellectual challenges posed by the “new 
conservation” movement (Ehrlich 2002; Soule 2013; Terborgh, van Schaik, 
Davenport, and Rao 2002). This debate is addressed further in the 
concluding section.  

To translate the wilderness ethic into practical action on the ground, the 
creation and preservation of protected areas emerged as the most 
commonly accepted global strategy (Hayes and Ostrom 2005). Today, there 
are more than 100,000 designated protected areas in the world, with more 
than 10 per cent of the terrestrial area of the planet under some regime of 
protection (Hayes and Ostrom 2005). A wide body of research in ecological 
sciences and conservation biology justifies exclusionary conservation by 
demonstrating that human interference is detrimental to particular species 
of endangered flora and fauna, or to overall conservation of biodiversity in 
different ecosystems. It is considered almost axiomatic in the PA-based 
conservation doctrine that “a principal objective of protected areas is to 
conserve nature by eliminating, minimizing, or reducing human pressures 
and threats operating within their boundaries” (Schulze et al. 2017). In an 
influential review paper, Watson et al. (2016) support this axiom, but 
simultaneously argue for more “ecologically sensible” goal-setting to 
monitor the conservation efficacy of protected areas4 (Watson et al. 2016).  

The conservation agenda in the global South is largely driven by State (and 
to a much lesser extent non-State) efforts to protect charismatic “flagship” 
mega-fauna species. Not surprisingly, therefore, the dominant orthodoxy in 
conservation research is focused on minimising human presence and 
creating “pristine” or “inviolate” areas. In India, for instance, scholarship 
on wildlife conservation by the topmost conservation research institutions 
focuses predominantly on charismatic endangered species like the lion, the 
tiger and the elephant, and has only recently begun to engage intensively 
with other species. The assumptions and findings of these studies should 
not be extrapolated uncritically to other species, scales and landscapes, but 
this point is often missed by the dominant orthodoxy of exclusionary 
conservation.  

 
4In particular, the authors make a strong case for clearly defined outcome-based goals and 
not just area-based goals like those set out in Target 11 of the CBD’s 2020 Strategic Plan for 
Biodiversity.  



[13] Asmita Kabra 

A study of 150 potential tiger habitats in India concludes that better 
management of protected areas and their surrounding landscapes is crucial 
for increasing the capacity of these reserves to support an enhanced tiger 
population. The study identifies three parameters of good management – 
funding, staff support and enforcement - the last presumably refers to strict 
restrictions on human use of protected areas (Ranganathan, Chan, Karanth, 
and Smith 2008). Another landmark study identifies habitat fragmentation 
as a key threat to survival of tigers in the wild, and attributes fragmentation 
mainly to agriculture, fodder and other extraction, presumably by the local 
population in the neighbouring “human-dominated” landscapes. The 
authors argue that the creation of viable forest “corridors” between 
fragmented landscapes is key to survival of tigers (Seidensticker, Christie, 
and Jackson 1999). Similarly, a study on the threats to tiger population in 
the Rajaji-Corbett Tiger Conservation Unit in the Indian terai region 
identifies habitat fragmentation as the key variable. It views large-scale 
monoculture plantations, small-scale local livestock holdings and poaching 
as the main “biotic pressures”, and suggests relocation of local villages as 
one of the key “management” strategies for improving chances of tiger 
survival in the landscape (Johnsingh and Negi 2003; Karanth 2018). A study 
on herbivore abundance conducted by the Wildlife Institute of India in 
2005 (David et al. 2005) is cited to argue that tigers have gone locally extinct 
in the Kailadevi wildlife sanctuary despite heavy investments in 
participatory conservation.5 The author uses the evocative phrase “empty 
forests” (signifying depleted population of herbivores) to conflate the 
absence of tigers in Kailadevi wildlife sanctuary with wholesale failure of 
conservation. He further argues that since participatory conservation 
strategies failed to reduce livestock numbers in Sariska, Kailadevi and 
Ranthambore, the way forward for conservation is to relocate the remaining 
human settlements outside these protected areas (Reddy 2008).6 

An empirical assessment of the impact of local use on forest degradation 
and biodiversity across five protected areas in India examined the 
relationship between forest degradation and (a) human population density; 
(b) intensity of agriculture; and (c) dependence on wage labour. The results 

 
5 Interestingly, while documenting in passing that the Ranthambore Tiger Reserve (of which 
Kailadevi is a part) receives as many as 100,000 tourists each year, the author identifies 
livestock pressures from the human population in and around the PA as the main source of 
disturbance. It may also be noted that the notion of “participatory” conservation in 
protected areas like Sariska and Kailadevi needs to be unpacked carefully, as it often hides 
resource politics and contestations within the local community.  
6 It may be noted, however, that while proposing conservation displacement as the preferred 
solution, Reddy (ibid.) does make a strong plea for proper compensation and livelihood 
restoration of the displaced people.  



Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [14] 

indicate that “extraction pressure on forests was positively associated with 
the availability of wage labour and negatively with the proportion of 
agricultural households”. The authors attribute this counter-intuitive result 
to the inadequacy of official data (State of the Forests Reports) to measure 
forest degradation in protected areas (Davidar et al. 2010). Alternative 
interpretations are simply not considered, and the authors ignore a wide 
body of literature (for instance, Wunder et al. 2014; Angelsen et al. 2014) 
that explores diverse linkages of local livelihoods with forest dependence.  

From the above discussion, it emerges clearly that the argument for PA-
based fortress conservation has two essential premises. First, biodiversity is 
believed to thrive in “natural” landscapes, and use of these landscapes by 
humans is considered detrimental to biodiversity (Hayes and Ostrom 2005). 
It is assumed that when left “undisturbed”, different elements of natural 
ecosystem tend to move towards a fine equilibrium, and human 
interference in these systems creates imbalance due to resource competition 
(Ricklefs 2008). Second, it is believed that protection of large tracts of land 
will provide habitat connectivity, which is important for conservation (ibid.). 
Use of these landscapes by humans is believed to create fragmentation, 
which induces species loss (Terborgh 1992). Based on these premises, the 
dominant orthodoxy of fortress conservation proposes that biodiversity 
should be conserved by creating large and interconnected protected areas 
which are either completely “inviolate”, or place serious restrictions on 
human use. The incremental ecological gains from reduction of local 
human disturbances are believed to be high enough to justify the social and 
economic costs of exclusionary conservation, so long as these costs are 
adequately compensated for7.The ecological critiques that I set out in the 
next section often question precisely these assumptions that underlie the 
dominant orthodoxy of exclusionary conservation. 

 

 

 

 
7 It must be pointed out that social scientists and ecologists working within the framework 
of fortress conservation recognise the inherent social justice concerns associated with the 
exclusion of humans from protected areas. They seek to address these concerns by calling 
for more community participation, increased financial outlays and stronger policy safeguards 
to offset loss of access to PA resources. They believe that by doing so, fortress conservation 
can craft a win-win situation that can serve simultaneously the moral imperatives of 
conservation and social justice (Agrawal and Redford 2009; Cernea 2006; Harihar, Ghosh-
Harihar, and MacMillan 2014). The political ecology critiques of these assumptions are 
beyond the scope of this article.  



[15] Asmita Kabra 

3. ECOLOGICAL CRITIQUES OF EXCLUSIONARY PA-BASED 
CONSERVATION 

An important category of ecological critiques of exclusionary conservation 
is methodological in nature, and cite the absence of robust evidence as a 
major concern. An important review article shows that till recently very 
little evidence was available about the ecological effectiveness and social 
impacts of PA-based conservation. The authors show that in recent years, 
the importance of evidence-backed conservation is being realized, and the 
limitations of earlier methods of estimating PA effectiveness are being 
challenged (Ferraro and Pressey 2015). They make a strong plea for 
replacing before-and-after-PA or with-or-without-PA study designs by 
rigorous counterfactual-based study designs. They also plead for 
deployment of more sophisticated tools and methods and better datasets 
for proper impact evaluation of protected areas, which is emerging as an 
important multidisciplinary area of study in its own right.  

Given the dominant orthodoxy of exclusionary conservation, the ecological 
gains accruing from protected areas are often assumed rather than 
demonstrated. Robust empirical evidence that human use of protected areas is 
detrimental to biodiversity, and that significant incremental gains can be 
made by restricting people’s access to protected areas, is both scarce and 
patchy (Agrawal and Redford 2009; Mcelwee 2013; Persha, Fischer, 
Chhatre, Agrawal, and Benson 2010). Recent work on impact evaluation of 
protected areas has begun to address this lacuna. Several studies have 
shown, using techniques like remote-sensing, GIS and on-ground ecological 
surveys, that some positive conservation outcomes can be obtained through 
restriction of human use (Brockington 2002; Hall et al. 2014).8 However, the 
generalizability of these results across space, time, ecosystems and species is 
contested by many scholars. An alternative view is that protected areas end 
up serving other, less relevant policy targets and operational objectives 
instead of the main goal of avoiding biodiversity loss. (Pressey, Visconti, 
and Ferraro 2015).Some of the most significant threats to terrestrial 
ecosystems such as unsustainable hunting and disturbances from 
recreational activities are not amenable to monitoring by methods like 
remote-sensing, and require collection of robust in-situ threat data (Schulze 
et al. 2017). In an important contribution to the debates on human 

 
8 The positive social contribution of PAs has been highlighted by several studies, arguing that 
PAs provide important ecosystem services for humans, and are also important buffers 
during disasters, droughts and other calamities (Badola and Hussain 2005; Corbera, Kosoy, 
and Martínez Tuna 2007; Verma et al. 2017). However, this article focuses mainly on the 
ecological outcomes of PAs and the ecological debates about the efficacy of PAs in meeting 
conservation goals and targets.   



Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [16] 

disturbance in protected areas, Vaidyanathan et al. (2010) highlight the 
importance of triangulating ground-based and remotely-assessed 
evaluations of ecologically critical areas. They show that impacts “above” 
the canopy are influenced by “climatic regimes, anthropogenic disturbances, 
management practices, and their interactions”, while spatial variability 
“below” the canopy is better explained by human “disturbance”.  

Other ecological critiques of exclusionary conservation have emerged from 
research at fine spatial scales over longer periods of time. For instance, 
while conservation research on tigers usually advocates the creation of 
inviolate protected areas, recent work on other mega-carnivores like lions, 
leopards and snow leopards and avifauna like the sarus crane indicates that 
these species may be able to adapt well and survive in moderately or heavily 
used human-dominated landscapes too (Banerjee, Jhala, Chauhan, and 
Dave 2013; Bhatnagar 2009; Odden, Athreya, Rattan, and Linnell 2014). A 
note of caution offered here is that co-occurrence of humans and large 
carnivores on the same landscape should not be conflated with co-existence, 
and the fact of mega-carnivores adapting to human presence is not 
conclusive proof that human presence is always benign (Harihar et al. 2013). 
At the same time, conservationists need to engage critically with site-
specific research and overview studies that demonstrate that certain types of 
PA resource utilization by local people may in fact be associated with high 
species diversity (Persha et al. 2010). Certain types of localized human 
interventions like livestock grazing and fire management might actually be 
critical for maintaining certain types of landscapes (Barthel, Colding, 
Elmqvist, and Folke 2005; Carter, Shrestha, Karki, Pradhan, and Liu 2012; 
Jurskis 2018; Middleton 2013; Saberwal 1996).  

A recent book on anthropogenic grasslands dominated by Imperata cylindrica 
in Southeast Asia highlights the critical agency of humans in the 
maintenance of such grasslands, and cautions against the “forest 
fundamentalism” of orthodox ecological scholarship (Dove and Kammen 
2015). Combining modern scientific ecological knowledge with indigenous 
and local knowledge systems about sustainable extraction, grazing, and fire-
management might result in improved management of protected areas 
(Sundaram, Krishnan, Hiremath, and Joseph 2012). In the context of rivers 
and associated freshwater habitats, local resource decline often emanates 
not just from local over-harvesting but from extra-local factors like 
modification of river flow due to dams, boat traffic and urbanization-
induced pollution. Therefore, exclusionary riverine PA-based conservation 
strategies may not be successful. Robust evidence-backed alternatives 
strategies may need to be based on co-existence of carefully managed 
human use of riverine ecosystems with conservation of charismatic species 



[17] Asmita Kabra 

like crocodiles, otters and river dolphins (Kelkar, Krishnaswamy, 
Choudhary, and Sutaria 2010). Ecological research has begun to accept the 
“historical structuring role of people in natural landscapes” (Persha et al. 
2010). The nature and scale of human activities as well as their impact on 
particular species needs to be disaggregated and could fall into several 
categories like “joint wins, losses and trade-offs” (Persha, Agrawal, and 
Chhatre 2011). An important study in India show the limits of flagship 
species based conservation planning through a field study in the biodiversity 
rich Western Ghats. The authors demonstrate that “reliance on flagship 
species for conservation planning can both underestimate and overestimate 
the ability of other species to persist in multiple-use landscapes; protecting 
flagship species would only protect species with similar habitat 
preferences”(Gangadharan, Vaidyanathan, and St. Clair 2016). 

Fortress conservation strategies that involve displacement of human 
populations outside protected areas often entail further deforestation to 
resettle the people outside park boundaries, creating a cascade effect. Site-
specific research on conservation displacement shows that (a) preparation 
of resettlement sites can involve further ecological loss, and (b) resettlement 
may not necessarily extinguish local people’s access to forest resources. To 
capture these effects, research design of impact evaluation studies needs to 
expand beyond park boundaries to include landscape-level variables, and 
also go deeper into inter-household power dynamics that allow elite capture 
(Milgroom, Giller, and Leeuwis 2014; Nagendra, Pareeth, and Ghate 2006). 
The literature on exclusionary conservation often carries the implicit 
assumption that reduced human “disturbance” will result in the protected 
landscape returning to an “original” state of wilderness. Research in 
restoration ecology challenges this simplistic notion and demonstrates that 
reduced human disturbance does not lead to automatic recovery of the 
landscape to support conservation of flagship species or vulnerable 
ecosystems. Long-term ecological management and sustained funding are 
required to control invasive species and to ensure that other human users 
do not take over the “vacated” landscape (Babu, Love, and Babu 2009; 
Sahu and Singh 2008). For such “conservation-reliant species”, the 
continued management efforts and costs of restoring and maintaining 
landscapes are understated in conservation planning (Scott, Goble, Haines, 
Wiens, and Neel 2010). These long-term costs need to be recognized 
explicitly and weighed against alternative conservation strategies. An 
important critique of “inviolate” wilderness areas emerges from ecological 
studies of “maintenance-dependent species”, or threatened species “whose 
survival depends on humans actively managing land, such as to control 
invasive exotic vegetation or reintroduce periodic, low-intensity burning 



Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [18] 

(such as) formerly practiced by Native Americans”(Novick 2013). For such 
species, the most important survival risk emanates not from human-
induced “disturbances” to the ecosystem, but from land-use policies that 
restrict active management by human (Novick 2013; Wilcove and Chen 
2008). 

The rate and pattern of resource extraction of diverse groups of people 
living within PA boundaries and on its periphery are variable, and local use 
has become increasingly linked to extra-local resource flows and global 
commodity chains (Madhusudan 2005; Thompson and Homewood 2002). 
For instance, conservation research on species that are extracted by local 
people for personal consumption or sale as non-timber forest products 
(NTFP) provides important insights into the complex linkages between 
biodiversity, poverty and local livelihoods. It has been argued that “the 
ecological effects of harvesting NTFP can be varied, and the impacts can 
range from the level of genes to individuals and populations, communities 
and ecosystems, all of which have important consequences” (Hiremath 
2004). Robust research on the ecological impacts of harvesting of NTFP is 
alarmingly scant, but a review of available work indicates that excessive 
harvesting of NTFP, combined with associated activities like fire and 
grazing, may not be compatible with conservation outcomes. Several studies 
indicate the importance of identifying thresholds and tipping points beyond 
which conservation and livelihood outcomes tend to become incompatible 
(Ticktin 2004). The detrimental ecological impacts of large-scale, 
irreversible land use change for activities like mining or reservoirs are well-
known and extensively documented. However, in the highly globalised 
world today, it may be difficult to demarcate the boundaries between 
artisanal, localised and sustainable resource use, and invasive and large-scale 
commercial extraction. Oversimplifications about the inherent sustainability 
of multiple-use areas and co-existence with human use are understandably 
treated with misgivings by conservationists. 

Since the late 1990s, an important new debate on exclusionary versus 
mixed-use landscapes has emerged from ecologists studying the links 
between agricultural expansion and biodiversity conservation, especially in 
the context of growing global demand for food (Adams 2012; McLaughlin 
2011). This is referred to as the “share-versus spare” debate. Proponents of 
land-sparing argue in favour of segregating landscapes for exclusionary 
conservation in protected areas and intensive crop production on farms. 
They make the case that global food security and conservation of 
biodiversity can be achieved simultaneously by expansion of the network of 
protected areas, along with promotion of scientific agriculture to enhance 
crop-yield on already cultivated land (Fischer et al. 2008; Foley et al. 2011; 



[19] Asmita Kabra 

Green, Cornell, Scharlemann, and Balmford 2005). They provide evidence 
that protected lands are associated with higher biodiversity values than 
cultivated lands, and that the number of species negatively affected by 
cultivation is higher than the number of species that benefit from it. On the 
other hand, those in favour of land-sharing argue for promoting hybrid 
landscapes that allow for biodiversity-friendly agriculture. They provide 
evidence that several species tend to do better on cultivated landscapes than 
in strictly protected areas, and that agro-ecosystems generate significant 
ecosystem services which are ignored in the land-sparing literature (Perfecto 
and Vandermeer 2010; Tscharntke et al. 2012). They critique the land-
sparing strategy on the ground that it fails to take into account issues of 
scale and the complexity of smallholder agriculture in the global South.  

 

4. THE WAY FORWARD 

Protagonists of the “new conservation” movement within the ecological 
sciences argue that human-dominated landscapes, harbour significant 
amounts of  biodiversity  and can meet the combined needs of conservation 
and human well-being more effectively than PAs in the Anthropocene 
(Lalasz, Kareiva and Marvier 2011). Although some ecologists have 
responded to the “new conservation” critiques by calling for a return to 
ecocentrism, or promoting conservation for its intrinsic value (Piccolo, 
Washington, Kopnina and Taylor 2017), others have argued  for taking into 
account local complexity, site-specificity, tenure regimes, institutions  for 
governance, and the need of diverse landscapes to reconcile local 
livelihoods with conservation imperatives (Adams 2012; Dove and 
Kammen 2015; Sandbrook 2015). 

Thus a wide body of scholars working within ecology and conservation 
biology frameworks, as well as many conservation practitioners, are now 
engaged in developing multiple approaches  to conservation (Sandbrook, 
Scales, Vira, and Adams 2011). As an example,  share-versus-spare debate 
has encouraged meaningful debate between opponents (Phalan, Balmford, 
and Green 2012; Phalan, Onial, Balmford, and Green 2011). Similarly, an 
interesting revisionist strand in the exclusionary conservation literature 
attempts to integrate limited human activity into conservation planning by 
arguing for expanding the concept of buffer zones in a landscape based 
approach to conservation such as Zones of Interaction (ZOI) between 
strictly protected and human-dominated areas (DeFries et al. 2010).  Such 
contributions carry forward the intellectual tradition of the “sustainable 
landscapes” approach (Robinson 1993) by taking into account landscape 



Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [20] 

level flow of nutrients, resources, energy and water, into PA-level 
conservation planning.  

The ecological debates outlined here reinforce the importance of evidence-
backed, site-specific and interdisciplinary conservation planning, as opposed 
to an unquestioned belief in the magic bullet of exclusionary or fortress 
conservation. The nature and scale of human activities in biodiversity-rich 
landscapes is critical for making conclusions regarding conflict, co-
habitation and co-existence of humans with other species. Ignoring these 
crucial ecological concerns and simplistically equating all human use with 
“disturbance” is contested by many ecologists, and not just by social 
scientists. These ecological critiques make the case for evidence-backed 
conservation strategies, with clearly defined and measurable management 
objectives for protected areas. Thus there is a strong case for developing 
protocols for monitoring and impact evaluation of protected area 
effectiveness, and for avoiding “evidence complacency” (Sutherland and 
Wordley 2017).  

Conservation through government-managed protected areas has received 
far more attention than other institutional mechanisms, despite the fact that 
over 370 million hectares of forests globally are under different types of 
community-based management regimes (Hayes and Ostrom 2005; Måren, 
Bhattarai, and Chaudhary 2013). Conservation outcomes, biodiversity 
values, and relative costs in such regimes need to be understood through 
rigorous research and compared with state-managed protected areas. 

Merely an “unselfish belief” in the idea of either exclusionary or inclusive 
conservation is clearly not enough to address the stark conservation 
challenges facing us in the twenty-first century. 

 

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Babu, S., A. Love, and C.R. Babu. 2009. “Ecological Restoration of Lantana-Invaded 
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[21] Asmita Kabra 

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