HSD: Collaborative Research: Dynamics of Parks as Agents of Change in Eastern & Southern Africa
This project aims to examine the inter-relationship of livelihood diversification and social and environmental change outside protected areas in eastern and southern Africa. Since less than five percent of land in Africa is formally protected, and most wild biodiversity is found outside protected areas, the future of most biodiversity will depend on land-use activities and their impacts in domesticated landscapes. Even in countries (e.g., Tanzania) where substantial proportions of the land are gazetted as parks or other protected areas, the viability of protected areas as wildlife refuges depends on human activities outside the protected areas. These areas are rapidly becoming dominated by agriculture. Conservation literature (and policy) generally views agriculture as detrimental to biodiversity, and policies on the management of wildlife outside parks are often based on the assumption that conservation and cultivation are entirely incompatible. However, very little scientific research has explored the spatial and temporal relationship of the extent, pattern, and character of agricultural land use to biodiversity. Likewise, although much literature in political ecology addresses the inequities of resource restrictions of protected areas (including expulsion of people from parks), there has been little research examining how and to what extent the presence of protected areas influences land use practices of people living near them, including the expansion and intensification of agriculture. This research focuses primarily on the latter question.
Principal Investigators: Paul W. Leslie, J. Terrence McCabe, University of Colorado at Boulder Abraham C. Goldman, University of Florida
CPC Fellow Investigator:
Funding Source: National Science Foundation
Grant Number: BCS-0624265
Funding Period: 10/1/2006 - 3/31/2012
Related CPC Signature Theme:
