Conservation Resentment Dissected

Conservation Is Our Government Now: the Politics of Ecology in Papua New Guinea. P. West 2006 . Duke University Press , Durham , NC . 320 pp . $79.95 ( hardcover ). ISBN 0-822-33712-6 . $22.95 ( paperback ). ISBN 0-8223-3749-5 . Conservation projects can be considered attempts to change human behavior. Interestingly, those who study human behavior, such as cultural anthropologists, have been relegated to a marginal role in conservation efforts to date. In Conservation Is Our Government Now, Paige West, an anthropologist at Columbia University's Barnard College, details the implementation and operation of Papua New Guinea's Crater Mountain Wildlife Management Area. The Crater Mountain Project is one wherein conservation nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), in conjunction with the local Gimi people, worked to protect biodiversity, such as the famed birds of paradise. From the outset Crater Mountain Project was conceived as an experiment in conservation that aimed to achieve the protection of globally significant biodiversity through changes in local behavior, coupled with alternate income through new connections with the global marketplace. West's book documents the considerable social disruption that followed, including a pronounced increase in the demands made on women's labor (for the production of tourist commodities). These demands were subsequently blamed for a death in childbirth; they helped fuel the resentment of conservation that pervades the community; not all disruptions were social ones. One conservationist's offer of money in exchange for the protection of birds of paradise was followed quickly by the loss of the entire lek through hunting. The association of Harpy Eagles and conservation was the impetus for one embittered local chopping down the tree that held the eagle's nest. Most useful is West's documentation of the convergence of conservationists' vague promises of economic development with local expectations, where the latter involved relationships of reciprocity and recursive obligation rather than particular goods being traded. Conservationists saw their offerings as a quid pro quo relationship (i.e., cash for work or jobs for those with “eagle” land), where the ultimate arbiter of fair exchange was the market value of the thing given. In contrast, the villagers saw the relationship as a long-term social relationship of exchange, where ongoing sustained and mutual reciprocation was assumed. When this assumption was not met, justifiable incomprehension resulted. West herself clearly lives by her understanding of desired reciprocation, which is no small burden: given kindness and countless hours of conversation work, which contributed instrumentally to West's thesis, book, and career. West knows it is her social obligation to help the villagers—even from a distance, in New York—with “school fees, money, help finding a doctor, a new wristwatch, help opening a bank account” (p. 235). That West's time is valued much more highly in the global marketplace than the villagers' time is irrelevant to the social relationships she has entered. In chapters 3 and 4, what becomes clear is that meaning systems, like ecosystems, have their own logic that is often completely invisible to NGO staff and scientists, and yet is assumed by locals to be self-evident. Thus, when a conservation project is interjected into such a system, its success and its reception depend critically on the degree to which preexisting social arrangements and assumptions are understood. And, when things go wrong, it is almost never a matter of good versus bad actors (although there can be some of this), but rather a problem of mutual good intentions whose founding assumptions no party really understands. In chapter 6 (“Conservation as Development”), West explains how conservationists restricted the food-provisioning activities of the men by attempting to create a substitute market for local rainforest goods while increasing hunting prohibitions. As women's labor to produce net bags for new markets became more valuable, bride prices rose and along with them, pressures on women to work to “live up to” their “price.” West is quick to point out that this was not all the fault of conservation project. Any development initiative involving women producing commodities for a global market could have the same impact, but conservation NGOs were the actors in question here and thus the focus of women's resentment. Also apparent in this case and well captured by the eponymous “conservation is our government now” is that in nascent nation states or those with relatively informal civic infrastructures, NGOs or aid administrators often become the de facto government. This is an enormous responsibility that NGOs may or may not seek, but which should be addressed directly and not by happenstance. A good example of this appears in chapter 6, where West explains how conservationists' governing simplification of land tenure contributed to a family conflict and the chopping down of the harpy eagle tree. To simplify conservation action, conservationists assigned tenure authority to the first person who stated a claim over the land, ignoring the competing claims and the fact that such competing claims are commonplace. Resenting the benefits and prestige flowing to this one privileged actor, the man with the competing claim to the land chopped down the tree. “If I saw the bird, I would shoot it myself,” said another, sister to the first man and mother to the second (p. 198). In the eyes of the conservationists, the second man was the “bad actor,” although many members of the community supported his counter-claim to tenure. Meanwhile, conservationists naïvely maintained their simplification of the sociohistorical nature of systems of land tenure, wishing to “just find out who owns that land” (p. 196). Land-based people are just that (land based). First, conservationists should expect long-standing regimes of use and tenure rights that are more complicated than any rules or arrangements one might first be told. Second, land is the economy. So, although new administrative or other jobs not based on the land are often desirable, what is needed more than anything is recognition that conservation projects invariably involve (intentionally and not) the development of a transitional economy of sorts and ultimately necessitate a new sustainable economy. One is left with a general concern about conservation action that involves introducing global markets and creating commodities out of natural or human-made products that previously had only local exchange value, which is often the case in isolated places where much conservation action is directed. Yes, many of the complexities that arise when the “global” invades the “local” will occur regardless of whether interventions are conservation-and-development or just development, but this does not alleviate the challenge of doing conservation in such places. It will always be hard. Whenever development is involved, change must be expected, and it must be expected to alter the rules that structure economies. For example, crafts, such as net bags—whose exchange value is based partly or largely on consumers' perceptions of quaintness and genuine traditions—will likely result in one of the following: (1) fail to provide income sufficient to meet the needs and desires of locals or (2) if mass produced, provide sufficient income for desired changes such as health care or education but then lose market share because of consumer perceptions of what constitutes tradition. (Tradition is a function of those to whom it belongs and not of consumers, even though marketing goods rests on consumers' naive assumptions about tradition.) Such an economy is either an effective transitional economy or a poor one, but it is not a sustainable new economy, and it cannot be expected to maintain prescribed “cultural values and abilities,” as advertised by marketers (p. 208). Readers with a biology background will quibble with West's definition of primary forest (as highly diverse, not old growth) and the focus on local (alpha) diversity over global (gamma) diversity in her explanation of the human enhancement of biodiversity. And some of the claims that West makes in prominent locations are not well supported. For example, at the end of chapter 6, West claims that the commodification of nature undermined the inherent value that people saw in Harpy Eagles (which is crucial for conservation success). But there are multiple notions of inherent value, and the cultural significance of the eagles that West discusses (mostly as characters in didactic myths) does not necessarily demonstrate that locals value the continued viability of eagles. Regardless, these minor points do not detract from the crucial messages richly illustrated here. Some anthropologists seem to see little value in the conservation mission, which understandably unsettles conservationists, but West is not of this camp and clearly has not taken the adversarial stance some believe she has (p. 23). Instead she offers sufficient context and detail to make some initial lessons tangible, which just might be the first step in a more productive relationship between anthropology and conservation.

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