Should Integrated Conservation and Development Projects Focus on Traditional or Alternative Livelihood Strategies? Insights from Senegal and MauritaniaTraditional

Traditional livelihoods (endogenously-driven) are often viewed as incompatible with conservation goals because of their dependence on natural resources. Therefore, integrated conservation and development projects... [ view full abstract ]

Traditional livelihoods (endogenously-driven) are often viewed as incompatible with conservation goals because of their dependence on natural resources. Therefore, integrated conservation and development projects (ICDP) have mostly focused on substituting traditional livelihood activities with exogenously-driven alternative occupations. However, development scholars argue that some traditional livelihood strategies, such as the seasonal uptake of farming among fishermen during the low fishing season, have potential conservation benefits in addition to alleviating food and income insecurity . Consequently, different perspectives have emerged for ICDPs suggesting that programs focus on enhancing such traditional livelihood strategies rather than introducing alternative occupations. These perspectives further advance that ICDPs must be considered within their broader social and institutional context in order to fully understand their impacts at the local level.  

Using a qualitative analysis of two cases of ICDP from Senegal and Mauritania (both communities near parks on the Senegal River), we examine the assertion that focusing on endogenously-driven traditional livelihood strategies with a clear link to conservation can be a more effective strategy for ICDP than introducing exogenously-driven alternative occupations. In Mauritania, the ICDP focused on enhancing a local fishing-farming mixed livelihood strategy. Whereas in Senegal, program managers introduced tourism as an alternative source of livelihood. We consider each of these cases within their social and institutional context.  

The findings suggest that the program in Mauritania was more effective at promoting the wellbeing of households, improve relations with park officials and encourage pro-conservation behaviors among resource (e.g. compliance with seasonal fishing regulations, resource monitoring). Whereas, in Senegal, locals felt that tourism was incongruent with their fishing livelihoods, and reserved only for the local elites. Moreover, tensions between locals and park officials and occurrences of illegal fishing in the park remain high in Senegal. Contextual factors that help explain such outcomes include institutional arrangements for resource management, cultural identity and the equitable distribution of ICDP benefits. In the end, we argue that the success of ICDPs does not just depend on the nature of the projects, but the local institutions and cultural identity play a role in enabling or inhibiting projects to meet their social and environmental goals.