Integrated Conservation and Development Projects (ICDPs) were discredited a long time before I took aim at them, and so you won’t find too many proponents of them today. However, they haven’t entirely gone away, they’re just not called ICDPs any more. In order to understand why one needs an insight into project design as practised by donors and BINGOs (Big International NGOs), and quite a few smaller NGOs too. They will identify a conservation problem, either that has been specifically highlighted by others, or which has come to their attention through strategic mapping of biodiversity values and threats to highlight priority areas for intervention. They will then note that the location of this conservation problem has lots of poor people living there. These days the big operators probably have a policy which says they have to consider local livelihoods etc, and, as I noted in my previous post, local people and poverty may well be root causes of the conservation problem.
So the donor/NGO decides ‘something must be done’ about poverty in the area. Indeed this stems almost directly from their decision that ‘something must be done’ about the conservation problem. Richer protagonists will, at this point, commission one or reports from ‘expert’ consultants to assess local livelihoods and what are the options for intervention. Such consultants know very well who is paying their bill, so will almost always propose at least one way to try to tackle the problem. (Entirely negative report = no future business.) And thus it is determined what ‘something’ must be done.
Unfortunately, in this problem driven process, the priority is on doing something, rather than identifying a solution that is actually feasible. This is a difficult paradox to resolve since prioritising conservation funds on the severest and most urgent problems most definitely make sense in a world of limited resources. Sometimes the problem may be so big and/or urgent that it is reasonable to argue that ‘something’ is at least worth trying.
However, the reality is that I see far too many conservation projects that are ‘working with local people’ but achieving precious little development or conservation, and where the link between the two strands of the project are not clear. Talented and imaginative project staff may, to some extent, be able to overcome this problem, but even then there can be serious concerns about overall sustainability. Elsewhere such projects simply descend into box-ticking exercises devoid of a coherent strategy. ICDPs are unfortunately far from dead.
Bottom Up Thinking 