The Integrated Conservation-Development Projects – otherwise known as ICDPs – are initiatives which are pursued on account of a two-thronged aim. First, these benevolent projects are created so as to involve communities in efforts that seek to conserve the natural environment and endangered biodiversities. The projects are therefore undertaken with the controlling motive of empowering people, in hopes that they could, by themselves, come up with sustainable strategies that work well for the causes of environmental protection. Second, and apart from the desire to ensure the sustainable conservation of key biodiversities, the projects under the ICDP are likewise geared towards tapping the economic potentials of the locales caring for identified environments. ICDPs believe that the nobility that comes with the conservation of biodiversity goes hand in hand with the economic benefits ensuing from a sustainable ecology.
ICDPs represent novel approaches to efforts that aim at conserving biodiversities. This is because ICDPS are able to depart from the traditional “fences and fines” approach to conservation. Herein it merits noting that the traditional “fences and fines” approach remains largely unsustainable, if not wholly ineffective, precisely because it cannot substantially curtail illegal activities being committed against lands and wildlife creatures which have already been pronounced as endangered. As an alternative, ICDPs seek to incorporate the concept of corporate responsibility into the implementation of their goals. Implementers believe that tapping communal participation, say, exacting from the community a respect for buffer zones – i.e., the effort to define the geographical parameters where human activities are allowed – ensures that people themselves would become more aware of their task to respect the sacred spaces of the wildlife which they seek to protect.
Evoking an urgent sense of corporate responsibility, however, is just the beginning of the comprehensive and sustainable approach to protecting biodiversities. Providing financial assistance and monetary subsidies to communities acceding to ICDPs’ stipulated norms, form part and parcel of the strategic conservation methods as well. The allocation of these funds is intended to jumpstart rural development projects, education and skills training, as well as employment opportunities for the communities. In doing so, ICDPs hope to eliminate all forms of illegal economic activities which feed on massive poverty and sheer lack of alternative ways to making a decent kind of living.
In ways more than one, the enduring fight against poverty is central to ICDPs slated goals as well. Crucial therefore to the implementation of ICDPs lay in the creation of acceptable economic activities for the general populace to enjoy, while encouraging them to observe a mutually-benefitting co-existence with their respective biodiversities. This can happen if and only if certain projects could afford people with viable alternatives to improve their present conditions. Which is why, the establishment of key infrastructures and the creation of technical assistance sites to communities are deemed as necessary aspects which can help propel the cause of ICDPs. Without these foundational supports, the sustainability of any conservation projects can be severely compromised.
Two examples of ICDPs merit considerable attention in this regard: the COMACO (Community Market for Conservation) in Africa and the Caohai Natural Reserve in China. COMACO was conceived initially as a serious effort to stop deforestation and large mammal extinction in biodiversity-rich portions of Africa. Through these initiatives, the people of Africa were accorded with economic alternatives so as to become self-sufficient in sustaining their living needs, as well as become less-dependent on endangered biodiversities in accruing profitable enterprises. China’s Caohai Natural Reserve, while largely unique, also runs along the same logic. ICDPs implemented there helped Chinese locales surrounding Caohai Lake to engage in more profitable business outfits and farming skills, than merely depend on their otherwise fast-depleting marine resources.
Indeed, the inception and corollary implementation of ICDPs to key areas constitute a great promise not only for the benefit of the communities in question, but also for the global community as a whole. But as a final thought, it may be wise to cite that there still exists a host of challenges which still threaten to compromise the effectiveness of ICDPs. For one, the ponderous effort to allocate funds, in a manner being fair and just, still needs to be improved. Moreover, consistent monitoring of projects also needs significant improving. As indeed, ensuring the extensive range of community participation remains to be one of the most enduring challenges for ICDPs at present.
