The world today faces many challenges. Reducing poverty and protecting the
environment are prominent amongst these challenges, and consequently both are high
on priority lists for many national, international, governmental and non-governmental
organizations. Since the 1980s there has been an increasing awareness that
environmental protection must not fly in the face of social justice, especially in
developing countries, and that a system can only truly achieve sustainability if it is
socially just and economically sound, as well as environmentally secure. Likewise
poverty reduction at the cost of the environment is worthless in the long term. This has
given rise to much more holistic approaches to both conservation and poverty reduction
policies and brought the rights of communities living in or near protected areas into the
international focus. However, wether it is possible to conserve biodiversity and protect
habitats successfully without undermining the livelihoods of local communities, or wether
it is possible to offer development aid to an impoverished region without jeopardizing
their local environment, is a question which has not been resolved.
This study approaches this debate by examining the relationship between the livelihoods
and natural resources of a rural village adjacent to a forest reserve on the Mambilla
Highlands in Nigeria. A mixture of qualitative and quantitative techniques were employed
during five months spent living on location to develop a picture of the situation as it
currently exists, the environmental effects of development in the village to date, and the
effects of these environmental changes on people’s livelihoods.
Based on this research this thesis concludes that development in a region certainly
increases the vulnerability of the environment. However, rather than concluding that this
makes development and environmental protection conflicting agendas, this thesis
argues that this period of vulnerability presents opportunities to develop true
sustainability, as effective sustainable practices can develop from the experience of
resource depletion. Additionally, examples of how knowledge sharing and dialogue
between western scientists and indigenous communities has the potential to facilitate
and accelerate this process are discussed.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:canterbury.ac.nz/oai:ir.canterbury.ac.nz:10092/3684 |
| Date | January 2009 |
| Creators | Korndoerfer, Tammy Linda |
| Publisher | University of Canterbury. Geography |
| Source Sets | University of Canterbury |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic thesis or dissertation, Text |
| Rights | Copyright Tammy Linda Korndoerfer, http://library.canterbury.ac.nz/thesis/etheses_copyright.shtml |
| Relation | NZCU |
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