Whose Forest? Modern Conservation and Historical Land Use in Guinea's Ziama Reserve

Abstract

MANY OF WEST AFRICA'S high forest areas were reserved during the colonial period for commercial or environmental reasons. Today these are seen as important sites for the conservation of biodiversity, wildlife, climate, soils and hydrology concerns which satisfy global and regional environmental agendas,l but which are not necessarily shared by local populations who have other needs to use land and resources within reserves. The wisdom of colonially-derived forest conservation approaches based on policing externally-imposed reserves has recently been questioned, not least because of their expense and the politically unsustainable conflicts they have provoked between forest-edge communities and reserve administrations. Instead, attempts are now made to secure the support of forest edgepopulations by linking conservation to the provision of socio-economic benefits, whether in the form of reserve products (e.g. non-timber forest products, shares of eco-tourism revenues), or of 'compensatory' rural development activities.2 These socio-economic possibilities are seen to provide grounds for establishing more 'participatory' forms of conservation planning.