A Pluralist Approach to Community-Based Conservation Research: A Case Study of the Phu My Project (2010)
Undergraduate: Marion Boulicault
Faculty Advisor: Amy Cooke
Department: Environmental Science
By breaking with the exclusionary conservation models of the past, community-based conservation (CBC) claims to address conservation and development goals simultaneously, in a way that empowers the local community. The goal of this study is to analyze the role of the local community in CBC by applying a ‘pluralist’ approach to a case study of the Phu My Lepironia Conservation Project in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam.
Recognizing the interdisciplinarity of conservation research, this study began by advocating for the adoption of a pluralist research framework. Applying the pluralist tools of participant-observation, open-ended interviewing and quantifiable data gathering to the case study, research revealed an overall limited and economically focused role of the local community. A myriad of complex, interconnected factors were found to contribute to this role. This limited role was in turn found to have important repercussions on the distribution of benefits from the Project as well as the potential for conflict.
To enhance the role of the local people, a number of steps were suggested, including adopting alternative forms of community-Project communication and addressing issues of land rights. Awareness of the importance of contextualized, holistic solutions combined with an abandonment of the conservation/development binary were put forward as a means to move towards a form of conservation which empowers and emancipates: conservation that is truly and fully community-based.