Ɂehdzo Got’ı̨nę Gots’ę́ Nákedı
Sahtú Renewable Resources Board

pdf 2005 The Catch 22 of Conservation - Holt Popular

Resurgent protectionists advocate a return to strict nature protection characterized by excluding most people from ecologically fragile areas. Certain groups of indigenous residents, namely those with low population densities, simple technologies, and subsistence economies, are seen as conservation friendly, but groups who are experiencing demographic growth, using Western technologies, and producing for the market are perceived as incompatible with biodiversity conservation. Using insights from common property theory as well as ethnographic observations of the Huaorani Indians of Ecuador, the author illustrates how such assumptions constitute a “conservation Catch-22” in which cultural conditions deemed compatible with biodiversity conservation are precisely those from which we would not predict conservationist practices to emerge.