1   Challenge:

• Scale of human impacts on biodiversity and accelerating pace of species extinction demand attention (see Heywood 1995)

2   Moral imperative:

• Conservation and development as concepts are often assumed to be unproblematic, looking from outside.

• Yet the problems, goals and methods of achieving them are not agreed, ad there is debate within the fields, E.g.,

  • usefulness of ex situ conservation techniques
  • implications of protected area biogeography for protected area planning
  • appropriate consumptive use as a strategy for conservation.
  • development is ambiguous term
  • involve both moral and technical ideas
  • complicated debates, changing over time.

3   Development and Change

Development is a Euro-centric word. Notions of progress, success and improvement. Implies social, economic and environmental change is inevitable and, desirable.

Colonial Development and Welfare Acts 1940 and 1945, focussed on accelerated exploitation and better management of resources, particularly in Africa.

The World Bank (International Bank for Reconstruction and Development) and the International Monetary Fund sought to fund infrastructure development of the globe in an analogous manner to Post-war reconstruction off Europe after the Second World War. Built on western ideologies.

Emphasis on economic growth, measured by GNP, by 'G7' countries, or Organisation for Economic Cooperation and development (OECD).

Also, recognition of the need to balance needs of the poor and distribute wealth actively.

Alternative measures of development: GNP per capita and United Nations Development Programme's Human development Index UNDP 1992).