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The close of the twentieth century has witnessed an upsurge in international concern about people's impact on the natural environment. As pressure on natural resources has intensified, the conventional means of protecting habitat and preventing species extinctions, through the establishment of 'protected areas', has increasingly come into question. Conventional conservation approaches have been accused of ignoring the wider forces causing environmental damage and, even, of being part of the same mind-set, which imposes land use categories from the 'top-down', classifying lands as protected areas or zones. This, say the critics, has only legitimized and encouraged unsustainable land use outside protected areas, placing further pressure on natural resources and the beleaguered protected areas them-selves. Some have, thus, demanded broader changes in national and global economies and focused attention on the underlying causes of environmental destruction - social injustice, the lack of secure land tenure, the enclosure of the commons, consumerism, the rise of corporations, global trade, and government collusion or indifference (WRM 1990; IUCN 1991; Colchester and Lohmann 1993; Ecologist 1993; Verolme and Moussa 1999; Barraclough and Ghimire 2000; Wood et al. 2000).

More information

Type

Chapter

Publisher

Berghahn Books

Publication Date

2002

Pages

1 - 20