NGOs and Participatory Conservation in Developing Countries: Why Are There Inefficiencies?

Gani Aldashev and Elena Vallino ()

No 2018-16, Working Papers ECARES from ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles

Abstract: Participatory conservation projects run by NGOs in developing countries imply involvement of communities in conservation efforts, to combine economic development with environmental preservation. We build an economic model explaining the emergence of participatory conservation and its contradictions linked to the conflicting incentives of local farmers, NGOs, and donors. The tragedy of the commons in a natural area justifies an NGO intervention. Contractual incompleteness calls for participatory conservation. However, if the revenue from the conservation project is uncertain, the community abstains from conservation unless the NGO allocates resources to agriculture. The NGO must deviate from its narrow mission to reach its broad mission. If the NGO is funded by conservation-oriented donors, it struggles to justify diverting resources to agriculture. Thus, the NGO faces a “size versus efficiency” dilemma: poorly conserving a larger area (non-cooperating local community, satisfied donors) or conserving well a smaller area (local community cooperation, unsatisfied donors).

Keywords: Participatory conservation; NGOs; local development; land use (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 39 p.
Date: 2018-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-env and nep-ppm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published by:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
Working Paper: NGOs and participatory conservation in developing countries: why are there inefficiencies? (2013)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eca:wpaper:2013/271490

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://hdl.handle.ne ... lb.ac.be:2013/271490

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers ECARES from ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Benoit Pauwels ().