L'exploitation durable de la faune dans un village forestier de la République Centrafricaine : une approche interdisciplinaire
This manuscript presents the results of an interdisciplinary study of wildlife exploitation in Banga, a bofi forest village of 300 persons in Central African Republic. In the first part of this work, operating modes and worldviews of the four main local stakeholders of wildlife management are confronted: the Central African State, the local peoples (Pygmies and Bantus), a forester and a conservation-development project. This analysis shows marked differences between actors in terms of internal organization, influence networks, means available, knowledge of the resource and its exploitations, values, goals, strategies and vision of the future. Basically, there is a major conceptual divide between local people and the others stakeholders. The second part of this work summarizes the methods developed by the Conservation Biology to assess the sustainability of wildlife harvesting, applying them to our study site. We distinguished sustainability indices that can be classified as empirical or theoretical, and site-specific modeling exercises. This review identifies many approximations, uncertainties, questionable assumptions and errors that limit the relevance of sustainability indices. Furthermore, our analysis shows that these methods carry implicit values (environmentalism, fixism and neo-liberalism) that influence their results. Thus, the third part of this thesis proposes a synthesis of the wildlife management problem in Banga using the Panarchy framework, which gives a new definition of sustainability, of the role of science and of the practice of interdisciplinarity for complex problems solving. Four scenarios of prospective change and action are constructed, which clarify the values they promote, the beneficiaries of the actions engaged, the probability of success and their expected results.
| Summary: | This manuscript presents the results of an interdisciplinary study of wildlife exploitation in Banga, a bofi forest village of 300 persons in Central African Republic. In the first part of this work, operating modes and worldviews of the four main local stakeholders of wildlife management are confronted: the Central African State, the local peoples (Pygmies and Bantus), a forester and a conservation-development project. This analysis shows marked differences between actors in terms of internal organization, influence networks, means available, knowledge of the resource and its exploitations, values, goals, strategies and vision of the future. Basically, there is a major conceptual divide between local people and the others stakeholders. The second part of this work summarizes the methods developed by the Conservation Biology to assess the sustainability of wildlife harvesting, applying them to our study site. We distinguished sustainability indices that can be classified as empirical or theoretical, and site-specific modeling exercises. This review identifies many approximations, uncertainties, questionable assumptions and errors that limit the relevance of sustainability indices. Furthermore, our analysis shows that these methods carry implicit values (environmentalism, fixism and neo-liberalism) that influence their results. Thus, the third part of this thesis proposes a synthesis of the wildlife management problem in Banga using the Panarchy framework, which gives a new definition of sustainability, of the role of science and of the practice of interdisciplinarity for complex problems solving. Four scenarios of prospective change and action are constructed, which clarify the values they promote, the beneficiaries of the actions engaged, the probability of success and their expected results. |
|---|