Linking Development Interventions to Conservation: Perspectives From Partners in the International Gorilla Conservation Programme

Abstract

The disappointing performance of integrated conservation and development projects has been partly blamed on the lack of linkage between the development intervention and the expected conservation outcome, resulting in projects that rarely achieve the sought-after “win–win” outcomes. While this study replicates findings about the difficulties of establishing successful linkages, it also seeks to go beyond problem identification, by evaluating responses initiated within a long-term conservation initiative, the International Gorilla Conservation Programme, that has since 1991 worked with communities as part of its efforts to protect mountain gorillas and their habitats. The principal lesson that emerges from interviews with IGCP partner organizations relates to the benefits of a “conservation logic” in which conservation and development outcomes are linked through mutual dependence but also contractual conditionality.