Anthropology professor Constanza Ocampo-Raeder will take an extended sabbatical in Peru next year to finish writing a book about why many conservation and development projects fail—and how anthropologists can help them succeed.
I’m an environmental anthropologist. I specialize in analyzing societies that are resource-based (people who work directly with their natural resources to make a living) by observing participants, collecting scientific data, and conducting interviews to try to understand how people make decisions about their interactions with the environment.
I did research with an indigenous community in the Amazon for my dissertation. I spent five years documenting more than 70 conservation and development projects being conducted by outside organizations within this village of 300 families—everything from recycling produce and making organic jams to an ecotourism project and basket-weaving initiatives. A lot of those projects either failed entirely or didn’t last more than a couple of years.
It’s a predicament of good intentions. The people who work for these organizations come from societies that privilege one view of nature or of progress and well-being, so they have on blinders. The projects are flawed because the agenda is set before they even arrive. The locals say yes to almost everything, but they don’t follow through in ways the workers expect them to, and everyone ends up kind of jaded.
I’ve collected case studies from three field sites in Peru for the book. In one case, a group taught a village how to raise guinea pigs so they wouldn’t have to hunt forest game anymore. But two weeks later, the project leaders returned to find that the villagers had set all the guinea pigs free. Even though lots of people in Peru eat guinea pigs, this particular community has a deep conflict with the Andean people. Andeans eat guinea pigs, and these villagers refused to eat what Andeans eat.
In another case, an environmental education team member wanted a local shaman to tell the children the stories of their ancestors. The shaman told the conservation worker that their myths aren’t about environmental consciousness, which made the conservation worker angry.
Here are three ways workers could have changed the outcomes of these projects:
- Overcome inaccurate stereotypes. For example, don’t impose a romanticized view of harmonious relationships with nature on certain societies.
- Don’t underestimate the power of social capital. People at my field sites make investments and decisions based on maintaining relationships in the community, even when it means they make less money.
- Understand the community’s sense of identity. People will make choices based on their worldview and that may be very different from the decisions we make based on our worldview.
Photograph by John Noltner