Conserving biodiversity in the 21st century through integrated conservation and development planning on a regional scale at LBSNAAA, Mussoorie (28-30 june,1999)

Conservation and development have often been construed as mutually exclusive. This could have been attributable to an insensitive approach to development on the one hand and as an element of ecological fundamentalism on the other. This incompatibility has resulted in sectoral isolation and pitched battles between the protagonists on both sides, continued loss of biodiversity and unsustainable development. Realization of these facts has led to the emergence of a new paradigm that is based on the mutuality of conservation and development. Important lessons have been learnt and internalised in the field of conservation, from similar initiatives in integrated watershed management and minor irrigation programs.

Most of our Protected Areas are too small to be viable for wide ranging animals and ecological processes in the long-run. Unless Protected Areas forge linkages with other human-influenced land uses and become part of overall development planning, their long-term future will remain doubtful. However, persistence of planners with a sectoral agenda undermine the very basis of the integrated planning process. The pilot initiatives from different sectors and across different land uses that reinforce conservation and development linkages provide some directions to the future strategy. Termed as an eco regional or landscape approach, it binds many sectoral approaches in much bigger. geographical area (called eco-regions) that span across a mosaic of land uses and make sense, ecologically and socially. The approach involves stakeholder led collaborative efforts to protect, restore and sustainably use biological resources at a regional scale. The workshop targeting senior policy makers endeavoured to find a common ground wherein different sectoral agenda could discover the elements of commonality and strong bondages of inter-dependence. The present report on the deliberations and recommendations of the workshop could prove instrumental in cementing conservation and developmental linkages, by suggesting strategies and required policy changes for integrating the ongoing development programmes and conservation initiatives in the country.