Wright Juliet H, Hill Nicholas A O, Roe Dilys, Rowcliffe J Marcus, Kümpel Noëlle F, Day Mike, Booker Francesca, Milner-Gulland E J
Imperial College Conservation Science, Department of Life Sciences, Imperial College London, Silwood Park Campus, Buckhurst Road, Ascot, SL5 7PY, United Kingdom.
Zoological Society of London, Regent's Park, London, NW1 4RY, United Kingdom.
Conserv Biol. 2016 Feb;30(1):7-13. doi: 10.1111/cobi.12607. Epub 2015 Nov 2.
Alternative livelihood project (ALP) is a widely used term for interventions that aim to reduce the prevalence of activities deemed to be environmentally damaging by substituting them with lower impact livelihood activities that provide at least equivalent benefits. ALPs are widely implemented in conservation, but in 2012, an International Union for Conservation of Nature resolution called for a critical review of such projects based on concern that their effectiveness was unproven. We focused on the conceptual design of ALPs by considering their underlying assumptions. We placed ALPs within a broad category of livelihood-focused interventions to better understand their role in conservation and their intended impacts. We dissected 3 flawed assumptions about ALPs based on the notions of substitution, the homogenous community, and impact scalability. Interventions based on flawed assumptions about people's needs, aspirations, and the factors that influence livelihood choice are unlikely to achieve conservation objectives. We therefore recommend use of a sustainable livelihoods approach to understand the role and function of environmentally damaging behaviors within livelihood strategies; differentiate between households in a community that have the greatest environmental impact and those most vulnerable to resource access restrictions to improve intervention targeting; and learn more about the social-ecological system within which household livelihood strategies are embedded. Rather than using livelihood-focused interventions as a direct behavior-change tool, it may be more appropriate to focus on either enhancing the existing livelihood strategies of those most vulnerable to conservation-imposed resource access restrictions or on use of livelihood-focused interventions that establish a clear link to conservation as a means of building good community relations. However, we recommend that the term ALP be replaced by the broader term livelihood-focused intervention. This avoids the implicit assumption that alternatives can fully substitute for natural resource-based livelihood activities.
替代生计项目（ALP）是一个广泛使用的术语，用于指代那些旨在通过用影响较小且能提供至少同等收益的生计活动来替代被认为对环境有破坏作用的活动，从而降低此类活动的盛行程度的干预措施。替代生计项目在保护领域广泛实施，但在2012年，国际自然保护联盟的一项决议呼吁对这类项目进行批判性审查，原因是担心其有效性未经证实。我们通过考虑替代生计项目的潜在假设，聚焦于其概念设计。我们将替代生计项目置于一类广泛的以生计为重点的干预措施中，以便更好地理解它们在保护中的作用及其预期影响。我们基于替代、同质社区和影响可扩展性的概念剖析了关于替代生计项目的3个有缺陷的假设。基于对人们需求、愿望以及影响生计选择因素的有缺陷假设而进行的干预措施不太可能实现保护目标。因此，我们建议采用可持续生计方法来理解生计策略中对环境有破坏作用行为的作用和功能；区分社区中对环境影响最大的家庭和最易受到资源获取限制影响的家庭，以改进干预目标；并更多地了解家庭生计策略所嵌入的社会生态系统。与其将以生计为重点的干预措施用作直接的行为改变工具，或许更合适的做法是要么专注于加强那些最易受到保护措施所导致的资源获取限制影响的人群的现有生计策略，要么专注于使用与保护建立明确联系的以生计为重点的干预措施，以此作为建立良好社区关系的一种手段。然而，我们建议用更宽泛的术语“以生计为重点的干预措施”来取代“替代生计项目”这一术语。这避免了那种认为替代方案可以完全替代基于自然资源的生计活动的隐含假设。
