Research demonstrates alarming findings on poaching impacts, revealing that poverty and armed conflict significantly fuel illegal activities in Kahuzi-Biega National Park. These insights not only challenge conventional conservation strategies but also underscore the urgent need for enhanced law enforcement and community engagement to protect biodiversity.
CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW
Introduction
A literature review is a text of a scholarly published paper, which includes the current knowledge including practical findings, as well as theoretical and methodological contributions to a particular topic. It has the purpose of provide a context for the research, ensure the research hasn’t been done before, enable the researcher to learn from previous theories on the related subjects, illustrate how the subject has been studied previously.
So, this chapter shows how other authors have been written on this topic. The first part of this chapter defines key concepts, and the second part is related to theoretical approaches and third part is about other studies related to undertaken study.
Definitions of the key concepts
It is of paramount importance to define the key concepts used in this study as they reflect the main part of this work. These key concepts facilitate the comprehension and understanding of the terminologies. The key concepts to define include: Assessment, poaching activities and protected area.
Assessment
is the act of judging or deciding the amount, value, quality, or importance of something, or the judgment or decision that is made. (Cambridge advanced leaner’s dictionary)
Poaching
Poaching defined as the illegal hunting or capturing of wild animals, usually associated with land use rights. The term « poaching » has also referred to the illegal harvesting of plant species. In agricultural terms, the term ‘poaching’ is also applied to the loss of soils or grass by the damaging action of feet of livestock which can affect availability of productive land, water pollution through increased runoff and welfare issues for cattle (MacKean, 2005).
Protected Area
Protected area is defined as geographical space that recognized, dedicated and managed, through legal or other effective means, to achieve the long-term conservation of nature with associated ecosystem services and cultural values (IUCN, 2008). It is an area of land or sea especially dedicated to the protection and maintenance of biological diversity, and of natural and associated cultural resources, and managed through legal or other effective means (IUCN, 1994:p.7). These areas include: National Parks, wilderness areas, community conserved areas, nature reserves and antiquities sites.
These areas are mainstay of biodiversity conservation and it contributes to people’s livelihoods. Protected areas are at the core of efforts towards conserving nature and the services it provides us a food, clean water supply, medicines and protection from the impacts of natural disasters. As far as this study is concerned, protected area is Kahuzi-Biega National Park and it is protected for on one hand the maintenance of biological diversity and on other hand to contribute to the livelihood of adjacent communities.
Theoretical Perspectives
In this study, the researcher searched for the theories that are underpinning to the research topic. Theories relating to the Environmental sustainability theory and the Theory of Tragedy of the Commons have been used in this study.
Environmental sustainability theory
In 1980 the World Conservation Strategy developed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, in collaboration with the U.N. Environment Program and World Wildlife Foundation, worked to make sustainability standard of international action. Then the term “sustainable development” achieved international public prominence through the 1987 report of the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED, 1987).
The theory of sustainability tries to prioritize and incorporate social responses to environmental and cultural problems. This theory looks to sustain natural biodiversity and ecological integrity. In its literal origins, sustainability means a capacity to maintain some object, outcome, or process over time. Agriculture, forest management, might be judged sustainable, meaning that the activity does not exhaust the material resources on which it depends (WCED, 1987).
On a global scale the political challenge of sustainability raises a set of basic problems and comprehensive goals. By focusing on the ecological dependency of economic and social systems, sustainability explains the mutual effects between environmental degradation caused by human activities and hazards to human systems presented by global environmental problems at local and global levels.
Then, sustainability directs practical attention to the complex mutuality of human and ecological systems. Economic health, ecological integrity, and responsibility to the future must be integrated to address multiple global problems within a coherent, durable, and moral social vision. Sustainability is used to argue for and against climate treaties, for and against free markets, for and against social spending, and for and against environmental preservation.
Sustainability produces a significant discursive arena for a new kind of moral and political debate (Bruno, 2012). Strong sustainability gives priority to the preservation of ecological goods, like the existence of species or the functioning of particular ecosystems. The two views loosely correspond to eco-centric (ecologically centered) and anthropocentric (human-centered) positions in environmental ethics, but not perfectly.
The eco-centric view requires that moral decisions take into account the good of ecological integrity for its own sake, as opposed to exclusively considering human interests. But a strong sustainability view could be held from an anthropocentric perspective by arguing that human systems depend on biodiversity or that human dignity requires access to natural beauty (Herman, 1996).
With this research, the theory of environmental sustainability is closely related to this study as it reflects all approaches to addressing all environmental problems, in particular the illegal exploitation of natural resources leading to habitat degradation, global warming, the extinction of certain wildlife and plant species, etc. Thus, education, awareness raising, law enforcement, good personnel management, good involvement of all stakeholders would contribute to the conservation of KBNP’s biodiversity by reducing the number of recurrent illegal activities as well as their possible impacts.
Theory of Tragedy of the Commons
The tragedy of the commons is a term, originally used by Garrett Hardin, to denote a situation where individuals acting independently and rationally according to each’s self-interest behave contrary to the best interests of the whole group by depleting some common resource. The term is taken from the title of an article written by Hardin in 1968, which is in turn based upon an essay by a Victorian economist on the effects of unregulated grazing on land. “Commons » in this sense has come to mean such resources as atmosphere, oceans, rivers, fish stocks, the office refrigerator, energy or any other shared resource which is not formally regulated, not common land in its agricultural sense (Forster, 1833).
The tragedy of the commons concept is often cited in connection with sustainable development, meshing economic growth and environmental protection, as well as in the debate over global warming. (Forster, 1833)
Hardin (1968) explains that each individual’s behavior may appear to have an insignificant impact on resources, however when this behavior is multiplied, this collective behavior will affect the environment in either positive or a negative way. Population increase and accelerated consumption lie at the base of the problem.
The tragedy of the commons or in turn, is the fact that users, based on individual calculations, deplete a resource or exploit excessively because they have no incentive to adopt an attitude of conservation which others could benefit (Appel, 1993).
According to this study, the assessment of poaching activities at KBNP contributes to the discovery of how the park’s biodiversity is being destroyed and the steps to be taken to address the challenge, as described by the theory about the tragedy of the commons. Around the national Kahuzi-Biega National Park, the deterioration of the biodiversity caused by the inhabitants of raises many problems.
Pygmies and Bantu monopolize the park and exploit it at will, not even thinking that all these pressures would have consequences in the coming days. However, all these problems had to be solved by putting into practice the appropriate methods and techniques in order to palliate this plague. Therefore, this theory says in short that preserving what belongs to everyone is of little interest to everyone.
« It provides a minimum of care for what is common to the greatest number, » said Aristote.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the key concepts defined in the study of poaching in Kahuzi-Biega National Park?
The key concepts defined in the study include Assessment, Poaching Activities, and Protected Area.
What is poaching as defined in the article?
Poaching is defined as the illegal hunting or capturing of wild animals, usually associated with land use rights, and can also refer to the illegal harvesting of plant species.
What is the significance of protected areas like Kahuzi-Biega National Park?
Protected areas are crucial for biodiversity conservation and contribute to people’s livelihoods by maintaining biological diversity and providing ecosystem services.