Conserving Tropical Biodiversity Amid Weak Institutions

Tropical-biodiversity conservation has changed radically over the past generation. Until the early 1980s, conventional wisdom held that central governments should manage all conservation efforts in developing countries. Over the past 15 years or so, scholars, conservation practitioners, and policymakers have advocated an alternative approach based on bottom-up direction by local communities in response to real or perceived government malfeasance, misfeasance, or nonfeasance under the previous top-down model. Now that some of the pitfalls of community authority over conservation decisions have become apparent, the question is what, if any, best-bet strategies exist if the institutions of both government agencies and communities are ill equipped to handle the challenges of biodiversity conservation? (We follow Douglass North's [1990] definition of institutions as “the rules of the game in a society or, more formally, … the humanly derived constraints that shape human interaction[p. 3].” Thus, we distinguish between organizations and institutions. For example, a bank is an organization, but within it are many formal and informal rules - institutions - that guide individuals' behavior.)