Six conservation case studies where FPIC could have changed the outcome

Sep 8 / Adam Barlow

Six peer reviewed case studies document conservation and resource-management decisions made without Free, Prior, and Informed Consent, and each one involves a different kind of decision going wrong: a forest eviction, a carbon credit sold without the community's knowledge, a resource-use quota imposed from outside, a fishing ban that ignored the livelihoods it disrupted, and a patent built on traditional knowledge taken without asking. The cases span Kenya, Peru, Nepal, Mexico, South Africa, and Botswana. In every case, the underlying conservation goal was not the problem. What produced the harm was the absence of a process for the affected community to shape, agree to, or refuse the decision before it was made. Each case is summarised below with what happened, how FPIC could have changed the result, and a link to the research.

Mau Forest, Kenya: eviction of the Ogiek Peoples
Cordillera Azul National Park, Peru: carbon credits without consent
Chitwan National Park, Nepal: a resource-use quota set without the community
Upper Gulf of California, Mexico: a fishing ban that bypassed the fishers
The Hoodia plant, South Africa: a patent built on San traditional knowledge
Central Kalahari Game Reserve, Botswana: relocation for mining and tourism
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What happened. The Ogiek Peoples, hunter-gatherers who have lived in Kenya's Mau Forest for generations, were forcibly evicted from their ancestral land as part of a conservation initiative, despite a 2017 ruling by the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights in their favour. Researchers interviewed twenty-six Ogiek community members and held a sharing circle, documenting the loss of access to traditional foods, medicines, and spiritual sites, and the disruption of the intergenerational knowledge transmission that depends on continued presence in the forest.

How FPIC could have made a difference. The study identifies the eviction as a clear violation of Article 10 of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which requires free, prior, and informed consent before any relocation of Indigenous Peoples from their land. Had that consent process taken place, the Ogiek would have had the standing to negotiate the terms of any conservation measure, propose alternatives to eviction such as co-management, and refuse a plan that removed them entirely.

Citation: Mau Forest, Kobei, D.M., Luari, S.L., Carroll, D., Gougsa, S., Pratt, V. and Redvers, N. (2025) '"Removing an Ogiek from the Forest is like removing a fish from water": A qualitative examination on Ogiek community impacts from forced land eviction for conservation', PLOS Global Public Health, 5(6), e0004460. doi: 10.1371/journal.pgph.0004460.

Link: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgph.0004460

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What happened. A REDD+ carbon project in Peru's Cordillera Azul National Park generated and sold carbon credits linked to forest protection, but Indigenous Kichwa communities living in and around the park say they were not consulted and did not consent to the carbon rights being claimed over their territory. This review of 94 sources on forest carbon initiatives across the Global South documents the case as one of several where legal action was taken against a government for profiting from carbon credits without securing FPIC from the Indigenous communities whose land underpinned the project.

How FPIC could have made a difference. The review's eight-principle framework for assessing forest carbon projects places FPIC at the centre of what separates a rights-respecting project from an extractive one. Had the Kichwa communities been party to a consent process before the carbon rights were established, they would have had the opportunity to negotiate a share of the revenue, set conditions on the project's scope, or refuse participation entirely. Instead they discovered after the fact that credits tied to their land had already been sold.

Citation: Cubas-Báez, A., Sunderlin, W., Larson, A.M. and Frechette, A. (2025) 'From promises to practice: Persistent challenges in safeguarding local rights in forest carbon market initiatives', CABI Reviews, 20(1), 0025. doi: 10.1079/cabireviews.2025.0025.

Link: https://doi.org/10.1079/cabireviews.2025.0025

What happened. Chitwan National Park in Nepal was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1984 without the consent of the Indigenous and local communities living around it, and the park's buffer zone rules have restricted the communities' traditional collection of thatch, fodder, and other forest resources ever since. This study of households in the buffer zone found that despite these restrictions, prohibited resource collection continues, driven by demand for resources the legal community-forest system does not fully meet, and by residents' own judgement of environmental risks like invasive species that the restrictions were not designed around.

How FPIC could have made a difference. The restrictions were set by park authorities without the kind of consultation that would have let residents shape the rules to match their actual needs. A functioning FPIC process would have required these resource-use rules to be negotiated with the communities who depend on the buffer zone, potentially producing quotas and community-forest allocations residents were more likely to follow, instead of a system that continues to push people into prohibited collection nearly forty years after the park's designation.

Citation: Yabiku, S.T., Sullivan, A., York, A.M., Zhao, Q., Glick, J.E., Hall, S.J., Ghimire, D.J. and An, L. (2022) 'Drivers of prohibited natural resource collection in Chitwan National Park, Nepal', Environmental Conservation, 49(2), pp. 114 to 121. doi: 10.1017/S0376892922000121.

Link: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0376892922000121

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What happened. To protect the critically endangered vaquita porpoise, the Mexican government imposed a gillnet ban across the Upper Gulf of California in 2017, the waters that small-scale fishing communities depend on for their livelihoods. This analysis by a multidisciplinary panel of fisheries economists and conservation scientists found that despite nearly two decades of conservation actions, illegal gillnet fishing has continued, driven by weak enforcement and the absence of a viable economic alternative for the communities whose fishery was banned.

How FPIC could have made a difference. The paper notes that Mexico's own vaquita recovery plans have repeatedly acknowledged that saving the species requires providing an alternative income for local fishers, a commitment that was never delivered alongside the ban. A genuine consent process would have required the ban's design to be negotiated with fishing communities from the outset, working out compensation, alternative gear, or transition livelihoods as part of the agreement instead of as an afterthought applied once the restriction was already imposed.

Citation: Sanjurjo-Rivera, E., Mesnick, S.L., Ávila-Forcada, S., Poindexter, O., Lent, R., Felbab-Brown, V., Cisneros-Montemayor, A.M., Squires, D., Sumaila, U.R., Munro, G., Ortiz-Rodriguez, R., Rodriguez, R. and Sainz, J.F. (2021) 'An Economic Perspective on Policies to Save the Vaquita: Conservation Actions, Wildlife Trafficking, and the Structure of Incentives', Frontiers in Marine Science, 8, 644022. doi: 10.3389/fmars.2021.644022.

Link: https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2021.644022

What happened. The San Peoples of southern Africa have long used the Hoodia plant as an appetite and thirst suppressant during hunting expeditions. South Africa's Council for Scientific and Industrial Research studied the plant's properties and filed a patent on its active compounds in 1997, then licensed the discovery to a pharmaceutical company, without informing the San or seeking their consent, despite their traditional knowledge being the starting point for the research. The San only learned of the patent and the commercial licensing deals after both had already been finalised.

How FPIC could have made a difference. This chapter, written by the San's own legal representative alongside a researcher who monitored the case, treats the absence of prior consent as the central failure that had to be corrected after the fact through years of negotiation. A benefit-sharing agreement was eventually reached, but only once the San organised and pushed back. Had FPIC been sought before the patent was filed, the San would have had the standing to negotiate terms, set conditions on how their knowledge was used, and secure a share of any resulting revenue as part of the research process itself, instead of as a settlement won afterward.

Citation: Wynberg, R. and Chennells, R. (2009) 'Green Diamonds of the South: An Overview of the San-Hoodia Case', in Wynberg, R., Schroeder, D. and Chennells, R. (eds) Indigenous Peoples, Consent and Benefit Sharing. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 89 to 126. doi: 10.1007/978-90-481-3123-5_6.

Link: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3123-5_6

What happened. The Basarwa, or San, were relocated out of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve by the Botswana government between 1997 and 2002, officially to bring them access to social services available elsewhere. The Basarwa's own organisation, the First People of the Kalahari, argued the relocation was instead intended to clear the way for diamond mining and tourism in the reserve. This paper analyses the dispossession and social exclusion that followed, and notes that despite a 2006 High Court ruling that the relocation had been unlawful, the Basarwa remain marginalised and largely excluded from the tourism economy now operating on their former land.

How FPIC could have made a difference. The High Court's own ruling found that denying the Basarwa entry to the reserve without a permit, and refusing them hunting licences on their ancestral land, was unlawful and unconstitutional, a finding that only came after years of litigation the community had to fund and pursue themselves. A functioning consent process would have required the government to negotiate the terms of any conservation or resource-extraction plan with the Basarwa before relocation began, and could have given the community a formal stake in the tourism and mineral revenue the reserve now generates.

Citation: Mbaiwa, J.E. and Mogende, E. (2023) 'Conservation, tourism and indigenous communities' dynamics: the case of Basarwa in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR), Botswana', Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa, 78(3). doi: 10.1080/0035919X.2023.2255846.

Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/0035919X.2023.2255846

Most, though not all. The Ogiek, Kichwa, San, and Basarwa cases involve communities that qualify as Indigenous Peoples under international law, giving FPIC the status of a binding right. The Chitwan and Upper Gulf of California cases involve local communities whose FPIC claim rests on best practice and national policy commitments instead of the same binding international right. This is one reason the researchers in those two cases frame the missing consultation as a policy failure and not a legal violation.

In several cases, yes. The Chitwan study found that resource restrictions set without community input continue to be widely ignored, and the vaquita paper found the same pattern with the gillnet ban: restrictions imposed without a viable alternative for the people affected tend to produce continued non-compliance instead of the change they were designed to achieve.

Three broad patterns show up. In the Ogiek and Basarwa cases, consent was absent because relocation decisions were made and then defended instead of negotiated first. In the Chitwan and Upper Gulf of California cases, consent was absent because resource-use rules were set by outside authorities without input from the people the rules would apply to. In the Cordillera Azul and Hoodia cases, consent was absent because a commercial arrangement, a carbon credit sale and a patent licence, was finalised before the community whose land or knowledge underpinned it even knew it was happening.

Each paper listed above includes a full Harvard style citation and a direct link. Most are published under open access licences or have a freely available version through the publisher, so the full text is reachable through the links provided without needing a journal subscription.

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What skipping FPIC costs your organisation

Five peer reviewed papers examine what skipping Free, Prior, and Informed Consent costs a conservation organisation over time. The set covers a framework linking trust and justice in conservation relationships, a Nature paper on the reputational and existential stakes of exclusion, a Lancet Planetary Health piece questioning whether carbon markets amount to a new colonialism, a case where a certification body suspended a carbon project over consent concerns, and a study finding unequal decision-making is the top reason community conservation initiatives fail to scale.

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Six conservation case studies where FPIC could have changed the outcome

Quick answer

Contents

Mau Forest, Kenya: eviction of the Ogiek Peoples

LAUNCH YOUR CAREER IN WILDLIFE CONSERVATION

Cordillera Azul National Park, Peru: carbon credits without consent

Chitwan National Park, Nepal: a resource-use quota set without the community

LAUNCH YOUR CAREER IN WILDLIFE CONSERVATION

Upper Gulf of California, Mexico: a fishing ban that bypassed the fishers

The Hoodia plant, South Africa: a patent built on San traditional knowledge

Central Kalahari Game Reserve, Botswana: relocation for mining and tourism

FAQ

Are all six of these cases about Indigenous Peoples specifically?

Did a lack of consent affect the conservation outcome itself, not just the community?

What forms did the missing consent take across these six cases?

Where can I read the full papers referenced in this post?

Latest from our blog

What skipping FPIC costs your organisation

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Six conservation case studies where FPIC could have changed the outcome

Quick answer

Contents

Mau Forest, Kenya: eviction of the Ogiek Peoples

LAUNCH YOUR CAREER IN WILDLIFE CONSERVATION

Cordillera Azul National Park, Peru: carbon credits without consent

Chitwan National Park, Nepal: a resource-use quota set without the community

LAUNCH YOUR CAREER IN WILDLIFE CONSERVATION

Upper Gulf of California, Mexico: a fishing ban that bypassed the fishers

The Hoodia plant, South Africa: a patent built on San traditional knowledge

Central Kalahari Game Reserve, Botswana: relocation for mining and tourism

FAQ

Are all six of these cases about Indigenous Peoples specifically?

Did a lack of consent affect the conservation outcome itself, not just the community?

What forms did the missing consent take across these six cases?

Where can I read the full papers referenced in this post?

Latest from our blog

What skipping FPIC costs your organisation

UNLOCK OUR FULL BEST PRACTICES AND GET CERTIFIED CONSERVATION SKILLS

ABOUT

EXPLORE

LEGAL

JOIN THE CONVERSATION

EMPOWERING CONSERVATIONISTS TO RESTORE NATURE

Stay connected with WildTeam

LAUNCHING YOUR CAREER IN WILDLIFE CONSERVATION