Title: Community participation in Jamaican conservation Projects
Abstract: ABSTRACT International aid for conservation currently favours assisting projects promoting local-level solutions derived from ‘community’ initiatives. Nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) are fast becoming the preferred infrastructure through which such funding is channelled. This paper examines the role of environmental NGOs in ‘community-based’ conservation projects in Jamaica. Concepts of participation, assumptions about ‘community’, and issues of representation are explored. The central argument advanced in the paper is that, Jamaican environmental groups represent a narrow constituency. Those more likely to be effected by environmental degradation, the poor and marginalised, appear to be the least likely to be involved in environmental NGOs and comunity-based conservation projects. The paper concludes that international donors, and practitioners, should critically address such weaknesses in projects and endeavour to understand the impediments to participation.