ABSTRACT
There is a problem with ‘decentralization’ and ‘conservation’; both are used in various brands of the literature to mean different things, often for quite different reasons. On the ground, the realities and social processes that are referred to differ widely and are marred with layered conflicts of purposes and meanings. To ask whether decentralization can be ‘a panacea for conservation’ – or, to put it rhetorically, whether conservation could be ‘saved’ by decentralization – a question raised recurrently in the 1990s and early 2000s (e.g. Enters and Anderson, 2000; Fisher, 2000; Fisher et al, 2000; Gupte, 2006; Whyckoff-Baird et al, 2000), is, therefore, highly problematic.
