‘Africa is on the brink of ecological collapse.’ So said a senior World Bank official at a development conference at Tananarivo in November 1985, and most people seemed to believe him. This type of belief has long given licence to government and international intervention in African rural development, and particularly to conservationist lobbies to promote a conservationist programme in Africa. The outlines of this programme are stated in the World Conservation Strategy published by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) in 1980. The primary objectives of this strategy are as follows (IUCN, 1980):

1. (i) to maintain essential ecological processes and life-support systems (i.e. atmosphere, soil and water cycles);

2. (ii) to preserve genetic diversity (including preventing extinctions and preserving representative biotic communities);

3. (iii) to ensure the sustainable utilisation of species and ecosystems.

The conservationist programme is a strategy of limitation of resource use and human population increase. As such it inevitably embodies conflict between short-term individual interests and long-term communal interests. Any programme that emphasises long-term communal benefits at the expense of short-term individual benefits will meet with resistance. The problems and costs of conservation are proportional to the extent of the conflict between these two sets of interests (Bell, 1986a). For a conservationist programme to develop and survive without external enforcement, the benefits conferred must be real and they must not be long delayed.