Abstract:
When the word “paradise” comes to mind, words like “nature,” “prosperity,” and “peace” do as well. There is one phrase that most likely does not: “armed conflict”. However, over the past seventy years, most armed conflicts have occurred in biodiversity hotspots, areas that have both high species variety and high degradation. When armed conflict causes land-use changes, resource exploitation and pollution, there are direct damages to ecosystem health, ecosystem services and human health. Conservation in biodiversity hotspots seeks to protect natural ecosystems, but can also protect the people who are often ravaged by conflict. This thesis examines how countries in biodiversity hotspots have implemented strategies for forest biodiversity conservation in post-war periods and proposes a blueprint for conservation which any country could prospectively implement after armed conflict. I utilized the Most Different Systems Design, which seeks to identify similar factors between two extremely different case studies, to compare conservation efforts of the Vietnamese and Sierra Leonean governments. My time frame was sixteen years after their respective conflicts ended: between 1975 and 1991 after the Vietnam War, and between 2002 and 2018 after the Sierra Leone Civil War. Both countries sought to increase their conservation capacity after conflict, including expanding government capacity for conservation, creating new protected areas, incorporating communities in resource management, educating people about conservation issues, and developing alternative livelihood options. Protected areas, especially when combined with community-based management, can serve to fulfill the later four strategies. When there is an emphasis on communication, coordination, and collaboration between departments and between the government and local people, forest biodiversity conservation can be most successful after armed conflict.