What can the best-laid plans of multilateral donors tell us about the likelihood of protecting human rights in area-based conservation interventions? A case study from Bangladesh

Adequately integrating evidence from diverse social science perspectives, from political ecology to development studies, gives us a clear picture of the conditions necessary for conservation strategies to support human rights outcomes. Collectively these comprise the need for principles of recognitional, procedural and distributional justice to be embedded in conservation programs. An analysis of the World Bank-funded Sustainable Access to Forests and Livelihoods (SUFAL) Program in Bangladesh, finds significant shortcomings relating to this conception of environmental justice within the disclosed project documentation. The SUFAL project is likely to fail in achieving human rights outcomes. The theoretical implication is that at least in some cases area-based conservation will fail to protect human rights because justice is not part of the plan. The methodological implication is that analysis of all extant disclosed donor documentation by area experts is a research priority, allowing us to determine the extent to which the SUFAL intervention design is typical. To the extent that it is typical, it is likely that the Global Biodiversity Framework will fail to achieve human rights outcomes. In policy terms, this further vindicates recent progress in donor disclosure practices; such practices should be strengthened where they already exist, and adopted immediately by conservation NGOs and civil society organizations.