Finding Common Ground: Conservation, Development and Indigenous Livelihoods in the Huascarán Biosphere Reserve, Peru

The environment and biodiversity of the Huascarán Biosphere Reserve (HBR) are threatened according to many in the region’s conservation community. This chapter explores how social, political, and economic changes in the region have affected agropastoral land uses and indigenous institutions for managing them. Here, I examine the extent to which the region’s policies of “conservation with development” may ultimately be responsible for these threats. The focus of my analysis is on the conservation of grasslands in the HBR, a resource managed as common property. I adopt a cultural and political ecology perspective that relies on common property theory to describe the effects of state intervention, tourism involvement, and demographic change on the decision-making of the Ishinca valley user-group, specifically the sectors of Collón and Pashpa in the indigenous community of Tupac Yupanqui (TY). Findings illustrate how conflicts and unintended consequences can emerge when attempting to balance conservation and development, especially where the management of a commons is involved. Data compiled from diverse sources, including census, household and community-level surveys, time allocation observations, ethnography and participant observation suggest that the enclosure of its communal lands with the creation of the