They are, in fact, critical challenges to national security, global security and human well-being. With this seeking of the common good comes a great danger. This danger becomes clear by looking at the title of the Hearing itself. Africa's environment is not space, or the final frontier. Conservationists are not boldly going where no one has gone before.
People live there.
Most often, it is the people of these local communities that suffer most from the conservation initiatives, and thus it is the people of these communities who are least likely to subscribe to western conservation norms. Indeed, assuming there is a global norm claiming that conservation is a global security issue, it suffers from many of the same top-down tendencies which guided the development efforts of the 1960s and 1970s, despite project attempts to solicit participation at the local level. In Amboseli, with the establishment of the park in 1977, the local Maasai communities were promised several benefits. First, to make up for restricting access to spring water within the park boundaries, a pipeline was constructed to provide adequate water supply to the Maasai. In addition, they were promised annual compensation for loss of grazing land and direct economic benefits from development and tourism.