Revolution in socotra: A perspective from Yemen's periphery

Socotra has been transformed from an obscure and seasonally inaccessible Indian Ocean archipelago to a globally recognized (natural) World Heritage Site open to international ecotourism over the past 15 years. The metamorphosis occurred mainly through successive integrated conservation and development projects (ICDP), funded by the UN Development Program, the Global Environment Facility and bilateral donors, between 1997 and 2008. When, in early 2011, Socotrans expressed their opposition to the proposed Socotra Authority, they did so largely out of the conviction that the archipelago should become more integrated into the mainland's administrative structure, not less. What they wanted instead, these pastoralists with little patience for expert-driven conservation or the mainland's endemic corruption, was for Socotra to be elevated from its current division into two local districts under the governorate of Hadramawt to a single governorate in its own right.