Governance and Conservation Effectiveness in Protected Areas and Indigenous and Locally Managed Areas

Abstract

Increased conservation action to protect more habitat and species is fueling a vigorous debate about the relative effectiveness of different sorts of protected areas. Here we review the literature that compares the effectiveness of protected areas managed by states and areas managed by Indigenous peoples and/or local communities. We argue that these can be hard comparisons to make. Robust comparative case studies are rare, and the epistemic communities producing them are fractured by language, discipline, and geography. Furthermore the distinction between these different forms of protection on the ground can be blurred. We also have to be careful about the value of this sort of comparison as the consequences of different forms of conservation for people and nonhuman nature are messy and diverse. Measures of effectiveness, moreover, focus on specific dimensions of conservation performance, which can omit other important dimensions. With these caveats, we report on findings observed by multiple study groups focusing on different regions and issues whose reports have been compiled into this article. There is a tendency in the data for community-based or co-managed governance arrangements to produce beneficial outcomes for people and nature. These arrangements are often accompanied by struggles between rural groups and powerful states. Findings are highly context specific and global generalizations have limited value.

Modernity's Antillean ecologies: Dispossession, disasters, justice, and repair across the Caribbean archipelago

“…The "epistemological disjuncture," between how communities understand and relate to land and ecosystems vis-à-vis central governments and capitalist interests creates risk not only of epistemological violence, but physical violence against "entangled more-than-human communities" (Favini 2018, 23-24, 27). The threats and instantiations of violence are being meant by insurgent claims-making, assertions of belonging, and diverse performances of ecological rights, often anchored in conceptualizations of ancestrality and folk-heritage (McIntosh and Renard 2009;Campbell et al 2021;Vandebroek et al 2021;Zhang et al 2023). Assertions of Black-Indigenous heritage, grassroots organizing around Black-Indigenous unity, and communality also serve to reframe resources as commons (Anderson 2007;Mollett 2014;Gould and Lewis 2018;Nisbett 2021;Veronesi et al 2022).…”

Inequitable access to ecosystem services and commercial products is a major risk under certain political regimes in Myanmar

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