Protected Areas and Local Communities: an Inevitable Partnership toward Successful Conservation Strategies?

Abstract

ABSTRACT. Many protected areas (PAs) have followed the conventional and exclusionary approach applied at Yellowstone in 1872. As such, many parks have failed to fully integrate other important factors, such as social, cultural, and political issues. In some cases, this has triggered adverse social impacts on local communities, disrupting their traditional ways of living and limiting their control of and access to natural resources. Such an outcome can undermine protection policies through conflicts between park managers and local communities. The success of conservation strategies through protected areas may lie in the ability of managers to reconcile biodiversity conservation goals with social and economic issues and to promote greater compliance of local communities with PA conservation strategies. However, there are very few quantitative studies identifying what the key factors are that lead to better compliance with PA conservation policies. To address this issue, we conducted a meta-analysis of 55 published case studies from developing countries to determine whether the level of compliance of local communities with PA regulations was related to: (1) PA age, (2) PA area, (3) the existence of a buffer zone, (4) the level of protection as defined by IUCN categories, (5) gross domestic product per capita, (6) population density in the vicinity of PAs, and (7) the level of local community participation in PA management. We found that local community participation in the PA decision-making process was the only variable that was significantly related to the level of compliance with PA polices. In general, the higher the level of participation, the higher the level of compliance. This has important implications for PA management and suggests that greater inclusion of local communities in management should be a key strategy for ensuring the integrity of PAs.

Áreas Protegidas Marinho-Costeiras De Santa Catarina Sob a Perspectiva Das Populações Locais: Contribuições Da Literatura

“…The spatial domain deals with the problems and issues related to territorial regularization, including the people's perceptions of the influence of the PAs in the use and occupation of the territory (ZUBE & BUSCH, 1990;LELEU, 2012). The organizational domain refers to the process of creation of the PAs, the performance of the managing agency in the communities, organization of the populations and their participation in the management of PAs (ZUBE & BUSCH, 1990;WELLS et al, 1992;BROOKS et al, 2006;GERHARDINGER et al, 2009;ANDRADE & RHODES, 2012;KARANTH & NEPAL, 2012). The cultural domain covers aspects such as the influence of PAs in the cultural activities of the populations, and their importance as a source of information, education and training of local people (RESSURREIÇÃO, 2012).…”

“…Solutions that benefit both biodiversity conservation and the promotion of human welfare are difficult to find, because they usually involve complex tradeoffs and choices that result in losses and costs for stakeholders (MCSHANE et al, 2011). The inclusion of local people in management of PAs and conservation projects is a strategy to increase the acceptance of these areas (BROOKS et al, 2006;GERHARDINGER et al, 2009;KARANTH & NEPAL, 2012) and to improve compliance with PAs rules and regulations (ANDRADE & RHODES, 2012). To promote such inclusion it is crucial to understand the relationships among local people and PAs, which can be studied considering different domains of analysis (e.g.…”

Ethiopia: Changes from “People out Approach” Protected Area Management to Participatory Protected Area Management? Insight from Ethiopian Protected Areas

“…Many protected areas have followed the exclusionary approach without considering the social, cultural and political issues (Andrade and Rhodes, 2012 Thus, those people dependent on natural resources has no ownership and little involvement in their management. Even though the regulation for Wild life development, conservation and utilization regulation 163/2008 article 7 advocates the community participation to manage, develop and undertake development activities to the natural resources of wild life conservation areas.…”

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“…While the policy recognizes different types of activities and allocates a certain percentage of the budget to them, the more important aspect of the policy is probably its participatory nature (Paudel et al, 2007), which is a critical component of positive parkpeople relationships (Andrade & Rhodes, 2012) and also builds trust between protected area management and local communities (Stern, 2010). For example, in Chitwan NP, people's attitudes toward park management are generally positive, with the majority feeling that park management treats them as partners and supports their participation in conservation and development programmes (Nepal & Spiteri, 2011).…”