Trade-offs in nature tourism: contrasting parcel-level decisions with landscape conservation planning

Abstract

ABSTRACT. A challenge for landscape planning is to understand how trade-offs are differently negotiated across privately held parcels and how economic incentives for conservation affect these trade-offs. I used the efficiency frontier framework to explore the trade-offs associated with the nature tourism industry, an economic incentive for conservation, in Monteverde, Costa Rica. I modeled regional changes in forest cover from 1985 through 2009, dates that coincide with the boom in the nature tourism industry. Interview data were used to understand the social context of these forest cover changes and the negotiation of trade-offs from the perspective of individual parcel owners. The results suggest that nature tourism can provide a win-win conservation scenario on individual parcels in which livelihood opportunities coincide with forest regrowth. However, nature tourism has the potential to introduce market feedback that can both complicate livelihood sustainability and hinder multiple ecosystem service provisioning.

Prophetic Nomadism: An Art School Sustainability‐Oriented Educational Aim?

“…The narratives of these women's nomadic lives have certain elements in common, particularly: Creativity and originality : the transformative and disruptive social and political radicalism they presented to contemporaries through the choices they took, the gender‐subversive manner in which they lived, how they came to be visualised in narrative and artistic forms (See, for example, de Certeau ; Miller ; Castelli ; Grafton & Williams ; Harper ). Awareness of power‐dynamics : the extent to which they managed the social and power networks of their eras. This was expressed creatively, particularly in terms of gender cross‐dressing, a form of performativity that enabled the redressing of certain gender inequalities at the same time as access to powerful institutions (Coon ; Karras ). Futurism via speculative pragmatism : the future‐facing nature of their lives (from sinful women to elevated saints) which embodied a principle of being able to assess potential but ‘empirically unverifiable futures, make them already be felt, seen, and heard in the here and now’ (Gielen , 24) and, more directly comparable with sustainability literacies, work towards the most desirable ones through trade‐offs and persistence in the face of, at times, insurmountable challenges (Ward ; Coon ; Adams ; Matzdorf & Müller ; Allen ). Socio‐economic radicalism : the potential to revision these women as living in harmony with desert lands and in so doing eschewing conspicuous consumption via an embodied form of humility. Through what was essentially a radical approach to contemporary socio‐economic mores, the desert became creatively turned (through visualisation) into a spiritual landscape which embodied religious perspectives at odds with mainstream society (Goehring ).…”

“…This was expressed creatively, particularly in terms of gender cross-dressing, a form of performativity that enabled the redressing of certain gender inequalities at the same time as access to powerful institutions (Coon 1997;Karras 2005). • Futurism via speculative pragmatism: the future-facing nature of their lives (from sinful women to elevated saints) which embodied a principle of being able to assess potential but 'empirically unverifiable futures, make them already be felt, seen, and heard in the here and now' (Gielen 2014, 24) and, more directly comparable with sustainability literacies, work towards the most desirable ones through trade-offs and persistence in the face of, at times, insurmountable challenges (Ward 1987;Coon 1997;Adams 2001;Matzdorf & M€ uller 2010;Allen 2015). • Socio-economic radicalism: the potential to revision these women as living in harmony with desert lands and in so doing eschewing conspicuous consumption via an embodied form of humility.…”

Governance, Values, and Conservation Processes in Multifunctional Landscapes

“…For example, in the well-known study by Polasky et al [22] regarding efficiency frontiers in Oregon, the authors point out that regional planning had failed to optimize land-use values, in terms of trade-offs between biodiversity conservation and economic development, across space. However, critiques of this approach have pointed out that ecosystem services may be in competition with each other across space, and that it may be impossible to truly reconcile all trade-offs across space in an optimal efficiency frontier [36]. The attention to multifunctional landscapes offers a way to explore and measure the diverse values associated with social-ecological systems, including livelihood and wildlife habitat, along with the various policy mechanisms that might promote multifunctional use.…”

Trade-offs between multiple ecosystem services in UK and US salt marshes

“…Often, maximising the provision of one ES can drive declines in others (e.g. Allen 2015, Kim et al 2016, Turner et al 2014. In particular, increasing the supply of provisioning services, such as agricultural production, commonly leads to declines in regulating, processes underpinning these patterns (Mastrangelo et al 2014): spatial interaction between ES may result from one ES directly impacting on others, or from multiple ES reacting to a common driver (Bennett et al 2009).…”