People and protected areas

New agendas for conservation

For many threatened plants and animals, protected areas are a vital refuge in the face of declining natural habitats. However, across the world they face increasing pressures. Some conservation policies are also disadvantageous for local people. What does the future hold for protected areas?

A woman from the Lisu ethnic minority group in north west Yunnan Province, China. Conservation International has named the mountains in south west China as a biodiversity hotspot. Diverse wildlife includes endangered species such as snow leopards. Seventeen ethnic groups, including the Lisu and Tibetans, live in the region. Collecting wood is permitted under the National Natural Forest Protection Programme but poses a threat to ecosystems. The Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund focuses on increasing the capacity of emerging conservation leaders to preserve biodiversity and to ensure that community groups, NGOs and the private sector work together and complement government strategies - see www.cepf.net. Photo by Alexander Robin

The number of public protected areas has increased more than tenfold since the first United Nations list in 1962, to 102, 102 sites covering an area of 18.8 million square kilometres (World Conservation Monitoring Centre, 2003). Despite this, species and habitat loss is high. Population pressures, particularly the expansion of urban areas and agriculture, lead to protected areas becoming islands or increasingly fragmented habitats.

Even with current conservation areas, it is estimated that up to 50 percent of the world's biodiversity will be lost this century. Furthermore, there is little consistency between countries and regions on the criteria used to designate protected areas.

This issue of id21 insights discusses the challenges facing people living and working in or near publicly designated and locally defined protected areas, particularly in developing countries. Current debates on conservation include:

• Human activity in protected areas. Is forced resettlement of local people acceptable? Can conservation goals be integrated with land and resource use strategies of local communities, such as hunting and fishing?
• Funding is inadequate and declining. How should increasingly scarce global funds be allocated? How can initiatives be made sustainable in the longer term?
• New management approaches are expanding. How can protected areas create conditions for community management of conservation and support local projects? Can these approaches be applied to areas that cross international or state boundaries? What role does education play in these?
• The role of ecosystem services. Many ecosystems provide important services, such as cleaning water and absorbing carbon dioxide. Can paying people to protect habitats provide funds for conservation efforts and local economies?

Human activity in protected areas

Human presence in protected areas can be high; nearly half of the 17,000 larger protected areas have agriculture within their boundaries and at least one third of developing country protected areas overlap with indigenous peoples' traditional homelands - see articles by Sara Scherr and Gonzalo Oviedo.

Creating public protected areas historically meant declaring ecosystems as public lands and resources, often overruling existing local rights. This process sometimes includes the forced removal of people from protected areas, as Kai Schmidt-Soltau describes. A lack of attention to traditional resource use patterns and tenure rights often resulted in deep-rooted conflicts and unexpected pressures on natural systems caused by the disruption of well established human-nature balances.

Identifying conservation projects that help communities maintain or improve their environment is a priority. This supports human rights, is consistent with the devolution of government roles to other parties, builds on long-term social and cultural initiatives, and combines economic interests with other incentives to increase the likelihood of success.

Funding is inadequate and declining

There has been a substantial decline in Overseas Development Aid to the forestry and conservation sector (from US$ 2.2 billion per year 1991 to 1992 to US$ 1.1 billion 2002 to 2003) and most government sector budgets have remained the same (about US$ 3 billion a year). By comparison, community conservation initiatives invest between US$ 2 and US$ 5 billion annually and, where economic returns permit, these are increasing. In Mexico, Guatemala and Nepal, communities invest more than US$ 2 per hectare a year in managed forests and conservation areas. Many donors and governments expect community conservation enterprises to be self-sustaining when their own programmes are not.

Donors should support local innovation and form alliances with local communities and their supporting organisations. If protected areas are managed for local needs, they can be a good source of environmental services and employment. There is pressure from governments, private donors and conservation organisations to demonstrate quick and visible success. This makes it difficult to support long term processes which respect local cultures. There is also limited support for experimentation in management approaches. The global conservation community must reconsider their funding criteria, as suggested by Kent Redford.

New management approaches

For many years, protected areas were dominated by governments, conservation organisations or private landowners. Many countries still have such arrangements. However, these conservation models are controversial, especially in developing countries, where a significant number of arrangements are with absent land owners and managers, or where conservation agreements are a way to avoid the redistribution of large landholdings amongst poorer farmers. Pro-poor, pro-human rights and pro-indigenous peoples voices are starting to alter conservation approaches.

New approaches focus on integrating protected areas with wider uses and values, including cultural assets, livelihood uses and ecosystem services. Policies are increasingly recognising indigenous access rights and management responsibilities are being transferred to local people, Nakul Chettri explains. Katrina Brown and Sergio Rosendo show how boundaries are also changing; there is increased maintenance and, in some places, an expansion of community conserved forests, coastal mangroves and pastoral ranges, including a growth in the number of transboundary parks such as marine parks in the Caribbean.

Where in-country governance is improving, as discussed by Grazia Borrini-Feyerabend, local governments and non-governmental organisations are also taking a more active role with international conservation agencies and donors and debating the human-nature issues from new perspectives. Environmental education, which captures the complexities of this interaction, can have a very positive role to play in local societies looking forward.

The role of ecosystem services

Protected area management must consider market issues as well as conservation. Supporting local economies will complement conservation budgets. With emerging markets for ecosystem services, there are new opportunities to complement existing funding sources. For example, more than two thirds of forestry employment is in small enterprises, many within protected areas. Non-timber forest products (such as traditional medicines) are finding lucrative market niches that provide incentives to switch from timber harvesting to non-timber product management and biodiversity and landscape conservation. Assuring water quantity and quality is another vital service - 40 of the world's largest cities depend on healthy forests for their water supply.

The conservation community faces a huge challenge. Expanding public protected areas is impractical in many places. The model of 'wilderness' preservation exported from North America is clearly inadequate in developing countries, even with increased local involvement. The articles in this issue demonstrate that protected areas cannot follow one management approach.

There is increasing recognition that:

• people in protected areas and other high priority conservation areas need secure tenure and access rights
• traditional and indigenous knowledge and culture are hugely beneficial to protected area management
• community conservation initiatives can be successful
• biodiversity needs protecting in larger landscapes, including transboundary areas and agricultural systems
• conservation that excludes people is much more costly than collaboration.

These strategies, which respect human rights and apply creative approaches, need to be implemented more widely. The future of protected areas lies in a mix of new management approaches and conservation models, increased local involvement in conservation and the development of fair and dynamic tourism and ecosystem service markets.

Augusta Molnar
Forest Trends
1050 Potomac Street NW,
Washington, DC 20007
USA
T +1 (0)202 298 3000
F +1 (0)202 298 3014
amolnar@forest-trends.org

See also

Who Conserves the World's Forests? Community-Driven Strategies to Protect Forests and Respect Rights, Forest Trends, by A. Molnar, S. J. Scherr and A. Khare, 2004
www.ecoagriculturepartners.org/pdfs/Who_Conserves_final_11-04.pdf

Biodiversity hotspots for conservation priorities, Nature 403, pp.853-858, by N. Myers, R. A. Mittermeier, C. G. Mittermeirer, G.A.B. da Fonseca and J. Kent, 2000

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