NatureBureau - IUCN Parks

THERE IS NO IGNORING IT: protected areas simply cannot be viewed in isolation from the communities within and near them. This is true of the broad spectrum of protected areas, including those established by governments during the last century according to a “conventional” national park model. And it is, of course, inherent in the idea of “community-conserved areas,” which communities have been creating for millennia to protect the natural and cultural resources of importance to them. It is not simply that by ignoring local communities we imperil the security of existing protected areas. We also risk continuing a range of injustices that have been perpetuated on communities, in ways that include forced displacement, restrictions on access to livelihood resources and cultural erosion. At the same time, those people closest to the resource can bring their rich experience to bear when they are encouraged or merely permitted to take responsibility for their stewardship. We need to tap the wealth of knowledge, traditional management systems, innovation and love of place that so many communities could bring. That local communities can and must play a critical role in protected areas is not new; what is new, is the way that, in practice, their role is being accepted, encouraged and, indeed, embraced in very different parts of the world. Community involvement is central to an emerging new paradigm for protected areas (PAs) worldwide. This issue of PARKS comes out at a time when the importance of community involvement in protected areas is being increasingly recognised by the PA constituency. The World Commission on Protected Areas now considers it one of its five key themes, and important enough to become a cross-cutting theme at next year’s Vth World Parks Congress in Durban, South Africa. It is a theme that runs through recent and upcoming issues of PARKS focusing on topics such as Integrated Conservation and Development Projects, Population and Protected Areas and Protected Landscapes. At the same time, the role of communities is the focus of a lively debate at national and international levels. An example is the on-line discussion initiated by the IUCN Theme Working Group on Local Communities, Equity and Protected Areas (www.cee.envirodebate.org) which is debating the question of how community-conserved areas should be recognised within the IUCN system of protected areas categories, including the possibility of modifying the system to accommodate these areas. This issue of PARKS aims to showcase the different roles that local communities are playing in protected areas, highlight some emerging issues and challenges, and advance the debate on the state of community involvement in conservation. The papers included in this issue draw on experience from diverse regions and situations. They present a range of viewpoints and collectively pose some provocative questions. Whose protected area is it? In the article at the beginning of this issue, Grazia Borrini-Feyerabend contends that this question lies at the root of the different relationships between protected areas and communities. She points out that for thousands of years indigenous and local communities have developed conservation regimes, while the role of national governments in establishing protected areas extends back only a century or so. Her interview article with Tariq Banuri, Taghi Farvar, Kenton Miller, and Adrian Phillips brings out five distinct viewpoints in the discussion on community involvement in protected areas. It proposes a typology for governance of protected areas (see Figure 3, page 14) that will doubtless be a useful tool in the aforementioned debate on community-conserved areas and the IUCN management categories. Noting that the ground rules have changed – that no protected area is an island – Edmund Barrow and Christo Fabricius write that if protected areas are to continue to be important for biodiversity conservation, they must become integrated into wider landscape planning and must forge linkages with people based on equity, linked rights and responsibilities. In their review of recent experience in southern and eastern Africa, Barrow and Fabricius observe that protected areas will survive only if they address human concerns and gain the support of local people. This recognition has led to the emergence of community-based approaches to conservation in the region, as elsewhere in the world. Included in this issue of PARKS are many examples of how this is working, as well as the challenges that are emerging as these new approaches are put into practice. Experience from the insular Caribbean outlined by Tighe Geoghan and Yves Renard illustrates the potential for community participation in planning and management of protected areas. For example, in St Lucia, a participatory process that has included the broad range of local stakeholders has enhanced management effectiveness in the Soufriere Marine Management Area. Deepening the discussion, the authors challenge the common view that local communities are homogenous, stressing the need to understand and reconcile the interests, needs and expectations of a wide range of stakeholders as well as the complexity of their relationships with the resource and one another. They point out the importance also of institutional arrangements and transparent, negotiated processes for decision-making. Participatory planning involving diverse stakeholders has proven effective in efforts to establish the Meso-American Biological Corridor (MBC) in countries such as Costa Rica and Belize, as Vivienne Solis and her colleagues describe in their article. Over the past decade the Talamanca Caribe Biological Corridor (Costa Rica) has provided a forum for diverse community associations to discuss their concerns, and has helped to consolidate establishment of the MBC in the Talamanca region. In Belize, a process of public consultation at the local level that was launched during the feasibility study for the MBC has resulted in communities coming together to create and manage several micro-corridors. Customary laws and social practices can complement legislation, and the resulting innovative governance offers tremendous potential to improve management of resources inside and outside of protected areas. Janet Chernela and colleagues present three case studies from diverse regions where communities have developed innovative approaches to conserve aquatic resources in protected areas. The experience from Silves (Amazonian Brazil), Misali island (Zanzibar, Tanzania) and Kowanyama in the Mitchell River delta (northeastern Australia) illustrates how innovative governance can develop when there is strong community support for better resource management, especially in the face of external threats. The authors argue that traditional groups with high stakes in resource sustainability will invest creativity and effort, with the result of promoting sustainable resource use, as well as encouraging local self-determination. In the United States and Canada, while the national park model continues to play an important role, there is increasing emphasis on community outreach, participation in planning and management, and long-term partnerships as Nora Mitchell, Barbara Slaiby and Mark Benedict write. This shift in approach is exemplified by the growth in the numbers of new protected areas built on partnerships, such as Heritage Areas, and by recent collaborative management agreements with indigenous peoples. Other examples described in their paper include outreach to “gateway communities” bordering national parks, and a programme of the US National Park Service that supports community-led efforts to protect rivers and open space and create trails. One of the most exciting breakthroughs in the debate on community-based conservation, is the realisation that there is already in place a very large network of sites that are conserved and managed by communities, most of them outside officially recognised PA systems, and many of them managed in this way over many years. Community-conserved areas are found in every region of the world and take a wide variety of forms, including indigenous reserves, communitymanaged ecosystems, managed landscapes, sacred forests and springs, partnership areas, and many privately or NGO protected lands. These areas form a complementary protected area system that, until recently, has gone unrecognised. A box by Neema Pathak on Community conserved Areas (see article by Sejal Worah) presents the diversity of experience with communityconserved areas in South Asia and highlights the need for these areas to receive recognition and support. However, many challenges remain. In their review of the Meso-American Biological Corridor, Solis et al. contend that while the initiative has the potential to serve as a regional strategy for sustainable development, more must be done to create opportunities for local communities to participate in decision-making. Barrow and Fabricius identify a number of emerging challenges to advancing community conservation in eastern and southern Africa. The devolution of meaningful authority to the local level is an important prerequisite. At the same time, local communities must be willing and have the capacity to share responsibility. They observe that though community conservation remains the most effective and viable option, it also remains elusive. Worah, in her article, agrees, and expresses concern that community-based conservation, as practiced by many official agencies, is progressing too slowly to be convincing to sceptics. She argues for the importance of developing combinations of social, policy and economic incentives that will encourage local stewardship of resources. Other needs include facilitating equitable negotiations among interest groups, developing a supportive policy environment, and strengthening the capacity of local-level institutions. These conditions must be put in place to enable community-based conservation to be initiated and sustained and, she writes, they must have the resilience to adapt and evolve. Barrow and Fabricius argue that international and national policies must be revised to allow protected area categories to embrace community involvement in conservation. This, in turn, will require the devolution of meaningful authority, and ensuring that the benefits from conservation outweigh the costs to communities. An important part of the discussion that is so far under-represented, is the relationship of protected areas to mobile peoples. At the end of this volume, we have included a declaration on “Mobile Peoples and Conservation,” which came out of a recent meeting on the topic at the Wadi Dana Nature Reserve in Jordan. It proposes a series of principles aimed at fostering a mutually reinforcing partnership among mobile peoples and those concerned with conservation. As Taghi Farvar observes in this issue of PARKS, cultural and biological diversity are natural, powerful allies and it is only this alliance that may eventually succeed in saving both. The articles in this volume illustrate the successes and challenges emerging from the field. It is our hope that this publication will contribute meaningfully to the ongoing debate on community involvement in protected areas, and will stimulate further discussion of community-conserved areas as an approach that is complementary to, and overlapping with, the official protected areas network. At the same time, we hope the experience presented in this collection will help those engaged in this work to hone new ways to forge alliances between protected areas and the communities inside and near them.

Jessica Brown is Vice-President for International Programs at QLF/Atlantic Center for the Environment, where she conducts training, exchange and research projects focusing on landscape stewardship. She has worked in countries of Latin America, the Caribbean, and Central and Eastern Europe. QLF/Atlantic Center for the Environment, 55 South Main Street, Ipswich, Massachusetts 01938 USA. E-mail: jbrown@qlf.org.

Ashish Kothari is founder-member of Kalpavriksh, a 22-year environmental action group in India. He currently coordinates the Technical and Policy Core Group formulating India’s National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan. He is co-chair of the IUCN/WCPA/CEESP Theme on Indigenous/Local Communities, Equity, and Protected Areas, and on the International Board of Directors of Greenpeace. Kalpavriksh, Apt. 5 Shree Datta Krupa, 908 Deccan Gymkhana, Pune 411004, India. E-mail: ashish@nda.vsnl.net.in