On the way to a better state? The role of NGOs in the planning and implementation of protected areas in Brazil

Protected areas are considered some of the most versatile as well as important instruments of nature conservation and environmental policies. The `classic' model of nature conservation aims at the isolation of large areas in order to preserve their `pristine' nature from human interference. However, the transfer of this model to developing countries led to serious conflicts with local people. From a socio-geographical viewpoint, protected areas can be understood as regulative tools for the shaping and controlling of space. This approach helps to recognise the influence of distinct modes of appropriation of space and nature on the emergence and course of conflicts. In the present article it is used to analyse the leading role played by Brazilian NGOs in the transformation of the classic model of protected area management at the beginning of the nineties. Two case studies – dealing with the implementation of the Amazonian Mamirauá Reserve and with the reform of the Brazilian protected area legislation – are used to illustrate not only the success of the new approaches, but also the expectations and contradictions which surround the future development of protected areas in Brazil.     

Tourism dynamos: Selective commodification and developmental conservation in China’s protected areas

At scenic sites across China, rural officials compelled to maximize revenue use local state authority over protected areas to foster “tourism dynamos”. Local states set up infrastructure and institutions around rural attractions that channel the circulation of tourists, churning out revenues that meet quotas and fund further expansion of attractions and towns. To make these dynamos turn, local authorities have displaced resident-led tourism operations they had previously helped set up. Residents are reincorporated in varying ways and often retain land use rights. Meanwhile, as revenues stream out of attractions, what little is invested in environmental protection goes to maintaining scenery. Local governments also accomplish spatial transformations, within each park intensifying surplus generation in areas zoned for tourism while reserving other areas from use, and beyond park boundaries linking attractions together on tourism circuits radiating from central towns. This state-driven transformations depend on how the reservation of land from commodity exchange within protected areas comes together with specific state capacities to enable tourism intensification. These processes, which I label “developmental conservation,” call attention to selective commodifications and the mediating role of the state in protected area governance in China and beyond.     

Land rights in conservation areas in Tanzania

Conflicts arise increasingly in Tanzania which involve claims in land located in conservation areas. These conflicts arise, in many cases, between members of the local communities and the state authorities in charge of the conservation areas. They concern customary land rights both of pastoral and of agricultural communities, a topic which also touches upon their identities. The article investigates the legal dimension of these disputes by discussing the law governing conservation areas in the wider context of land tenure legislation. Within this context, the legal framework of conservation areas is discussed from both historical and contemporary perspectives. Nature conservation must respect the needs of the local population affected. It is therefore argued that concepts of community-based conservation should be developed further to work towards the goal of integrating nature conservation and the sustainable use of natural resources. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

From inflexible national legislation to flexible local governance: management practices in the Pelister National Park,Republic of Macedonia

The involvement of local people in protected area management a key factor in the sustainable and efficient protection of wildlife, and an economically preferable approach for the effective everyday care and protection of the environment. This paper aims to explore the community participation and protected area management challenges faced by national park authorities in developing countries, through a case study of the Pelister National Park in the Republic of Macedonia. The paper focuses on the multiple social, economic and political expressions of flexibility in national park management at the local scale. These examinations are based on field research in Pelister, executed in the summer of 2006, and involving 20 in-depth interviews with local policy-makers, nature protection experts and local inhabitants, as well as a questionnaire survey of 140 residents of three villages in and around the park (Nizhepole, Malovishta and Brajchino).     

Complex impact assessment of coastal development in the United Arab Emirates using GIS: a case study of Wurayah Biosphere Reserve

Wadi Wurayah area is one of the major wadis originating and running on the Oman Mountains and drains into the Oman Gulf. These wadis in general and Wadi Wurayah in particular are characterized with a rich diversity of rare and mountainous and freshwater habitats and species. These wadis contain unequal, representative, and sensitive areas of the dry lands ecosystem with natural, outstanding landscapes and cultural heritage, while the socioeconomic situation indicates that it has enough socioeconomic infrastructures to develop new alternatives ecologically and economically sustainable. As most of the United Arab Emirates and the region, the study area is undergoing dramatic changes linked to economic diversification and promotion of tourism. Established under the UNESCO’s Man and the Biosphere Program, Wurayah Biosphere Reserve represents protected areas intended to demonstrate well-balanced relationship between conservation of biodiversity and an appropriate local development. The main objectives of this study are to develop an environmental information system to understand the dynamics of human activities associated to land use in the study area, highlight the threats to the environment, educate people about the basic environmental issues and positive traditional practices, and promote tourism. Based on the gained results, the concept of biosphere reserve as a model is to implement ideas of sustainable land use in practice.     

Risk perception and hazard mitigation in the Yangtze River Delta region,China

The Yangtze River Delta region is an area highly vulnerable to flooding. As the population density is rising concomitantly with high economic growth, this region is becoming more vulnerable to natural hazards. We conducted a survey to investigate the individual risk perception of both the local authorities and the general community, analyze the current situation regarding risk management and identify problems in the current risk management scheme. Data were collected through questionnaires distributed to some members of the community and interviews with representatives of the local authorities. The primary findings are as follows: (1) risk and disaster multipliers perceived by lay people show the stigma effect of the Wenchuan earthquake; (2) the responses of college students illustrate that the stigma effect has less influence on people who have more knowledge about hazards; (3) differences exist in comparative groups (China and USA), which shows that the society and culture influence people’s perception of risk; and (4) economic activities have complicated flood risk management such as land shortage, ground subsidence and flood diversion. Accordingly, the following measures should be taken: (1) the government should improve the risk communication and education of lay people; (2) the government must also control unsuitable land use and balance economic development and risk management; (3) flood diversion areas should be compensated through special funds collected from other cities; and (4) local governments should provide more support for hazard mitigation.     

Kapati Island,a natural area in demand: Assessing social impacts

Kapiti Island Nature Reserve is an example of a fully protected natural area that is under pressure for increasing visitor access. Present restrictions on visitor numbers to this bird sanctuary provided for a controlled setting which was used as a case study in social impact assessment. The aim was to develop methods of monitoring visitors' perceptions of social impacts, and to establish an appropriate carrying capacity. Visitor experiences were first explored by using qualitative methods. Second, items based on these qualitative data were then used to define quantitative data and validate measures and procedures. The wider application of this research is the development of methods of assessment relevant to other natural areas which are also coming under pressure from growing domestic and international visitation.     

Conservation and community in the new South Africa: A case study of the Mahushe Shongwe Game Reserve

The idealization of natural landscapes and peoples during colonialism, coupled with the popularity of sustainable development in the postcolonial era, has contributed to the expansion of conservation planning throughout the African continent. Concerns surrounding the promotion of national and international conservation agendas at the expense of local livelihood needs have generated interest in community conservation projects that attempt to include local participation and knowledge in natural resource management. The early excitement associated with community conservation has waned in light of recent assessments that it has been unsuccessful in meeting its ecological and social goals. This parallels other research that suggests communities are understood in generic or homogenous ways that influence how these initiatives are understood. Using a case study of the Mahushe Shongwe Game Reserve, this paper evaluates how rural households access environmental and economic resources to produce livelihoods, and how these access patterns impact their views of the project. It is argued that there are significant livelihood variations within the community that shape the ways households engage with, and benefit from, conservation planning. Rather than strictly viewing Mahushe Shongwe as a constraint to environmental resource access or site for limited employment, community members identify a number of benefits from its existence including education and development opportunities. Additionally, transformations in governance systems in the region impact community views of the project since younger residents are less likely to engage with the Matsamo Tribal Authority, which participates in managing the reserve. The consequence is that conservation has various impacts and meanings within a specific community that remain tied to the livelihood and governance systems being renegotiated in the post-apartheid era.     

Evaluation of food risk parameters in the Day River Flood Diversion Area,Red River Delta,Vietnam

An interdisciplinary approach is necessary for flood risk assessment. Questions are often raised about which factors should be considered important in assessing the flood risk in an area and how to quantify these factors. This article defines and quantitatively evaluates the flood risk factors that would affect the Day River Flood Diversion Area in the context of integrated flood management in the Red River Delta, Vietnam. Expert analysis, in conjunction with field survey and Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), is applied to define and quantify parameters (indicators, subcomponents, and components) that contribute to flood risk. Flood duration is found to be the most prominent indicator in determining flood hazard. Residential buildings, population, and pollution are other fairly significant indicators contributing to flood vulnerability from the economic, social, and environmental perspectives, respectively. The study results will be useful in developing comprehensive flood risk maps for policy-makers and responsible authorities. Besides, local residents will also be able to implement suitable measures for reducing flood risk in the study area.     

Contradictions at the confluence of commerce,consumption and conservation; or,an REI shopper camps in the forest,does anyone notice?

Leave No Trace (LNT) is a United States government educational program guiding outdoor recreationist behavior on public lands. The program consists of seven principles imploring outdoor enthusiasts to “enjoy the outdoors responsibly.” This essay employs a political ecology framework, comprised by critical consumption research and political economic analysis, to engage the LNT program across temporal and spatial scales. We illustrate, first, the impossibility of ’leaving no trace’ even when adhering to the program’s principles. Second, we describe how LNT minimizes local environmental impacts by displacing them to distant locations. Third, we illustrate how LNT obscures connections between the uses of outdoor products and their production and disposal impacts. Along with challenging notions of responsible recreation and ethical consumerism, a close examination of Leave No Trace reveals four mechanisms that produce and maintain program contradictions: the development of private-nonprofit alliances; the indirect enclosure of public conservation areas; the perpetuation of truncated notions of environmental citizenship; and the cultivation of ethical consumer subjects that shop at retail outlets like Recreation Equipment Incorporated (REI).     

Market-oriented conservation governance: The particularities of place

Conservation policy and practice is increasingly turning towards market-based interventions to reconcile the growing conflicts between environmental conservation and rural livelihood needs. This short introductory paper to the special issue on “market-oriented conservation governance” critically investigates the growing commitment to markets as a means of meeting conservation objectives and livelihood security. We distinguish market oriented conservation from neoliberal conservation and argue for a grounded, empirically rich investigation into the passive and active promotion of markets in conservation landscapes – analysis which pays attention to how and why certain markets are promoted by ENGOs, governments and private sector, as well as how rural people negotiate livelihoods and markets when adjusting to conservation pressures. Such an approach takes seriously how the particularities of place, from local harvests to trans-local trade, shape market-oriented conservation in practice and expose the messiness of such ventures. The range of papers in this special issue show how neither neoliberal nor market-based interventions in conservation are uniform in character, impact and outcome, and that while identifying the patterns and logic behind these processes remains crucial, the basis for understanding how markets inform conservation, must be done by drawing on empirical data that speaks clearly to how actors variously engage the logic of market-driven conservation in terms of their histories and contemporary realities. We argue that doing so makes it possible to understand not only what is ‘new’ about contemporary market-oriented conservation but also its continuities with earlier forms of command and control conservation.     

Commodity conservation: The restructuring of community conservation in South Africa and the Philippines

The world over, neoliberal modes of conservation are hybridising with, or even replacing, other forms of conservation. Under the banner of ‘win–win’ policies, planners actively work to commoditize natural resources and the social relations that determine the use and conservation of these resources. While these general processes seem to hold sway globally, it is crucial not to lose sight of the context specific ways in which neo-liberalism influences conservation practice and local outcomes. The paper examines how neo-liberalism’s global pervasiveness becomes manifest across different levels and scales in South Africa and the Philippines. The conclusion suggests that as a result of these neoliberal pressures, emphasis is shifting from local constructions of ‘nature’ by communities to what the environment should mean for communities in terms of commodified resources and growing capitalist markets.     

Soil erosion, policy and people's perceptions in a rural community in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

In South Africa the science and practice of soil conservation have been dominated by a technical approach which does not take into account the perceptions, knowledge and needs of people living in rural areas. Attempts to incorporate land users into soil conservation programmes have not had much influence on conservation policies. In order to compare the scientifically-based physical appraisals of an area with the community's perceptions of soil erosion on their land, a project was established in a rural area of KwaZulu/Natal. This paper briefly reviews soil conservation policy in former homeland areas. It then considers the historical development of the community of Cornfields and their responses to changing government policies. The research indicates that rural dwellers have valuable knowledge concerning soil conservation, but that the neglest of such communities by agricultural and conservation authorities has led to the unsustainable use of the land. The area is severely eroded and soils in the area are amongst the most highly erodible in the province. Therefore levels of degradation would be high even without dense human occupation. This evidence is clearly important in future conservation planning and recommendations are made regarding a policy for the management of soil resources in rural areas.     

A framework to assess the vulnerability of California commercial sea urchin fishermen to the impact of MPAs under climate change

This paper describes the development of a Livelihood Vulnerability Index (LVI) that estimates the relative ability of California commercial sea urchin fishermen to cope with the change associated with proposed marine protected areas. A key goal in establishing marine protected areas is to maximize conservation benefits while minimizing the potential negative impacts to local fishing communities. However, current impact analyses largely assume a linear relationship between percent of fishing area or revenue lost with the magnitude of impact to fishermen. The LVI described in this paper aims to provide an additional dimension to impact analyses in which the adaptive capacity of individual fishermen is examined to estimate the differential abilities of fishermen to cope with the loss of fishing areas or revenue. This paper advances vulnerability assessments as it develops a novel framework for identifying and measuring drivers of vulnerability for understudied fishing populations whose livelihoods depend upon marine resources. This vulnerability assessment is intended to inform the design of marine protected areas by enabling researchers to incorporate the adaptive capacity of fishermen into socioeconomic impact analyses. The LVI was developed for the California commercial sea urchin fishery in the context of proposed marine protected area networks develop through the California Marine Life Protected Act planning process. As climate change advances there is an increasing need to identify vulnerable and resilient populations and ways to bolster adaptive capacity given the environmental and economic changes ahead.     

What is a forest? Competing meanings and the politics of forest classification in Thung Yai Naresuan Wildlife Sanctuary, Thailand

Based on a case study in a Thai forest reserve, this article compares two modes of ‘reading’ the forest - official and local forest classification systems - and discusses how they imply different ideas about the forest, and how these competing knowledges interact with the politics of forest governance. Forest classification conventions are shown to slip, as ‘facts’ about the forest, from their origins in extraction-oriented forestry to the realm of conservation. Through a comparison of conventional vegetation classifications used in the state’s governance of the Thung Yai Naresuan Wildlife Sanctuary in Thailand, with the classificatory systems of resident Pwo Karen communities, this paper examines the slippage of conventional classifications through various uses and the emphases placed by competing representations of the forest within the context of conservation politics in Thailand. It was found that conventional classifications continued to prioritise the silvicultural potential of trees within a conservation context, downplaying other notions of forests - such as their importance to livelihoods and as lived spaces - which are present in Karen classifications.     

Addressing the impacts of large-scale land investments: Re-engaging with livelihood research

What started as a media-driven hype about the global land rush has developed into a well-established academic debate on land governance and an important domain for policy intervention. Research over the past decade has deepened our understanding of how land, water and forests, which were once considered to be local assets and the sources of livelihoods, are transformed into global goods and the focus of capital investments. We are now clearly aware that such transformation generates significant impacts on the livelihood security of vulnerable groups. In response to this, a variety of policy interventions have been devised to minimize the negative impacts (‘do not harm’) and create new opportunities (‘do good’). Yet, it is still unclear how actual policy implementations play out on the ground, what the real impacts are at the local level and whether these interventions help people to improve their livelihoods. In this paper, we present an overview of the existing intervention approaches and their theoretical underpinnings, and discuss how to optimize the developmental outcomes. We argue that the once popular livelihood research framework should be revised and then incorporated more robustly in the existing intervention approaches, as it could help investors and governmental actors to engage in making their investments more relevant to local development.     

When local power meets hydropower: Reconceptualizing resettlement along the Nam Gnouang River in Laos

In Laos, hydropower development is occurring at rapid, though controversial pace. While hydropower development could in principle contribute to the country’s development objectives to promote economic growth and reduce poverty, it also impacts people’s livelihoods especially local communities living along the river. Focusing on the transition of Nam Gnouang River into a reservoir, this article looks at the process of resettlement of four neighboring villages in Bolikhamxai Province, Laos into one resettlement site, Ban Keosengkham. Conceptualizing hydropower development as a ‘technology’ of power, it illustrates how power relations between villagers, local government authorities, and dam developers determine resettlement processes and outcomes.     

A critique of development and conservation policies in environmentally sensitive regions in Brazil

More than a strategy for environmental conservation, protected area paradigm has represented a specific conception of nature–society relationship. Originated in a context of capitalist consolidation, rapid urbanisation and frontier development in the US, this paradigm has given rise to a ‘politically viable rationale' in which utilitarian use of natural resources by tourism development would ensure nature preservation. This political rationality has deeply influenced environmental policies in developing countries, fostering a paradoxical model in the history of nature preservation. It also has brought into play diverse interests that have shifted patterns of local nature–society interaction, configuring a complex politicised environment. Established in ‘isolated' regions, protected areas have been implemented often by top–down approaches, disrupting resident peoples' livelihoods strategies through conflicts over the control of natural resources. Understanding the implications of development and conservation policies on resident peoples' livelihoods may represent a starting point for an integrated developmental conservation policy towards the promotion of sustainable livelihoods in environmentally sensitive regions in developing countries. These issues are analysed in the region of the Lençois Maranhenses National Park in Brazil. This paper argues that the context facing the region reveals a standardised conservationist paradigm marked by the absence of wider ecological criteria informing nature protection and a disregard for the strengthening of sustainability in existent socio-economic dynamics. The regional development and conservation policies have not only promoted tensions between resident peoples' livelihoods and the protected area paradigm, but also reinforced the legitimisation of social exclusion and environmental disruption under the prevalent rhetoric of nature protection and tourism development.     

Urban greenspace from the inside out: An argument for the approach and a study with city workers

How might the fact that western people now spend so much of their time indoors impact upon techniques for studying urban greenspace experience? This paper takes this question as its starting point before substantiating one possible answer. It does so by using qualitative methods to examine the everyday practices of city professionals in London and what they tell us about the likelihood that this group will ever venture out into the various parks and gardens found around their offices. Many studies have considered which physical arrangements of city greenspace seem to deliver the greatest amounts of human benefit. Yet this kind of endeavour gives us only one part of the puzzle and contextual studies with those now generally found indoors have something important to add. It is with this in mind that the paper discusses how one sample of office workers quite easily forgot about these spaces, how certain social injunctions both pushed them outside and sealed them indoors, and why it sometimes made good sense for them to avoid any areas of local outdoor vegetation during the day. In so doing it highlights contextual dynamics that seem set to make significant impacts on the future of urban environmental experience and offers some novel suggestions about how best to promote positive greenspace relations in cities today.