Participatory wetland conservation in Yok Don National Park, Vietnam

Abstract

Protected areas are the 'backbone' of conservation, essential to supporting a diverse, healthy and resilient environment. They also play an important role in contributing to the culture and livelihoods of Indigenous communities, often leading to conflict between conservation and the needs of local communities. Collaborative management has been found to be an effective strategy to decrease this.However, a lack of communication and shared understanding can be an impediment to developing co-management arrangements. I examined levels of natural resource use in Indigenous communities in Yok Don National Park, Vietnam. I identified the most important cultural keystone species and examined the effectiveness of using a conceptual social-ecological modelling approach to enhance Indigenous communities are elephants, cogon grass, Indian mulberry, turtles, snakes, lizards, fishes, frogs, crabs, shrimps, sweet leaf, rice paddy herb and sticky adenosma. The first four most important cultural keystone species were unpacked by multiple dimensions of relationship between these cultural keystone species and Indigenous communities. The results illustrate the complexity of cultural keystone species and how people value them differently. These differences were rooted in the attributes of those animals and plants and the way they are used by people. A conceptual socialecological systems model was developed in a workshop of community representatives and managers to gain an understanding of the social and environmental relationship between Indigenous communities and the protected area. The accuracy of this conceptual model was examined by developing individual conceptual social-ecological systems models for the most important cultural iii keystone species. After the workshop all participants from the communities reported an increased awareness of the importance of wetland resources and the need to maintain these, as well as a better understanding of the functions of important species in terms of their conservation. Managers reported their understanding of local people's desires to ensure local livelihoods through investment in cultivation, planting perennial plants and breeding some species around their villages. They saw a role for the park management through employing local people as guides and providing permission, funding, training and source animals for rearing and breeding instead of concentrating just on the management and conservation of the forest. All representatives from the Indigenous communities felt more comfortable initiating discussion with park managers, who had previously been reluctant to share their knowledge. Identifying potential areas where collaborative management might be improved will allow managers and local communities to move toward negotiations for more formal collaborative management agreements. iv Declaration by authorThis thesis is composed of my original work, and contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference has been made in the text. I have ...