Stakeholders’ perceptions of protected area management following a nationwide community-based conservation reform

Abstract

People’s perceptions can point to reasons for conservation support or lack thereof. In this study, we surveyed the perceptions of conservation among local stakeholders who participated in protected area (PA) management following a reform towards community-based conservation in Norway. We analyzed the link between perceptions of threats to conservation values, prioritized management actions and trust in PA governance, and assessed how these perceptions aligned with the stakeholders’ preferred overarching conservation approach and their support for PAs. Conservation perceptions differed mostly between property owners and representatives of nature conservation (such as NGOs). Property owners perceived modern farming, grazing and hay making, and securing the interests of rights holders as a priority. They had a lower support for PAs and favored a conservation approach focusing on “people and nature”. Representatives from nature conservation prioritized management actions to increase biodiversity and reduce land development, had higher trust in environmental authorities and identified motorized vehicle use as a threat to conservation values. They had a high support for PAs and favored a conservation approach that mitigates threats from human activity (i.e. “nature despite people”). The nationwide reform aimed at increasing support for PAs, but 31% of the members of the stakeholder advisory councils were willing to downgrade or degazette PAs for the benefit of economic development, which is much more than general population surveys. However, the level of trust in local governance was less polarized among the members of stakeholder advisory councils compared with the former state governance, which suggests that that the community-based conservation reform has the potential to improve collaboration and conflict mitigation.

Stakeholder Values Inform Indigenous Peoples’ Governance and Management of a Former National Park in New Zealand

“…Both statutory and non-statutory stakeholder groups expressed a desire for both conservation and development outcomes to be achieved in Te Urewera NP. The success of such initiatives within protected areas globally is, however, widely contested (see e.g., Wilshusen et al 2002;Adams et al 2004;Roe 2008;Blom et al 2010;Zeller et al 2017;Engen et al 2019). Conclusions from studies are reported to be largely context-dependent, although recent findings identify that remaining areas of high biodiversity are commonly found on the lands of Indigenous peoples (IPBES 2019).…”

The complexity of the conservation-development nexus in Central African national parks and the perceptions of local populations

“…Responses for each variable were analysed to understand general socio-economic patterns (Engen et al, 2019). We have included many variables in the analysis to explore the full picture explaining conservation perception and development nexus.…”

Changes in Selected Aspects of Environmental Management: The Case of Natura 2000 in South-Eastern Poland

“…It not only writes about the fears of local governments regarding the need to respect various requirements, but also about openness to alternative sources of income and the possibility of reconciling environmental protection requirements with economic interest (Christopoulou and Trizoni, 2007). Perhaps it is a signal of increasing environmental awareness, which some studies seem to indicate (Engen, Fauchald and Hausner, 2019;Kubacka and Macias, 2016). Treating the presence of valuable natural values as a base on which to build economic growth is very important and opens up prospects for the development of new, additional forms of activity in rural areas.…”