The Role of Trust in the Participatory Establishment of Protected Areas—Lessons Learnt from a Failed National Park Project in Switzerland

Michel, Annina Helena; Pleger, Lyn Ellen; Atzigen, Aline von; Bosello, Ottavia; Sager, Fritz; Hunziker, Marcel; Graefe, Olivier; Siegrist, Dominik; Backhaus, Norman

doi:10.1080/08941920.2021.1994679

Cited by 7 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 42 publications

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“…Limited studies have explored the role of social capital on public support for protected areas in Europe [41] but there is some evidence regarding the role of trust and networks in this context. Studies in Switzerland, Poland and Norway [42,43] have all found that the level of trust towards management authorities significantly influences how strongly people support protected areas. Regarding networks, Di Franco et al [44] found that denser networks with higher levels of participation in Mediterranean protected areas led also to higher levels of support for these areas.…”

Section: Social Capitalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding Public Support for European Protected Areas: A Review of the Literature and Proposing a New Approach for Policy Makers

Jones

McGinlay

Kontoleon

et al. 2022

Land

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Protected Areas are the most widely applied policy tool for biodiversity conservation. In Europe, protected areas are expected to significantly increase as the new EU Biodiversity strategy sets an ambitious target of 30% of land and 30% of water to be protected by 2030. Despite the popularity of this environmental policy, understanding variations in the level of public support for protected areas remains underexplored. This is an important area of research, considering that, in order for protected areas to be effective, they need to be supported by most users, including local communities and visitors. In this paper, we reviewed theoretical and empirical evidence explaining the level of support for protected areas and proposed a new approach when designing and designating protected areas in Europe. This approach models the process of the introduction of a new protected area as a policy intervention within a socio-ecological system. Specifically, it models how protected area social outcomes or impacts are conditioned and contextualised by numerous intervening factors relating to the social context and governance and management system to influence local actors’ attitude and active support for the protected area. This new approach aims to assist policy makers, conservation practitioners and scientists to plan actions that assist in increasing the level of public support for protected areas in the context of the post 2020 Biodiversity Strategy of the European Union.

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Section: Social Capitalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding Public Support for European Protected Areas: A Review of the Literature and Proposing a New Approach for Policy Makers

Jones

McGinlay

Kontoleon

et al. 2022

Land

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Broadening the horizon in land use change modelling: Normative scenarios for nature positive futures in Switzerland

Black,

Adde,

Farinotti

et al. 2024

Reg Environ Change

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Within scenario-based research of social-ecological systems, there has been a growing recognition of the importance of normative scenarios that define positive outcomes for both nature and society. While several frameworks exist to guide the co-creation of normative scenario narratives, examples of operationalizing these narratives in quantitative simulation modelling are still limited. To address this gap, this paper presents an example of how aspects of normative scenarios can be realized within a spatial model of land use and land cover change. This is achieved through a combination of data-driven approaches to encapsulate scenario-specific differences in local and global scale phenomena, as well as iterative expert elicitation to quantify descriptive trends from narratives. This approach is demonstrated with a case study simulating five scenarios of landscape change (three normative and two exploratory) in Switzerland between 2020 and 2060. The resulting maps of future land use and land cover exhibited distinct variations between the scenarios, notably with regard to the prevalence of areas of heterogeneous semi-natural land, such as alpine pastures and grassland, often considered culturally emblematic of Switzerland. While the simulation results were generally consistent with the outcomes expressed in the scenario narratives, following a process of expert feedback, we reflect that there are clear challenges in leveraging such results to elicit further discussions as to the desirability and plausibility of future scenarios. Specifically, the need to summarize spatial simulations in a manner that is easily interpretable and encourages consideration of the broader patterns of change rather than focusing on fine-scale details.

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Human disturbance and habitat structure drive eurasian otter habitat selection in heavily anthropized river basins

Tolrà,

Ruiz-Olmo,

Riera

2024

Biodivers Conserv

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Assessing habitat selection is essential to protecting threatened species but also to understand what factors influence species that, although globally not currently in decline, act as flagships of their ecosystems and remain highly vulnerable to human impacts, such as the Eurasian otter. This paper examines otter habitat selection at the river reach scale in two heavily anthropized river basins. Both river basins encompass a wide spectrum of human pressures and biogeographic units, which offers an excellent opportunity to assess otter responses to anthropogenic activities in different scenarios. Through two modelling approaches (structure-agnostic way and a priori hypothesized habitat factors) we demonstrate that otters currently inhabiting these human-dominated landscapes show a trade-off between a preference for highly productive areas and for well-structured and safe areas. We suggest that habitat simplification and human disturbance, which were of minor relevance to the dramatic decline of otter populations in the 20th century, are emerging as potential threats in the context of worldwide increasing land use intensification. Furthermore, we found that otter habitat requirements were remarkably more stringent for breeding site selection than for occurrence, particularly concerning variables related to human disturbance. The results of this work provide tools for integrating ecological criteria oriented to effective otter conservation into river management in human-dominated landscapes, as well as serving as methodological support for lowland river restorations. Our results suggest that long-term otter conservation in anthropized rivers will depend on ensuring the availability of habitat patches that maintain sufficient structural complexity away from intensely outdoor recreational activities.

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The Role of Trust in the Participatory Establishment of Protected Areas—Lessons Learnt from a Failed National Park Project in Switzerland

Cited by 7 publications

References 42 publications

Understanding Public Support for European Protected Areas: A Review of the Literature and Proposing a New Approach for Policy Makers

Understanding Public Support for European Protected Areas: A Review of the Literature and Proposing a New Approach for Policy Makers

Broadening the horizon in land use change modelling: Normative scenarios for nature positive futures in Switzerland

Human disturbance and habitat structure drive eurasian otter habitat selection in heavily anthropized river basins

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