Throughout
the world, managing protected areas involves people and
organizations in widely differing roles. Field managers,
whether working for an agency or for a community, deal
with concrete problems and responsibilities on a daily
basis and directly enjoy the rewards that only nature
and culture at their best are able to provide. Local authorities
and residents – administrators, community members,
land owners and businesses – “live with”
the protected areas, face restrictions, harness benefits
and are variously involved in relevant concerns and decision
making. Agency managers at the national level are concerned
with systems of protected areas and the conservation benefits
they provide as a whole; they, in turn, are account able
to the general public and taxpayers for official expenditure
on protected areas. Natural and social scientists, and
conservation and human rights advocates engage in under
standing and refining management options and practices.
And policy makers and legislators at the national and
international level help shape the overall context in
which protected areas exist.
Conventional
protected area approaches dominant over the past 100
to 150 years have tended to see people and nature as
separate entities, often requiring the exclusion of
human communities from areas of interest, prohibiting
their use of natural resources and seeing their concerns
as incompatible with conservation. While some kinds
of protected areas (e.g. those corresponding to IUCN
categories V and VI) are assumed to accommodate human
communities, more prestige seems to have been attached
to those designed to exclude them both as residents
and decision-makers (usually corresponding to IUCN categories
I, II and III). Since most protected areas in the world
have people residing within them or dependent on them
for their livelihoods, the conventional exclusionary
approaches have engendered profound social costs. This
is particularly true when the affected indigenous peoples
and local communities were already, even before the
protected area intervention, among the most marginalized
groups.
CEESP—in
particular through its Co-management Working Group and
Theme on Indigenous and Local Communities, Equity and
Protected Areas— has been for a long time concerned
with approaches and models that see conservation as
fully compatible with human communities – as managers,
decision-makers, residents, users, caretaking neighbours
– and that regard such communities as an asset
to conservation rather than a liability. Drawing on
recent experience and best practice from around the
world, as well as from reflections and guidance developed
at the local, national, regional and
inter national levels, CEESP members have developed
numerous considerations, concepts and ideas that can
be accessed through this web page and that revolve around
two main concepts: Co-managed Protected Areas and Community
Conserved Areas. These are extensively described in
2 recent publications:
For
a summary of key concepts and ideas, the following Briefing
Notes are also very useful:
The
publications do not prescribe blueprint solutions, but
offer a menu of options for action, to be reviewed by
the concerned actors and adapted to their circum stances.
Work for this publications was carried out by CEESP
members and steeped up in preparation for the V
World Parks Congress (Durban, South Africa, September
2003), the 7th Conference
of Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity
in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (February 2004) and was nourished
by the experiences, aspirations and concerns of the
many representatives of government agencies, civil society
organisations and indigenous people, mobile indigenous
peoples and local communities who participated in those
events. The publications were finally launched at the
3d World Conservation
Congress (Bangkok, Thailand, November 2004).
Key
definitions
Co-managed
Protected Area
Government
designated protected area where decision making power,
responsibility and accountability are shared between
govern mental agencies and other stake holders, in particular
the indigenous peoples and local and mobile communities
that depend on that area culturally and/or for their
livelihoods.
Community
Conserved Area
Natural
and modified ecosystems, including significant biodiversity,
ecological services and cultural values, voluntarily
conserved by indigenous peoples and local and mobile
communities through customary laws or other effective
means
We
encourage interested readers to browse through these
publications, download them or, better, order them in
print form through the IUCN
Conservation Bookstore.
For
people interested in regional specificities and the
development of concepts and ideas, the links below provide
earlier draft documents and region-specific documents
that served as stepping stones towards the publications
described above.
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