Has Research in a Peruvian National Park Revolutionized Conservation?

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In comparison to countries of the developing world, the United States is quite lucky when it comes to managing its parks and protected areas. Why? Except for a few rare exceptions, Americans currently are not dependent on the natural resources in their parks for their livelihood and survival.

In Peru, however, some people depend on resources they can find near where they live– and sometimes this means in or near parks. Without the support of these people countless opportunities to protect ecosystems, animals, plants, and cultures might be lost. Legal protections for parks generally go ignored by people who are in need and often such laws are challenging if not impossible to enforce in remote areas anyway. The key for conservation in Peru and elsewhere seems to rest upon finding a middle ground upon where communities choose to help protect natural resources, while also benefiting from the use of these resources in a sustainable manner.

So how have Peru and countless other countries tried to address this challenge? By inviting people who have a stake in national parks and other protected areas to participate in the creation of plans that will guide how these places are protected and utilized for economic gain. While sometimes extraordinarily successful, it’s not surprising that many of these management plans often fall short, and do not end up accomplishing their goals. The public participation processes used to make management plans are sometimes utilized by park managers as a manipulative means to have communities accept already decided upon objectives, or the goals agreed upon during the processes are not easily achieved or are poorly funded. But these failures might be a thing of the past, as researchers in Peru’s Cordillera Azul National Park have perhaps revolutionized conservation through an innovative strategy. It seems to have empowered communities in the buffer zones of the park and won their confidence and support.

Before I write more about this intriguing approach, I want to provide a little bit more background about Cordillera Azul National Park. It was created in 2001 in part because several years earlier 28 previously unknown plant and animal species were discovered inside its boundaries. About the size of the state of Connecticut, the park has diverse ecosystems such as rainforests and is considered a biodiversity hotspot.  Last year, Hilary Del Campo from the University of Florida and Alaka Wali of the Field Museum of Natural History of Chicago published an article about the experimental approach that was used to create the management plan for the park. They discuss how after the boundaries of Cordillera Azul National Park were legalized, the need to create a management plan for the park was crucial. A population of approximately 100,000 people live in the park’s buffer zones. Before the study occurred, it was not entirely clear how all of these people might be influencing the natural resources of the new park for better and worse.

Rather than going down the traditional public participation path, it was decided that the plan would be created using an “asset-based” approach. In the words of Del Campo and Wali, “An asset-based approach recognizes that citizens have gifts and capacities that are operative and highly functional in communities, and can be used to develop conservation programs in conjunction with local people rather than for them.” To apply this approach, the researchers worked with 53 of the 57 communities that existed in the buffer zone of the park to catalogue how people used resources for economic benefit and subsistence.

The researchers also collected information about the identities of communities, local stories and legends, and how the people envisioned their futures. This information was entered into a publicly-accessible database that was linked to GIS maps. The enhanced, information-packed maps provided the basis for understanding which kinds of conservation goals were most universal to the communities and which actions were most desired by them.

The transparency of ideas that the database created helped guide how the park would be managed. So far, according to Del Campo and Wali, the plan that was created through the approach seems to be rolling out effectively. They suggest that the communities are willing helping to protect the park because the guidelines that were created for its use are viewed as fair and reasonable. But I wonder, beyond the generalizations they provide, how do they know this to be true? Is it really possible that 53 communities could work together in harmony?

On another interesting note, contrary to what I would have thought, the data that were collected indicate that the communities are interested primarily in maintaining their agriculturally-based subsistence lifestyles, rather than re-inventing their economic structures with various ecotourism and/or commercial schemes like many other communities in South America have. In turn, because the communities’ desires were collectively understood and pursued as a first priority (rather than those of the park’s first), conservation goals were more positively embraced. Del Campo and Wali note that even “some communities developed important norms for the use of management of game and fish.” There were some limitations to this approach according to authors of the paper as well: it took a lot of time and money, and the conservation professionals who were involved were somewhat weary of the non-traditional approach.

Nonetheless, I think that the “asset-based” approach they have used may serve as a revolutionary model and stepping stone for conservation attempts in the future. I’d like to see more parks try it though, because even they my hopes are high I still question if this approach will work in other places too. If more parks and conservation organizations in the future accept the risk of relinquishing total management power, then we might just find out the answer.

Related on the GO Network

Mark Seall discussed Switzerland’s lead in global environmental performance rankings. Joshua S. Hill discussed Lake Victoria’s declining health and how local populations depend on fish in the lake for subsistence.

Photo of Cordillera Azul National Park courtesy of Flickr under a Creative Commons License.