Social Aspects

Trade-offs in nature tourism: contrasting parcel-level decisions with landscape conservation planning

Background

This article discusses the trade-offs linked to nature tourism in Monteverde, Costa Rica. Nature tourism has been used for promoting conservation in Costa Rica since the 1970s when it was adopted into developmental policy. Tourism is now the largest industry in Costa Rica; but is nature tourism an effective way to preserve ecosystem services and promote economic benefits? The study area includes Monteverde (an ecotourism town near the Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve), San Luis (a coffee and dairy farming community), and Guacimal (economy based on cattle ranching and dairy).

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Bridging the great divide: State, civil society, and ‘participatory’ conservation mapping in a resource extraction zone

Background

The author evaluates the outcomes of a participatory and inclusive mapping technique in a mineral extraction zone—the Cordillera Huayhuash—in the Andes of Central Peru. Knowing that land titling is often a source of mistrust and conflict between communities and the government, this technique offers a way to build counter-narratives to the unused territory story often told by state resource management agencies in charge of granting concessions to outside interests.

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300,000 Hectares Restored in Shinyanga, Tanzania — but what did it really take to achieve this restoration?

Background

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Violence, Decentralization, and Resource Access in Indonesia

Background

This paper examines the social and political factors that dictate who has access and control over natural resources, arguing that non-deliberate decentralization of resource management can create situations that encourage conflict.

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Factors influencing community participation in mangroves restoration: A contingent valuation analysis

Background

This paper analyzes the willingness of a household to participate and pay for the benefits of a mangrove restoration program in the West Coast of India. In the second half of the twentieth century, this region has been threatened by shrimp cultivation, industrial development and hydroelectric projects, which overall made mangroves recede substantially.

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Does tree planting change minds? Assessing the use of community participation in reforestation to address illegal logging in West Kalimantan

Background

In this study, Pohnan et al. evaluated the social impacts of the local NGO Alam Sehat Lestari (ASRI) restoration program that took place in Gunung Palung National Park in West Kalimantan, Indonesia, an area that host numerous endangered species and that has been degraded by illegal logging for the past several decades.

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Assessing social values of ecosystem services in the Phewa Lake Watershed, Nepal

Background

Over 40 years, Community-Based Forestry has actively been practiced in Nepal, which aims to integrate human societies, social values and biophysical systems.  Using the Phewa watershed as a case-study, this paper evaluates the social values for ecosystem services and their importance to different stakeholders. This approach seeks to assess quantitatively how diferent users value the different ecosystem services perceived from a specific ecosystem. Authors carried on interviews and group sessions to assess according to a numeric scale different ecosystem services.

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Community-based mangrove forest management: Implications for local livelihoods and coastal resource conservation along the Volta estuary catchment area of Ghana

Background

The author of this paper recognize that there has been limited research into the primary motivators for motivating long-term community-based mangrove restoration and management on local scales. In order to fill this gap, this paper aims to assess management practices of community-based mangrove restoration projects in the Volta River estuary in Ghana, paying close attention to the ecological and economic incentives for community-based mangrove forest management (CBMFM). The site was evaluated between 1974 and 2011 and the authors used participatory mapping and orthophotos. 

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Communal management as a strategy for restoring cloud forest landscapes in Andean Ecuador

Background

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Social Capital in Biodiversity Conservation and Management

Background

The article begins with a description of the opposing views of the roles of smallholders in conservation strategies.  On the one hand they directly use resources that external agencies attempt to protect, on the other hand these people have intimate knowledge of these systems.  Thus leading to the question, “Could local people play a greater role in biodiversity conservation and management?” (Pretty, 2004).

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