Making Parks Work: a Thought‐Provoking Argument, but Not a Guide

Abstract

Making Parks Work: Strategies for Preserving Tropical Nature. Terborgh, J., C. Van Schaik, L. Davenport, and M. Rao, editors. 2002. Island Press, Washington, D.C. 511 pp. $65 (hardcover). ISBN 1-55963-904-0. $40 (paperback). ISBN 1-55963-905-9. Making Parks Work: Strategies for Preserving Tropical Nature is the result of the 1999 White Oak Plantation meeting in Florida, organized by the Center for Tropical Conservation at Duke University and the Wildlife Conservation Society. Scientists, practitioners, and conservation agencies examined success stories of biodiversity conservation in the tropics in an effort to find ways to make tropical protected areas effective for conservation. The book is intended to be a guide for practitioners in the field, government administrators, conservation organizations, and funding agencies interested in supporting effective and sustainable tropical parks. The volume provides a general overview of the status of parks around the world, discusses a range of problems that parks face, and suggests strategies to improve biodiversity conservation within parks. The book is arranged in four parts: an introduction, which sets the tone; a series of case studies; a discussion of crosscutting themes at park, national, and international levels; and a presentation of synthetic conclusions. In the introduction, the editors assert the necessity to manage parks “as a haven for a nature where people, except for visitors, staff, and concessionaires, are excluded” (p. 6). From there, they turn to a critique of the integrated conservation and development project (ICDP) model, which has become the primary challenge to the traditional “haven” approach to parks. The editors then contest the assumptions underpinning integrated conservation and development projects (ICDPs) and contend that “[p]arks are simply not the proper arena for resolving social inequities” (p. 25). In the final chapter of part 1, they respond to local opposition to park formation by taking a historical perspective to argue that strong public support usually develops after a park has been created. The case studies in part 2 are drawn from tropical regions around the globe. The section on Africa ranges from nearly hopeless West Africa to remarkably successful Madagascar. Authors of the case studies emphasize the threats of warfare, civil disorder, and development, and recognize the importance of international conservation organizations and committed individuals. Chapters on Latin America highlight the challenges of establishing a network of protected areas in Brazilian Amazonia, the immediate need for conservation policy and legislation, and the conflicts between local resource users and park enforcement, where alternative economic opportunities are limited. Costa Rica's national park system stands out as an economic and social success, but it is seen as an ecological stopgap measure. Case studies from Asia explore Nagarahole National Park in India; the Leuser Ecosystem in Sumatra; and protected areas in Indonesia, Thailand, and Bhutan. Part 3 includes a diverse series of chapters that cover important themes aimed specifically at addressing conservation concerns and management strategies at the level of individual parks and at national and international levels. One chapter provides recommendations on how to mitigate human and wildlife conflicts. Another focuses on the challenges of enforcing park regulations, such as the lack of institutional power, inadequate compensation for loss of land or resources, ineffective local guards, and the marginalized status of local residents. Other chapters in this part discuss the impacts of resource extraction by human residents in parks and suggest ways to improve and promote ecotourism activities both as an economic resource and as an opportunity to educate locals and tourists. The involvement of the private sector, anarchy in parks, international financing, internationalization of nature conservation, and the importance of political will to establish and manage parks are all explored in the section on national- and international-level themes. The section on general tools includes three disparate chapters on the importance of monitoring, the need for guiding principles that are “general, yet nontrivial” (p. 411), and a discussion of the “frontier model” of development. The book concludes by discussing the appropriate kinds of protected areas for a variety of social situations and reiterating the major themes of the book. According to the authors, biodiversity protection looks promising in the near future if nations follow a modernist development model. As a group of graduate students, postdoctoral students, and faculty members, we brought to this review a diversity of experiences and attitudes toward protected areas in the tropics. Our areas of expertise include conservation biology, sociology, anthropology, ecology, and political ecology. Our group includes proponents and critics of traditional protected areas. Consequently, the book sparked interesting discussions and provided a useful framework for an interdisciplinary discussion about parks and protected areas around the world. We found that the regional chapters show geographic breadth, are informative, and demonstrate the need for short-term conservation action. Many of the lessons from these examples are useful (e.g., communicating with local communities from the outset, establishing economic ties through tourism projects, and training nationals who then become invested in the park). The authors of the case studies draw on deep and intimate knowledge of the study areas and highlight particularities of each park and country. This allows the reader to gain a sense of the array of issues involved in park management, including enforcement, public support, political alliances, ecotourism, and poaching. Making Parks Work covers several specific topics that are useful as well, such as conflicts between establishing new parks versus existing well-managed parks, the role of the private sector in establishing parks and protecting biodiversity, and the possibility that periods of instability could lead to new structures that could help conserve biodiversity. We appreciated the inclusion of many different kinds of parks (e.g., private parks, biosphere reserves, and national protected areas). Given the book's intended audience, however, we expected more attention to concrete suggestions for people trying to make parks work in the field. Most of the case studies do not contain enough depth to be directly applicable to management strategies, and the sparse linkages among chapters make it difficult to compose meaningful generalizations. From a biological point of view, there is not enough information to support the broad statements made by many of the contributors. Key definitions of terms such as parks, ICDPs, and success shift among chapters, making it difficult to compare across case studies. Most importantly, we believe that the book needed more attention to big-picture conservation—the purpose of parks and how they fit into conservation on a landscape or global scale, given the unavoidable fact that parks cannot protect adequately all biodiversity. Addressing these issues with a more concrete and uniform approach would have made the case studies more useful to field practitioners. The chapter authors stress the need for creating parks to conserve biodiversity while recognizing the role of social, political, and ecological factors beyond park boundaries. But these authors seem to presume an audience already sympathetic to a traditional approach of strictly protected parks. Whereas such an assumption might have been tenable two or three decades ago, this book emerges in a very different context in which many of its premises have been subject to extensive critique. The book does not deal substantively with these competing perspectives. This issue is true of both the academic critiques of wilderness and protected areas as well as their application in the ICDP approach. For example, most chapters simply write off ICDPs as a failure, but the book contains no detailed evaluation of the actual effects of ICDPs on biodiversity on which to base this claim. Likewise, the dismissal of the critique that parks are culturally imperialistic overlooks a serious concern that reoccurs throughout the book in the guise of unruly locals, corrupt authorities, and insecure financial resources. Without recognizing the inequities rooted in the violent and exploitative experiences of colonialism, as well as the inequities produced by free-trade policies and liberalized international investment, it is difficult to imagine a productive dialogue about the challenges facing international conservation. Although the contributors may not agree with the critics of traditional park models, they need to take those criticisms seriously to participate effectively in current debates on protected areas management. Perhaps part of the problem is that many of the debates at the park-development interface have been situated in the social sciences, a discipline not well represented among the book's contributors. The notable dearth of social scientist contributors, especially among the editors, engenders problems when the book applies social-science-based concepts, such as development, culture, enforcement, and urbanization, in ways that suggest a lack of familiarity with current scholarship in these areas. For example, the view that “the world is a free and open marketplace of cultural values” (p. 9) obscures the substantial inequalities of power and resources involved in these cultural exchanges. Another notable example is the recurring use of a “frontier-crisis-stable land use” model of development (see especially chapter 30). According to this model, nations inevitably degrade natural resources until a “crisis stage.” Developed nations historically responded to this crisis by urbanizing and intensifying land use, which resulted in conservation gains. The authors suggest that developing nations can avert this “law-like progression” (p. 426) by promoting urbanization and intensive land use. Unfortunately, these policy proposals make troubling assumptions about the causal mechanisms that allowed developed nations to establish more efficient land uses. The development trajectory taken by developed nations was fostered by colonial relationships that allowed a base of wealth to be accumulated, subsequently allowing these nations to rely less on domestic natural resources and more on resources from the developing world. The developing world will not have similar opportunities, making policies founded on the model tenuous at best. Furthermore, the suggested policies contradict the social and environmental externalities of rapid urbanization and intensive agriculture that the authors suggest will hinder conservation success and stable land use. Accepting these policies as a desirable means to development supports a vision of development that may counter the goals of conservation. Making Parks Work would have been improved by better integration of examples, critique, and solutions. Case studies and discussion of themes provide a helpful foundation but would have been more effective if there had been stronger linkages across parts of the book. For instance, the “Themes” part of the book would have been richer had it drawn explicitly on the detailed case studies described in the book's second part. Even the concluding chapter by the editors makes no reference to the 13 case studies and makes minimal reference to other sections. In addition, the book would have been strengthened by a more direct treatment of conflicting points of view. A noteworthy exception is one of the concluding chapters by Brandon, which provides a rich example of how acknowledging and addressing opposing views can both enhance effectiveness of the analysis and provide a jumping-off point for important future work. The overall contribution of Brandon's chapter illustrates that despite the book's deficiencies, Making Parks Work clearly points to the need for more direct cooperation and collaboration between natural and social scientists in developing effective approaches to biodiversity conservation in protected areas. * The CenTREAD Working Group (part of the Center for Tropical Research in Ecology, Agriculture, and Development at the University of California Santa Cruz; http://centread.ucsc.edu) is a diverse group of scholars from the natural sciences, the social sciences, and interdisciplinary studies. We have research interests in tropical conservation and a range of experiences working with parks and protected areas. Participants in developing this review included B. Ayala-Orozco, J. Barsimantov, D. Bevington, E. Blavascunas, M. Bonilla, R. Cole, R. Cohen, G. S. Gilbert, K. D. Holl, R. Hufft, S. Langridge, M. Moritz, D. Mulvaney, J. O'Leary, L. Pejchar, A. E. Racelis, and J. Ward.