1.Front section - IUCN

Some conclusions and ways ahead 15
conservationists to control. Often other
government ministries may be directly at odds
with the goals of conservation. Frontier
settlement programmes, emergency refugee
relief, planned colonization of protected areas for
national security reasons, and commercial
exploitation of natural resources to service
national debts, result from government decisions
that may be oblivious of protected area objectives.
Chitwan National Park, Nepal.
● Within the framework of the market-based
economic systems that are becoming increasingly
widespread, greater participation by the civil
society in economic development should extend
to the management of protected areas, especially
for tourism and the sustainable use of certain
natural resources.
The implications of these measures for building
broader support for the integrity and objectives of
protected areas will require additional efforts to
establish standards and enforce them. Thus the
appropriate government institutions will need to
continue strengthening their role in the creation,
planning and management of protected areas, while
inviting greater participation of NGOs, private
business, universities and local communities.
One useful mechanism for putting this vision into
practice is through “Integrated Conservation and
Development Projects” that seek to reconcile
conservation and community interests through
promoting social and economic development among
communities in and around protected areas. Past
shortcomings have shown that such projects need to
be carefully designed to ensure that the interests of the
various stakeholders are well represented. It is critical
that the effort involves a clear identification of the
problems facing the protected area so that the
proposed measures specifically address the problems
identified at the level where the intervention can be
effective.
While early efforts at establishing protected areas
often excluded people, more recent approaches have
sought to involve local communities in ways that are
appropriate to the agreed objectives for the protected
areas. This can be a considerable challenge, as local
people often feel disenfranchised and would like to
© Jeffrey A. McNeely
extract far more resources from a protected area than
can be provided on a sustainable basis. Providing
sustainable services to local communities from
protected areas may require more effective controls to
ensure that populations of plants and animals – and
the services they support – are maintained at
productive levels. The general approach to protected
area management that is advocated in this book
involves using a wide range of protected area
categories managed as a system that involves national,
provincial and local governments, non-governmental
organizations, local communities and indigenous
peoples, the private sector, researchers and other
stakeholders. This does not remove the need for active
protection by government, as some individuals will
always be able to benefit from “beating the system” ,
to earn individual benefits by breaking regulations
that are designed to provide broad social benefits.
Joint management agreements with new partners
may also be possible. The objective of a joint
management agreement is to arrive at a series of
accommodations of the goals and needs of both
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