ECI Annual Review 2006/2007 - Environmental Change Institute ...

much on numerical targets appear
to be justified, and more attention is
now being turned to the ecological
impacts of such plans.
Citizen science and community
participation in Protected Area
Management: a new approach for
European Transition Countries
Through its new and acceding
member states the European Union
has inherited an impressive array
of protected areas and traditional
agricultural landscapes with a
wealth of biodiversity that has long
been lost in western member states.
New EU policy and changes in
conservation philosophy provide
openings and challenges for the
central and eastern countries of
Europe.
These include the shift from
centralised, hierarchical planning
to participatory approaches
which recognise the value of local
knowledge, local commitment
to place, and traditional customs
and rules for protecting resources.
Current participatory approaches
rely either on a strong civil society
sector (as in western Europe)
or on rural communities who
depend on their own resources and
develop their own user rules (as in
developing countries). New models
of participatory conservation are
therefore needed in post-socialist
Europe.
ECI is testing a model for
community participation in
protected areas in the northern
Carpathians of Romania (the Rodna
Mountains National Park) as part of
a UK Government Darwin Initiative
funded project. The approach
recognises that participation is
a new concept for many of the
stakeholders, and therefore builds
on existing relationships of trust
within communities and schools.
Activities include school children
documenting local and traditional
knowledge about the national park;
schools forming ‘Friends of Rodna
Mountains’ clubs, focusing on the
specific interests of their school (eg,
art); and Friends clubs contributing
to the implementation of the
management plan, by selecting
specific plants or animals to study,
with training in GIS (Geographical
Information Systems). This also
allows the park administration to
consolidate, analyse and map all the
data.
This approach provides a model
which is culturally and politically
appropriate. It is being evaluated
and adapted at interactive multistakeholder
workshops nationally
(Nov 2006) and internationally (late
2007).
Community forests and small-scale
forestry in Romania
In common with other former-
Soviet countries in Central and
Eastern Europe, Romania initiated a
process of ‘restitution’ – the return
of state-appropriated property to
pre-communist owners soon after
the restoration of democracy.
Restitution of forests is notoriously
problematic and controversial,
and ECI research is highlighting
the difficult experiences of rural
households, as they have coped
with losing their forests to the
state, regarding the forests as state
property, and then engaging with
the tangled restitution process to get
their forests back.
The diversity of these experiences
provide signposts to the future to
improve the social, institutional and
ecological sustainability of forests,
Key Publications
Leader: Dr Anna Lawrence
including:
1. Establishing examples of good
practice;
2. Education and training:
practical initiatives to integrate
environmental and cultural
values into school curricula;
communication training for
foresters; and management
training for forest owners;
3. Support for associations of
forest owners to simplify
administration and governance;
4. Policy: taking account of the
strong diversity of ownership
and forest history; engaging
with the more abstract, pronature
values of city-based
owners and public;
5.
Media: addressing the negative
effects of foresters’ low selfesteem;
and promoting the
remarkable richness of cultural
attachment to the forest found
in rural Romania.
Lawrence A. and Hawthorne W.
(2006) Plant identification: creating
user-friendly field guides
for biodiversity management.
Earthscan, London.
Lawrence, A., Paudel, K.,
Barnes, R. and Y. Malla. 2006.
Adaptive value of participatory
biodiversity monitoring
in community forestry, Nepal.
Environmental Conservation
33(4):325-334.
Lawrence, A. (2006) “No
personal motive?” Volunteers,
biodiversity and the false
dichotomies of participation.
Ethics, Place and Environment 9
(3): 279-298.
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