THE UNIVERSITY OF LEIPZIG

much of this responsibility from the federal land management agencies and put it into the
hands of the American people and the legislative process. 697
We ought to mention that the American model of nature conservation set precedence in terms
of protected area management in the years that followed. This was especially common with
many of the newly independent states of Tropical Africa, though it was not any different from
the conservation model which had earlier on been set up by their former colonial masters. In
the same way the American model of conservation also formed the basis of what is today
known as the classical model of protected area management. This classical model largely
looks at setting aside protected areas for protection of particular wildlife, with a major
emphasis on how things work rather than how natural systems functioned. Under the classical
model, protected areas or reserves are managed for tourists and visitors whose interests
normally prevailed over those of the local people. The Kakamega model of forest reserve
management falls under this kind of arrangement. In this regard we note that the classical
model of reserve management puts much emphasis on wilderness and ecosystems rather than
the human system interactions and as a result, management of protected areas is done by
central governments, run by technocrats with little regard to local knowledge and local
methods of resource usage and conservation.
Emerging paradigms in institutionalism, participation and forest reserve management
The last two decades have seen a shift from the “fines and fences” method of conservation.
Other scholars like Adrian call it the move away from the ‘fortress conservation’ framework
to a community-oriented protected areas approach has emerged alongside international trends
seeking to combine conservation and local community development, hence the notion of
community-based conservation. These divergent shifts have paralleled paradigms which have
occurred in the discipline of natural resource conservation, away from reductionism to a
systems view of the ecosystem, towards an inclusion of humans in the ecosystem
management. The new paradigm shifts also manifest a deviation from expert-based
approaches to participatory approaches to ecosystem management. 698
The changing paradigm is thus an elucidation of the growing change in the classic view of
protected area management. This new paradigm is an advocate to inclusion of local resource
users’ knowledge and perceptions in the conservation of natural resources such as forest
ecosystems.
The new paradigm also contrasts in almost every respect with the classic model of
conservation and management of protected areas. It includes social economic, conservation
and restoration, rehabilitation, regeneration objectives of protected area of forest reserve
management. The new paradigm further involves creating protected areas, often for scientific,
697 Ibid.
698 Adrian, P. 2003. The New Paradigm for Protected Area Management. In Innovative Governance: Indigenous
People,Local Communities and Protected Areas, edited by Hanna. J and S.Dermont, 1-24. S. New Dehli:
Ane Books.
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