Understanding and optimising governance: a Copernican
revolution for protected areas?
Grazia Borrini-Feyerabend
Why is “governance” such a crucial new concept in the programme of work on
protected areas (PAs) of the CBD? Why some believe it represents a sort of a
Copernican revolution for protected areas? There are at least three main reasons:
 the first is that it broadens the perspective on what can be included as part of a
national system of protected areas;
 the second is that it broadens the spectrum of the social actors recognised as
legitimate protected area managers;
 the third is that it introduces the consideration of principles and values, affecting
what is perceived as possible and desirable for protected areas.
Governance has to do with power, relationships and accountability, and reflects what
a society sees as fair, or is prepared to accept as such, in terms of the whos and hows
of authority and responsibility. In a protected area context, governance affects the
achievement of management objectives (effectiveness), the sharing of costs and
benefits (equity) and the generation and sustenance of community, political and
financial support. At the level of a protected area system or individual site,
governance depends on history, culture, access to information and informal influence
on decisions as much as on formal institutions and processes.
Since the World Congress on Protected Areas of 2003, a first cut at understanding
governance is made on the basis of “who holds relevant authority and responsibility
and can be held accountable”.1 In this sense, four main types of protected area
governance have been identified:
A.
Government managed protected areas (at various levels);
B.
Co-managed protected areas (in various forms and including transboundary
PAs);
C.
Private protected areas (for profit and not for profit);
D.
Community conserved areas (including areas conserved by indigenous
peoples).
Besides the well known IUCN category (defined on the basis of main management
objective), a protected area is thus characterised by its governance type (see Figure 1).
Field based analyses of different governance types reveal that all include examples of
major conservation value and that all types can be compatible with all IUCN
categories. In this sense, a protected area can be found to occupy any of the position
in the matrix of Figure 1. In particular, examples of Community Conserved Areas
harbouring unique biodiversity and safeguarding essential ecosystems can be found
all over the planet2 (see Figures 2-6) and are slowly becoming recognised as essential
elements in national conservation systems.3
Community Conserved Areas are the oldest form of governance of natural resources
and often reveal a symbiosis between communities and nature that some refer to as
“bio-cultural units” or “cultural landscapes/seascapes”. Characteristically, they are
established and managed by customary or otherwise locally-agreed organisations and
rules, following various interlocked objectives and values (spiritual, religious,
security-related, survival-related). They include “sacred” areas and resources but also
resources collectively managed for sustainable use by indigenous peoples and local
communities, both sedentary and mobile. Modernization processes have neglected
and devalued such forms of conservation, which are rarely included as part of a
national protected area patrimony and often under jeopardy today. Their “rediscovery” by the CBD is part of a broader movement that uplifts cultural diversity
and human rights. Coherently, the same movement also advocates for comanagement4 for the protected areas established by state governments.
Countries that take full advantage of all governance types can build a flexible and
responsive national system, capable of expanding the national PA coverage,
addressing its gaps, improving connectivity and enhancing the public support for
conservation.5 Arguments are also accumulating that an expansion of the national PA
system may be not only important for biodiversity and equity but also economically
advantageous.6 Yet, such countries are more the exception than the rule. Indigenous
management systems and community conserved areas are still generally
unrecognised, when not actively undermined.7 Many private protected areas receive
no incentive from the state. And co-management is often confined to marginal
experiments. Fortunately, with the impulsion of the CBD leadership, all this might
change.
The CBD Programme of Work on Protected Areas not only stresses the need to
recognise and support different types of PA governance, and community conserved
areas in particular. It also encourages its parties to seek “good governance”. It
requires “not to harm” the indigenous, local and mobile communities living close to
the relevant biodiversity, in full respect of their human rights, and it calls for
“equity”, sharing in a fairer way the costs and benefits of PA management and
ensuring recourse to justice when conflicts ensue. Other principles include
“legitimacy and voice”— the capacity of men and women to influence decisions,
built on freedom of association and speech; “subsidiarity”— attributing management
authority and responsibility to the institutions closest to the resources at stake;
“accountability”— ensuring a transparent flow of information on processes and
institutions, with decision-makers assuming responsibility for their choices;
“performance”—meeting the needs and concerns of all stakeholders according to
agreed plans and while making a wise use of resources; and “direction”— grounding
long-term conservation strategies on ecological, historical, social and cultural
complexities.
With the lamppost of the principles of good governance and the full spectrum of
IUCN categories and governance types at their disposal, national protected areas
systems, indeed, can enter an era of renewed strength. Likely, the new challenge will
be harmonising protected area governance within the broader system of governance at
the landscape and regional level.8 Biodiversity conservation may even become a
widespread and quite “normal” consideration in managing natural resources— the
concern not only of expert professionals but of society as a whole.
IUCN
Category
(manag.
objective)
I - Strict
Nature
Reserve/
Wilderness
Area
II – National
Park
(ecosystem
protection;
protection of
cultural
values )
III – Natural
Monument
IV – Habitat/
Species
Management
V – Protected
Landscape/
Seascape
VI – Managed
Resource
C. Private Protected
Areas
Declared and run by local
communities
…by for profit organisations
(e.g. individual or corporate
land-owners )
Declared and run by
indigenous peoples
…by non-profit organisations
(e.g. NGOs, universities, etc.)
Collaborative management
(various forms of pluralist
influence)
Joint management (pluralist
management board)
B. Co-managed
Protected Areas
Declared and run by
individual land-owner
A. Government
Governance Managed Protected
Type Areas
Trans-boundary management
Government-delegated
management (e.g. to an NGO)
Local/ municipal ministry or
agency in change
Federal or national ministry or
agency in charge
Figure 1 The emerging IUCN classification system for protected areas,
comprising both management category and governance type.9
D Community
Conserved
Areas
Figure 2 to 6 [high resolution version to be sent separately]
Figure 2. Women collect and make sustainable use of wild plants in Kayan
Mentarang National Park (Indonesia), the first Indonesian protected area under a comanagement regime with the resident Dayak people. Courtesy Cristina Eghenter
Figure 3. Community members pull in the net in the Marine Extractive Reserve
(MER) of Arraial do Cabo (Brazil). This is the oldest of Brazilian MERs and is governed by
a local fishing community in collaboration with a federal environmental agency. The
resources remain under the exclusive access of the community that possesses customary
rights and developed through time a complex system of rules for their sustainable use.
Courtesy Patricia Pinto da Silva.
Figure 4. Indigenous leaders gathered in Yurayako-Caquetà (Colombia). The
Ingano peoples have themselves proposed to the Colombian government that their
traditional sacred territory is declared “protected area”. This was agreed, and now
Alto Fragua Indiwasi is a National Park managed by its traditional owners. Courtesy
Asociacion de Cabildos Tandachiridu Inganokuna—Jose Ignacio Giraldo
Figure 5. A sacred lake in the region of Toulear (Madagascar). This lake and several
sacred groves in the same region remain remarkably conserved within a territory
dominated by destructive and unregulated exploitation. Courtesy Claudine
Ramiarison.
Figure 6. US Forest Service Officials discuss with local residents a variety of
management issues, including a revised management plan for the San Juan National
Forest in Colorado. Courtesy Randall K. Wilson.
Notes
1
Borrini-Feyerabend, 2003; http://www.cbnrm.net/pdf/iucn_005_wpc2003_governancereport.pdf ;
Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, 2004;
http://www.iucn.org/themes/ceesp/Wkg_grp/TILCEPA/briefing%20notes%20on%20governance%20of
%20PAs.pdf
2
Stevens, 1997; Kothari et al.,1998; Posey, 1999; Pathak and Gour-Broome, 2001; Smyth and Jaireth,
2003; http://www.iucn.org/themes/ceesp/Wkg_grp/TILCEPA/community.htm; IUCN/CEESP, 2003;
Molnar et al., 2004.
3
Examples exist in all continents: Chapin, 2001; Alden Wily and Mbaya, 2001; Parques Nationales de
Colombia, 2001; Mitchell et al., 2002; Szabo and Smyth, 2003; http://www.regole.it ; Whande et al.,
2003; Ghana has just completed an official survey of 3000 sacred groves; similar endeavors are under
way in India (Pathak et al., 2005), Senegal (Thiaw et al., 2003) and under discussion in Madagascar.
4
Borrini-Feyerabend et al., 2004a.
5
This is extensively discussed in Borrini-Feyerabend et al., 2004b.
6
Carret and Loyer, 2003.
7
One example for all: the sacred groves of many countries in Africa are at times logged and destroyed
by religious zealots to “demonstrate” that the traditional beliefs that support them are not valid. See
also Colchester, 2003.
8
Sandwith et al., 2001; Van der Linde et al., 2001; Phillips, 2002; Brechin et al., 2003.
9
Reproduced from Borrini-Feyerabend et al., 2004b.
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