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11 Causes and Consequences of Stakeholder Participation in Natural Resource Management: Evidence from 143 Biosphere Reserves in Fifty-Five Countries
- The MIT Press
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11 Causes and Consequences of Stakeholder Participation in Natural Resource Management: Evidence from 143 Biosphere Reserves in Fifty-Five Countries Andreas Duit and Ola Hall A central assumption in many contemporary environmental management paradigms, such as adaptive management and adaptive comanagement, is that stakeholder participation is a crucial component in successful conservation programs. As a consequence, policy prescriptions tend to focus on increasing the number of stakeholders involved in conservation efforts of various kinds. The assumption that stakeholder participation leads to better management of ecosystems mainly has been investigated using case study techniques, and there have been few studies aimed at reaching more generalizable conclusions regarding the pivotal role attributed to stakeholder participation. A first objective of this chapter is thus to conduct an extensive test of the claim that stakeholder participation in natural resource management programs leads to better management of ecosystems. A second knowledge gap regards the question of how institutional contexts affect local-level stakeholder participation in natural resource management: How does the quality of democratic institutions and levels of corruption affect stakeholders’ propensity for participating in natural resource programs? Case study designs are generally not effective in estimating the effect of such system-level factors, which in turn has contributed to a lack of knowledge about the role of institutional contexts in stimulating and repressing the participation of stakeholders. In an effort to address both these research needs, this chapter will engage in two tasks. First, we investigate the role of institutional contexts for stakeholder participation. Specifically, we test the hypothesis that the institutional environment of stakeholder participation, in terms of political rights and levels of corruption, has an impact on the level of stakeholder involvement in natural resource management. The second hypothesis to be scrutinized has to do with the outcomes of stakeholder participation— does it contribute to better conservation performance? Here, we test the hypothesis that more frequent participation of various stakeholder 294 Andreas Duit and Ola Hall groups is associated with better management outcomes in Biosphere Reserves (BRs). We employ remote sensing estimates of changes in biodiversity levels combined with survey data on stakeholder participation and management patterns, as well as national level data for political rights and corruption, collected from a total of 143 BR areas in 55 countries. Stakeholder Participation in Natural Resource Management: Causes and Consequences Often contrasted to a traditional view of natural resource management, which takes as its primary goal to let experts and scientists preserve natural habitats or resources by restricting human access to them, the notion of stakeholder participation in natural resource management and conservation has emerged as a strong alternative management approach in recent years (Kasperson 2006). Adaptive management (Lee 1999), and in particular adaptive comanagement (Olsson et al. 2004; Armitage et al. 2007), are at once theories of, and policy prescriptions for, management of natural resources and conservation areas in which stakeholder participation plays a crucial role. There are several components associated with these approaches, but a key idea is to involve rather than expel people and groups who are either living within, using the resources of, or are in other ways involved in the natural area that is to be preserved. Several positive consequences are argued to follow from this. First, stakeholder involvement is thought to increase the legitimacy of the preservation effort itself, which in the long run will create a more benign context for continued preservation efforts. Because conservation schemes often intervene in the daily lives of local inhabitants, securing local legitimacy (if not direct support) is frequently an indispensable prerequisite for successful conservation. The legitimacy of preservation programs is thought to increase if local stakeholders are allowed to do things such as influence decision-making processes regarding the protected area, have access to the area, be allowed to use some of the resources located in the area, participate in preservation activities, and receive information about events and ongoing processes in the area. There is also a growing recognition in both the research and practice of natural resource management of the fact that there is rarely such a thing as a “pristine” natural area or resource, and that the people living in it or using it are often a most influential force in shaping the landscape that the conservation program is trying to preserve (Nabahan 1997). The continued activities of local stakeholders, therefore, might be [18.204.214.205] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 23:46 GMT) Stakeholder Participation in Natural Resource Management 295 a direct requirement for conserving a landscape...