Policy MattersIUCN COMMISSION ON ENVIRONMENTAL, ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL POLICY

FROM SOLUTIONS TO RESOLUTIONS: A NEW SOCIAL COMPACT FOR JUST AND EFFECTIVE CONSERVATION OF BIODIVERSITY

ISSUE 20 - SEPTEMBER 2016

Policy MattersIUCN COMMISSION ON ENVIRONMENTAL, ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL POLICY

ISSUE 20 - SEPTEMBER 2016

FROM SOLUTIONS TO RESOLUTIONS: A NEW SOCIAL COMPACT FOR JUST AND EFFECTIVE CONSERVATION OF BIODIVERSITY

Edited by (in alphabetical order): Catie Burlando (Italy) Aroha Te Pareake Mead (Aotearoa / New Zealand) Meher Marker Noshirwani (Pakistan) Caroline Seagle (Canada) Trisha Kehaulani Watson (Hawai‘i)

© 2016 International Union for Conservation of Nature

Reproduction of this publication for educational or other non-commercial uses is authorized without prior written permission from the copyright holder(s) provided the source is fully acknowledged.

Reproduction of this publication for resale or other commercial purposes is prohibited without prior written permission of the copyright holder(s).

The views expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect those of International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) or of the Commission on Environmental, Economic and Social Policy (CEESP).

The designation of geographical entities in this book, and the presentation of the material, do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of IUCN [**or other participating organizations] concerning the legal status of any country, territory, or area, or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries.

This publication should be cited as: Burlando, C. Aroha Te Pareake Mead, Meher Marker Noshirwani, Caroline Seagle, and Trisha Kehaulani Watson. 2016. From Solutions to Resolutions: A New Social Compact for Just and Effective Conservation of Biodiversity. Policy Matters, Issue 20. CEESP and IUCN: Gland, CH.

Cover Photo: Pani ka Puka event at He‘eia Fishpond on the island of O‘ahu (Hawai‘i), which completed the restoration of a 800 year old traditional Hawaiian fishpond in 2016. Over 2,000 community members participated in this historic event. For more information, visit paepaeoheeia.org. Photo Courtesy of Paepae o He‘eia. Photo Credit: Keoni Lee / ‘Ōiwi TV

Printed in Honolulu, Hawai‘i by Apuakehau 4348 Waialae Ave #254 Honolulu, Hawai‘i +1 (808) 392-1617

ISBN: 978-0-9979270-1-6

Acknowledgements

Letter from Chair Aroha Te Pareake Mead

Introduction || Trisha Kehaulani Watson, Catie Burlando, Caroline Seagle, Nigel Crawhall and Meher M. Noshirwani

Dancing Diversity: Critical Indigenous Perspectives on a New Conservation Ethic in Melanesia || Delly Roy, Thomas Dick and Sarah Doyle

Resource Africa’s Community Theatre Outreach Programme: Raising Awareness and Building Capacity within Disadvantaged Communities || Nkululeko Chunky Phiri

The Quest for Intergenerational Equity: A Case of Youth Quotas in Wildlife Resources Management in Kenya || Kennedy Liti Mbeva and Grace Muthoni Mwaura

Draft Principles for Justice and Equity in Access to and Distribution of Benefits from Ecosystem Services in Protected Areas || Nigel Dudley, Catie Burlando, Rosie Cooney, Scott Jones and Trisha Kehaulani Watson

From Sanpabawa to Bulong Nature Reserve: Contested Natural Resource Management in Xishuangbanna, Southwest China || Jianhua Wang

Resolving Conservation and Community Conflict: A Tanzania Case StudyBruce Downie

Towards Just and Effective Conservation for Indigenous Men and Women in the Mt. Mantalingahan Protected Landscape, Palawan Philippines || Jeanne Tabangay and Kame Westerman

La Gobernanza Comunitaria en Costa Rica: Promoviendo el Poder Local Hacia Nuevos Retos de Conservación Marina || Vivienne Solís Rivera and Marvin Fonseca Borrás

Successfully Implementing Indigenous Policy Within Western Frameworks: The Case of Traditional Hawaiian Fishponds in Hawai‘i || Trisha Kehaulani Watson

About the Commission on Environmental, Economic and Social Policy (CEESP)

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

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DRAFT PRINCIPLES FOR JUSTICE AND EQUITY IN ACCESS TO AND DISTRIBUTION OF BENEFITS FROM ECOSYSTEM SERVICES IN PROTECTED AREASNigel Dudley1, Catie Burlando2, Rosie Cooney3, Scott Jones4 and Trisha Kehaulani Watson5

ABSTRACT

There is recognition of the wider benefits from protected areas provided by ecosystem services and the economic and other values that these generate. Yet research shows that such benefits are often not equitably accessed, shared or distributed amongst people living in and around protected areas, leaving those who bear the costs of conservation missing many of the benefits. Protected area governance and management have an opportunity to tackle these issues directly to create more equitable partnerships between conservation and human wellbeing. We explore the background to this issue in protected areas and suggest nine draft principles for supporting just outcomes and increasing the equity in access to, sharing and distribution of benefits from ecosystem services in from protected areas. These cover (in summarised form): (1) culturally appropriate approaches to identifying economic and non-economic benefits from protected areas; (2) recognising the economic, social, cultural, spiritual and political dimensions of benefits; (3) favouring those who bear significant costs of protection amongst the beneficiaries of ecosystem services; (4) the need for values, principles and good governance to ensure a just and fair process to equitable access, sharing and distribution of benefits; (5) not undermining nature conservation in protected areas through use of ecosystem services; (6) respecting

1 Nigel Dudley is a consultant ecologist. His work focuses particularly on ecosystem services, broad scale approaches to conservation, planning and management of protected areas and measurement of the ecological and social impacts of conservation. He is currently Industry Fellow at the University of Queensland, active in the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas (vice-chair for ecosystem services, and co-led a stream at the 2014 World Parks Congress.

2 Catie Burlando is Special Advisor of the IUCN CEESP Steering Committee and leads the Emerging Leaders Network. She is currently researcher at the University of Padova, at the Department of Land, Environment, Agriculture and Forestry. She holds a Ph.D. in Natural resources and environmental management from the University of Manitoba.

3 Rosie Cooney is Chair of the IUCN CEESP/SSC Sustainable Use and Livelihoods Specialist Group and teaches at University of New South Wales, Sydney. She is interested in ways to make use of wild resources sustainable while supporting indigenous peoples’ and local communities rights and livelihoods, and in the role of incentives from sustainable use in supporting conservation outcomes, including reducing poaching and illegal wildlife trade. 

4 Dr. Scott Jones is a restoration ecologist and social anthropologist who works with natural resources conflict management worldwide as a researcher, facilitator and trainer. With additional training in nursing and mental health, Scott works on gendered, diverse approaches to building multi-stakeholder partnerships that support people’s ability to move from conflict to collaboration.

5 Trisha Kehaulani Watson, JD, PhD, is the Co-Chair of TILCEPA for CEESP and a member of the U.S. MPA Federal Advisory Commission. She has a law degree (J.D.) from the William S. Richardson School of Law with a background in environmental law and Ph.D. from the University of Hawai‘i where she specialized in traditional ecological knowledge. She owns her own consulting company based in Honolulu, Hawai‘i.

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the role, norms and institutions of resident and local communities when use and maintenance of ecosystem services requires active management; (7) basing negotiations on culturally appropriate and locally legitimate approaches; (8) recognising both customary and statutory laws when these exist side by side; (9) and ensuring compensation mechanisms when available ecosystem services are insufficient to compensate local communities for benefits foregone. These principles are proposed in draft form to be discussed at the 2016 World Conservation Congress, field-tested and refined into IUCN Guidelines.

Keywords: Benefit Sharing, Ecosystem Services, Protected Areas

FOREWORD

The purpose of this paper is to invite practitioners and academics to consider the principles involved for just, equitable access to, sharing and distribution of benefits from ecosystem services in protected areas. As a draft Issues paper it draws on a few examples to illustrate key ideas with a view to using this as a ‘discussion starter’ at the 2016 WCC meeting in Hawai’i and for rigorous field testing afterwards. We hope that this process ensures the development of a culturally diverse and internationally applicable set of principles that are robust, practical and relate to protected areas worldwide.

INTRODUCTION

A row of neat little huts has been built at the edge of the village; a donor-funded project to develop home stay ventures for a local community. A few yards away beside the water there is a line of brand new boats waiting to take visitors around the nearby bird reserve. But there are no visitors. When we ask why, we find that a local businessman has blocked the trade because he wants everyone to stay in his own hotel and hire his boats; and he has enough political power to push the competition aside. Like many well-

meaning integrated conservation and development projects, the time and investment put into developing ecotourism are going to waste, the promises of sustainable development have failed to materialise and the local people are no better off than they were before.

As this anecdote from the experience of one of the authors suggests, relationships between local communities and protected areas are complex, frequently problematic, and heavily influenced by who holds decision-making power. Of critical importance is how different types of power are understood, exercised and negotiated within communities, and between local communities and others who have power(s) to decide or influence things. Protected areas introduce new institutions and new land tenure systems, frequently changing access and use, rights and responsibilities. They may lead to varied processes of enclosure, displacement and resettlement, or sometimes (under alternative models) to empowerment and increases in wellbeing. They can result in more or less overt conflicts over the sharing and distribution of benefits from protected areas, as well as conflicts over rights, participation and representation, legitimacy and accountability (West et al, 2006a, 2006b).

In this paper we focus on the just and equitable distribution of benefits from ecosystem services in protected areas, and include the related concept of access to benefits (usually through physical access to the protected area or its resources) and allocation of benefits (how the enjoyment of benefits is mediated and determined through governance arrangements). Note that as used here the term “distribution” is not intended to imply only a transactional relationship between people and nature, or that the benefits are necessarily “extracted” from nature and allocated among people. We include in our discussion all benefits that people enjoy from protected areas, including those where use by one does not reduce the benefit available to others (i.e. non-rivalrous goods) such as clean air. Finally we use the term “ecosystem services” as essentially equivalent to the benefits obtained by people from ecosystems, following

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the definition of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2006 (MEA 2006). After discussing background concepts, we set out a proposed set of principles for governance and management to guide the distribution of these benefits from ecosystem services. These are based on the research and direct experience of the authors and put forward as an initial proposal to stimulate focused discussion and examination for relevance and usefulness against a wide set of contexts. Kick-off discussions on the draft principles, taking place at the 2016 World Conservation Congress, will be field-tested and refined into IUCN Guidelines by 2018.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PROTECTED AREAS AND LOCAL BENEFITS: JUSTICE AND EQUITY CONCERNS

While many people like to think that biodiversity protection serves a wider good, it does not necessarily translate into a good for the people in the immediate environment. At worst, people experience various forms of human wildlife conflict, and lose access to land and water to live, farm, fish, hunt, graze their livestock or use other natural resources, along with an associated range of cultural and spiritual benefits (Brockington et al., 2006; Dowie, 2009; Duffy, 2010). Protected areas supply enormous benefits to humanity (Stolton and Dudley, 2010) but the way these benefits are identified, accessed and distributed may be unfair, highly inequitable, and lead to resentment, retaliation or be potentially conflictive. Protected area establishment and management strategies may thus ignore, undermine or disenfranchise right-holders (West et al., 2006) and it is often the poorest and most marginalised that bear the brunt of the costs (Hall et al., 2014).

There is nothing inevitable about this. Depending on how they are shared, benefits from ecosystem services have the potential either to increase or decrease progress towards overall human wellbeing. Application of the concepts of justice,

equity and rights can help to strengthen the links between ecosystem services and overall sustainability, for example in the potential of such services to deliver tangible benefits to the poor and the marginalised.

While justice and equity are sometimes used interchangeably, they differ, depending on whether rights are defined through international and national law (justice) or through the balancing of interests among different stakeholders (equity and fairness). Both have been considered through the lenses of three dimensions: recognition, procedure and distribution (e.g., Quesada-Aguilar and Franks, 2015). Here, distribution of benefits can vary in form, ranging from equal benefits, to benefits according to goals, efforts, costs, rights and needs. Distribution, however, does not depend on simple allocation, but is the outcome of recognition (whose values, interests and framing may be adopted and thus who may actually be able to enjoy benefits) and procedure (how stakeholders may be included through effective participation and access to information and capacity building) (Frank and Quesada-Aguilar 2014). Whether a process of access and distribution is ultimately equitable will very much depend on local context and local perceptions, and it is perception and behaviour, which will influence local patterns of use and thus sustainable outcomes.

Achieving rights, justice and equity (see our definition in box below) in conservation is challenging, as it is in any other area of human endeavour. But plenty of examples exist of mutually beneficial approaches and best practice to establishing and managing protected areas, including such tools as devolution of ownership and management rights, co-management options, joint fishery agreements, Free Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC), payment for ecosystem services schemes, sustainable use-based conservation strategies, and other ways that – if respectful and inclusive of more marginal stakeholders and right-holders – can secure the balanced integration of conservation and sustainable development (Dudley et al., 2008).

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There are also many instances of protected areas contributing successfully to different sectors of the local and regional economy, both directly and indirectly, through e.g. water supply and regulation; sustainable use of wild resources in and around PAs that support health, culture and livelihoods; payments from tourism, hunting concessions or ecosystem services; opportunities to access tourist markets with craft, accommodation or food services, including explicitly where they are helping to meet poverty alleviation targets (Andam et al, 2010). But success here is linked closely with both the governance of the protected area and overall quality of governance in a region or country, to address issues such as rights, participation and representation, accountability, tenure, conflict and management, but also human dignity (Dudley et al., 2010). In countries with high levels of corruption and weak rule of law, it is all too common to see the profits accrue to a minority, whether this is politicians, civil servants, the international tourism industry or powerful individuals and families in local communities.

GOVERNANCE FOR ACCESS, SHARING AND DISTRIBUTION OF BENEFITS FROM ECOSYSTEM SERVICES IN PROTECTED AREAS

Governance arrangements help to identify social, economic and ecological priorities and thus which values get protection and how diverse groups are included in fair and equitable decision-making processes of allocation. Good governance can help to avoid or solve conflicts, ultimately supporting both social and conservation objectives. Effective, equitable management and governance arrangements in protected areas are born out of:

• Respectful, nurturing relationships with local inhabitants,

• Sensitivity to power relations within governance arrangements,

• Agreements over existing land, sea and resource tenure and property rights, and

• Sensitivity to diverse concepts and values regarding nature and ecosystem services, amongst stakeholders and right-holders.

Term Description – how we use the term in this paper

Rights The freedom or entitlement to some attribute of a protected area. This could be ownership rights, tenure or lease rights, user rights or access rights. A ‘right’ may be located in a number of places, for example local customary law, statutory law or international human rights law. Conflicts in protected areas are sometimes related partly or wholly to disputes over rights, or the existence of a right under one jurisdiction (e.g. custom) and its denial under another (e.g. colonial or post colonial statutory law).6

Justice The capacity to decide a fair outcome as determined by a law, for example a statute, a custom, or even a standard (e.g. an ethical principle) that may stand apart from formal statute or established principles.

Equity The principle that every person has equal rights and freedoms vis-à-vis protected areas, even though roles and responsibilities may differ, e.g. according to age or gender.

6 For further information on rights vis-à-vis local peoples and protected areas, see http://www.rightsandresources.org/wp-content/uploads/RRIReport_Protected-Areas-and-Land-Rights_web.pdf. Protected Areas and the Land Rights of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities, Rights and Resources Initiative, Washington DC, May 2015.

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The economic benefits that protected areas bring can actually increase inequity, if governments or industry view their national park systems narrowly as a way of making money. In countries like Tanzania, where national parks are the single largest source of foreign exchange, very little of the revenue generated reaches the people living in and around these protected areas, who are nonetheless expected to shoulder the costs of lost grazing land, fishing and hunting rights and similar (Dowie, 2009; Duffy, 2010; West and Brockington, 2006a). Eventually this backfires against conservation interests; with the loss of rights and incentives to promote stewardship, people are less willing to engage positively with management, levels of poaching tend to spiral upwards, and parks retrench into inadequately guarded enclaves (IUCN et al., 2015). In contrast, where local people have a direct stake in the protected area, or are the owners and managers of the protected areas, like the community conservancies in Namibia, poaching levels remain relatively low and local activists collaborate to monitor and prevent illegal off-take, while enabling for the continuation of needed economic practices (Naidoo et al., 2015).

More positive approaches seek to balance human rights – particularly in this case ownership and tenure rights, access and user rights – with biodiversity rights, roughly speaking the right of the global ecosystem to experience rates of species extinction no greater than the norm expected through natural evolutionary processes (Dudley, 2011). They seek to represent and include the needs and wants of a broad range of stakeholders; from those living locally to more geographically distant people in the same country, to businesses, tourists and the global community. These stakeholders may lay claims or hold rights to the goods and services contained within the protected area. However, the strength of these claims will vary depending on geographical location, history, culture and the ways in which national laws recognize the rights of local right-holders and protect them vis-à-vis external claims. Achieving equitable trade-offs between multiple competing interests is never easy. Particularly in conditions

of weak governance, individual protected area managers may be more-or-less powerless to prevent the strong and unscrupulous from grabbing most of the benefits; this is a challenge not limited to conservation. But there are many cases when protected areas can support inclusive processes that help to ensure more equitable access, sharing and distribution of their goods and services, through direct intervention, collaboration between all relevant stakeholders, and by helping to strengthen capacity, resilience, as well as social and inclusive economic institutions. International Conventions and Declarations such as the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples have set new standards and mechanisms to ensure legitimacy and accountability of conservation actions. Understanding of and support for rights-based approaches to conservation (Campese et al., 2009) are providing people with powerful tools to understand their options and lobby for their rights, which is in turn creating different opportunities for conservation management and for active local participation in monitoring and management activities, also enhanced by technological change (Sheil et al., 2015). People who manage protected areas should therefore not use the excuse of poor human rights records in a country to justify complacency, but rather seek to set examples of best practice.

A JUST PROCESS FOR ACCESS TO, SHARING AND THE DISTRIBUTION OF ECOSYSTEM SERVICE BENEFITS FROM PROTECTED AREAS

Much research has already taken place into what protected areas offer in terms of ecosystem services, ranging from contributions to food and water security, through various forms of disaster risk reduction, to income from recreation and tourism and to cultural and spiritual values (Stolton and Dudley, 2010). Research has also shown that with care and good governance, these goods and services can make a material

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contribution to the lives of resident and local communities: a win-win solution where both nature and people benefit (Ferraro and Hanauer, 2011). However, this often does not happen in practice, sometimes even where this is intended and actively pursued (Hall et al, 2014), and it is important both to find the root causes of unfair processes and inequitable outcomes, and the ways of increasing the odds of success (Ferraro et al, 2011). Key issues include whom benefits, how they benefit and how decisions about distribution of benefits are made.

One way that people involved in running protected areas can help is through having a clear framework of principles and understanding of governance arrangements for identification of the ecosystem services from the protected areas under their responsibility, recognition (respect of rights, knowledge and institutions) and approaches to access and benefit sharing (procedure and distribution). Such a framework can help recognize and address sensitive issues with greater care, understanding and sense of both procedural and distributional justice. Identification of values and benefits from ecosystem services is a social, cultural and political process that involves trade-offs among different services and actors (Martín-López et al., 2014). Support for some ecosystem services may inadvertently marginalize those who utilize other services or the right-holders, and thus lead to unequal outcomes and conflict (Frank and Quesada-Aguilar, 2014). Shifts to relying primarily on monetary valuation of ecosystem services can ignore services that are not susceptible to straightforward calculation in this way, such as many cultural and spiritual benefits, leaving the recipients of these benefits ignored in allocation of benefits and rights (Vatn, 2010; Singh, 2015). If poorly implemented, individual-level compensation such as PES schemes or tourism industry employment can increase inequity, exclude marginal groups, change the ability of local stewards to maintain appropriate community relationships and have cultural values reflected in the management of resources (Corbera et al., 2007).

In this paper, we present a draft set of principles for protected areas regarding the just and equitable distribution of benefits from their ecosystem services. This draft will further be refined in consultation with a wide range of relevant stakeholders, including through workshops and field testing with communities in several parts of the world, with the aim of publishing the final version as technical guidance from IUCN and partners.

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These are not strict delineations; a single “ecosystem service” may fit into more than one of the types outlined above. Some benefits are realised immediately, such as income from recreational hunting or tourism, while others are far longer term, such as food and income from recovery of fish populations, and some reflect the interaction between people and landscapes; in other words they are values that depend on relationships and processes of living together (Comberti et al., 2015; Propper and Haupts, 2014). Parcelling things into neat packages of benefits is itself a slightly simplistic way of viewing an ecosystem. What we mean by ecosystem services may continue to evolve, because peoples’ perception of and need for particular benefits change over time. Wild medicinal herbs may be a critical service while the majority of people in a country remain poor, but become less so when people can afford synthetic medicines. The role of an ecosystem in preventing a climatic event from developing into a natural disaster may only be needed once every few decades. Wild food or grazing lands inside protected areas may provide a safety net only in drought or at specific times

of year. Carbon storage and sequestration, now considered by many as the most important of all the potential benefits from protected areas because of its role in mitigating climate change, was scarcely recognised a decade ago. We can expect other similar changes in perspective in the future. However, we have gone a long way towards codifying ecosystem services and the advantage of this approach is that particular benefits can be identified and support diverse actions at different institutional levels that enhance the delivery of ecosystem services.

There are various ways in which ecosystem services from protected areas create benefits, as well as engender trade-offs and potential conflict, which require different approaches:

1. Ecosystem services provide onsite or local benefits, e.g., collection of non-timber forest products, maintenance of fish stocks used both for subsistence and commercial purposes, stewardship, cultural continuity and spiritual significance. Such benefits may accrue to the community as a whole or to

SUPPORTING SERVICES

Nutrient recycling • Soil formation • Primary production

CULTURAL SERVICESAestheticSpiritualEducationalRecreational

PROVISIONING SERVICESFoodFreshwaterWood and fibreFuel

REGULATING SERVICESClimate regulationFlood regulationDisease regulationWater purification

COMPLEXITY WITH ECOSYSTEM SERVICES

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment defines ecosystem services as “the benefits people obtain from ecosystems” and divides these services into four types, listed below with examples:

Figure 1: Examples of ecosystem services following a typology developed by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005).

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individuals within the community;2. Ecosystem services benefit individuals or

private companies: e.g., ecotourism ventures on private protected areas, or sales of bottled mineral water by a major company, sale of genetic material to pharmaceutical or agricultural companies;

3. Ecosystem services provide offsite benefits to a distinct group of people: e.g., provision of potable drinking water to a municipality, flood control in a watershed that protects downstream communities;

4. Ecosystem services benefit governments in international negotiations, e.g. in carbon counting and achieving CBD targets; (this is more related to political economy);

5. Ecosystem services provide indirect benefits to the global population as a whole, e.g., carbon sequestration, protection of crop wild relatives for future food security.

Individual ecosystem services can provide benefits to more than one group depending on the governance arrangements. For instance revenue from recreational hunting in reserves can go entirely to a private company or be distributed among many members of a community. Conflict related to determining the proportional distribution of such benefits is often due to poor governance and to processes of exclusion (Benjaminsen and Bryceson, 2012). Services that provide values to many widely dispersed people, such as spiritual values of a site, may nevertheless assume a relatively higher importance to local communities and right-holders, or particular faith groups. Some ecosystem services are delivered within the protected area itself, such as recreational benefits or the collection of medicinal herbs, while others are delivered further away, such as clean water used by a downstream municipality.

TOWARDS PRINCIPLES FOR THE DISTRIBUTION OF BENEFITS FROM ECOSYSTEM SERVICES

The best principles are simple enough for people to understand, whilst being sufficiently clear to

avoid misinterpretation or deliberate distortion. In this case, any principles also need to be applicable on a global basis: e.g., apply equally in least developed countries where people are often directly reliant on natural resources from a protected area and in rich countries where wealthy people may choose to live near or inside protected areas due to lifestyle quality. For instance it makes ethical sense for a rich municipality to pay rural peasants living near a national park for conserving its water resources; but less sense for impoverished villagers to pay a wealthy owner of a private reserve in the mountains for the same thing; but determining who should pay and when they should pay can be difficult.

Principles will need to apply to all protected area governance types, including state, private, indigenous peoples and community conserved areas, and to operate where there is shared governance of various kinds. They will necessarily be applied across a diversity of political and cultural environments. They must address a wide range of different biomes: terrestrial, freshwater, coastal and marine, where needs and wants may be very different. Finally, they should abide to existing best practice within IUCN, in its Theme on Governance, Equity and Rights, and within international standards and practice, which has dealt in practice with monetary and non-monetary values (equity discussions in REDD+, PES and commodification concerns, and market-based approaches to conservation).

1. Benefits can be economic, social, cultural, spiritual and political.

Over half the families living in and around Buxa Tiger Reserve in India derive their income from non-timber forest products harvested in the reserve (Das, 2005). Further, much of the value of Apo Island Reserve in the Philippines is in terms of extra fish for subsistence caught as a result of the marine reserve, as well as some additional income from tourist revenues (Raymundo, 2002). The establishment of the Sanctuary of Flora Medicinal Plants Orito Ingi Ande, now part of the national park system in Colombia, was proposed by the

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indigenous Kofán communities to strengthen and restore their traditional culture and the associated landscapes, by maintaining traditional medicine plants and also the associated skills in collecting and using these (Stolton and Dudley, 2010).

2. Culturally appropriate approaches and diverse valuations of nature are needed for identifying monetary and non-monetary benefits from protected areas.

Diverse values of nature determine diverse perceptions of what is considered to be a resource, what benefits are derived and what are the most socially and culturally just ways of redistributing benefits (Blaser, 2009). These diverge and are mobilized in different ways depending on the worldviews, knowledge, institutions and relations to others. Valuation processes identify (economic) values on resource through more or less complex and time-consuming options; and assessments driven by outside experts or by local stakeholders. For example, an assessment of the total economic value of Virunga National Park in DRC involved weeks of work by an outside consultant and interviews with over 50 stakeholders, but was considered necessary due to the high risks of oil exploitation throughout the protected area (WWF / Dalberg, 2013). On the other hand, actual and potential benefits from over 50 protected areas in the Dinaric Arc in Europe were assessed using a simple questionnaire in meetings involving local stakeholders in each park, usually lasting less than a day each, capturing basic information from the ground as quickly as possible (Stolton et al. 2015).

3. The beneficiaries of ecosystem services from protected areas should particularly favour all those who bear significant costs of protection. This might include where appropriate, for instance, protected area management, local communities and Indigenous people.

In Uganda, tourism revenue from gorilla watching in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park pays for the rest of the Uganda Wildlife Authority operations to maintain and protect wildlife areas; part of the revenue from Bwindi also goes to local

communities (pers. comm. from John Makombo). And in Finland, research on the economic benefits that national parks bring to rural communities persuaded an otherwise unsympathetic government to maintain financial support (pers. comm. from Finnish Parks Service).

4. Negotiating how benefits are distributed implies making choices and trade-offs, and therefore needs associated values, principles and good governance to ensure a just and fair process to equitable distribution. Negotiations should reflect principles of free, prior and informed consent; procedural justice, including participation, representation, accountability and dignity; distributional justice, including gender and intergenerational equity; and ensure that rights, tenure and areas of conflict are sensitively included.

When The Nature Conservancy helped develop PES schemes in protected areas to conserve forests to maintain a supply of pure water above Quito, in Ecuador, the terms, agreements and processes were worked out over many months with the full participation of resident communities, and have proved workable in practice over several years (Goldman-Benner et al., 2012).

5. Use of ecosystem services should not undermine nature conservation in protected areas, in line with the IUCN definition of a protected area and the management objectives of the particular category of protected area.

When research in Dhimurru Indigenous Protected Area in Australia showed that legal off-take by the traditional owners was causing a decline in marine turtle populations, elders of the Yolngu people agreed to reduce the catch. Reaching agreement involved a complex process of negotiation, involving re-interpretation of some traditional Dreamtime stories. Strong leadership and a willingness to innovate are helping tackle some serious ecological challenges within the IPA (Hoffman et al, 2012). And although ecotourism is an important source of income for protected

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areas in Chile, the amount of the park open to visitation is quite limited and access to other areas strictly controlled. Visitors have an experience of wild nature whilst considerable areas remain dedicated primarily to conservation (ND, personal observation).

6. Where use and maintenance of ecosystem services requires active management, the role, norms and institutions of resident and local communities in supporting those values should generally be recognised, respected and supported, and resident and local communities should participate and be represented fully in decisions related to this management through principles of FPIC and procedural justice. (However, this principle may be superseded by principles 3 and 4 in cases where local norms include discriminatory practices against for example women, youth and children).

In Northern Ontario, burning practices were used traditionally to renew the land in the spring. Ethnographic work in the community of Pikangikum First Nation revealed Elders’ understanding of fire behaviour, forest disturbance and renewal cycles, traditional controlled burning practices, and perspectives on current fire management policies. They claimed a space to contribute their knowledge to contemporary planning efforts affecting woodland caribou habitat and fire management at site and landscape scales within their territory (Miller et al. 2010) as well as their interest to participate in firefighting activities (Sanders, 2011). In the European Alps, meadows and high pasture lands are maintained through active management and commons governance regimes, with abandonment leading to reforestation and thus to loss of mosaic patterns and landscape and species diversity (Macdonald et al. 2000).

7. Where realisation of benefits of ecosystem services requires entry into negotiations with third parties (e.g. REDD+, water services), negotiations should be based on culturally appropriate and locally legitimate approaches, respecting the dignity, values,

rights, norms and institutions of local resident and local communities, and involve representatives of all relevant stakeholder groups. Decisions to withdraw from the process should be respected, and mechanisms for supporting claims, grievances and redress should be provided.

The Ankeniheny–Zahamena–Mantadia Biodiversity Conservation Corridor and Restoration Project in Madagascar affects 30 rural communities living adjacent to the protected area, requiring careful negotiations to ensure that rights are not undermined. Seven NGOs have been helping communities to take part in consultative processes relating to natural resource management within the protected area. A steering committee, consisting of representatives from government, local management units and civil society, evaluates proposed activities and monitors their implementation. The programme employs several hundred people from the local community and has also been instrumental in clarifying land tenure (Virgilio et al., 2010).

8. Where customary and statutory laws exist side by side, both need to be recognised and taken into account in helping to address issues of recognition, in light of overall procedural and distributional fairness and justice.

Makuira National Park in northern Colombia is both a biodiversity-rich ecosystem and the sacred landscape of the Wayúu people. Conservation management focuses on the cloud forest ecosystem. The site is entirely within a legally-owned indigenous ancestral territory and management is an amalgamation of both national law and the customary law of the Wayúu, a social and political organisation based on matrilineal extended families and taboo areas (Premauer and Berkes, 2012).

9. Where available ecosystem services are insufficient to compensate local communities for benefits foregone, other compensation mechanisms will be necessary.

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Villagers in Nepal receive compensation for crop damage from wildlife such as elephants. This is important; elephant damage can cost from a quarter to a third of income in some villages close to national parks and elephant damage increases when forests are fragmented. The government also invests in elephant proof fences and other measures to reduce the level of damage (Elliott et al., 2008).

CONCLUSIONS

Getting the process for the just and equitable distribution of ecosystem services right anywhere is a challenge; protected areas provide an obvious unit in which to try to balance many different needs, values and perspectives. Some of the ingredients needed cannot be described simply in a set of principles and include things like openness and trust, effective leadership, commitment from all parties to reach agreement and, ideally, a background of sound national or regional governance. Nonetheless, laying out some key elements of best practice might make it easier to build the more intangible parts of successful, fair and equitable negotiation processes. The nine draft principles outlined above are not the final word on the subject; they now need to go through a rigorous process of discussion and field-testing. This will begin with a workshop at the 2016 World Conservation Congress and, once a revised set of principles have been iterated, field tested with communities and protected area managers in a number of places where ecosystem service values from protected areas are already recognised. Once we reach a near consensus, they will be published by IUCN and become, we hope, important guidance for those managing ecosystem services within and around the world’s protected area system.

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