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Socionature and the design of national parks and conservation areas
• No universal criteria about how parks and conservation areas are defined. – American model
• Recreation and beauty, an escape back to wilderness. Humans are visitors.
– African model • Wildlife viewing• Displacement of local people in the formation of first parks • More cooperative relationships evolving
– British/European model• Emphasis on freezing past cultural landscapes and the nature
they interacted with
Yellowstone National Park (YNP)• Since 1916, YNP and
other parks have aimed to preserve the land in its ‘natural’ condition —how it looked before white people arrived.
• Leopold Report of 1963: “A national park should represent a vignette of primitive America.”
Mandate unrealistic
• Climate change – Mountain pine beetle
infestations due to warmer winters
– Increases in fires– Forests are not going to stay
the same as when they were at park establishment
Glacier National ParkJoshua Tree National Park Sequoia National Park
In 50 years’ time, climate change will have altered some US parks so profoundly that their very names will be anachronisms.
Green neocolonialism
• Deployment of environmental views that result in colonial relations marked by control from afar, lack of self-determiniation, and unbalanced acquisition or access to resources
Climate change, carbon sequestration and tropical forests
Climate change, carbon sequestration and tropical forests
• Countries and communities are paid for keeping land in forest
• This helps slow the growth of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
• However, it also transfers power from local forest owners to global actors involved in climate change and their system of resource management
• Not just a tree in the rainforest, trees become part of global economy
United Nations Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD)
program
Green neocolonialism
• REDD “lock-up” forests for climate change mitigation
• Peasant movements contend it could threaten food security by forcing farmers to grow trees instead of food
• Contracts and terms of forest management not always favorable for farmer
Emerging hybrid models
• Australian model– Ayers Rock: Now
called Uluru and more voice given to Aboriginals in its management
• The reef has lost over half of its coral cover in 27 years.
• Representation or construction of the GBR versus more of the ecological reality
Environmental issues arise from tourism
• Terms like ecotourism, sustainable tourism and responsible tourism are rooted in the concept of sustainable development, or development that "meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of the future generations to meet their own needs" (Bruntland Commission, 1987).
• Sustainable tourism meets the needs of present tourists and host regions while protecting and enhancing opportunities for the future.
• Ecotourism, when properly executed based on these principles, exemplifies the benefits of socially and environmentally sound tourism development.
