Publikationsdatum:
2014-09-09
Beschreibung:
Protected Areas (PAs) remain central to the conservation of biodiversity. PAs were originally conceived as areas that would be set aside to maintain a natural state free from human influence. However, global environmental change, growing anthropogenic influence, and increasing globalisation of society have made it clear that PAs can no longer be thought of as 'ecological islands' that function independently of the broader social-ecological system in which they are located. For PAs to be resilient (and to contribute to broader social-ecological resilience) they must be able to adapt to changing social and ecological conditions over time in a way that supports the long-term persistence of populations, communities, and ecosystems of conservation concern. We propose a framework for understanding PAs and their long-term persistence, as a form of land-use embedded in social-ecological systems, with feedbacks from the local to the global scale. We develop approaches to thinking of PAs as multi-scale social-ecological systems in three ways. First, we combine elements of resilience analysis and the closely related social-ecological systems framework of Ostrom to develop a new conceptual outline for thinking about PA resilience. Second, we highlight the cross-scale influences and feedbacks on PAs that exist from the local to the global scale, contextualizing PAs within multi-scale social-ecological 'functional landscapes'. Such functional landscapes are integral to understanding and managing the long-term sustainability of individual PAs. Third, we illustrate our conceptual contribution with three case studies that highlight cross-scale feedbacks and social-ecological interactions in the functioning of PAs and in relation to regional resilience. Our analysis suggests that while ecological, economic and social processes are often directly relevant to PAs at finer scales, at broader scales the dominant processes that shape and alter PA resilience are primarily social and economic. # doi:10.1890/13-2113.1
Print ISSN:
1051-0761
Digitale ISSN:
1939-5582
Thema:
Biologie
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