Around the world, communities rely on protected areas for a myriad of basic services including clean drinking water, irrigation and food. Increasingly, these communities are also turning to careful management of natural resources as a source of income through ecotourism and sustainable development.

Nature.org spoke to Luis Pabon, The Nature Conservancy’s senior policy advisor for protected areas, about how protected areas are contributing to human well-being around the world and helping pull communities out of poverty.

Nature.org: There seems to be a general public perception that protecting nature is incompatible with improving livelihoods in developing areas. Is this perception wrong, and if so, why?

Luis Pabon: Twenty years ago and earlier, this perception was generally correct. Environmentalists advocated for strict protection and development experts for full land conversion — and there was very little middle ground. Their positions seemed irreconcilable.

However, during the last 10 years scientists and practitioners have accumulated evidence of sustainably managed areas and lands that fulfill both functions: They conserve biodiversity and at the same time people use their resources for their livelihoods.

Nature provides services that we often forget. Nature gives us clean water, food, medicine, clean air, and control of plagues and disease. Lately, eco-tourism is also a growing source of income for many rural people. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment estimates that over 1 billion people depend directly on nature for employment.

Nature.org: When establishing a protected area, how do you ensure that indigenous people can maintain their rights, cultures and traditions, or modernize if they want in the face of this protection?

Luis Pabon: When protected areas are imposed on people without their consent, and management regimes are contrary to their traditions — or are against their interests and livelihoods — they will not be successful in the long term.

Good governance is a key element to successful protection and thus conservation. This means that protected areas management must take into account several factors, including:

• participation of local citizens,
• traditional institutions and governance,
• customary laws,
• cultural practices, and
• traditional use.

I know many examples where people in protected areas become the best stewards for conservation. They not only respect the protected area agreements, they help enforce them. It is important that protected areas provide alternatives to local people for any lost opportunities, or they will backfire. If governments invest in rural areas — providing basic social services, creating income opportunities and lifting people out of poverty — conserving biodiversity would be an easier task.

Nature.org: If protected areas can provide so many services to people and communities, then why aren’t they easier to create?

Luis Pabon: Most people and governments fail to value the natural capital of their countries. We usually see the value of nature through a utilitarian lens; this means that natural resources have a value only when they can be commercialized.

Conservationists have not made enough efforts to demonstrate and convince governments and even communities that the goods and services provided by ecosystems and especially by biodiversity make a very significant contribution to the economy and to the well-being of the society.

In addition, we have to keep in mind that most people that inhabit protected areas and adjacent zones are mainly rural poor. Therefore any new economic activity introduced is seen as a salvation and as an opportunity to improve their living standards, especially large capital investments such as extensive agriculture, large tourism projects, timber and minerals extraction and oil concessions among other projects.

When protected areas have weak governance, these economic activities will override the protected area conservation objectives — often with adverse affects on peoples’ livelihoods.

However, there are many examples when local people have opposed large projects based on their prior experience with large capital investments that had little effect on increasing incomes or well-being across the community. On the contrary, many of these projects altered ecosystems, decreased subsistence opportunities and disrupted traditions and social cohesion of communities.
 

Nature.org: How do you balance production and industry in or around a protected area and the long-term health of the area? A protected forest doesn’t do much good if the acreage around it is completely degraded.

Luis Pabon: Protected areas are just part of the solution to biodiversity conservation. For instance, species do not only move within the boundaries of protected areas, some have wider geographic ranges as their habitats or many species migrate during specific seasons. Besides, with increasing temperatures from global warming, habitats are suffering changes. Therefore it is extremely important to connect protected areas through corridors if we want to ensure that species and ecosystems survive.

Some organizations have been advocating this “connectivity” approach, but very little has been done in practice. Although some countries have adopted land-use planning instruments, they are rarely implemented or enforced and most lack conservation criteria. Markets are the predominant force driving change on the landscape, giving priority to short term gains over long-term benefits.

It is urgent that countries — especially developed countries — invest in more responsible industrial practices and consumption patterns with the goal of reducing their impact on the world’s biodiversity.
 

Nature.org: From a long-term perspective, what have been the tangible benefits for people and nature from protected areas?

Luis Pabon: It has already been proved that protected areas conserve biodiversity. And now, the studies that we are conducting are providing us with remarkable evidence of local, national and global socioeconomic benefits provided by protected areas. For example:

• In Lembeh Strait, North Sulawesi (Indonesia), diving alone generates an income ranging from USD $1.5 million per year to USD $2.3 million per year.
• Households dedicated to tourism activities in the Eduardo Avaroa Reserve in Bolivia earn around 10 times more than an average Bolivian. It has been estimated that tourism in this area contributes around $10 million to the economy every year.
• National parks in Venezuela cater to the freshwater needs of 19 million people, or 83 percent of the country’s population that inhabit large cities. About 20 percent of the irrigated lands of the country are dependent on protected areas for receiving irrigation water.
• Mexico’s federal and state protected areas store 2,446 MtCO2, equivalent to 5.6 years of Mexico’s CO2 emissions. The value of Mexico’s protected areas as a carbon sink is estimated at US$ 12.2 billion.

Nature picture credits (top to bottom, left to right): Photo © Scott Warren (students in Serra das Almas Natural Preserve the Caatinga, Brazil, South America); Photo TNC (Luis Pabon) .