Sunday, August 8, 2010

Winds of Change Confront Protected Areas

After a long absence, I have returned to my blog. Travel, work, and a family death kept me away. I do hope to update the blog at least every other week from now. I have written a lot about how complex the situations are that confront protected area managers. In today’s blog, which is borrowed from a paper I was scheduled to give in Taiwan in early August, I outline the reasons for this complexity. In future blogs, I will more directly address how we can respond.


Protected areas like many other areas of human life are buffeted by the winds of change sweeping the globe. These winds, are not mere breezes, but approach hurricane strength, and like a hurricane, come in many directions with unanticipated effects. These changes were popularly described in Alvin Toffler’s bestselling book of 1980 “The Third Wave”. In it, he suggested that the dominant, industrial society characterizing the Second Wave of human development was being increasingly challenged by a Third Wave, triggered primarily by the development of electronic and digital technology and the development of an “information society”. The Third Wave meant new norms, paradigms and ways of doing things; these clashed with and would eventually supplant the industrial Second Wave just as surely as it had replaced the agrarian based First Wave.

We know now that Toffler’s commentary was accurate, if simplified. The winds of change are far more complex, turbulent and unpredictable than perhaps even he realized. There appear to be seven major directions of change, each interacting with the others to produce unknowing and often surprising consequences. Figure 1 shows these seven sources of change.

Climate change, and the uncertainty it brings with it is increasingly the subject of research and debate, if not action. Whether the globe is warming or cooling, whether the cause is natural or anthropogenic, climatic changes typify today’s world, in some cases potentially endangering the natural capital situated within protected areas. Assuming for the moment that the IPCC (2007) scientists are correct, we can expect some significant changes in the natural capital upon which life on earth as we know it depends. In some cases, such as rising sea levels, human life may be directly threatened; in other cases we may see the disappearance of some species and the relocation of others. Building an extensive system of protected areas can provide some measure of resilience for the human community.

A second source of change involves human population dynamics, of which several dimensions are critical to the future of protected areas. First, and most obvious, is population growth. The global population now stands at about 6.9 billion, and will likely top 9 billion by 2050. An increase of 28% in the human population will stretch, to understate, our ability to provide needed food, housing, medical care and education to say nothing of the demand on natural resources. While climate change may impact protected areas, simple growth of population and resulting needs for goods and services may endanger them. As the standard of living in large, heavily populated countries such as India and China rises, demand for resources to supply goods and services will increase, in many cases dramatically. The fight to conserve the values lying within protected areas will likely increase in intensity. In places such as the United States where components of its protected area system lie within areas classified as wilderness—where no resource extraction is allowed—one can only envision dramatic political, social and cultural conflict over access to those areas.

Aging of the population will shift demand for the types of experiences expected when visitors engage protected areas, shifting from more active experiences to more passive, but appreciative ones. Aging populations will require increased, and expensive health care, leading to increased competition for government funds. Choices between funding for health care and stewardship of protected areas likely will become more frequent and competitive. Diseases—such as HIV/AIDS—attack younger members of the workforce, sapping protected area agencies of skilled workforces and requiring financial support for health care (Cash and McCool 2007).

Another trend of global significance involves powerful and continuing advances in technology. Technology does not change linearly but geometrically as machines created by older technology are used to develop new technology which is then used to create even newer technology (Kurzweil 2006). Technological advances have helped us better understand and map biodiversity values, develop comprehension of how human activity impacts the environment and manage the people who visit protected areas.

A fourth significant trend concerns changing models of governance. Democracy—in all its flavors—has become a global trend, with authoritarian, single party governments headed by “Big Men” falling in favor of multi-party open and inclusive governments. While this trend is countered in some regions by rising fundamentalism which views religion as the basis for governance, the world is more democratic than it has ever been. This tendency is mirrored in protected areas with growing interest and experimentation with management more inclusive—and community-influenced than ever before.

Our awareness of human impact on the environment has never been higher than now, and our willingness to do something about it—the greening of the economy, the strive for renewable energy sources, the rising concern about sustainability—has also increased dramatically in the first decade of the 21st century. This green dimension suggests enhanced political and social support for protected areas and conservation, growing interest in the services ecosystems provide and the benefits that result, and a willingness to commit funding to the sustainability of the biodiversity upon which we depend.

A sixth trend reflects a shift, closely associated with governance, toward public decision making that is more transparent and accountable. People want to understand how a decision was made—and its rationale—as well as desiring to hold governments and their bureaucracies accountable for these decisions. This suggests some major changes in the process of decision making that promote notions of inclusiveness, representativeness, a sense of responsibility or ownership.

A final trend concerns the ongoing restructuring of the economic foundations of particular countries. In developed nations, this restructuring involves a transition from an industrial based economy to one that is service and knowledge based. In more agrarian situations, the trend reflects a shift from agriculture to manufacturing. Both trends are associated with changes in the length of the work day and work week, number and distribution of holidays and amount of paid vacation time and other benefits that affect the amount and distribution of demand for nature-based recreation.

These trends, sometimes contradictory, sometimes synergistic, always compelling, lead to a number of implications for protected area stewardship. First, protected area decisions are far more complex and contentious than they have been, reflecting the higher economic stakes in the alternatives being considered. Alternatives represent pathways to a future, which we can refer to as a public interest, but there are many public interests, which are both overlapping and competing. In this era of complexity and contentiousness, each carries significant consequences, and thus the stakes are high.

Second, the demands and expectations society places on protected areas are accelerating and growing in diversity, reflecting multiple public interests and mounting pressures for both economic utilitization and biodiversity protection. Increasingly, the services ecosystems provide are recognized by contemporary society and combined with population dynamics indicate not only diversifying demands, but increasing and conflicting ones as well.

Third, the vulnerability of human populations directly dependent on the services the natural capital protected in parks, wilderness and wild landscapes is increasing. These populations are often among some of the poorest on earth; changes in the amount, temporal and spatial distribution and kind of ecosystem services exposes them to a variety of risks. Vulnerable populations will require attention to help build their resiliency in the face of change and surprise.

Finally, the collision of these various trends, operating at varying scales and paces means that we face increased volatility, making the delivery of services and benefits provided by protected areas increasingly unpredictable, dynamic, and changing.

These trends and implications demand that the conventional approaches to planning of the past be replaced by strategies and frameworks more appropriate to a complex, uncertain and contentious world. Conventional approaches to planning assumed that the world is predictable, linear, understandable and stable. But current events indicate otherwise:

• Volcanic ash shuts down airports in Europe, leading to the cancellation of 100,00 flights, with enormous financial and economic consequences

• The U.S. stock market on May 6 drops nearly 1000 points in a few minutes for apparently no reason (the “flash crash), then nearly completely recovers minutes later

• A small hole in a pipe 5,000 feet below the surface of the ocean 50 miles from shore leads to the most devastating environmental disaster in U.S. history

• A bolt on a highway bridge fails. Leading to collapse of the structure and death to many

Protected areas are not immune to this situation:

• The U.S. Forest Service fire suppression policy for national forests, in effect for 75 years, leads to increased risk of catastrophic fires, in complete opposition to its intended effect

• The Convention on Biological Diversity, signed in 1992, has failed to prompt parties to the convention to achieve protection of biodiversity, goals agreed to by all state’s parties (Butchart and others 2010)

• Attempts to reduce impacts at backcountry campsites by closing them result in greater impacts.

• Limiting use to provide greater opportunities for solitude in wilderness, results in increased congestion and decreased visitor satisfaction in some areas.

All of these incidents, and many others, have been the subjects of many planning exercises, but in the words of Aaron Wildavsky, “Planning fails everywhere it is attempted” (1973). In many cases, the failures are not due to some operational defect, such as a lack of data, not enough information, an incorrect procedure, but rather to systemic or structural problems with the planning process itself. These problems have been detailed elsewhere by a variety of authors, but rise from fundamental views of planning as a predominantly scientific, technical exercise requiring the application of expertise.


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