Title: Partnerships for Protection: New Strategies for Planning and Management for Protected Areas
Abstract: Partnerships for Protection: New Strategies for Planning and Management for Protected Areas, Sue Stolton and Nigel Dudley (eds), London, Earthscan, 1999, 283 pp., £18.95 Britain has had an internationally renowned approach to the protection of landscape and wildlife for over half a century. Since the late 1970s planners have been issued with various forms of policy guidance to consider the needs of wildlife in site development. Yet our biodiversity, almost uniformly, is in steady decline. The esteem for environmental issues and the enjoyment of the countryside have never been higher, yet still there are bitter confrontations between conservation and economic interests at the site level. Why do these paradoxes occur? Some would cite weaknesses in legislation, but current wisdom suggests two additional but less obvious causes. First, despite many farmers' and developers' views that conservationists have been greedy in their claims upon land, protected areas have generally been insu ciently extensive. Sites are rarely large enough to maintain the integrity of hydrological systems, or of core and bu. er habitats, for example. Second, despite our recent emphasis on consensus building, there is still too little inclusion of local stakeholders in the formulation of conservation strategies. What is presently very apparent, and is strongly endorsed by Partnerships for Protection, is that these patterns are not confined to the UK or even to the economically advanced nations. The need to practise the 'wise use' of farmland, forests and fisheries across large spatial units, with the active engagement of local people, is now universally acknowledged. Thus, while, as this book points out, over 13 million square kilometres of the world's surface carries some kind of o cial protective designation, species extinctions proceed apace-the product of habitat fragmentation, weak land use controls, ine. ectually enforced designations ('paper parks') and lack of local support for management frameworks. In spite of vast cultural di. erences, the comparability of experience between the rubber tappers of Amazonia and the withy growers of Somerset is, in many respects, quite striking. Stolton and Dudley have assembled a wide range of papers from an impressive Reld of international experts, on Rve key themes. First, the contributors review the state of play on protected area designations and the areas which are more or less eectively covered by these. …
Publication Year: 2002
Publication Date: 2002-03-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 60
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