POLICY CHALLENGES TO MANAGEMENT EFFECTIVENESS
ASSESSMENT (MEA) OF PROTECTED AREAS

( Paper presented at the 4th Regional Protected Areas Management Conference jointly conducted by the IUCN-WCPA, Birdlife International, ASEAN Center for Biodiversity and Sabah Parks, held at Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia, 23-27 April 2007.)

Ben S. Malayang III

INTRODUCTION

Hockings and Phillips (1999) highlight the importance of assessing the effectiveness of Protected Area (PA) management. They suggest three reasons for why such assessments are to be done: (1) to ensure that PAs are delivering their expected environmental, social and economic benefits, to those intended to have them; (2) to achieve a high level of complementation and synchrony in pursuing PA objectives across a complex of PAs; and (3) to better fulfill the cascade of global to local expectations on PAs.

They describe the key elements of robust PA-MEAs. They identify issues attending the purposes, objectives, methods and conduct of PA-MEAs and propose strategies for overcoming these issues.

This paper identifies a number of policy challenges to mainstream PA-MEAs. It offers an approach to meeting the challenges, which takes into account doing MEAs in different sites and areas where socio-cultural, economic, environmental and political millieus may highly differ (e.g., across countries in Southeast Asia). The approach involves identifying policy options (to achieve mainstreaming) using multisector processes and appropriate frameworks for understanding the challenges. The paper does not seek so much to propose particular options but merely suggests how options may be identified.

POLICY CHALLENGES

Hockings and Phillips describe the science needed to do good MEAs. Taking off from their work, the next question to ask is: what would be the policies needed to institutionalize (and routinize) good MEAs across local to global management and governance of PAs?

I think at least three:

1. Policies to increase public demand and value for PAs.

Unless PAs are widely valued for what they are (and for the services they offer), their management (and even presence) would not have the public constituency needed to attract the attention of political leaders and policy makers. They will remain in the bottom rungs of a country’s (or peoples’) political priority that except perhaps for lip service (that can have high value in symbolic terms or platitudinal politics) they would not really be attended to by decision makers. Investing on PA policies (and on effective PA management) would not make sense to policy jugglers and optimizers when there are no real political returns to the investments.

2. Policies to put value to MEAs.

In the same sense that investments on PAs are directly related to their value and to the breadth of their constituency, MEAs, too, require value to a large constituency in order to increase the “demand” for them. The “supply” of (and need for) good MEAs would be opportuned (stimulated and pushed) by their high demand.

MEA values are linked to PA values. But its conduct as a specific component of PA management shall need to stand on its own merit. It needs to acquire an autonomous value in PA management because, as Hockings and Phillips would stress, it enriches and improves the robustness of PA management as a science. It appears crucial that in order to prompt investments on MEAs, their value is increased.

3. Policies to enable the technical and institutional development of MEAs.

As the value of PAs increase and the demand for good MEAs rise, there would consequently be an increase in the demand for MEA techniques and tools. This can be expected to occasion the need for a “supply” response, in particular for MEA R&D, to improve the design, methods and procedures of robust biosocial analyses that Hockings and Phillips have identified as being crucial to doing good MEAs. Enabling policies shall need to focus on giving higher returns to investments for MEA R&D, linking these to PA services and to the value of MEAs as a component of good PA management.

Governance Context. These three policy challenges would seem to share (at least in most of Southeast Asia) a common governance context. This is in terms of how PA objectives cascade (from global to local) across different sectors of governance (public and non-public, i.e., civil society and local communities). The objectives are not always shared across the sectors of governance. Economic objectives (e.g., revenues and livelihoods) may not figure similarly in the order of priorities of government, civil society or local communities. Governments will likely place revenues first over livelihoods and if there are no revenues to be had from PAs, their investments on PAs would be low. Civil society and communities on the other hand may place higher premium to PAs supporting local livelihoods. And so here, there could be a potential (if not already widespread) mismatch of cascades of economic objectives on PAs, among managers situated in different tiers of PA governance, associated with different sectors of governance.

The same could be true for cascades of environmental and cultural objectives. As the cascade moves down the tier, the competition for who shall capture PA services (e.g., natural resources) will likely heighten among higher and lower governance bodies (e.g., between the state and local communities). And the tension may vary across sectors of governance. The services of interest and of value of different sectors (e.g., macrobiotic and microbiotic interests) may also differ across the tiers and sectors of governance. Cultural objectives and aspects of culture that are of interests of different sectors may be increasingly stressed as the tier of governance goes down. And this may involve different reasons and substance of the interests: the government for political reason, and communities for self-identity.

Figure 1 illustrates this possible context of the three policy challenges. The pointed arrows show the direction of how certain objectives are given more value and priority as different objectives cascade down the tier of governance, across public and non-public sectors of governance.

Figure 1. Governance context of policy challenges on MEAs

POLICY OPTIONS

Addressing the three policy challenges will require proper recognizance of the different millieus of PAs and PA management (a point stressed by Hocking and Phillips). Thus, it would seem a better tack for this paper that rather than prescribe a menu of options for each policy challenge, an approach to address them is instead proposed. (Options are presented as mere illustrations and examples of the outcomes of the approach.)

The approach is one that seems very doable across the different governance situations of PAs across Southeast Asia. It involves two elements:

1. The use of multisector processes to identify the options (a process of participatory policy formation), which takes advantage of the region’s strong civil society presence, and

2. The use of clear frameworks for understanding the challenges to provide a common conceptual construction of the challenges among otherwise divergent stakeholder interests on (and views of) the region’s PAs.

A. Examples of a Multisector Process

Several processes may be considered. Among them:

• The Rapid Assessment (RA) Process. A group of experts on diverse areas of study and concerns relevant to PAs, MEAs and policy, are made to do a quick but rigorous rapid assessment of the appropriateness of alternative frameworks and on what policies may seem to meet the challenges. Data and views on PAs and on PA management in an area of interest (i.e., a site or a complex of sites) shall be quickly collected but extensively triangulated by the experts across different stakeholders in different tiers and sectors of PA governance. Then their findings shall be presented to larger bodies of stakeholders for participatory and collective review, validation and analysis. Policy options to address the challenges shall be identified by the stakeholders together. These are then submitted to policy makers for adoption.

• The National Capacity Self-Assessment (NCSA) Process. Recent NCSA projects in many countries in Asia and Europe involved the mobilization of thematic experts (on biodiversity conservation, climate change, and land degradation) working together with similar thematic experts of relevant government and research institutions of the country. The projects aimed to identify key actions to be done in the country to meet national obligations to three relevant multilateral agreements (i.e., the Convention on Biological Diversity, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, and the Convention on Combating Desertification). The combined team of thematic and agency experts conducted the review of relevant data and of the progress of past actions. In the process, the team referred to and consulted similar experts of different public, civil society and research organizations. The combined team did the analysis and identification of needed actions but had these actions reviewed, validated and recommended for adoption in the country by larger multisector groups.

• The Millenium Assessment (MA) Process. Experts from different disciplines, regions, countries and institutions were invited to do collaborative assessment of how human well-being is influenced by changing drivers of ecosystem services, globally and in different regions and sites in the world. The process involved experts using different lenses of theory and empirical evidence engaging each other to adopt common views on the conditions of the planet and on the likely outcomes of changes in these conditions. Another set of experts representing different disciplines and institutions of national and international governance (international organizations, governments, academe, NGOs, others) were subsequently engaged to review and validate the findings of the first group. The results of the process were consolidated and offered to national and international policy makers for consideration or adoption.

• The Adaptive Co-Management (ACM) Process. This process involves different stakeholders of resource systems directly assessing their situation, the situation of their resource base, and how they may together improve them. Community members, civil society organizations and representatives of government agencies identify and assess their options together, then accordingly accommodate each other’s interests and organizational constraints to undertake a common action to achieve common aims. Results of actions are collectively assessed and the process is repeated, this time incorporating further adjustments to how the stakeholders will do things together.

The processes described above involve different actors doing data gathering, validation and analysis, and eventually producing the intended products of the process (e.g., policy recommendations or actions). But they all work, albeit under different constraints and circumstances. And they are done collaboratively and collectively by entities that have otherwise diverse interests on the process. The key is to select which one might work best in different sites and countries where they are to be done.

B. Examples of a Framework

• The Sustainable Development Framework. PAs, MEAs & MEA R&D are assumed to have three interlinked dimensions: ecological, economic, and socio-cultural. Any policy option to mainstream MEAs shall need to add ecological, economic and socio-cultural values to PAs, MEAs and MEA R&D; else, the policy options will not result to fully mainstreaming MEAs.

• The Millennium Assessment Frammework. PAs generate ecosystem services that support or threaten wellbeing. Policy options to mainstream MEAs and stimulate MEA R&D shall need to focus on expanding and improving PA services that bolster human wellbeing (or reduce the threats to it). Otherwise, the likelihood of MEA mainstreaming will be low.

• The Equimarginality Framework. MEAs are rational exercises. They are done only to the extent that doing them will produce outcomes that are of value to stakeholders (which include community members, political leaders, scientists, and PA managers). Investments on MEAs and on developing techniques and tools to do them will be directly related to the value of (and the size of the constituency giving value to) the PAs. Policy options to mainstream MEAs shall need to focus on widening the constituency and the value they ascribe to PAs, and to the gains to be clearly had from doing MEAs and MEA R&D.

C. Examples of Policy Options

Policy options can be expected to surface from multisector processes that use certain frameworks for identifying the options. Some examples of these options include:

• Options to put value to PAs

• Policies that widen the distribution of clear bio-cultural and material benefits from PAs for their stakeholders across tiers and sectors of PA governance.
• Policies that promote the proper pricing of PA services, and to enable the emergence of market-based system of cross-subsidies by off-site users of the services for on-site producers of the services.
• Policies that mobilize PAs as tools and components of strategies to control risks and vulnerabilities (such as those arising from climate change).
• Policies that reduce conflicts over statutory and customary governance of PA sites.
• Policies that generate incentives to PA managers (professional and communities).

Examples:

a. On-site communities shall have priority access to the sustainable utilization of PA ecosystem services according to their tenurial traditions and preferred options of resources and resource uses.
b. Off-site communities benefiting from PA services shall subsidize the delivery of social services for on-site communities and this shall be pegged against the quantity, quality and value of the off-site benefits they gain and enjoy.
c. PA ecosystem services (including those that mitigate risks and reduce human vulnerabilities) shall be protected and managed for economy of scale; PA boundaries shall be delineated and the PAs managed according to the contiguity of PA ecosystems.
d. ENR legislation affecting PAs shall be harmonized; legal instruments shall be crafted and developed to harmonize and resolve conflicts on the enforcement of statutory and customary ENR regulations affecting PA services.
e. Professional managers and communities engaged in managing PAs shall be properly compensated for their services in protecting and developing the ecosystem services of PAs

• Options to put value to MEAs

• Policies that link the value of MEAs to the value of PAs.
• Policies that link the value of MEAs to reducing risks and vulnerabilities on human wellbeing.
• Policies that link public investments on PAs to their productivity and the extent they achieve the cascade of objectives on them.

Examples:

a. Material, professional and social compensations for PA managers (professionals and communities engaged in PA management) shall be linked to the degree that cascades of PA objectives (ecological, economic, socio-cultural, justice, R&V mitigation, and political, from global to local) are met.
b. Government budgetary support for PAs shall be directly linked to the degree that their cascades of objectives are met.
c. Compensations and budget support for PAs shall be pegged against the degree that their services have a clearly demonstrated value higher than alternative land uses of the PAs.

• Options to put value on MEA R&D

• Policies that increase public investments on improving PA management and intensifying MEA R&D (including R&D on risk and vulnerability assessments)
• Policies that encourage private sector investments on improving PA management and on intensifying MEA R&D.
• Policies that provide incentives for good PA management and MEA R&D.

Examples:

a. Government budget support for PAs shall include allocations for M&E (i.e., in order to determine the values gained from their management); it shall also include allocations for developing appropriate tools for M&E and MEAs.
b. The national science and ENR-relevant budgets shall include allocations for M&E (and in particular, for MEA) R&D; it shall include allocations for developing methods that link MEAs to risk and vulnerability assessments within PAs and beyond PAs; regional intiatives to this effect shall be wellcomed and pursued.
c. State science institutions shall allocate publication space for PA M&E and MEA findings, including on how PA services link with risk and vulnerability mitigation; private R&D institutions shall be encouraged to do the same.
d. National CBD Country Reports shall include participatory and third party MEAs.

CONCLUSIONS

It would seem that mainstreaming MEAs would require a complex of policies that address different concerns about PAs and on their prominence as both environmental and political imperatives of national development.

First, MEAs are management techniques and tools. Their use and the adherence to doing them will likely depend upon how much PAs are valued by their constituency and by society in general.

Second, unless PAs and good (i.e., participatory and robust) MEAs acquire high political value, policy investments on them will likely remain low.

Third, a higher demand for MEAs (occasioned by higher values for PAs) will likely fail to translate to mainstreaming them unless the demand is properly matched by a good supply of techniques and tools for doing them.

And fourth, because interests on PAs and on the objectives of PA management could cascade down tiers of PA governance across sectors of governance, identifying and developing policy options to mainstream MEAs are likely to be difficult. But because they would be crucial to improving PAs, they would need to be done.

 

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