Protected Area Governance: Key to Advancing Conservation in the Midst of Armed Conflict – The Cases of Alto Fragua Indiwasi National Park and La Planada Nature Reserve in Colombia
Publisher: Freiburg University
Author(s): Julia Gorricho
Date: 2018
Topics: Governance, Land, Peace Agreements
Countries: Colombia
Protected areas constitute central strategies for the conservation of most biodiverse places in the world. These biodiversity hotspots, as well as the protected areas that contribute to their conservation, have been affected by armed conflict since the end of WWII. Yet, the impact of armed conflict on protected area governance along with the type of protected area governance arrangements and institutions that emerge and operate during wartime are still little understood. Building on the literatures on protected area governance and wartime social orders, this research makes a contribution to the protected area governance research agenda by examining how armed conflict impacts and transforms protected area governance. It also identifies the strategies that protected area stakeholders adopt in contexts of violent conflict to be able to continue with conservation efforts. Drawing from a neo-institutionalist understanding of protected area governance, this research develops and applies an analytical framework to examine how the constitutive elements of protected area governance systems (i.e. actors, resource attributes and institutions) are transformed by armed conflict. Using two protected areas in Colombia as case studies, this research argues that protected area governance does not disappear but is transformed by armed conflict. Furthermore, it provides significant evidence on how the transformation of protected area governance systems allows protected area managers to achieve certain conservation results in the midst of armed conflict through the adoption of specific strategies. However, whether the efforts and strategies adopted for the transformation of protected area governance systems during armed conflict open up possibilities for the protected area community to gain a more active role in peace building efforts remains an open question.