Why local people do not support conservation: Community perceptions of marine protected area livelihood impacts, governance and management in Thailand
Nathan James Bennett
abstract
Conservation success is often predicated on local support for conservation which is strongly influenced by perceptions of the impacts that are experienced by local communities and opinions of management and governance. Marine protected areas (MPAs) are effective conservation and fisheries management tools that can also have a broad array of positive and negative social, economic, cultural, and political impacts on local communities. Drawing on results from a mixed-methods study of communities on the Andaman Coast of Thailand, this paper explores perceptions of MPA impacts on community livelihood resources (assets) and outcomes as well as MPA governance and management. The area includes 17 National Marine Parks (NMPs) that are situated near rural communities that are highly dependent on coastal resources. Interview participants perceived NMPs to have limited to negative impacts on fisheries and agricultural livelihoods and negligible benefits for tourism livelihoods. Perceived impacts on livelihoods were felt to result from NMPs undermining access to or lacking support for development of cultural, social, political, financial, natural, human, physical, and political capital assets. Conflicting views emerged on whether NMPs resulted in negative or positive marine or terrestrial conservation outcomes. Perceptions of NMP governance and management processes were generally negative. These results point to some necessary policy improvements and actions to ameliorate: the relationship between the NMP and communities, NMP management and governance processes, and socio-economic and conservation outcomes.
1. Introduction
Marine protected areas (MPAs) are an important instrument for conservation and fisheries management. MPAs can protect habitats, ecosystem structure, functioning and integrity, and species diversity, richness, size and density [1–3]. These conservation and fisheries benefits are particularly evident in “no-take” MPAs [4].Their import as a management tool has lead to increasing numbers of MPAs around the world – more than 6800 MPAs covering 2.86% of Exclusive Economic Zones in 2010 [5] – and global commitments to scale up the coverage of MPAs to 10% aerial coverage by 2020 [6].
The management and conservation benefits of MPAs can also lead to positive outcomes for local communities through spillover of fish into local fisheries [7–12], mitigation of climatic and environmental threats [13], and tourism livelihood benefits [14–17]. Yet MPAs have also been criticized for leading to negative social, economic, cultural and political impacts for local people and communities (see literature review below). This is problematic since support for and the success of MPAs is predicated on positive local perceptions of socio-economic and ecological outcomes in many locations [18–21]. Support is also dependent on perceptions of the effectiveness and quality of management and governance policies, institutions, and processes [22–25].
Situated between Malaysia and Myanmar and facing the Bay of Bengal, the Andaman coast of Thailand is an area of high biodiversity and ecological importance [26]. Within the 116,000 km2
of marine area, there are important areas of seagrass, coral reefs, and mangroves [27,28]. However, the ecological health of the area is threatened by overexploitation and destructive fishing, degradation and loss of habitats, and pollution and fisheries are in decline [28–30]. There are a number of MPAs in the area, including several smaller community-based MPAs [31], one