This open access book applies a social ecological systems (SES) lens to conservation-based development in Patagonia, bringing together authors with historical, contemporary, and future-oriented ...perspectives in order to increase understanding of the social and environmental implications of nature-based tourism and other forms of conservation-based territorial development. By focusing on Patagonia (as a region) and its various forms of conservation-based development, this book contributes one of the first collections of South American based lessons and will be valuable to researchers and practitioners, both locally and around the world, seeking to better understand complex interconnections between social and ecological environments, and pursue a similar path to resilience and sustainability.
What the Gringos Brought Louder, Elena; Bosak, Keith
Conservation & society/Conservation & Society,
04/2019, Letnik:
17, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Privately Protected Areas (PPAs) are a growing trend in conservation and have been promoted by global environmental institutions such as the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) ...as an essential component for achieving conservation targets. PPAs are on the rise worldwide and particularly in Chile, where neoliberal reform has created new spaces in conservation management for private individuals and civil society. However, little empirical research examines their effects on local people. Drawing from critiques of the neoliberalisation of nature and the intertwining of capitalism and conservation, this research explores the case of a particular PPA in Chile, Patagonia Park; asking specifically: what are the impacts of this particular PPA on local residents? Based on in-depth, semi-structured interviews, this research finds that the park has been detrimental to local livelihoods, disrupted systems of production, and elicited emotional responses of pain, sadness, and loss. The relation between the park and community has been characterised by a lack of information and understanding, and reveals deeply contrasting views of nature held by park administrators and local residents. We find that, in this case, the social impacts of the PPA are similar to those that have long been documented and criticised in state-run, ‘fortress conservation’ models. When we look closely at the history of many state-run protected areas, we see that private capital has always played a central role in conservation. This research suggests then that there may be little truly novel about PPAs in terms of both process of development, and the ways that local people experience them.
In this article, we bring together understandings of the spectacle of nature and spectacle 2.0 to show how people are invited to participate in the spectacular production of nature. Recent work has ...expanded on the Debordian notion of spectacle, interrogating the ways people do not just consume images, but help to produce and enact spectacle: spectacle 2.0. Building on this, we argue that in conservation, consumers increasingly interact with the spectacle through digital and real-life means, thereby reinforcing and reproducing the nature that is being transformed. We term this process the spectacle of nature 2.0. We present the case of Valle Chacabuco in southern Chile, which has been transformed into Patagonia National Park. This process has been welcomed by the international conservation community, but has incited tension and conflict with local residents who have their own very different sense of Valle Chacabuco. Through the production of spectacle, park discourses highlight the heroic role of Northern conservationists, obscuring the underlying capitalist logics of the project and the social tensions it has created. We argue that it was possible to unmake/remake Valle Chacabuco from once a place of livelihoods, ranching, and production to a place of unspoiled nature through the recruitment of digital and material interaction. In the process, environmental politics and activism are channeled back into the dominant underlying capitalist ideology. Patagonia National Park is now a place that the park promoters claim belongs to the world, its nature and culture to be consumed and reproduced by environmentalists and tourists.
This paper considers increasing global reliance on privately protected areas (PPAs) and associated nature-based tourism (NBT). A targeted literature review was guided by three research questions, ...which sought to understand how neoliberal concepts and dynamics manifest in private forms of conservation; how private forms of conservation have manifested in Chile; and, how Chileans' attitudes towards their government's neoliberal policies might affect their expectations of PPAs. The search strategy resulted in 284 resources. Three dimensions of neoliberal approaches to PPAs emerged from the data each highlighting specific vulnerabilities: a loss of the social embeddedness of nature; an imposition of global, capital dynamics; and conflicting discourses and assumptions. Results suggest that, in order to improve long-term support and integration of PPAs and NBT, greater attention needs to be given to social well-being outcomes (including equity and justice concerns), building of social capital, and the preservation of local identities and histories. Additionally, regional and PPA-specific land-use planning needs to incorporate greater public engagement, cross-jurisdictional coordination, and transparent and inclusive decision-making.
This research explores the nexus of climate change and socio-economic change with a focus on the significance that local conditions (physical and cultural) can have in influencing vulnerability and ...resilience. In order to better examine how climate change impacts interact with socio-economic changes and are experienced at the community scale, this research integrates household survey data with geospatial processing techniques. Two comparative study sites, one rural and one urban, were selected in the region of Ladakh; an area experiencing severe climate change impacts alongside rapid socioeconomic and political changes. Archival data was used to supplement survey responses and provide additional historical context. Survey responses were then combined with Hot Spot and Kernel density analysis in ArcGIS to identify areas of high and low spatial concentration and correlation. While climate change is widely perceived in many Western Himalayan mountain communities, impacts of climate change as an issue of high importance are moderated by other pressing socioeconomic, cultural, and political concerns. The role of locality and place-based themes such as community attachment, social cohesion, and sense of place, emerged as influential factors in enhancing social resilience and thereby reducing dimensions of local vulnerability to climate change impacts.
Maps can take a variety of forms from simple symbols to complex, interactive layers of information. Given their widespread use and potency as symbols and tools, maps are often assumed to be objective ...representations of reality. However, map creation involves an implicit privileging of certain perspectives. That maps are actually socio-political constructions has implications for how they can be used, by whom and for what ends. This paper explores the process of creating National Geographic's Crown of the Continent geotourism mapguide. Geotourism mapguides, like all maps, are influenced by social and political factors and thus act as a persuasive form of communication and an articulation of particular values despite being founded on scientific triangulation. In this paper we deconstruct the Crown of the Continent mapguide in order to shed light on why these maps should be viewed as socially constructed representations of space that are power-laden and have the potential to create a place-myth for the Crown of the Continent that is not representative of the values of the people of the region.
Affect is a construct that has received substantial scholarly attention in non-representational theory and other fields. This study focuses on human-wilderness relations through a ...non-representational theoretical lens to reveal insights into the concept of affect. Research indicates that societal and cultural forces play an influential role in wilderness relationships. A focus is lacking on how wilderness may affectively influence, build, or sustain human - wilderness relations through emotional registers. Fifteen people participated in a study of how wilderness affect occurs in everyday life. For one week following a visit to a wilderness area, participants kept a diary and camera to take notes and photographs when certain feelings formed. The researcher augmented the diary-photograph, diary-interview method with exemplary and evocative anecdotes. The results show three ways the emergence of affect becomes perceptible. It offers an example of how affect-oriented inquiry is carried out and informs further affect-oriented outdoor recreation research. Conceptually, wilderness affect appreciates and responds to differences that emerge through relations with wild nature. The study furthers inquiry into emotional meaning making via human - wilderness relations.
Following global trends, nature-based tourism in the Aysén region of Chilean Patagonia has grown dramatically in recent years. This growth has challenged traditional economic activities derived from ...commodification of natural resources, including ranching, logging, and mining. A qualitative research study conducted in 2016–2017 used semi-structured interviews and focus groups to investigate how local residents perceived the changes that accompany rural development around the nationally protected area of Cerro Castillo, projected to be one of the region’s protected areas that will drive economic development through tourism in coming decades. Results identified several themes reminiscent of the rural transition that took place in the western United States in the mid to late-1900s. During this era, the remote, rugged, wild frontier lands of the sparsely populated intermountain west shifted from an economy grounded in extractive industries to a service-based one, geared towards amenity migrants and tourists seeking recreation opportunities and closeness to nature. Patterns and lessons are drawn between similar transitions across geographies and timescales, which may assist planners with understandings of trends and tendencies as tourism continues to influence rural transition in Patagonia.
Sustainable tourism has grown rapidly in the last 35 years, both on the ground and as an area of academic study. However, the results of sustainable tourism development have proven to be mixed, with ...many unwanted outcomes stemming from its development in destinations around the world. Recent academic approaches to studying sustainable tourism development are increasingly turning towards social–ecological systems (SESs) thinking in order to embrace the inherent complexity and rapid change found in today’s world. This stems partly from an understanding that tourism is a complex social–ecological phenomenon, and that its success relies on understanding its dynamics in a given location. While SES approaches to understanding complex phenomena such as tourism are well-developed, they tend to be resource-intensive and unwieldy in rapidly changing environments, such as those found in sustainable tourism destinations. Therefore, we hypothesized that a novel form of concept mapping based on an SES perspective and the paradigm of resilience thinking could address limitations in conceptualizing and understanding sustainable tourism as part of a larger SES. In this paper, we outline our method thoroughly, then evaluate concept mapping by assessing its effectiveness as a rapid assessment tool that enhances systems understanding while being easy to use in the field, privileging local knowledge, and emphasizing relationships within the SES. We focus on the method and its applicability rather than the results of the maps themselves. Through a case study in Ometepe, Nicaragua, our results showed that concept mapping revealed key drivers and values within the SES and emphasized the value of participatory and transdisciplinary tourism research. Our study demonstrates that concept mapping is an effective method for rapidly assessing the complexity of a tourism destination in a manner that is accessible, adaptable, and achievable.
In the rural American West, a region rich in natural resources and scenic amenities yet increasingly experiencing rapid demographic and economic shifts, place-based collaboration is endorsed as a ...means to find mutual resolutions to issues such as land use disputes, natural resource management, and socioeconomic development. However, assessing place-based collaborative models in view of their results is challenging due to differing criteria, expectations, and motivations supporting the collaborative partnership framework. This research uses the case study of Montana's Mineral County Challenge, a rural place-based collaborative development project, to make critical inquiries into the long-term efficacy of such approaches. Given that place-based collaborative projects are grounded in geographical traditions, the focus of this assessment is on the role and implications of scale in determining the trajectory of the collaborative process. This is accomplished by evaluating the Mineral County Challenge to (1) recognize the material and non-material outcomes of collaborative development models and, (2) examine the implications and role of scale in catalyzing or hindering the deliberation and realization of these collaborative endeavors. In doing so, the authors emphasize the spatial and temporal constraints including lack of accountability, administrative formalities, and other institutional intricacies which evolved at the federal level to reduce the overall capacity for local and state-level stakeholders to execute long-term project deliverables. In overcoming these barriers, scale must be reconfigured to account for the conflicting conceptual and operational discrepancies that manifest at different levels of stakeholder exchange to derail and disempower place-based collaboration.
•We evaluate a case study of rural place-based collaborative development in Montana.•Long-term deployment and validation of collaborative goals is a large challenge.•Gaps in communication and dialogue is high between the local and the federal level.•It is important to recognize the role of scale in collaborative development.•Scale can be used to leverage local representation in multilateral collaboration.
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