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Socioeconomic effects of protected areas in Spain across spatial scales and protection levels.

ABSTRACT: Impacts of the legal designation of protected areas (PAs) may have contrasting implications for different stakeholders, and at different spatial scales. In this study, we analysed the organisational perception on the socioeconomic effects of PA designation from all sectors of activity in Spain, accounting for PAs' legal stringency. A semi-structured questionnaire was administered to 68 organisations at national, regional (Andalusia) and local scales (two municipalities in the Almeria province, Andalusia) through an online survey. Local stakeholders and the primary, secondary and tertiary sectors were most concerned about the social and economic impacts of PAs designation on their organisations. By contrast, organisations at the national or regional scales together with public institutions, the quaternary sector and other miscellaneous stakeholders perceived predominantly positive effects. Only national organisations perceived an increase in local social and economic effects from the designation of legally stringent PAs with regard to multiple-use PAs.

SUBMITTER: Rodriguez-Rodriguez D

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6888791 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Socioeconomic effects of protected areas in Spain across spatial scales and protection levels.

Rodríguez-Rodríguez David D López Iván I

Ambio 20190311 1

Impacts of the legal designation of protected areas (PAs) may have contrasting implications for different stakeholders, and at different spatial scales. In this study, we analysed the organisational perception on the socioeconomic effects of PA designation from all sectors of activity in Spain, accounting for PAs' legal stringency. A semi-structured questionnaire was administered to 68 organisations at national, regional (Andalusia) and local scales (two municipalities in the Almeria province, A ...[more]

PMID: 30859399

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Project description:Nature-based tourism has the potential to enhance global biodiversity conservation by providing alternative livelihood strategies for local people, which may alleviate poverty in and around protected areas. Despite the popularity of the concept of nature-based tourism as an integrated conservation and development tool, empirical research on its actual socioeconomic benefits, on the distributional pattern of these benefits, and on its direct driving factors is lacking, because relevant long-term data are rarely available. In a multi-year study in Wolong Nature Reserve, China, we followed a representative sample of 220 local households from 1999 to 2007 to investigate the diverse benefits that these households received from recent development of nature-based tourism in the area. Within eight years, the number of households directly participating in tourism activities increased from nine to sixty. In addition, about two-thirds of the other households received indirect financial benefits from tourism. We constructed an empirical household economic model to identify the factors that led to household-level participation in tourism. The results reveal the effects of local households' livelihood assets (i.e., financial, human, natural, physical, and social capitals) on the likelihood to participate directly in tourism. In general, households with greater financial (e.g., income), physical (e.g., access to key tourism sites), human (e.g., education), and social (e.g., kinship with local government officials) capitals and less natural capital (e.g., cropland) were more likely to participate in tourism activities. We found that residents in households participating in tourism tended to perceive more non-financial benefits in addition to more negative environmental impacts of tourism compared with households not participating in tourism. These findings suggest that socioeconomic impact analysis and change monitoring should be included in nature-based tourism management systems for long-term sustainability of protected areas.

Project description:Traditionally, biodiversity conservation gap analyses have been focused on governmental protected areas (PAs). However, an increasing number of social initiatives in conservation (SICs) are promoting a new perspective for analysis. SICs include all of the efforts that society implements to conserve biodiversity, such as land protection, from private reserves to community zoning plans some of which have generated community-protected areas. This is the first attempt to analyze the status of conservation in Latin America when some of these social initiatives are included. The analyses were focused on amphibians because they are one of the most threatened groups worldwide. Mexico is not an exception, where more than 60% of its amphibians are endemic. We used a niche model approach to map the potential and real geographical distribution (extracting the transformed areas) of the endemic amphibians. Based on remnant distribution, all the species have suffered some degree of loss, but 36 species have lost more than 50% of their potential distribution. For 50 micro-endemic species we could not model their potential distribution range due to the small number of records per species, therefore the analyses were performed using these records directly. We then evaluated the efficiency of the existing set of governmental protected areas and established the contribution of social initiatives (private and community) for land protection for amphibian conservation. We found that most of the species have some proportion of their potential ecological niche distribution protected, but 20% are not protected at all within governmental PAs. 73% of endemic and 26% of micro-endemic amphibians are represented within SICs. However, 30 micro-endemic species are not represented within either governmental PAs or SICs. This study shows how the role of land conservation through social initiatives is therefore becoming a crucial element for an important number of species not protected by governmental PAs.

Project description:AimWe investigate patterns of phylogenetic diversity in relation to species diversity for European birds, mammals and amphibians, to evaluate their congruence and highlight areas of particular evolutionary history. We estimate the extent to which the European network of protected areas (PAs) network retains interesting evolutionary history areas for the three groups separately and simultaneously.LocationEurope.MethodsPhylogenetic (QEPD) and species diversity (SD) were estimated using the Rao's quadratic entropy at 10' resolution. We determined the regional relationship between QEPD and SD for each taxa with a spatial regression model and used the tails of the residuals (QERES) distribution to identify areas of higher and lower QEPD than predicted. Spatial congruence of biodiversity between groups was assessed with Pearson's correlation. A simple classification scheme allowed building a convergence map where a convergent pixel equalled to a QERES value of the same sign for the 3 groups. This convergence map was overlaid to the current PAs network to estimate the level of protection in convergent pixels and compared it to a null expectation built on 1000 randomization of PAs over the landscape.ResultsQERES patterns across vertebrates show a strong spatial mismatch highlighting different evolutionary histories. Convergent areas represent only 2.7% of the Western Palearctic, with only 8.4% of these areas being covered by the current PAs network while a random distribution would retain 10.4% of them. QERES are unequally represented within PAs: areas with higher QEPD than predicted are better covered than expected, while low QEPD areas are undersampled.Main conclusionsPatterns of diversity strongly diverge between groups of vertebrates in Europe. Although Europe has the world's most extensive PAs network, evolutionary history of terrestrial vertebrates is unequally protected. The challenge is now to reconcile effective conservation planning with a contemporary view of biodiversity integrating multiple facets.

Dataset Information

Socioeconomic effects of protected areas in Spain across spatial scales and protection levels.

Publications

Socioeconomic effects of protected areas in Spain across spatial scales and protection levels.

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