A local-scale participatory zoning approach to conflict resolution in protected areas

Protected areas (PAs) commonly involve multiple objectives, rendering zoning increasingly important. However, the generalised zoning of PAs leads to local conflicts, often caused by the scale mismatch between the generalised zoning and the social-ecological systems. Generalised zoning approaches offer only single-scale management practices, hence zoning tends to cover large areas where local social-ecological systems are neglected. This study aims to develop and test a local-scale participatory zoning approach for PAs to resolve local conflicts. The proposed approach is developed using a landscape services framework, starting with a progressive stakeholder analysis to gain a deeper understanding of the local social-ecological system, involving the identification of stakeholders and landscape service typology, differentiating between and categorising stakeholders and investigating relationships between stakeholders. Lastly, facilitate stakeholder collaboration to develop a consensus zoning scheme based on these understandings. This was tested in Baoku Valley (China) to reveal the strengths and limitations of the approach and provide a case for application in other PAs. Eighteen stakeholders and twenty-five landscape services were identified. The stakeholders were divided into three groups according to their preferences for landscape services and the spatial relationships between the three stakeholder groups were identified. A consensus zoning scheme consisting of five zones was then developed by the stakeholders in a workshop. The results suggest that the local-scale participatory zoning approach can help resolve local conflicts in PAs by dividing conflict areas into more precise planning units and providing more fine-scaled management strategies matched to local social-ecological systems.