Thomas O. McShane

Cross-Scale Value Trade-Offs in Managing Social-Ecological Systems: The Politics of Scale in Ruaha National Park, Tanzania

Management of social-ecological systems takes place amidst complex governance processes and cross-scale institutional arrangements that are mediated through politics of scale. Each management scenario generates distinct cross-scale trade-offs in the distribution of pluralistic values. This study explores the hypothesis that conservation-oriented management scenarios generate higher value for international and national scale social organizations, whereas mixed or more balanced management scenarios generate higher value for local scale social organizations. This hypothesis is explored in the management context of Ruaha National Park (RNP), Tanzania, especially the 2006 expansion of RNP that led to the eviction of many pastoralists and farmers. Five management scenarios for RNP, i.e., national park, game reserve, game control area, multiple use area, and open area, are evaluated in a multicriteria decision analytical framework on six valuation criteria: economic welfare; good governance; socio-cultural values; social equity; ecosystem services; and biodiversity protection; and at three spatial scales: local, national, and international. Based upon this evaluation, we discuss the politics of scale that ensue from the implementation of management alternatives with different mixes of conservation and development goals in social-ecological systems.

Taking of rights for natural resource conservation: a discussion about compensation.

Protected areas are the defined spaces where human societies seek to ensure the persistence of those parts of nature that they value. As such, they have changed through time, evolving and expanding from early origins where local resource users sought to prevent outsider access and use, to imperial hunting reserves and sacred forests where local elites metered use of natural resources by nonelites, through the Yellowstone parks for “all” people model, to more recent sustainable use reserves and cultural landscapes. Different categories of protected areas provide different balance points between biodiversity conservation and human use, all require that norms are established and enforced to control access to and meter use of natural resources, and each offers both opportunities and constraints on the active involvement of local people in resource management.