Side Event
Participative management in protected areas: evaluating governmental experiences
Organizer
Instituto Brasileiro do Meio Ambiente e dos Recursos Naturais Renováveis - IBAMA
Date and Time
23 March 2006 18:30 - 20:15
The public policies for conservation of nature have emphasized the creation of protected areas and the handling of natural resources. Notwithstanding the adopted strategy, in many cases, these strategies culminate in the application of models based on other realities in places whose communities keep specific characteristics and culture. In order to prevent any conflicts, to strengthen the political power of local communities and guarantee the citizenship’s right in these communities, in the last decades, the governmental organizations for the environment and non-governmental organizations have supported the social participation of different actors in the management of protected areas. In this sense, it has been given priority to the enhancement of the protected areas as an element for the interaction between Estate and society, in which, the cultural diversity of such groups is evident and the improvement of community’s welfare is added to conservation of nature. Following this world effort, it has bean noticed some actions by governmental agencies in implementing these politics. Due to this reason, when the Eighth Ordinary Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP 8) promotes among the side events, the round table “Participative management in protected areas: evaluating governmental experiences”, this action makes possible: (a) to strength the incorporation of this subject to the governmental agendas; (b) to stimulate the participants to join in international forums about the subject; and (c) to acknowledge the participative management as an instrument to make stronger the communities and respect to the local cultures. Therefore, in this round table there will be presentations prepared by professionals of governmental agencies from Latin America, Africa and Asia, and the mediation of Ecosystems Director of Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Resources (Ibama). Each speaker will have twenty minutes (about seven pages) to give further details about his country experience in the subject and outline a general view of his continent. In the end, the moderator will make a brief of all presentations, emphasizing the experience of Brazilian Government, and will start the debate with the auditory, if there is still enough time. Besides that, it will be distributed the CD-ROM “Experiences in participative management of protected areas”, in which there are articles prepared by experts from many countries.