National Parks as Common Pool Resources: Scale, Equity and Community

Abstract

"Conflicts between parks and people can be understood in terms of different ideas about the spatial scale at which these resources should be considered to be common. The reservation of land by the state in National Parks represents an assumption of common interests at the national scale, but also reflect international (global) interests in biodiversity. Local resource use is conventionally prevented. This paper will provide a framework for analysing different kinds of use values (direct consumptive and non-consumptive use, indirect use and non-use values) of the species and ecosystems contained within national parks at local, national and international scale. It argues that the establishment of a property regime that excludes local consumptive use, and local resource users, is likely to persist as inequitable. Failure to balance resource uses between actors at different scales is a threat to the sustainability of protected area policy. New institutions are needed that link actors across scales (from global to local), and which link the enlarged community for whom the biodiversity resource is held in common."