Relationship-scale Conservation

Conservation can occur anywhere regardless of scale, political jurisdiction, or landownership. We present a framework to help managers at protected areas practice conservation at the scale of relationships. We focus on relationships between stakeholders and protected areas and between managers and other stakeholders. We provide a synthesis of key natural resources literature and present a case example to support our premise and recommendations. The purpose is 4-fold: 1) discuss challenges and threats to conservation and protected areas; 2) outline a relationship-scale approach to address conservation threats; 3) describe the tools and techniques that can be used to implement this approach; and 4) present a case example from rural Alaska, USA, to illustrate relationship-scale conservation. Our case example illustrates how aspects of this approach to conservation were applied to address a wildlife population decline. Tools needed to implement relationship-scale conservation include 1) collecting and documenting narratives of place; 2) measuring and monitoring trust and commitment; and 3) identifying and mitigating threats. We recommend that planners and managers, working with their research partners, redefine and refocus their goals and objectives to include these practices. Doing so will enable them to gain substantial applied knowledge about their stakeholders and foster and maintain place relationships as desired outcomes of conservation. The ultimate outcome is a better prognosis for long-term global survival of protected areas and biodiversity. Published 2014. This article is a U.S. Government work and is in the public domain in the USA

Reflections on the legitimacy of regional environmental governance: Lessons from Australia's experiment in natural resource management

The regional arrangements emerging for environmental governance in Australia mark a substantial change in the relationship between the state and civil society. Central to these arrangements is a transfer of responsibilities for natural resource management to regional communities. Although partnerships and other collaborative approaches have been embraced as a more democratic and effective means of addressing Australia's environmental problems, the legitimacy of these arrangements has been given insufficient attention. In particular, as central governments have retained significant influence in the setting of regional priorities and the accreditation of regional plans, there is a need to examine the relationships between 'old' and 'new' forms of governing. This paper critically examines the sources of legitimacy that underpin these relationships by drawing on interviews with regional actors in Central Queensland. This analysis demonstrates the hybrid nature of legitimacy, justified via traditional sources of legitimate authority alongside participatory and deliberative norms. This hybridity underlines the importance of attending to all dimensions of legitimacy in the design of governance arrangements. Residual issues of exclusion, and the discounting of community members' substantive concerns, mean that harnessing the mutuality gains derived from local knowledge and experience remains a core challenge for the legitimacy of environmental governance