By Pratap Chatterjee
MONTREAL, Oct 14 1996 (IPS)

The deep orange flowers of the wild cinnamon greet visitors driving through the forests of Kerinci- Seblat park in central Sumatra.

More than just a pleasant welcome to the tourist who has found his or her way to one of Indonesia’s more remote parks, these trees are a source of income for the small communities that live at the edge of the protected areas.

A decade ago, park managers probably would have banned local residents from entering the forest to collect the fragrant products of the tree and perhaps even have evicted them from their homes.

But in recent years, thinking among scientists and policymakers has changed radically, fueled by the realisation that support for the local communities like cinnamon gatherers to continue their traditions is critical for the protection of forests.

Today, local environmental groups, including WARSI based in the town of Bangko, are working with communities on a multi-year program with community to map the local use of the Kerinci-Seblat park to ensure that these communities can continue these economic activities.

Indeed, the thinking is that the communities that live within protected forest areas should be allowed to stay exactly where they have always lived. And protected areas have repeatedly been shown to be major sources of income.

The U.S. National Parks Service reports that 11 of its national parks each generate close to a billion dollars per year in revenues. In Australia, another study showed that eight protected areas were responsible for generating 1.6 billion dollars in income, while Belize has earned as much as a quarter of its national income from tourism connected to protected areas.

But as large as these sums are, there is no guarantee that the money reaches local communities, as much of it may be paid out in fees to state or national governments.

To the contrary, stories abound of local people being evicted from parks in eastern and southern Africa in order to “protect” wild animals, birds, and plants or to make it more pleasing to tourists.

This can have disastrous effects. For example three-quarters of the animal protein in the diets of people in Zaire comes from wild sources, while 40 percent of the diet in Botswana comes from animal protein produced by wild sources. A ban on subsistence hunting would have a devastating impact on local people who depend on these wild areas for basic survival.

“If local people are against you, there is no future in your park,” said Adrian Phillips, who chairs the Commission on National Parks and Protected Areas (CNPPA) of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which is currently holding its World Conservation Congress here.

Indeed, eviction can send local people straight into the eager arms of poachers, who exploit their knowledge to catch rare or endangered species to the detriment of the park, local people and, eventually, the tourism industry.

Local residents can easily be enlisted to help defend protected areas, and they often are the best suited to such jobs.

“Local people can be brought in to work for the benefit of the marine areas. Take beachcombers who collect by the sea. They can easily be trained to supplement their income by guiding tourists around,” said Graeme Kelleher, an Australian who heads the CNPPA’s marine programme.

The solution to some problems, however, is not always so simple.

What if mega-trawlers are dipping their vast nets into the ocean to scoop up hundreds of thousands of tons of fish regardless of whether or not the fish is on an endangered species list?

Well, Kelleher said, in such situations the local fisherfolk may have to work with the armed forces, if need be, to keep trawler boats out of protected areas, as has been done in the Philippines.

Nor is local economic activity always sustainable. But there are often ways to make them so.

Costa Rican farmers living in the delta of the Terraba and Sierpe rivers, for example, were overcutting mangrove forests in order to earn a living after their previous employers — large multinational banana companies — abandoned local plantations.

IUCN and other international groups came in to teach farmers how to improve the efficiency of processing mangrove timber and charcoal, which allowed them to sell products at a higher price. The initiative was so successful that the community, which now celebrates an annual “Mangrove Festival” to re-plant mangroves, has pushed for the creation of a natural resource management plan for the river delta.

Today, the CNPPA’s draft guidelines for national system planning for protected areas includes a list of criteria for community involvement that recommend assessment of local peoples needs, as well as the impact of new infrastructure and services.

In addition to calling for consultations with local people in the creation and management of protected areas, the guidelines recommend supplementary training to make sustainable economic activities more productive.

And the examples of such parks are growing.

In northern Canada, the Inuit are responsible for the creation of three national parks in the eastern Arctic under the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement, while aboriginal peoples in the northern territories of Australia are involved in creating the Kakadu national park under the Indigenous Peoples Protected Areas programme.

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