Parks & Wildlife

Costa Rica and South Africa share a common policy of creating national protected areas (NPA) as a way to achieve on-site conservation of key landscapes, ecosystems, and/or species. The Central American and the South African EfD centers are working closely with local authorities to tackle the main difficulties in achieving a sustainable system of NPA.

Costa Rica and South Africa share a common policy of creating national protected areas (NPA) as a way to achieve on-site conservation of key landscapes, ecosystems, and/or species. Furthermore, both countries are quite successful in this policy. Still, a lot remains to be done and both the Central American and the South African EfD centers are working closely with local authorities (SINAC in Costa Rica and SANParks in South Africa) as well as with national level non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to tackle the main difficulties in achieving a sustainable system of NPA.

Costa Rica

In Costa Rica, the EfD center for Central America is working on:
(i) sustainable financing of NPA in ecotourism (optimal entrance fees and combinations of donations and fixed fees, for example),
(ii) participatory methods for designing NPA,
(iii) relations between local communities and NPA open to tourism,
(iv) evaluation of the impact on net deforestation of creating NPA.
Other topics are under development.

South Africa

In South Africa the NPA conservation movement now subscribes to the bioregions conservation approach. The ecological side of bioregions is clearly defined, and maps of desired future configurations are clearly outlined and supported by legislation. Precise boundaries of bioregions in South Africa are now being carved. To achieve conservation goals in bioregions it is necessary that the social and economic arrangements in society support this. For instance, it will be easier to achieve these goals if people can see a way in which a well-functioning bioregion means increased welfare for them.

Therefore ensuring the attainment of conservation goals requires the crafting of favorable social and economic arrangements in society. This task requires research inputs from a diverse number of disciplines, most notably economics and ecology.  With that background, the South African EfD center (EPRU) and SANParks have organized a collaborative research program which focuses on several important questions. The answers will form an important input into the crafting of well-functioning bioregions.

The questions in the South Africa programme currently focus on
(i) the welfare effects of different land-use configurations,
(ii) the nature of incentive schemes for use in navigating a bioregion to economic sustainabilit,
(iii) the cost-benefit analyses of different ecological plans, e.g. choice among different conservation corridors,
(iv) the stance to take on devolution of powers (concerning resource use and regulation),
(v) the valuation of and payments for ecosystem services in bioregions, and
(vi) the determination of optimal park entrance fees.