This research evaluates the development of strategy and planning undertaken by the three federal protected areas management organisations in Canada. These organisations and the protected areas they manage are: the Canadian Wildlife Service (National Wildlife Areas and Migratory Bird Sanctuaries), the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (Oceans Act Marine Protected Areas), and the Parks Canada Agency (National Parks, National Marine Conservation Areas, and National Historic Sites). As non-renewable resources become more valuable, urban centres expand, and the climate changes, protected areas will face an increasing number of threats, the mitigation of which will require significant new financial resources. In order to acquire these new resources, protected areas management organisations will have to compete with other aspects of the government’s agenda. In this research, strategy is identified as an important component of successful competition. A review of literature from various disciplines explains some of the main theories of strategy development: strategic planning, strategic management, and collaborative planning. Management planning for protected areas helps to understand the congruence between strategy and site management. Using a qualitative approach, the research triangulates the results of interviews, reviews of documents, and participant-observation to evaluate the way that each of the organisations develops strategy and understands management planning activities. The research also includes a model strategic plan for the Canadian Wildlife Service protected areas network. The model plan stems from data collected during this research. This research supports the results from a previous study (Foresta, 1985) that found Parks Canada (now the Parks Canada Agency, or PCA) has been actively pursuing a coherent strategy through systematic management planning since the late 1960s. The PCA can attribute a significant degree of its ongoing success in creating and managing National Parks to its consistent strategy and systematic planning efforts. Another important part of the PCA success has been its external orientation, which demonstrates its awareness of the importance of maintaining public satisfaction and its high public profile. No prior research on the development of strategy or of systematic planning at the Canadian Wildlife Service (CWS) or the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) was uncovered. This research concludes that the CWS, which has many strategic plans on paper, has not actively pursued strategic or management planning. The lack of strategic thinking and planning contribute significantly to the relatively low budgets of the CWS, and to its low public profile. The DFO has decided to take a “learning approach” to its protected areas, by creating a set of pilot marine protected areas and then identifying the policies and procedures needed to manage the sites. The public profile of the DFO protected areas is even lower than that of the CWS. The CWS and the DFO are internally-oriented, do not have significant public outreach programs, long-range or strategic planning, and do not seem to have champions. The most important contributors to the PCA’s success are the finite nature and the simplicity of their goals, which Parks staff can easily communicate to decision-makers and to the public. The external orientation of the PCA, demonstrated by extensive public outreach programming, such as natural history interpretation and the provision of camping opportunities, is also an important part of its success. Another important contributor, identified in this research, is the support of a small number of key political champions. This research identifies means by which organisations could improve their competitiveness, including by improving public profile. The research highlights the importance of externally-focused strategic plans that include certain elements that are well-defined in the literature, and the importance of strategic thinking. The results suggest that there is a need for a new approach to developing strategy, and proposes the exploration of collaborative planning as a potential model. This research contributes to the academic literature and to planning practice by identifying key elements that created conditions of success for the PCA. The PCA experience highlights the importance of strategic thinking, in the context of developing a strategic plan.

This research evaluates the development of strategy and planning undertaken by the three federal protected areas management organisations in Canada. These organisations and the protected areas they manage are: the Canadian Wildlife Service (National Wildlife Areas and Migratory Bird Sanctuaries), the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (Oceans Act Marine Protected Areas), and the Parks Canada Agency (National Parks, National Marine Conservation Areas, and National Historic Sites). As non-renewable resources become more valuable, urban centres expand, and the climate changes, protected areas will face an increasing number of threats, the mitigation of which will require significant new financial resources. In order to acquire these new resources, protected areas management organisations will have to compete with other aspects of the government’s agenda. In this research, strategy is identified as an important component of successful competition. A review of literature from various disciplines explains some of the main theories of strategy development: strategic planning, strategic management, and collaborative planning. Management planning for protected areas helps to understand the congruence between strategy and site management. Using a qualitative approach, the research triangulates the results of interviews, reviews of documents, and participant-observation to evaluate the way that each of the organisations develops strategy and understands management planning activities. The research also includes a model strategic plan for the Canadian Wildlife Service protected areas network. The model plan stems from data collected during this research. This research supports the results from a previous study (Foresta, 1985) that found Parks Canada (now the Parks Canada Agency, or PCA) has been actively pursuing a coherent strategy through systematic management planning since the late 1960s. The PCA can attribute a significant degree of its ongoing success in creating and managing National Parks to its consistent strategy and systematic planning efforts. Another important part of the PCA success has been its external orientation, which demonstrates its awareness of the importance of maintaining public satisfaction and its high public profile. No prior research on the development of strategy or of systematic planning at the Canadian Wildlife Service (CWS) or the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) was uncovered. This research concludes that the CWS, which has many strategic plans on paper, has not actively pursued strategic or management planning. The lack of strategic thinking and planning contribute significantly to the relatively low budgets of the CWS, and to its low public profile. The DFO has decided to take a “learning approach” to its protected areas, by creating a set of pilot marine protected areas and then identifying the policies and procedures needed to manage the sites. The public profile of the DFO protected areas is even lower than that of the CWS. The CWS and the DFO are internally-oriented, do not have significant public outreach programs, long-range or strategic planning, and do not seem to have champions. The most important contributors to the PCA’s success are the finite nature and the simplicity of their goals, which Parks staff can easily communicate to decision-makers and to the public. The external orientation of the PCA, demonstrated by extensive public outreach programming, such as natural history interpretation and the provision of camping opportunities, is also an important part of its success. Another important contributor, identified in this research, is the support of a small number of key political champions. This research identifies means by which organisations could improve their competitiveness, including by improving public profile. The research highlights the importance of externally-focused strategic plans that include certain elements that are well-defined in the literature, and the importance of strategic thinking. The results suggest that there is a need for a new approach to developing strategy, and proposes the exploration of collaborative planning as a potential model. This research contributes to the academic literature and to planning practice by identifying key elements that created conditions of success for the PCA. The PCA experience highlights the importance of strategic thinking, in the context of developing a strategic plan.

No description available.

This thesis explores Japanese employment policy for blind people in the context of the current decline of their traditionally reserved occupations. The thesis presents an historical analysis of the rise and fall of the occupational guild of the blind since the thirteenth century. The study focuses on blind people's attempts to reinforce their traditionally reserved occupations in the context of the emergence of Japanese social policy in the early twentieth century. Archival research suggests that the government refused to restore blind people's monopoly of massage under the influence of Western medicine and fashionable British integrationist ideas, the latter of which increasingly influenced the postwar policy despite the absence of any significant success in employment of the blind in ordinary industries. In order to assess the credibility of the government's belief in open employment, the development of British employment policy for the blind is explored. The analysis focuses on blind people's commitment to sheltered workshops, and suggests that the shift to open employment was largely caused by the government's concerns over the financial cost of providing sheltered workshops. The historical analysis in Japan and Britain demonstrates that protected employment was gradually eroded despite blind people's demand for preferential treatment. It was in this context that some blind people began to seek employment within the sighted world, but, in both countries, the blind identity was maintained in separation from the sighted. Based on in-depth interviews with 38 blind people and two postal surveys involving 323 blind people in Japan, the second part of the thesis explores why and how the blind identity is generated in the employment field, and how blind people themselves perceive work and equality. The thesis concludes that whereas the blind identity is generated by separation at work, that separation is not only due to social oppression but also to voluntary disengagement from sighted society and engagement in the blind community.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Oregon State University, 2004. / Printout. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 155-201). Also available on the World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ph. D., Natural Resources)--University of Idaho, June 2007. / Major professor: Edward O. Garton. Includes bibliographical references. Also available online (PDF file) by subscription or by purchasing the individual file.

Thesis (M.S.)--Ohio University, June, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 93-100)

Thesis (M.S.)--Ohio University, June, 2005. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references (p. 93-100)

A thesis submitted to the Faculty Arts in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department Of Recreation and Tourism at the University Of Zululand, South Africa, 2017 / The beneficial and magnanimous relationship between protected areas and communities staying adjacent to these areas is one of the most important mechanisms at our disposal in shaping and sustainably managing the natural environment and resources. In some instances, the progress made in developing a sound environmental governance framework, in the KZN protected areas, relating to UKhahlamba Drakensberg Park and Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Game Park, have been hindered by the environmental issues. The need to strengthen the implementation of appropriate environmental laws and policies still require bringing environmental sustainability principles into the mainstream of all aspects of governance, planning, decision-making and operation, in the protected areas of KwaZulu-Natal. Aswani and Weiant (2004) have affirmed that when local communities are excluded from the management of protected areas, and their needs and aspirations ignored, then it becomes extremely difficult to implement conservation policies. This research inquiry is fundamentally aimed at revealing the existing relationships between local communities and protected areas in KwaZulu-Natal: focusing on tracking the achievements made from the apartheid to the post-apartheid periods. The spatial analysis of these relationships is determined in places such as UKhahlamba Drakensberg Park and Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Game Park. In other words, the study seeks to objectify and establish how local communities understand the meaning and importance of the concept of conservation in the study area. It also attempts to find out if there are any business developments or partnership/relationship between the authoritative agencies and local communities. The methodology pursued in this study includes the selection of the sample, use of the research instrument for data collection in two (2) KwaZulu-Natal protected areas, namely, UKhahlamba Drakensberg Park and Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Game Park. Other methodologies that were used included the Semantic Differential technique, used to analyse respondents' attitudes, awareness, understanding and beneficiation. In conclusion the study established that, on the whole, the respondents were fully aware and understood the meaning and importance of the role of relationships in the benefit and sustainable value of Protected Areas in the study area. Also established by the study is that the exclusion of local communities tends to perpetuate hostile attitudes towards policies and the management of natural resources, thus leading to the practise of illegal activities. The findings of the study further indicated that the local communities do understand the meaning and importance of conservation services within the study area. Furthermore, the outcomes also indicated that there are limited to no tourism business ventures that have resulted for the community's beneficiation from the protected area. Eventually, it may be concluded that the respondents perceived that there were no business opportunities brought by the practice of tourism and conservation in the study area. It is an indictment on the authorities that the community indicated that there were no policies and strategies that they were aware of or successfully implemented in the study area. Finally, the idea that relationships and conservation appreciation was found to be inadequately contributing to community-based tourism and that its implementation was deficient, the study anticipated that designing a management model would facilitate its effectiveness. The success of such a model would stand as the ultimate contribution of this study to knowledge in the tourism discipline leading to better community beneficiation.

No abstract available. / Thesis (M.Sc.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2004.