management as a route for solving conflicts. It argues that present approaches used to solve conflicts in protected areas have been ineffective in their aim because they fail to address the very root causes of conflicts as well as to understand their complex, diverse and dynamic nature. The thesis thus calls for a shift away from instrumental forms of participation, that put the control over the participatory process on conservationist and protected area managers, towards collaborative processes that would help to address the underlying issues in dispute. Although seldom acknowledged, conflicts in protected areas generally include struggles over complex issues such as modernity, identity, authority, ownership, knowledge systems and different cultural notions of nature and land use, among others. The long-term transformation of conflicts requires that these issues are adequately understood and addressed. A shift away from the dominant participatory paradigm also requires breaking away from a managerial conflict resolution approach that treats conflicts as static, negative and undifferentiated phenomena. In its place an approach that emphasises the dynamic, differentiated nature of conflicts and their transformative power in forcing necessary social changes in protected area management is advocated. Special attention is paid here to analysing the dynamics of power relations among actors and the history of their interactions in order to determine the factors that limit or offer opportunities for a productive engagement among actors in addressing the root cause of conflicts. In order to demonstrate the complex, dynamic and diverse nature of conflicts in protected areas this thesis studies three different types of conflicts currently taking place in Canaima National Park, Venezuela: conflicts over the use of fire, tourism management and the building of a high voltage power-line. Through this differentiated analysis this thesis concludes with a discussion of the types of collaborative processes that could help address and discuss the core issues in dispute in each case but also the factors that limit and offer opportunities for such engagement
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:271885 |
| Date | January 2002 |
| Creators | Rodriguez, Iokine |
| Publisher | University of Sussex |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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