- Email: [email protected]
Stewardship of national parks and reserves in the era of global change
Environmental Development 1 (2012) 102–106
Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect
Environmental Development journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/envdev
Stewardship of national parks and reserves in the era of global change Alex O. Awiti Aga Khan University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, PO Box 30270, 00100 Nairobi, Kenya
a r t i c l e in f o
a b s t r a c t
Article history: Accepted 2 August 2011
With the establishment of Yellowstone National Park in 1872, the ideology underpinning ‘wilderness’ as outside and separate from human engagement was institutionalized and globalized. For over 130 years parks have been considered as the bastion of biodiversity conservation. However, recent studies indicate that we are losing species, especially large animals, from many of Africa’s parks and reserves. Given the magnitude and frequency of natural and anthropogenic change, preservation of species richness in static single equilibrium habitats as the ultimate goal of conservation is untenable. This review advocates for an ecosystem resilience approach to conservation of biodiversity. & 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Conservation Ecosystems Resilience Stewardship
With the establishment of Yellowstone National Park in 1872, the ideology underpinning ‘wilderness’ as outside and separate from human engagement was institutionalized and globalized. National parks and reserves have become the cornerstone of in national and global conservation policy, with their expansion accomplished by designation of categories of protected areas with less restrictive protection (IUCN, 1994) in varied ecological and socio-cultural contexts. Worldwide, national parks are the bastion of biodiversity conservation (Terborgh and Van Schaik, 2002). The raison d’ˆetre of national parks is to protect enclaves of uninhabited wilderness off limits to humans in order to preserve, in immutable form, their natural beauty. American environmental historian William Cronon described wilderness as the ‘grandchild of romanticism’ (Cronon, 1995). Contemporary policies and practices of biodiversity conservation in Africa through isolated national parks and reserves are largely a relic of the colonial romanticism of ‘wilderness’. For instance, Tanzania National Parks declares, of parks and reserves, that ‘‘these landscapes must remain unspoiled, as benchmarks of what once was’’ (Tanzania National Parks,
E-mail address: [email protected] 2211-4645/$ - see front matter & 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.envdev.2011.12.008
A.O. Awiti / Environmental Development 1 (2012) 102–106
103
1994). However, African communities have difficulty with the formulation of nature as apart from and outside human daily experience. Parks and reserves rely predominately on a model of static isolated enclaves of protected areas, and the mandated goal of many conservation agencies is to protect particular species assemblages and their habitats. However, recent studies indicate that we are losing species, especially large animals, from many of Africa’s parks and reserves. For example, using a database of 583 population abundance time series for 69 species of large mammals in 78 African protected areas, MacArthur and Wilson (1967) showed a 59% decline in large mammal population abundance in Africa’s protected areas between 1970 and 2005, with 85% decline in western Africa, 52% in eastern Africa and 24% in southern Africa. The Equilibrium Theory of Island Biogeography (Craige et al., 2010) provides some predictive rules for understanding long-term dynamics of large mammal populations in isolated or insular reserves. Similarly, national level assessments show trends of decline in large mammal populations. In Masai Mara for example, between 1977 and 2009 populations of most wildlife species have declined toward a third or less of their previous abundance both in the Maasai Mara National Reserve and in the adjoining conservation areas (Ogutu et al., 2009). Worrying declines in wildlife populations have also been recorded in Uganda. For instance, figures published in the Uganda Wildlife Policy of 1999 show that between 1960 and 1998, Uganda lost 97% of its Elephants, 85% of its Impala, 57% of its Buffalo and 57% of the Uganda Kob (Republic of Uganda, 1999). Declining large mammal populations in Africa’s national parks and reserves is a source of urgent concern with respect to long term sustainability of Africa’s rich large mammal diversity (MacArthur and Wilson, 1967; Ogutu et al., 2009). More importantly, the seemingly inexorable decline in the population of large mammals raises concerns about the effectiveness of existing biodiversity protection strategies (Dawson et al., 2011; Hannah et al., 2002). But what is the cause of such large, rapid continent wide decline of large mammals in Africa? Conservationists are increasingly concerned about species extinction and habitat loss as climatechange impacts intensify in the coming decades (Hannah et al., 2002; Maclean et al., 2011). The declines in abundance of six ungulate species in Kenya’s Maasai Mara National Reserve between 1989 and 2003 have been shown to be contemporaneous with rising temperatures, recurrent severe drought and ENSO flood in 1997/98 (Ogutu et al., 2009). Large mammals across Africa’s national parks and reserves are especially vulnerable to climate change induced variability in rainfall. Rainfall governs vegetation growth and hence the spatio-temporal patterns of food production for herbivores within the savanna ecosystems where the greatest diversity of African large mammals are found. To counteract the spatio-temporal variability in range resources, large mammals migrate more favorable, or at least less adverse, localities, sometimes in the form of mass migrations. However, wildlife migrations are becoming increasingly restricted at a time when they may be most crucial. This is because a majority of Africa’s national parks and reserves have become insularized due to fencing, conversion of adjoining dispersal areas and migration corridors to human settlement, agriculture and transportation infrastructure. Empirical evidence shows that species response to climate change is hampered by habitat fragmentation and/or loss (Opdam and Wascher, 2004). Precipitous decline of large mammal diversity within protected areas have been examined based on the island biogeography theory (Craige et al., 2010). The rate of extinction of mammals in six of Tanzanian’s parks over the last 35–83 years suggests that increasing insularization of parks has been an important contributing factor in large mammal extinctions (Newmark, 1996). The failure of parks and reserves as reliable tools for conservation is becoming increasingly clear. An exclusive focus on reducing variability through time and space as the main tool for biodiversity conservation would lead to failure of the very idea of nature reserves (Bengtsson et al., 2003). Similarly, Caro and Scholte (2007) have observed that protected areas cannot be relied upon as longlasting conservation tools. The command-and-control or protected area management approach has been characterized as pathology of management that leads inevitably to loss of ecosystem resilience (Holling and Meffe, 1996). Ecosystem resilience is defined here as the capacity of an ecosystem to absorb disturbance, reorganize through local cycles of adaptive renewal across multiple spatial scales while retaining
104
A.O. Awiti / Environmental Development 1 (2012) 102–106
identity, basic function, structure services and feedbacks (Adger et al., 2005; Walker et al., 2004; Holling and Gunderson, 2002). Resilience is related to the characteristics of an ecosystem that restrain variability of state or control variables from passing critical thresholds that precipitate regime shifts to alternative stable states. Recent studies show that a loss of resilience usually paves the way for a shift, sometimes catastrophic, to an alternative undesirable state (Scheffer et al., 2001; van de Koppel and Rietkerk, 2004; Awiti, 2011). The ecosystem resilience approach underlies the fact that national parks and reserves are vastly complex, adaptive systems characterized by path dependency, thresholds, non-linear dynamics, emergence and multiple basins of attraction (Levin, 1999; Beisner et al., 2003). There is growing understanding, supported by empirical research, that tropical ecosystems are complex dynamic systems, characterized by non-linear change involving slow and rapid transformation and feedback often leading to shifts to alternative stable ecosystem states (Dublin et al., 1990; Van de Koppel et al., 1997). Long-term data illustrates the role of herbivory, disease, fire, rainfall, drought habitat fragmentation and anthropogenic disturbance in regulating large mammal population (Ogutu and Owen-Smith, 2005; Sinclair et al., 2007; Ogutu et al., 2009) and altering habitat condition, leading to alternative ecosystem states. Given the magnitude and frequency of natural and anthropogenic change, preservation of species richness in static single equilibrium habitats as the ultimate goal of conservation is untenable. An ecosystem resilience approach to biodiversity conservation is therefore relevant and urgent. Parks and reserves should not be insular entities. Parks and reserves should be a part of spatially linked dynamic and adaptively managed landscapes (Bengtsson et al., 2003). Where land is privately held, it is necessary to evaluate a range of incentive options as well as market-based mechanism to nudge land use toward meeting broad ecosystem service goals. The ecosystem resilience approach seeks to maintain a critical assemblage of functional and response diversity necessary for renewal and reorganization after large-scale natural and or anthropogenic disturbance. In an ecosystem resilience based approach, parks and reserves are not isolated, but are interconnected or interdependent dynamic landscape elements. An ecosystem resilience based approach to conservation promulgates three critical considerations: (i) Delineation or definition of ecosystems, i.e., size, configurations of adjacencies. (ii) Identification and protection of complex dynamic patterns, functions and process at multiple scales. (iii) Managing networks and flows among assemblages of functional–group and functional– response diversity, incorporating feedbacks and emergent properties to enable transformation and persistence through reorganization and adaptive renewal, especially in human dominated landscapes.
Functional groups in a system refer to species that perform different roles (e.g., pollination, predation, grazing, seed dispersal, decomposition). The persistence of functional groups contributes to optimal performance of ecosystems. Functional–response diversity refers to variability in responses among species that contribute to the same ecosystem function (Elmqvist et al., 2003) within functional groups to environmental change. The concept of ecological solidarity is emerging as a tool for re-thinking ecological connectivity between protected areas and surrounding landscape (Thompson et al., 2011). Moreover, Poiani et al. (2000) argued that to enable ecological connectivity, it is critical to identify ecological processes, which create interactions among protected areas and between protected areas and adjoining landscapes. Ecological solidarity sensu (Thompson et al., 2011) is difficult to achieve in a majority of African countries, where national parks and reserves are small, scattered and surrounded by intensively managed private land. However, spatial connectivity among parks and reserves has the best chance to conserve optimum diversity and preserve ecological memory, which is a key component of ecosystem resilience. Designing spatial connectivity among parks and reserves must take a holistic functional landscape approach. This means that planned contiguity and connectivity of parks and reserves must
A.O. Awiti / Environmental Development 1 (2012) 102–106
105
be based on reliable, evidence-based understanding of vital ecosystem functions processes and services. We have much to learn from the centuries old migration corridors of large mammals to inform the design principles for spatial connectivity between and among parks and reserves, both at national and regional levels. Functional networks between or among local or national level landscape units are dramatically more complex when ecological and landscape networks encompass regional and transboundary species guilds and ecosystems. For instance, thousands of wildebeest and zebra, followed by predators (lion, hyena and cheetah) migrate between Kenya’s Nairobi National Park, Maasai Mara Game Reserve and Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park and Ngorongoro conservancy. Hence, designing dedicated connecting corridors and joint management of the parks and reserves of northern Tanzania and southeastern Kenya would be an excellent and exciting place to start. Agreements for managing networks of transboundary parks and reserves will require protocols, new policy and legal and institutional frameworks to engender cooperation among disparate national and regional interests. Africa’s Regional economic communities (REC) such as Common Market of Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) provide a broad institutional platform around which contemplate, frame and negotiate the design and joint management of transboundary networks of parks and reserves. The bigger challenge lies in negotiating access and acquisition of portions of wildlife migration corridors currently under private ownership. But there is a great opportunity here to create the largest and most lucrative ecosystem service markets. Landowners can be persuaded by financial incentives through ecosystem service payments to lease their land for use as wildlife corridors. Moreover, ecosystem service markets could be developed further to enable trading of such leases in financial stock markets. But providing a science evidence-base for why our parks and reserve systems are not viable is not enough. It is vital to communicate the scientific evidence-base through a robust public outreach and education strategy to engage policy makers and the general public so they understand that maintenance of a critical assemblage of biodiversity is necessary and has both short-and-long-term socio-economic and ecosystem service value. References Adger, W.N., Hughes, T.P., Folke, C., Carpenter, S.R., Rockstrom, J., 2005. Social ecological resilience to coastal disasters. Science 309, 1036–1039. Awiti, A.O., 2011. Biological diversity and resilience: lessons from the recovery of cichlid species in Lake Victoria. Ecology and Society 16 (1), 9. URL: /http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol16/iss1/art9/S (online). ¨ Bengtsson, J., Angelstam, P., Elmqvist, T., Emanuelsson, U., Folke, C., Ihse, M., Moberg, F., Nystrom, M., 2003. Reserves, resilience and dynamic landscapes. Ambio 32 (6), 389–396. Beisner, B.E., Haydon, D.T., Cuddington, K., 2003. Alternative stable states in ecology. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 17 (2003), 376–382. Cronon, W. (Ed.), 1995. Uncommon Ground: Towards Reinventing Nature. W.W. Norton and Co., New York. Craige, I., Baillie, J.E.M., Balmford, A., Carbone, Chris, et al., 2010. Large mammal population declines in Africa’s protected areas. Biological Conservation 143, 2221–2228. Caro, T., Scholte, P., 2007. When protection falters. African Journal of Ecology 45, 233–235. Dawson, T.P., Jackson, S.T., House, J.I., Prentice, I.C., Mace, G.M., 2011. Beyond predictions: biodiversity conservation in a changing climate. Science 332 (6025), 53–58. Dublin, H.T., Sinclair, A.R.E., McGlade, J., 1990. Elephants and fire as causes of multiple stable states for Serengeti-Mara woodlands. Journal of Animal Ecology 59, 1157–1164. Elmqvist, T., Folke, C., Nystro¨m, M., Peterson, G., Bengtsson, J., et al., 2003. Response diversity and ecosystem resilience. Frontiers of Ecology and Environment 1 (2003), 488–494. Hannah, L., Midgley, G.F., Lovejoy, T., Bonds, W.J., et al., 2002. Conservation of biodiversity in a changing climate. Conservation Biology 16, 264–268. Holling, C.S., Meffe, G.K., 1996. Command and control and the pathology of natural resource management. Conservation Biology 10, 327–328. Holling, C.S., Gunderson, L.H., 2002. Resilience and adaptive cycles. In: Gunderson, L.H., Holling, C.S. (Eds.), Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems. Island Press, Washington, D.C., pp. 25–62. IUCN, 1994. Guidelines for Protected Areas Management Categories. Gland, Switzerland. Levin, S., 1999. Fragile Dominion: Complexity and the Commons. Perseus Books, Reading, MA. MacArthur, R.H., Wilson, E.O., 1967. The Theory of lsland Biogeography. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. 203 pp.
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Maclean, I.M.D., Wilson, R.J., 2011. Recent ecological responses to climate change support predictions of high extinction risk. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 108 (30), 12337–12342. Newmark, W.D., 1996. Insularization of Tanzanian parks and the local extinction of large mammals. Conservation Biology 10 (6), 1549–1556. Ogutu, J.O., Piepho, H.-P., Dublin, H.T., Bhola, N., Reid, R.S., 2009. Dynamics of Mara-Serengeti ungulates in relation to land. Journal of Zoology 278, 1–14. Opdam, P., Wascher, D., 2004. Climate change meets habitat fragmentation: linking landscape and biogeographical scale levels in research and conservation. Biological Conservation 117, 285–297. Ogutu, O.J., Owen-Smith, N., 2005. Oscillations in large mammal populations: are they related to predation or rainfall? African Journal of Ecology 43 332–339. Poiani, K.A., Richter, B.D., Anderson, M.G., Richter, H.E., 2000. Biodiversity conservation at multiple scales: functional sites, landscapes, and networks. BioScience 50, 133–146. Republic of Uganda, 1999. Uganda Wildlife Policy. Scheffer, M., Carpenter, S.R., Foley, J., Folke, C., Walker, B.H., 2001. Catastrophic shifts in ecosystems. Nature 413, 591–596. Sinclair, A.R.E., Mduma, S.A.R., Hopcraft, J.G.C., Fryxell, J.M., Hilborn, R., Thirgood, S., 2007. Long-term ecosystem dynamics in the Serengeti: lessons for conservation. Conservation Biology 21 (3), 580–590. Terborgh, J., Van Schaik, C., 2002. Why the world needs parks. In: Terborgh, J., Van Schaik, C., Davenport, L., Rao, M. (Eds.), Making Parks Work: Strategies for Preserving Tropical Nature. Island Press, Washington, DC, pp. 2002. Tanzania National Parks, 1994. National Policies of National Parks in Tanzania. Arusha, Tanzania, TANAPA. Thompson, J.D., Mathevet, R., Delanoe, O., Gil-Fourrier, C., Bonnin, M., Cheylan, M., 2011. Ecological solidarity as a conceptual tool for rethinking ecological and social interdependence in conservation policy for protected areas and their surrounding landscape. C. R. Biologies 334, 412–419. Van de Koppel, J., Rietkerk, J.M., Weissing, F.J., 1997. Catastrophic vegetation shifts and soil degradation in terrestrial grazing systems. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 12, 352–356. van de Koppel, J., Rietkerk, M., 2004. Spatial interactions and resilience in arid ecosystems. American Naturalist 163, 113–121. Walker, B.H., Holling, C.S., Carpenter, S.C., Kinzig, A.P., 2004. Resilience, adaptability and transformability in social–ecological systems. Ecology and Society 9 (2), 5. URL: /http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol9/iss2/art5/S (online).
Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect
Environmental Development journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/envdev
Stewardship of national parks and reserves in the era of global change Alex O. Awiti Aga Khan University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, PO Box 30270, 00100 Nairobi, Kenya
a r t i c l e in f o
a b s t r a c t
Article history: Accepted 2 August 2011
With the establishment of Yellowstone National Park in 1872, the ideology underpinning ‘wilderness’ as outside and separate from human engagement was institutionalized and globalized. For over 130 years parks have been considered as the bastion of biodiversity conservation. However, recent studies indicate that we are losing species, especially large animals, from many of Africa’s parks and reserves. Given the magnitude and frequency of natural and anthropogenic change, preservation of species richness in static single equilibrium habitats as the ultimate goal of conservation is untenable. This review advocates for an ecosystem resilience approach to conservation of biodiversity. & 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Conservation Ecosystems Resilience Stewardship
With the establishment of Yellowstone National Park in 1872, the ideology underpinning ‘wilderness’ as outside and separate from human engagement was institutionalized and globalized. National parks and reserves have become the cornerstone of in national and global conservation policy, with their expansion accomplished by designation of categories of protected areas with less restrictive protection (IUCN, 1994) in varied ecological and socio-cultural contexts. Worldwide, national parks are the bastion of biodiversity conservation (Terborgh and Van Schaik, 2002). The raison d’ˆetre of national parks is to protect enclaves of uninhabited wilderness off limits to humans in order to preserve, in immutable form, their natural beauty. American environmental historian William Cronon described wilderness as the ‘grandchild of romanticism’ (Cronon, 1995). Contemporary policies and practices of biodiversity conservation in Africa through isolated national parks and reserves are largely a relic of the colonial romanticism of ‘wilderness’. For instance, Tanzania National Parks declares, of parks and reserves, that ‘‘these landscapes must remain unspoiled, as benchmarks of what once was’’ (Tanzania National Parks,
E-mail address: [email protected] 2211-4645/$ - see front matter & 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.envdev.2011.12.008
A.O. Awiti / Environmental Development 1 (2012) 102–106
103
1994). However, African communities have difficulty with the formulation of nature as apart from and outside human daily experience. Parks and reserves rely predominately on a model of static isolated enclaves of protected areas, and the mandated goal of many conservation agencies is to protect particular species assemblages and their habitats. However, recent studies indicate that we are losing species, especially large animals, from many of Africa’s parks and reserves. For example, using a database of 583 population abundance time series for 69 species of large mammals in 78 African protected areas, MacArthur and Wilson (1967) showed a 59% decline in large mammal population abundance in Africa’s protected areas between 1970 and 2005, with 85% decline in western Africa, 52% in eastern Africa and 24% in southern Africa. The Equilibrium Theory of Island Biogeography (Craige et al., 2010) provides some predictive rules for understanding long-term dynamics of large mammal populations in isolated or insular reserves. Similarly, national level assessments show trends of decline in large mammal populations. In Masai Mara for example, between 1977 and 2009 populations of most wildlife species have declined toward a third or less of their previous abundance both in the Maasai Mara National Reserve and in the adjoining conservation areas (Ogutu et al., 2009). Worrying declines in wildlife populations have also been recorded in Uganda. For instance, figures published in the Uganda Wildlife Policy of 1999 show that between 1960 and 1998, Uganda lost 97% of its Elephants, 85% of its Impala, 57% of its Buffalo and 57% of the Uganda Kob (Republic of Uganda, 1999). Declining large mammal populations in Africa’s national parks and reserves is a source of urgent concern with respect to long term sustainability of Africa’s rich large mammal diversity (MacArthur and Wilson, 1967; Ogutu et al., 2009). More importantly, the seemingly inexorable decline in the population of large mammals raises concerns about the effectiveness of existing biodiversity protection strategies (Dawson et al., 2011; Hannah et al., 2002). But what is the cause of such large, rapid continent wide decline of large mammals in Africa? Conservationists are increasingly concerned about species extinction and habitat loss as climatechange impacts intensify in the coming decades (Hannah et al., 2002; Maclean et al., 2011). The declines in abundance of six ungulate species in Kenya’s Maasai Mara National Reserve between 1989 and 2003 have been shown to be contemporaneous with rising temperatures, recurrent severe drought and ENSO flood in 1997/98 (Ogutu et al., 2009). Large mammals across Africa’s national parks and reserves are especially vulnerable to climate change induced variability in rainfall. Rainfall governs vegetation growth and hence the spatio-temporal patterns of food production for herbivores within the savanna ecosystems where the greatest diversity of African large mammals are found. To counteract the spatio-temporal variability in range resources, large mammals migrate more favorable, or at least less adverse, localities, sometimes in the form of mass migrations. However, wildlife migrations are becoming increasingly restricted at a time when they may be most crucial. This is because a majority of Africa’s national parks and reserves have become insularized due to fencing, conversion of adjoining dispersal areas and migration corridors to human settlement, agriculture and transportation infrastructure. Empirical evidence shows that species response to climate change is hampered by habitat fragmentation and/or loss (Opdam and Wascher, 2004). Precipitous decline of large mammal diversity within protected areas have been examined based on the island biogeography theory (Craige et al., 2010). The rate of extinction of mammals in six of Tanzanian’s parks over the last 35–83 years suggests that increasing insularization of parks has been an important contributing factor in large mammal extinctions (Newmark, 1996). The failure of parks and reserves as reliable tools for conservation is becoming increasingly clear. An exclusive focus on reducing variability through time and space as the main tool for biodiversity conservation would lead to failure of the very idea of nature reserves (Bengtsson et al., 2003). Similarly, Caro and Scholte (2007) have observed that protected areas cannot be relied upon as longlasting conservation tools. The command-and-control or protected area management approach has been characterized as pathology of management that leads inevitably to loss of ecosystem resilience (Holling and Meffe, 1996). Ecosystem resilience is defined here as the capacity of an ecosystem to absorb disturbance, reorganize through local cycles of adaptive renewal across multiple spatial scales while retaining
104
A.O. Awiti / Environmental Development 1 (2012) 102–106
identity, basic function, structure services and feedbacks (Adger et al., 2005; Walker et al., 2004; Holling and Gunderson, 2002). Resilience is related to the characteristics of an ecosystem that restrain variability of state or control variables from passing critical thresholds that precipitate regime shifts to alternative stable states. Recent studies show that a loss of resilience usually paves the way for a shift, sometimes catastrophic, to an alternative undesirable state (Scheffer et al., 2001; van de Koppel and Rietkerk, 2004; Awiti, 2011). The ecosystem resilience approach underlies the fact that national parks and reserves are vastly complex, adaptive systems characterized by path dependency, thresholds, non-linear dynamics, emergence and multiple basins of attraction (Levin, 1999; Beisner et al., 2003). There is growing understanding, supported by empirical research, that tropical ecosystems are complex dynamic systems, characterized by non-linear change involving slow and rapid transformation and feedback often leading to shifts to alternative stable ecosystem states (Dublin et al., 1990; Van de Koppel et al., 1997). Long-term data illustrates the role of herbivory, disease, fire, rainfall, drought habitat fragmentation and anthropogenic disturbance in regulating large mammal population (Ogutu and Owen-Smith, 2005; Sinclair et al., 2007; Ogutu et al., 2009) and altering habitat condition, leading to alternative ecosystem states. Given the magnitude and frequency of natural and anthropogenic change, preservation of species richness in static single equilibrium habitats as the ultimate goal of conservation is untenable. An ecosystem resilience approach to biodiversity conservation is therefore relevant and urgent. Parks and reserves should not be insular entities. Parks and reserves should be a part of spatially linked dynamic and adaptively managed landscapes (Bengtsson et al., 2003). Where land is privately held, it is necessary to evaluate a range of incentive options as well as market-based mechanism to nudge land use toward meeting broad ecosystem service goals. The ecosystem resilience approach seeks to maintain a critical assemblage of functional and response diversity necessary for renewal and reorganization after large-scale natural and or anthropogenic disturbance. In an ecosystem resilience based approach, parks and reserves are not isolated, but are interconnected or interdependent dynamic landscape elements. An ecosystem resilience based approach to conservation promulgates three critical considerations: (i) Delineation or definition of ecosystems, i.e., size, configurations of adjacencies. (ii) Identification and protection of complex dynamic patterns, functions and process at multiple scales. (iii) Managing networks and flows among assemblages of functional–group and functional– response diversity, incorporating feedbacks and emergent properties to enable transformation and persistence through reorganization and adaptive renewal, especially in human dominated landscapes.
Functional groups in a system refer to species that perform different roles (e.g., pollination, predation, grazing, seed dispersal, decomposition). The persistence of functional groups contributes to optimal performance of ecosystems. Functional–response diversity refers to variability in responses among species that contribute to the same ecosystem function (Elmqvist et al., 2003) within functional groups to environmental change. The concept of ecological solidarity is emerging as a tool for re-thinking ecological connectivity between protected areas and surrounding landscape (Thompson et al., 2011). Moreover, Poiani et al. (2000) argued that to enable ecological connectivity, it is critical to identify ecological processes, which create interactions among protected areas and between protected areas and adjoining landscapes. Ecological solidarity sensu (Thompson et al., 2011) is difficult to achieve in a majority of African countries, where national parks and reserves are small, scattered and surrounded by intensively managed private land. However, spatial connectivity among parks and reserves has the best chance to conserve optimum diversity and preserve ecological memory, which is a key component of ecosystem resilience. Designing spatial connectivity among parks and reserves must take a holistic functional landscape approach. This means that planned contiguity and connectivity of parks and reserves must
A.O. Awiti / Environmental Development 1 (2012) 102–106
105
be based on reliable, evidence-based understanding of vital ecosystem functions processes and services. We have much to learn from the centuries old migration corridors of large mammals to inform the design principles for spatial connectivity between and among parks and reserves, both at national and regional levels. Functional networks between or among local or national level landscape units are dramatically more complex when ecological and landscape networks encompass regional and transboundary species guilds and ecosystems. For instance, thousands of wildebeest and zebra, followed by predators (lion, hyena and cheetah) migrate between Kenya’s Nairobi National Park, Maasai Mara Game Reserve and Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park and Ngorongoro conservancy. Hence, designing dedicated connecting corridors and joint management of the parks and reserves of northern Tanzania and southeastern Kenya would be an excellent and exciting place to start. Agreements for managing networks of transboundary parks and reserves will require protocols, new policy and legal and institutional frameworks to engender cooperation among disparate national and regional interests. Africa’s Regional economic communities (REC) such as Common Market of Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) provide a broad institutional platform around which contemplate, frame and negotiate the design and joint management of transboundary networks of parks and reserves. The bigger challenge lies in negotiating access and acquisition of portions of wildlife migration corridors currently under private ownership. But there is a great opportunity here to create the largest and most lucrative ecosystem service markets. Landowners can be persuaded by financial incentives through ecosystem service payments to lease their land for use as wildlife corridors. Moreover, ecosystem service markets could be developed further to enable trading of such leases in financial stock markets. But providing a science evidence-base for why our parks and reserve systems are not viable is not enough. It is vital to communicate the scientific evidence-base through a robust public outreach and education strategy to engage policy makers and the general public so they understand that maintenance of a critical assemblage of biodiversity is necessary and has both short-and-long-term socio-economic and ecosystem service value. References Adger, W.N., Hughes, T.P., Folke, C., Carpenter, S.R., Rockstrom, J., 2005. Social ecological resilience to coastal disasters. Science 309, 1036–1039. Awiti, A.O., 2011. Biological diversity and resilience: lessons from the recovery of cichlid species in Lake Victoria. Ecology and Society 16 (1), 9. URL: /http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol16/iss1/art9/S (online). ¨ Bengtsson, J., Angelstam, P., Elmqvist, T., Emanuelsson, U., Folke, C., Ihse, M., Moberg, F., Nystrom, M., 2003. Reserves, resilience and dynamic landscapes. Ambio 32 (6), 389–396. Beisner, B.E., Haydon, D.T., Cuddington, K., 2003. Alternative stable states in ecology. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 17 (2003), 376–382. Cronon, W. (Ed.), 1995. Uncommon Ground: Towards Reinventing Nature. W.W. Norton and Co., New York. Craige, I., Baillie, J.E.M., Balmford, A., Carbone, Chris, et al., 2010. Large mammal population declines in Africa’s protected areas. Biological Conservation 143, 2221–2228. Caro, T., Scholte, P., 2007. When protection falters. African Journal of Ecology 45, 233–235. Dawson, T.P., Jackson, S.T., House, J.I., Prentice, I.C., Mace, G.M., 2011. Beyond predictions: biodiversity conservation in a changing climate. Science 332 (6025), 53–58. Dublin, H.T., Sinclair, A.R.E., McGlade, J., 1990. Elephants and fire as causes of multiple stable states for Serengeti-Mara woodlands. Journal of Animal Ecology 59, 1157–1164. Elmqvist, T., Folke, C., Nystro¨m, M., Peterson, G., Bengtsson, J., et al., 2003. Response diversity and ecosystem resilience. Frontiers of Ecology and Environment 1 (2003), 488–494. Hannah, L., Midgley, G.F., Lovejoy, T., Bonds, W.J., et al., 2002. Conservation of biodiversity in a changing climate. Conservation Biology 16, 264–268. Holling, C.S., Meffe, G.K., 1996. Command and control and the pathology of natural resource management. Conservation Biology 10, 327–328. Holling, C.S., Gunderson, L.H., 2002. Resilience and adaptive cycles. In: Gunderson, L.H., Holling, C.S. (Eds.), Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems. Island Press, Washington, D.C., pp. 25–62. IUCN, 1994. Guidelines for Protected Areas Management Categories. Gland, Switzerland. Levin, S., 1999. Fragile Dominion: Complexity and the Commons. Perseus Books, Reading, MA. MacArthur, R.H., Wilson, E.O., 1967. The Theory of lsland Biogeography. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. 203 pp.
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