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Public support for protected areas in new forest frontiers in the Brazilian Amazon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 August 2019

Helenilza Ferreira Albuquerque Cunha ,
Adriano Ferreira de Souza  and
José Maria Cardoso da Silva Open the ORCID record for José Maria Cardoso da Silva [Opens in a new window]
Helenilza Ferreira Albuquerque Cunha
Affiliation:
Universidade Federal do Amapá, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Biodiversidade Tropical, Rod. Juscelino Kubitschek, Km 2 – Jardim Marco Zero, Macapá-AP, 68903-419, Brazil
Adriano Ferreira de Souza
Affiliation:
Universidade Federal do Amapá, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Biodiversidade Tropical, Rod. Juscelino Kubitschek, Km 2 – Jardim Marco Zero, Macapá-AP, 68903-419, Brazil
José Maria Cardoso da Silva*
Affiliation:
University of Miami, Department of Geography, 1300 Campo Sano Avenue, PO Box 248067, Coral Gables, FL 33124-4401, USA
*
Author for correspondence: José Maria Cardoso da Silva, Email: jcsilva@miami.edu
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Summary

Gazetting and maintaining protected areas (PAs) are political processes and, as such, depend on wider society’s support in order to achieve their aims. In this paper, we evaluated the influence of gender, education, age, income, place of origin and place of residence on public support for PAs in the Brazilian state of Amapá, a new tropical forest frontier. We gathered 615 complete interviews with adults living in both rural and urban settings. We found that most (90.5%) of the participants support PAs and that this attitude is more likely to exist among urban than rural participants. We found that gender, education, age, income and place of origin did not influence support for PAs. Biodiversity conservation is the most common reason why PAs receive public support. In contrast, participants who do not favour PAs see them as providing no benefit to people. We suggest that support by local political leaders from dominant and rival political parties for conservation helps to promote acceptance of PAs by stakeholders. However, relatively low support for PAs among rural participants could indicate that the expectations of these populations regarding the social benefits associated with this conservation policy have yet to be fulfilled.

Keywords

Amazonconservationpolicyforest frontiersBrazil
Type
Research Paper
Information
Environmental Conservation , Volume 46 , Issue 4: Thematic Section: Bringing Species and Ecosystems Together with Remote Sensing Tools to Develop New Biodiversity Metrics and Indicators , December 2019 , pp. 278 - 284
Copyright
© Foundation for Environmental Conservation 2019 

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