A review of successes, challenges, and lessons from Indigenous protected and conserved areas
Introduction
Areas that are protected and conserved by Indigenous Peoples have gained global attention due to the urgency of protecting declining biodiversity during a time of Indigenous resurgence and recognition of Indigenous Rights. Through the adoption of United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), 144 countries recognized Indigenous Peoples’ Rights (see glossary) to self-determination, cultural identity, and free prior informed consent to uses that affect their traditional Territory (UN General Assembly, 2007). Considerations of Indigenous Rights and Title and Indigenous Peoples’ role in protected and conserved area governance in state-recognized conservation initiatives is also growing. For example, International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)’s protected area matrix includes protected areas with traditional uses and governance regimes involving Indigenous Peoples (see Beltrán, 2000; Borrini-Feyerabend et al., 2004, 2013; Dudley et al., 2008). Similarly, countries participating in the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD) not only committed to creating new protected areas across ecosystems by 2020 (Aichi Target 11), but also to considering the needs of Indigenous Peoples in conservation and restoration (Target 14), and to respecting Indigenous institutions relevant to conservation and the ‘effective participation’ of Indigenous Peoples across all conservation activities (Target 18, CBD, 2010). As such, there is interest from states, Indigenous, and environmental conservation organizations in the establishment and increasing widespread recognition and support for territories and areas protected and conserved by Indigenous Peoples.
Indigenous forms of land and water protection and stewardship have existed since time immemorial. Yet only within the last few decades have they been acknowledged by states and global conservation efforts through formal labels, designations, and arrangements. We use the term Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas (IPCAs), currently used in Canada, to refer to a suite of Indigenous-driven initiatives to protect, conserve, or steward areas where they exercise agency in territorial management (see glossary). In practice, there are many labels used by different agencies, initiatives, and regions to describe territories and areas protected by Indigenous Peoples, including: some Indigenous Community and Conserved Areas (ICCAs, https://www.iccaconsortium.org)1, Indigenous Protected Areas (IPAs) in Australia (Department of the Environment and Energy, 2019), Tribal Parks in North America (e.g. Nexwagwez?an – Dasiqox Tribal Park; Dasiqox Tribal Park Initiative et al., 2019); areas with shared governance and management (e.g. Uluru-Kata Tjuta and Kakadu National Parks, Langton et al., 2005), and many other political designations and arrangements (Table 1). IPCAs may have state-recognized Indigenous tenure (e.g. some Australia IPAs, Smyth, 2015), or they may exist without state recognition and/or within state-recognized protected areas (e.g. beyuls in Nepal, Stevens, 2010; 2013). The multiple designations and arrangements highlight a wide range of areas that we consider to be IPCAs in our review, but may not be labelled explicitly as such other than in Canada. Indeed, some Indigenous Peoples prefer to use their own definitions, governance, and management structures for IPCAs (see Davies et al., 2013; ICE, 2018). The term IPCA is relatively new, even in Canada; we have elected to use it for consistency with growing national literature. For the purpose of this review, we consider any area as an IPCA when it meets all of the following criteria, which draw from the IUCN definition of ICCAs (Borrini-Feyerabend et al., 2013; ICCA Consortium, 2019) and from Canada’s Indigenous Circle of Experts (ICE) report regarding IPCAs (ICE, 2018):
- 1)
Indigenous Peoples have a strong spiritual and/or cultural connection to the area, be it terrestrial, aquatic, marine or otherwise, through past and current lived histories language, and other potential interactions;
- 2)
Indigenous Peoples have asserted a leading role in decision-making (governance), establishment, and/or management that demonstrates their rights and responsibilities in the area. This includes arrangements with other organizations but in a way that governance and/or management occur with the consensus of Indigenous actors; and
- 3)
Environmental protection and/or conservation occurs whether it is stated explicitly or an understood (implicit) goal.
The most comprehensive attempt to explore and document IPCAs to date was published by the CBD, which evaluated examples in 19 countries under the ICCA framework and suggested recommendations for state, civil society, and Indigenous actors to support and recognize these initiatives (Kothari et al., 2012). That report was developed through reviewing case studies in those countries, based on publications and reports that were readily available, and reviewed by experts within these countries and internationally. The report indicated a strong link between ICCAs’ ecological conservation success, and for Indigenous-led initiatives, increased self-determination of Indigenous Peoples, while also highlighting several challenges.
There were some key limitations to the CBD report when it comes to focusing on Indigenous-led initiatives and protected/conserved areas. Notably, some Indigenous Peoples’ protected/conserved areas are either not labelled as ICCAs, by the choice of Indigenous groups managing them or for other reasons, or they are labelled as such without Indigenous consent (Smyth, 2015; Jonas et al., 2017). Second, ICCAs include areas managed by both Indigenous and local communities (IUCN, 2004; Borrini-Feyerabend et al., 2004; Smyth, 2015). Indigenous Peoples face critically different historical and contemporary contexts, aspirations, and challenges compared to local communities, which include: “their own historical continuity with pre-colonial societies; their close relationship with the land and natural resources of their own territory; their particular socio-political system, language, culture, values and beliefs; and not belonging to the dominant sectors of their national society and seeing themselves as different from it” (Borrini-Feyerabend et al., 2004, page 8). As Opaskwayak Cree scholar Dr. Shawn Wilson (2008, page 34) notes: “the term Indigenous has important implications politically, as in the face of colonization we assert our collective rights as self-determining Peoples at an international level”. State and other actors seeking to establish or increase support for IPCAs need to carefully consider the specific contexts surrounding specifically Indigenous initiatives and should follow visions set forth by Indigenous Peoples.
Some academic research on IPCAs has explored their social-ecological benefits, challenges, lessons learned, and provided advice for their development and recognition. Most academic publications about IPCAs describe specific case studies, such as Australia’s Indigenous Protected Area program (e.g. Davies et al., 2013; Muller, 2003); Indigenous-led Tribal Parks in North America (e.g. Murray and King, 2012; Carroll, 2014), co-managed protected areas in Latin America (e.g. Ruiz-Mallén et al., 2014 and Reyes-Garcia et al., 2013), and long-standing Indigenous conserved areas in Malaysia (e.g. Massey et al., 2011; Vaz and Agama, 2013) and Nepal (e.g. Stevens, 2013). Research is warranted to identify and address the common issues, motivations, approaches, and challenges faced by Indigenous Peoples, to inform state and other actors interested in better supporting these initiatives and the Indigenous Peoples who are striving to achieve state and external recognition and support for IPCAs. No comprehensive review of research on IPCAs based on the academic literature exists; we seek to fill this gap.
Given the urgent and ongoing need for biodiversity conservation and recognition of Indigenous Rights, IPCAs are an important avenue forward for achieving both simultaneously (Schuster et al., 2019). Future initiatives can benefit from understanding the successes and challenges of existing IPCAs. We reviewed peer-reviewed literature to characterize research to date on IPCAs, in order to describe the conditions, successes, challenges, and lessons associated with IPCA creation. Our primary objectives in this literature review were to: (1) identify and characterize IPCA initiatives documented in the academic literature; (2) describe socio-cultural, ecological, and political motivations behind IPCA creation, as well as external support, and recognition by state and other non-Indigenous actors; (3) summarize successes and challenges facing various initiatives; and (4) draw from lessons learned to provide recommendations for Indigenous, state, and other external actors to improve multi-sector support and recognition of IPCAs.
Section snippets
Literature selection
We focused our literature search on English-language, peer-reviewed articles. Literature search methods and selection involved a key term search, reviewing papers based on selection criteria, and coding relevant literature for achieving our objectives, following similar methods by Pittman and Armitage (2016) and Ban and Frid (2018). We searched three interdisciplinary databases: Web of Science, SCOPUS, and Google Scholar in January 2018 using keywords and phrases related to IPCAs (see Table A1
Characterization of IPCA initiatives
The sources that we reviewed discuss 86 site-specific initiatives (i.e. with specific names and/or Indigenous Peoples/communities) involving at least 68 distinct Indigenous Peoples from at least 25 different countries (see Table 2 for examples, Table A3 for full list). A total of 58 articles met the selection criteria (see Table A4, Fig. A1). The majority of articles (52 of 58, 90%) focused on initiatives within individual countries, while some (6 of 58, 10%) discussed regional or global IPCA
Conclusion
The rise in number and visibility of IPCAs has been significantly influenced by Indigenous advocacy regarding the roles and rights of Indigenous People in conservation across geographic scales. Indigenous Peoples have shown great resiliency and adaptability in working alongside and pushing against colonial frameworks to maintain and develop IPCAs. Peer-reviewed literature reflects multiple and tangible benefits of IPCAs. IPCAs can be a beneficial tool towards achieving the socio-cultural and
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors confirm that there are no known conflicts of interest associated with this publication and there has been no significant financial support for this work that could have influenced its outcome.
Acknowledgements
This research was supported through the University of Victoria, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, the Bob Peart Graduate Scholarship in Terrestrial Parks and Protected Areas, and the Robert W. Ford Graduate Scholarship. We are grateful for the constructive input on prior versions of this paper by Charlotte K. Whitney, Kim-Ly Thompson, and Sarah K. Friesen. We also thank three anonymous reviewers for their suggestions, which greatly improved this manuscript.
Glossary
- Indigenous Rights and Title
- These concepts are defined differently by various legal and governmental entities around the globe. Conceptually, Indigenous Rights refer most often to Indigenous People’s diverse rights to use and occupy their ancestral Territories, including territorial, political, and cultural rights, as they were practiced and enjoyed prior to colonization by other governments, and current contemporary rights. Title refers to the formal rights and recognized legal/political
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