Socioenvironmental conflicts in conservation areas

Abstract

The growing awareness of widespread changes in the biosphere, including themodification of landscapes, loss of biological diversity and climate change is inspiring the creation of protected areas by means of governmental planning. But in practice, such initiatives have been frequently undertaken leaving aside the perceptions, needs and preferences of local communities. This is a major cause of conflicts that threat the survival conditions of stakeholders that depend directly on the ecosystems goods and services existing in the protected areas.In general, such disputes are ambivalent: conflict heating can lead, on the one hand, to an increasing worsening of the biophysical environment and of the living conditions of the poor; on the other hand, it can reinforce the move towards social inclusion of groups and communities that have been systematically marginalized from spaces of citizenship´s construction and exercise. This article focuses on such ambivalence, exploring selected experiences of conflict management in different regional settings – including South Brazil. The analytical framework is tributary of complex systems thinking applied tothe field of common property resource management - an innovative approach thatremains unknown of large segments of social scientists in our country. Keywords: socio-environmental conflict; Conservation Units; common property.