Conservation across the cultural divide : comparative perspectives on local communities and protected area management in the Asia-Pacific region

Abstract

The widespread rise of a modern conservation ethic has seen national parks, archaeological parks, nature reserves and a host of other forms of protected area (PA) spread to almost every corner of the globe. As a body of thought and practice that was developed initially in western industrialised societies, the spread of modern, state initiated conservation has been a spectacular success as far as increasing the total area of protected land and waters is concerned, but it has not always been a straightforward process as far as the on ground work of managing landscapes for conservation is concerned. In particular, the ideal of state run PAs preserving pristine natural areas has proven difficult to reconcile with on the ground realities in developing countries and on Indigenous lands, where sometimes tens of thousands of people will live in and depend on protected landscapes for economic and cultural reasons. 30 years after participatory planning methods and co-management emerged, where are we up to with cross-cultural collaborations in conservation? An initial point to be made is that interactions between western oriented conservationists and local, culturally distinct communities have been sustained to the extent that at times PAs are not only the subject of intercultural dialogue, but have become the products of intercultural engagement. PAs in some cases have moved beyond a standoff between western and non-western views of nature, culture and conservation, and are now in some important ways bi-cultural entities. What are the implications of this process for on-ground conservation work? Presenting case material from Australia and Timor-Leste, I{u2019}ll focus on how the growth of the conservation estate in Australia has been fuelled in part by the growth in Indigenous owned land, and secondly on how traditional institutions in Timor-Leste have played a key role in facilitating social and political change in the past. Both these cases support the argument that developing {u2018}bi-cultural{u2019} PAs can broker alliances in support of conservation among local communities.