Protected Area Management Planning

PROTECTED AREA MANAGEMENT PLANNING

by Antonio C. Antonio

February 25, 2015

Let us first talk about the attributes of a good plan for protected area management.  These features are:

A GOOD PLAN IS FOUNDED ON ACCURATE INFORMATION.  Decisions made in planning should be backed with credible information.  In protected area management, a thorough understanding of the biophysical and socioeconomic components and process in and outside the area is needed before fair management decisions can be made.  This requires not only expertise but also enough information that will allow the planners to have a good understanding of how the protected area behaves under various management circumstances.

A GOOD PLAN IS A BALANCE RFLECTION OF THE NEEDS FOR SOCIOECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION.  Difficult as it may be, the plan should be acceptable to all stakeholders in the protected area.  It means incorporating in the plan the varying concerns of people and sectors of the society in and out of the protected area.  Planning must therefore involve the mass participation of various stakeholders (local communities, LGUs, civil society, DENR, DA, other NGOs, international communities, etc.) and must be up to the challenge of wielding conflicting interests into a unified concern to promote the sustainability of resources in the protected area.

A GOOD PLAN IS A PRODUCT OF AN INTERDISCIPLINARY DECISION-MAKING PROCESS.  Protected area management while principally concerned with the protection of important biological resources and attributes of an area is also bound to deal with issues and concerns relating to physical and socioeconomic resources and processes that are intricately linked to the integrity of the protected area.  It is therefore crucial that experts representing major disciplines (e.g., botany, wildlife management, taxonomy, forestry and watershed management, climate and hydrology, soil and geology, sociology, community development, policy and institutional development) are part of the planning team to provide essential technical guidance in decision-making process.

A GOOD PLAN IS FLEXIBLE AND DYNAMIC.  A plan is built around the past, the present and prospective circumstances.  To the extent possible we want our plans to be perfectly fit to the conditions under which it will be implemented.  That is why we spend substantial resources in the accurate description and prediction of how the environment will look like upon implementation.  However, there is only so much that we can do to get a lucid picture of the future and in most likelihood, the future will still deviate from our expectations.

It is therefore important that a plan has the flexibility and adaptability in responding to the rapidly changing environmental and socioeconomic conditions.  In this regard, keeping the future in sight under a broad perspective and designing suitable system of monitoring plan implementation and the environment is necessary to make the plan more responsive and attuned to the prevailing conditions.

The foregoing literature was lifted from the book “Management of Protected Areas” by Nathaniel C. Bantayan, Robert P. Cereno, Rex Victor D. Cruz, Diomedes A. Racelis and Teodoro R. Villanueva.  I found no need to paraphrase or come up with another article to protect the integrity of their collective message on protected area management planning.

Just my little thoughts…

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