ABSTRACT

This volume provides a judicious and critical examination of the rapidly evolving field of protected areas management, based on an assessment of recent experiences worldwide. Such an assessment needs to provide ideas that enhance the resilience of the discourse on parks and protected areas – and, ultimately, the resilience of the social-ecological systems they aim to protect – and ensure that this dialogue continues to work towards serving legitimate human and ecological needs. How well we have achieved this goal is evident in the extent to which the chapters contribute new insights into contemporary challenges of park management. In the first chapter we argued that parks and protected areas face two significant challenges. One is the growing complexity of managing them. Protected area managers today are facing qualitatively different problems from those that such institutions were originally designed to address.