ABSTRACT
Government protected areas in Asia are mostly designated based on a colonial model in which local and indigenous communities are excluded from the Park. Following the Yellowstone National Park model from the USA, a top-down approach was often used in the creation of ‘formal government controlled’ protected areas. Frequently these models resulted in a lack of integration with traditional land uses and activities within and surrounding protected areas. As revealed during the workshop on ‘Governance in Protected Areas in Asia’ held in Akita, Japan in 2011, protected areas in Asia were prone to suffer from the lack of compliance and encroachment by local communities motivated by poverty.
