Elsevier

Journal for Nature Conservation

Volume 40, December 2017, Pages 64-76
Journal for Nature Conservation

Understanding non-compliance: Local people’s perceptions of natural resource exploitation inside two national parks in northeast Brazil

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jnc.2017.09.006Get rights and content

Abstract

Non-compliance with conservation regulations is a key issue for protected area management effectiveness in most parts of the world. Effectively managing such behaviours requires a clear understanding of who is non-compliant, what is driving their non-compliance, and what the likely conservation consequences of compliant and non-compliant behaviours are. However, such information is notoriously difficult to obtain due to the (understandable) reluctance of transgressors to discuss illegal activities. Here, we adopt the Kiping social survey method to assess the drivers of non-compliance with resource use rules in two national parks (Catimbau and Chapada Diamantina) in Northeast Brazil. The method is therefore used to support the exploration of suitable solutions for coping with non-compliance on the ground. We found high levels of social acceptability for illegal behaviours in both Parks, though hunting and cutting trees inside the park were viewed more negatively by local residents. Respondents from both areas generally supported the collection of plants and firewood, especially by poor people and local residents. Acceptance of illegal activities was statistically correlated with awareness of park regulations in both parks and, in Catimbau NP, it was also prevalent among older, poorer and less educated residents. To deter non-compliance, a mix of interventions from more coercive measures to softer instruments are recommended, especially in Catimbau NP where the area is not patrolled and the close proximity of indigenous lands gives rise to land- and resource-use conflicts.

Introduction

Protected Areas (PAs) are the primary policy instrument for conserving biodiversity internationally and their ability to achieve this objective largely depends on effective management (Hockings et al., 2006). For many PAs, the success of conservation initiatives is highly dependent on the active support of the local population in the form of compliance with park regulations (Mascia et al., 2014). Conversely, failure to curb illegal activities (cf. Cifuentes, Izurieta, & de Faria, 2000) may significantly weaken management effectiveness. Indeed, non-compliance with PA regulations is increasingly seen as a threat to the effectiveness of conservation policies in most parts of the planet (Conteh, Gavin, & Solomon, 2015; Solomon, Gavin, & Gore, 2015).

Non-compliant behaviour can have significant biodiversity and socioeconomic impacts at various scales and, if unresolved, can seriously compromise the ability of a PA to achieve its conservation objectives (Gavin, Solomon, & Blank, 2010; Keane, Jones, Edwards-Jones, & Milner-Gulland, 2008; Solomon et al., 2015). For example, illegal logging and illegal trade of timber and forest products have been identified as global threats to tropical forests in both Indonesian and Amazonian PAs (Barber, Cochrane, Souza, & Laurance, 2014; Tacconi, 2012, Yonariza and Webb, 2007). Illegal wildlife hunting and trade has been recorded in PAs of developed and developing countries with serious consequences on population dynamics (Carvalho & Morato, 2013; Gandiwa, Heitkönig, Lokhorst, Prins, & Leeuwis, 2013; Rauset et al., 2016). Illicit resource extraction in PAs has also been observed at a local scale, giving rise to conflicts between users and PA managers in many parts of the world (Weladji and Tchamba, 2003, Anthony, 2007; Robbins, McSweeney, Chhangani, & Rice, 2009).

Illegal activities can be particularly problematic in developing countries where resources available for conservation and PAs are limited (Balmford et al., 2002; Bruner, Gullison, & Balmford, 2004), land ownership and resource tenure are unclear (Wunder, 2007) and where rural communities are often highly dependent on natural resources such as firewood, medicinal plants and bushmeat (Vedeld, Angelsen, Bojö, Sjaastad, & Kobugabe Berg, 2007). The legal restriction on the use of these resources by PAs is often perceived as a loss of rights by local communities, increasing social conflicts and leading to negative attitudes towards PAs and/or non-compliant behaviour: the illegal extraction of natural resources from within the park boundaries (Baral and Heinen, 2007a, West and Brockington, 2006, Yonariza and Webb, 2007).

In this context, there are at least two reasons to study compliance/non-compliance with conservation rules. Firstly, while many studies have demonstrated the consequences of non-compliant behaviours across scales, our understanding of conservation “crimes” to date is still fragmented and requires critical, comprehensive and interdisciplinary approaches (Gore, 2011). Secondly, the emerging compliance “crisis” may indicate that traditional instruments for law enforcement are ineffective to deter non-compliance with conservation and environmental regulations. Consequently, there is an urgent need to find alternative solutions and design more tailored interventions to deter/prevent non-compliant behaviours (Moreto & Gau, 2017).

The most common response to non-compliance is to implement measures to strengthen the enforcement of conservation rules through, for example, more severely punishing infractions. Such a strategy is indicative of a classic “command-and-control” approach to conservation where resources are primarily directed towards monitoring for rule violations and processing law-breakers. While several studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of such punishments as a strategy for reducing illegal hunting and poaching (Hilborn et al., 2006; Jachmann, 2008), considerable resources are required to implement well-organized systems that include mechanisms for patrolling and successfully punishing rule-breakers (da Silva and Bernard, 2015, Keane et al., 2008; St. John, Mai, & Pei, 2014). Moreover, punishing members of local communities for committing infractions against PAs can have wider and unintended consequences such as weakening trust between people and park authorities (Infield and Namara, 2009). More generally, the implementation of coercive strategies opens a space for corruption since the decision to report/prosecute may be financially negotiable in some cultures (Jin-Li, Huang, & Chu, 2004). In other words, if officials are willing to shut their eyes (for a price), local people can easily avoid fines without needing to change their behaviour (Aklin, Bayer, Harish, & Urpelainen, 2014).

An increasingly used alternative to ‘command and control’ conservation strategies, especially in the developing world, is the implementation of economic incentives (e.g. alternative livelihood schemes, conservation-development programmes, pro-poor conservation programmes, payment for ecosystem service schemes, etc.) to deter non-compliant behaviours (Duffy, St John, Büscher, & Brockington, 2015). However, these initiatives have also been criticized for intensifying inequalities which, in turn, can actually increase non-compliance at a local scale (Gibbes and Keys, 2010). Moreover, financial instruments and economic incentives may have a “crowding out” effect (Pannell, 2008, Fisher, 2012) as they may not necessarily reinforce people’s intrinsic motivations to engage in biodiversity and ecosystem conservation (Rode, Gómez-Baggethun, & Krause, 2015).

Another approach is to create/strengthen education and outreach campaigns focused on promoting pro-conservation behaviours and attitudes. If well planned and implemented, such an approach can generate considerable long-term benefits, raising environmental awareness and engaging more people in conservation-friendly behaviours (Arias, 2015, Holmes, 2003a). Nevertheless, the ability of these schemes to influence individual behaviours such as non-compliance remains uncertain, since the causal link between knowledge and behaviours is, at best, tenuous (Schultz, 2002; Schultz, 2011).

Together with the traditional “carrots, sticks, and sermons” approach (Bemelmans-Videc, Rist, & Vedung, 1998), new environmental policy instruments (NEPIs) can be applied to increase compliance. NEPIs are “soft” environmental policy measures that were first introduced as more flexible alternatives to the traditional command-and-control approach. They are characterized by a more flexible, market-oriented, and multi-level and multi-stakeholder approach to environmental governance (Jordan, Wurzel, & Zito, 2003). For example, a new generation of payments for ecosystem services (Compensation and Rewards for Environmental Services − CRES) have been framed and implemented in the developing world and have gained the approval of conservation organizations for paying particular attention to poverty reduction, rural empowerment and social justice, ecosystem governance and management (Swallow et al., 2009). More generally, community-based conservation (CBC) models have been broadly adopted as a post-modern strategy to deal with non-compliance with PA regulations, enhancing PAs as a common goal and proactively involving local communities in PA management (Berkes, 2004; Moreto, Brunson, & Braga, 2016). Nevertheless, many conservationists remain skeptical, fearing that CBC approaches may be more effective at changing users’ attitudes rather than their behaviours (Infield and Namara, 2001, Lepp and Holland, 2006).

New technologies (remote-sensing, drones, etc.) and global information infrastructure (i.e. the Internet) have also recently provided an innovative and low-cost way to support the enforcement of conservation and PAs regulations (Fuller, 2006, Kretser et al., 2015). Nevertheless, these new tools raise new concerns about data privacy, data security, and regulatory reach (di Vimercati, Genovese, Livraga, Piuri, & Scotti, 2013). Choosing between these alternative approaches for reducing non-compliance with a PA rules therefore requires a clear understanding of who is non-compliant, what is driving their non-compliance, and what the likely conservation consequences of compliant and non-compliant behaviours are (Arias, 2015, Gavin et al., 2010). Answering these key questions will provide information for optimal policy choices and allow managers and conservationists to design more efficient interventions (Solomon et al., 2015). However, collecting such data is by no means straightforward: direct observation of illegal activities is practically challenging, while indirect measures (e.g. through social surveys) are often beset with biases and uncertainties (Loibooki, Hofer, Campbell, & East, 2002; Nepal and Weber, 1995, Razafimanahaka et al., 2012). These issues have led to the development of a new generation of methods specifically designed for collecting sensitive data (Fairbrass, Nuno, Bunnefeld, & Milner-Gulland, 2016; St. John, Edwards-Jones, Gibbons, & Jones, 2010; Warner, 1965). For example, it has been claimed that far more robust data on illegal activities can be gained by carefully analysing local people’s attitudes to resource use and their estimates of the illegal behaviour of their peers (St. John et al., 2014). Moreover, the study of perceptions of local people concerning conservation issues have been recently advocated as a meaningful way to provide insights and evidence for improving monitoring, evaluating, and adapting conservation programmes and policies (Bennett, 2016). An additional challenge is that the relative importance of socio-economic, environmental and cultural factors driving non-compliance may change for different behaviours and across different contexts (Rizzolo, Gore, Ratsimbazafy, & Rajaonson, 2017). This is partly because there is large spatial and temporal variation in social norms about whether a given behaviour is socially acceptable and to what extent rules and enforcement strategies (e.g. fines) are perceived as just and fair within that particular context (Keane et al., 2008, St. John et al., 2014).

Social acceptability − defined as a “a measure of support towards a set of regulations, management tools or towards an organization by an individual or a group of individuals based on geographic, social, economic and/or cultural criteria” (Thomassin, White, Stead, & David, 2010) − is therefore a key aspect for the success of a PA. Social acceptability is also used as a measure of legitimacy, defined as “the acceptance and justification of shared rule by a community” (Bernstein, 2005). Specifically, the extent to which an individual or community is likely to accept/legitimate different environmental policy instruments, and thereby, support regulations and decisions, depends upon social and institutional and trust (Jones, 2010). In the PA context, many empirical studies have shown that social acceptability and/or legitimacy are inextricably linked with trust (Thomassin et al., 2010; Thuy et al., 2011; Jones et al., 2012). For example, a study of local residents living adjacent to three National Parks located in developed and developing countries found legitimacy, together with trust, were key drivers of voluntary compliance in the absence of general agreement with PA regulations (Stern 2008).

Thus, in order to frame appropriate strategies to cope with non-compliant behaviours it is also crucial to have a clear understanding of socio-anthropological aspects such as historical grievances, ethnic conflicts and social stratification in the studied population (Bragagnolo, Malhado, Jepson, & Ladle, 2016). For example, a key factor influencing local residents’ perceptions of natural resource exploitation is whether their livelihoods depend on the direct extraction of those resources (Triguero-Mas, Olomí-Solà, Jha, Zorondo-Rodríguez, & Reyes-García, 2010).

Here, we use an extensive social survey database to assess the context and drivers of non-compliance with resource use rules for two national parks in Northeast Brazil. Specifically, we use the Kiping Method (or 5W’s), which is considered a suitable starting point to study compliance with conservation rules (Arias, 2015, Gavin et al., 2010), as a starting point to explore alternative solutions to cope with non-compliance. The method is based on five main questions: i) who are (or could be) the rule-breakers?; ii) what are the resources illegally used?; iii) where does the illegal resource use occur?; iv) when does the illegal resource use occur?, and; v) why does an individual decide (or not decide) to break rules? By answering these questions we aim to provide evidence-based information to support the design of tailored initiatives to cope with non-compliance on the ground. Our data comes from face-to-face surveys collected in the buffer zone of two NPs. We discuss our results in the context of a general system to manage compliance with respect to regulations governing NPs, considering the peculiarities of the Brazilian context.

Section snippets

Study areas

Brazil hosts the largest terrestrial PA network in the world: covering nearly 13% (about 240 million ha) of the total global protected land surface (UNEP-WCMC, 2016). Under the Brazilian system of PA designation, National Parks (NPs) are public and restricted-use lands where exploiting natural resources is strictly prohibited (MMA-SNUC, 2000). Generally speaking, NPs management in Brazil follows a traditional “fence and fines” approach. Thus, sensu strictu, the only activities permitted in

Socioeconomic context

The sample consisted of 409 local residents: 160 in CNP and 249 in CDNP. The socioeconomic context differed between the two NPs. Local communities surrounding CNP were homogeneously rural: 100 out of 160 respondents were farmers and about 15% declared to own land inside the park. In contrast, two thirds of respondents living close to CDNP were resident in small towns (>10,000 residents), less than 15% were farmers and less than 10% held land inside the park.

The level of education varied

Knowledge of what resources can be exploited inside the park

In the current study, a considerable proportion (39–53%) of local residents in CNP considered activities such as animal keeping, grazing and farming inside the park as legal, even though park regulations do not allow any kind of direct use activity inside park boundaries. While the knowledge of the legal status of such activities was generally higher in respondents from CDNP, many nevertheless incorrectly believed that exploitative activities such as collecting firewood (47%) and collecting

Conclusions

Non-compliance with conservation regulations is a worldwide problem, being especially problematic in the developing world where rural inhabitants often have strong traditions of exploiting natural resources and where decision-making contexts are more exposed to corruption (Sundström, 2016). Where such traditions exist, their prohibition is unlikely to be effective in the absence of intensive monitoring and enforcement.

In this contribution, we aimed to explore alternative solutions to cope with

Acknowledgements

This research was funded by the Brazilian Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) − Post-doc fellowships N° 501168/2012-5&168258/2014-5. RJL is supported by CNPq 311412/2011-4. Special thanks to the anonymous reviewers.

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