Perspectives of youths on cultural ecosystem services provided by Tun Mustapha Park, Malaysia through a participatory approach

Abstract

Successful buy-in and support for management of Marine Protected Areas (MPA) should acknowledge the existing cultural ecosystem services and their connections to the well-being of local communities to gain positive perceptions. It is necessary to engage local stakeholders, especially among the youths, to explore governance complexities of MPAs and how to better understand cultural ecosystem services. Thus, this qualitative study investigated the perceptions of youths on cultural ecosystem services using a visual method, namely photovoice, as part of the participatory research in a newly established MPA of Tun Mustapha Park, Sabah. Three themes were identified in the process, namely social, economic, and environment. The engagement demonstrated the value of using the participatory approach, which yielded important insights of youths as a part of the community, which included the need for additional livelihood means post-establishment of MPA and issues of degradation of the marine environment. This paper contributed to the MPA governance literature specifically on the empirical youth perception which has been underrepresented as well as the employment of visual participatory methods to encourage better expression among the youths towards their living environment.

Keywords:

• Marine Protected Areas
• participatory approach
• photovoice
• cultural ecosystem service
• youths

Acknowledgements

We were grateful to the principal of SMK Abdul Rahim Kudat, Mr Abdul Waris Bin Iman Goy, all coordinating teachers especially Mr Vijaya Ragavan A/L Subramany and Mr Amar Singh A/L S. Charan for providing support and assistance during the project. The revision of this draft was prepared during the corresponding author’s writing residency with the company of Abu Bijan in Rimbun Dahan.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This paper was supported by funding in part from the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) via the United Kingdom Research and Innovation (UKRI) under grant agreement NE/P021107/1 to the Blue Communities project, which is partially hosted by the Universiti Malaya under reference no. IF052-2017 as well as University of Malaya Partnership Grant under reference no. RK005-2019.