Taking of Rights for Natural Resource Conservation: A Discussion About Compensation

Abstract

Protected areas are the defined spaces where human societies seek to ensure the persistence of those parts of nature that they value. As such, they have changed through time, evolving and expanding from early origins where local resource users sought to prevent outsider access and use, to imperial hunting reserves and sacred forests where local elites metered use of natural resources by nonelites, through the Yellowstone parks for “all” people model, to more recent sustainable use reserves and cultural landscapes. Different categories of protected areas provide different balance points between biodiversity conservation and human use, all require that norms are established and enforced to control access to and meter use of natural resources, and each offers both opportunities and constraints on the active involvement of local people in resource management.

KEYWORDS:

• compensation
• conservation
• protected areas
• rights
• parks
• biodiversity