A Management Model for Improve the Governance of Protected Areas since an Institutional Perspective and an Empirical Case in a Spanish Natural Park

Abstract

This paper propose a management model for improve the governance of protected areas from an institutional perspective. The good governance in protected areas is based in seven principles: Legitimacy, Inclusiveness, Accountability, Performance, Equity, Connectivity and Institutional sustainability. This proposal is based on an overview of work at the institutional framework level and incorporates factors that affect to the efficiency of governance and improve it. A collaborative multi-criteria method is proposed to improve the good governance and ensure the Institutional Sustainability dimension, by integrating the stakeholder preferences in decision making. This model allows for obtain priorities on the management objectives of the stakeholders in a protected area and identify equivalences with IUCN protection categories using a multi-criteria outranking technique. It also presents an application in the Albufera Natural Park in Valencia, a strongly man-modified wetland located in Eastern Spain. This holistic approach allows ensure the incorporation of elements associated with the institutional sustainability that are not sufficiently represented in the governance in protected areas and to lay the theoretical basis for improve the governance for the global network of protected areas. The application of the model in the Albufera Natural Park has identified the V-Protected Lanscape / Seascape IUCN category as the equivalent international protection category. The results obtained by the park staff and other stakeholders have no major discrepancies. This suggests that this protection category seems well adapted to the social context of this protected area, moreover, the V protection category usually fits well to ecosystems strongly modified by human activities as is the case of the Albufera of Valencia. This model achieves improve two subdimensions of the Institutional Sustainability in the governance of protected areas: the Institutional Resilience, with a flexible integration of the preferences of the stakeholders and the Institutional Robustness, including the priorities of the stakeholders in the decision making of the protected areas.