Pathways to Enhancing Community Participation in National Parks through the Collective Forest Conservation Easement System—A Case study of Qianjiangyuan National Park
⑴ Background——The national park system is a major institutional innovation in China's ecological civili-zation construction.However,the establishment of the national park system is faced with a difficult balance be-tween natural resources protection and community livelihood guarantee.China has explored some measures to solve this dilemma,but certain limitations have been exposed in the implementation,and the collective forest conservation easement system is an innovative system of national park system reform.At present,most studies show that community is an important stakeholder in national park governance.However,the mechanism of collec-tive forest conservation easement system to improve community residents'participation in national park govern-ance has not been well explained.⑵ Methods——Qianjiangyuan National Park was one of the first 10 national park system reform pilot areas in China and was taken as the research object in this paper.The research data came from the field survey conduc-ted by the research group in October 2022 in Qianjiangyuan National Park and its four surrounding townships,which mainly included participatory observation and semi-structured interviews.This paper used the grounded the-ory to conduct open coding,axial coding and selective coding on the obtained data and constructed a conceptual model to explore the mechanism of conservation easement system to improve the community residents'participa-tion in national park governance.⑶ Results——First,economic factors and policy factors are potential incentives for the community resi-dents to participate in the reform of conservation easement system.Economic factors mainly include subsidy de-mands,income from migrant workers,agricultural and forestry income and total income,while policy factors mainly include policy implementation,logging policy and policy publicity.Second,supporting measures are an important guarantee for the community residents to participate in the reform of conservation easement system,which mainly include government support,community construction,livelihood security and environmental educa-tion.Third,the cooperation of the local government is the"catalyst"for the community residents to participate in the reform of conservation easement system,which mainly includes building a dialogue platform and a feedback mechanism.⑷ Conclusions and Discussions——Based on the above research conclusions,the following policy sug-gestions are put forward:First,improve the legislative mechanism and optimize the institutional environment for community participation.The rights,responsibilities and benefits of community residents in national park govern-ance should be clarified through legislation,and the institutional cost of community participation should be re-duced through formal system.Second,improve the livelihood alternative mechanism to ensure the sustainability of community residents'livelihoods.On one hand,establish a differentiated and hierarchical ecological compensa-tion mechanism.On the other hand,provide the wildlife damage insurance and public welfare services,and allo-catefunds to construct the villages.Third,improve the channels for social participation,and create a new govern-ance pattern of national parks of co-construction,co-governance and co-sharing.Local governments should intro-duce some subsidy policies and preferential tax policies,and play a supervisory role.The national park authori-ties can raise more money through concessions,tickets revenue,and paid use of resources.
conservation easement systemcommunity participationQianjiangyuan National Parkgrounded theory
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