The role of communities in the governance of China's national parks and the consolidation and development of their role
As China's national park system reform enters a crucial phase,effective governance of national parks seeks to leverage the strengths of government,market,and societal entities to establish a multi-actor co-governance structure.National park communities,as a vital compo-nent of societal entities,are a key link in fostering effective governance of national parks.Based on literature research,this paper elucidates the underlying logic of communities as criti-cal actors in the governance of China's national parks.It distills the characteristics and challeng-es of community involvement in national park governance through empirical studies and pro-poses recommendations for promoting the coordinated development of national parks and com-munities.The study indicates that,as complex socio-ecological systems,Chinese national parks feature distinct patterns of community-based natural resource utilisation.The necessity of com-munity involvement in national park governance fundamentally lies in the fact that only reason-able multi-actor natural resource governance can sustain harmony between nature and humans.Current community participation in national park governance is influenced by path dependence,context dependence,and financial dependence.Governance effectiveness is affected by struc-tural factors,local cognition,and incentive mechanisms.Based on the analysis of current com-munity participation,this paper further proposes an analytical framework to disentangle the park-people relationship that can be steered to be positive under good governance.Thus,to ful-ly leverage the role of communities as actors in national park governance and achieve coordi-nated development between national parks and communities,the paper suggests differentiated community management mechanisms,diversified incentives and guarantees,internalisation of external policies,and mainstreaming biodiversity.This approach aims to achieve socio-ecologi-cal systems'adaptive governance,foster cooperation among governance entities,realise liveli-hoods compatible with conservation,and prompt interdepartmental government collaboration to address structural issues.Ultimately,clarifying natural resource property rights,decentralis-ing management authority,and promoting community-led conservation based on local needs and cultural contexts should be central to community empowerment in community governance.To achieve the governance goal of coordination between national parks and community through a multi-actor governance approach,it is necessary to strengthen the power and secure rights of national park communities,with legal protection as the starting point and community self-awareness enhancement as the endpoint.Thus,multidimensional community empowerment,in-cluding political,economic,cultural,social,and technical aspects,should be implemented in the process of national park governance.
national park communitysocial-ecological systemsnational park governancecommunity participationcoordinated developmentmulti-actor governancecommunity em-powerment
万方数据
维普
