Protected areas: questioning the development-conservation system. A socio-political-economic and ecological framework for a bottom-up approach

Despite repeated calls for urgent action to address biodiversity loss, the resounding verdict is that most conservation policies, in particular their main policy measure, Protected Areas (PAs), have failed to halt environmental degradation and achieve meaningful social outcomes. Yet, the international community has committed to extending PA coverage to 30% of the planet by 2030, and with one-third of the Global South’s population already living in or near a PA, this proportion is set to become a majority. In view of this, the current practice, which is supposed to promote sustainable development but is problematic, consists of juxtaposing socioeconomic policies and environmental policies, often regarded as mutually antagonistic, without considering a comprehensive view of governance issues. This article reviews the impact of PAs on biodiversity and the populations’ living conditions and identifies the knowledge gaps, before looking into why biodiversity conservation has been prioritised, inconclusively, to the detriment of local sociopolitical and economic dynamics and why the narrow principle of ‘inclusive governance’, more words than deeds, falls far short of the mark. The traditional approach, which is blind to the fact that conservation and development objectives are embedded within power relations and a broader sociopolitical dynamic, dominated by extractivist and capitalist logic, should be challenged. We propose a novel analytical framework with an operational methodological approach grounded in critical political ecology in order to take a bottom-up approach rooted in a territory and improve our understanding of the complex interactions between local socioecological, socioeconomic and sociopolitical concerns. This approach will help put in place more effective and inclusive policies consistent with local livelihoods, ways of life, equity and justice.