Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 6
Public Participation and
Socioecological Resilience
JAVIER ESCALERA REYES
Social Participation, Collective Identification, and
Socioecological Resilience
The following lyrics by the old Costa Rican calypso singer Walter “Gavitt” Ferguson
express with wonderful Caribbean irony and wit the feelings toward politicians and
conservation agency personnel when the areas that people live in become the object
of official protection because of their “natural” value:
National Parkers are going around
into my farm they sit and walk
telling everybody all around the town
“This is National Park.”
They want get full details
“How long I owned this piece of land?”
No tell no lie or you going to jail!
That's what they made me understand.
Walter “Gavitt” Ferguson
This is particularly true of areas that boast such natural value precisely because of the
relationship the local population has maintained with the land for generations, mak-
ing such lands “national park material” or eligible for other types of protected status.
Local residents' feelings of exclusion and even alienation from a territory that had
been their world until it was declared a protected space are a logical consequence of
the ways in which politicians, civil servants, scientists, and technicians typically view
the “human element” of these areas (see chaps. 18, 19, 20, this volume, for more dis-
cussion of this phenomenon). Even today, many of these agents continue to perceive
the local population as a problem if not an outright hindrance. Many still believe that
the best way of conserving important spaces is to keep people as separate from them as
possible, based on the assumption that people are not aware of the heritage value of
the space in which they live and to which they belong. However, it is becoming
increasingly apparent that areas of high environmental value cannot be properly
