Sustainable Mountain Development - Mountain Geography: Physical and Human Dimensions - page 621

such ways, conservation is linked to the continuation of local practices and employment
possibilities. These examples underline the key role of continued human intervention in
maintaining the cultural landscapes that are essential elements of many mountain pro-
tected areas. This is also true in developing countries, where the indigenous knowledge,
or traditional ecological knowledge, of local people has been recognized through their
involvement in the management of resources, as in the Hunstein Range of Papua New
Guinea, the Kilum and Ijim Mountains of Cameroon, the Kigezi Highlands of Uganda,
and the Venezuelan Andes (Borrini-Feyerabend 1997; Boffa et al. 2005; Llambí et al.
2005).
Recognition of the expertise of local people also extends to environmental monitoring
in mountain protected areas, which has involved local people in Western countries for
some time (Peine 2004). In developing countries, indigenous knowledge is often comple-
mentary to, and sometimes more suitable and adaptable than, Western scientific meth-
ods. It may therefore be more appropriate to use indigenous expertise to monitor the
success of nature conservation measures than expensive expatriate consultants or sci-
entific equipment (Higgins-Zogib et al. 2010). Thus, cultural heritage is preserved and
people gain employment as stewards of their own landscape. There can also be other
incentives for local people to work in the long-term interests of conservation. For in-
stance, tourism can contribute to poverty reduction by providing employment opportun-
ities, which further contribute not only to biodiversity conservation, but also to the so-
cial responsibility commitments of national parks, as at Table Mountain National Park,
South Africa (Ferreira 2011). Entrance fees can also be reinvested in local community
facilities, as for instance in Bwindi National Park in Uganda, where the park authorities
have also provided local people with bamboo rhizomes to plant on their farms (Borrini-
Feyerabend 1997).
A further element in building partnerships is to ensure that all partners have access
to the same information. For instance, in developing the master plan for Flathead
County, Montana, residents used geographic information systems (GIS) in a privately
funded process to select between various alternative futures (Culbertson et al. 1996).
Similarly, the indigenous people of the Colombia's Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta were
provided with GIS and trained to use them to map their landscape and evaluate the
implications of different potential land uses (Johnson et al. 2001). Equally, when the
dominant national language is different from the languages of mountain people, docu-
ments need to be made available in these languages, in forms that can easily be under-
stood, and public meetings should be held in these languages and in appropriate cul-
tural settings. For government agencies and their staff, all of these examples require
that they consider local goals and values, as well as those of the wider society, with a
shift from “expert management” to management in partnership. This is usually not easy;
it requires giving away power and authority, and recognizing that local people have
complementary knowledge and the right to be involved in managing their region (Lock-
wood 2010). Overall, these examples also show that the conservation of biodiversity, just
like tourism, is a complex use of resources with not just environmental, but also many
economic, social, and cultural implications at many scales. The mere fact that people,
wildlife, fires, diseases, and air pollution regularly cross administrative and ecologic-
al boundaries means that conservation has to be implemented at the regional scale.