ARS'23 Ninth International Workshop on Social Network Analysis

Defining indicators on Protected Area Conflicts through Social-Ecological Network Analysis: An Economic and Justice approach

02 mag 2023, 15:30

15m

Room Sant'Angelo ()

Oral Presentation Applications of network analysis in multidisciplinary fields Applications of network analysis in multidisciplinary fields

Description

This paper revisits the literature on environmental conflicts in Protected Areas and proposes a theoretical framework that combines the environmental justice approach with an economic and ecosystem services framework. By integrating these perspectives under the Social-Ecological Network approach, the framework aims to improve the understanding of natural resource governance challenges. This paper also suggests a set of indicators to evaluate and track conservation conflicts in Protected Areas. Simultaneously, a questionnaire model has been developed and will be implemented in an online format, making it easy to distribute and administer. The data obtained can be directly beneficial for Protected Areas, offering new perspectives on the drivers of conflicts. The questionnaire also enables a thorough examination of environmental conflicts across various contexts and governance structures, focusing on the influence of social and social-ecological relational dimensions on the emergence of conflicting trade-offs in property rights over ecosystem services. A two-mode network analysis will be implemented considering the network closure and network heterogeneity. Specifically, the two set of nodes, on which ties and attributes will be collected, are social actors and ecosystem services. As main findings, the present research provides a set of indicators and an alternative to sole case-study, to explore and monitor governance issues arising in protected areas. The Social-Ecological Network approach is able to provide a map of social ecological interactions in the relational dimension of environmental conflicts. Thus, this paper aims to demonstrate the importance of the approach to convey the economic and environmental justice frameworks, in order to target the analysis of Protected Areas conflicts and to guide the selection of the most effective indicators to assess and explore such issues. This approach can lead to more economically, socially, and ecologically sustainable and equitable governance of ecosystem services in Protected Areas and more broadly in natural resource management.