Planning for democracy in protected rural areas: Application of a voting method in a Spanish-Portuguese reserve

Abstract

The planning of protected rural areas is usually defined by institutional decision-makers without considering the preferences of the local communities that live on the land, which frequently leads to conflicts in landmanagement. This paper proposes a votingmethod based on the Borda count to rank themanagement goals of a protected rural area. Themethodwas applied in a Spanish-Portuguese reserve called Iberian Plateauwith the aimof collecting the preferences of institutional decision-makers (government and scientists) and rural landowners (farmers and businesspersons). Regarding the conservation and development objectives, the results show differences in spatial planning when only the preferences of institutional decision-makers are taken into consideration, as opposed to when the preferences of landowners are included within the analysis.