MANAGEMENT OF CONSERVATION AREAS WITH PARTICIPATION OF COMMUNITIES IN MOZAMBIQUE

Abstract

This article discusses the challenges of managing conservation areas; in search of new institutional instruments and mechanisms that make effective conservation of biodiversity and ecosystems in protected areas. The management of conservation areas in some countries has been made from a growing demand for involvement of stakeholders and communities in decision-making in the process of managing natural resources. There are three issues surrounding the debate on participatory management of conservation areas, namely: the distribution of authority and responsibilities in the decision-making process; distribution of benefits and sustainability (ecological, social and economic).  The main reasons that justify the management of these areas with the participation of communities are: the restriction on access to resources can compromise the food security of families living there and; it is a prerequisite for communities to be able to carry out their activities, to set up joint enterprises with them, or other forms of management that make their participation effective.  The analytical approach was based on the theory of natural resource management and complemented by recent contributions from research in the areas of political sociology, poverty and the environment on the phenomenon of "participation". The local dimension, although the integrative synthesis between the natural and the human, historically and spatially located, makes essential a participatory management of conservation areas in countries such as Mozambique, because it allows the understanding and transformation of social relations that are carried out from a certain mode of production and organization established in a defined space of protection and conservation.