Challenges for Protected Areas: Biodiversity Loss, Place-People and Law Connections

Abstract

In this chapter, I consider the extraordinary phenomenon of planetary-scale biological diversity loss and introduce how one key answer aimed at halting these losses, namely in situ protected area conservation programs, are failing. Despite unprecedented efforts to preserve ecosystems and habitats we are facing an extinction crisis. In this context I introduce a new approach aimed at improving the efficacy of in situ conservation protected area schemes. I argue one solution can be found in legal geography scholarship. A legal geography approach empowers us to consider the intertwined regulatory people-place dynamics that enable or disable effective management practices. In the age of the Anthropocene, legal geography is both an applied and conceptual approach for our time.