Management plans as resources in conservation conflicts

Abstract

This article examines the capacity of management plans to respond to conflicts arising in conservation planning and management. As a widely adopted policy tool for nature conservation, management plans are often prepared in situations with diverging interests. Our starting point is that these plans inevitably influence planning situations, and the conflicts emerging in these situations, even though conflict resolution may not be their primary purpose. Inspired by Lucy Suchman's work on plans in technology development, we analyse the situated effects of four management plans dealing with wildlife and land-use conflicts. Based on the analysis, we identify features that increase the sensitivity of management plans to power asymmetries in planning situations. We suggest that attentiveness to power effects is a step towards ‘uncomfortable planning’, a principle identified by Rafael Ramirez and Jerome Ravetz to be key in responding to the possibility that plans in uncertain, complex and controversial situations make things worse. Uncomfortable planning seeks to involve the peripheral voices and experiences that plans tend to neglect and that often form the roots of conflicts in planning. Adhering to uncomfortable planning is thus a way to enhance the aptitude of management plans as tools in contentious conservation planning situations.