Parks and Protected Areas: Mobilizing Knowledge for Effective Decision-Making

Dear Colleagues,

Parks and protected areas provide essential services and resources, including nature conservation, visitor recreation, local economic opportunities, Indigenous cultures, and human wellbeing. Park managers make difficult decisions to achieve their diverse mandates, and need up-to-date, relevant, and rigorous information. Evidence-based management is in vogue with politicians and practitioners; however, access to, and effective use of, current research (Fazey et al., 2013; Segan et al., 2011; Sutherland et al., 2012) provided by social scientists, natural scientists, local people, or Indigenous peoples, is an ongoing challenge (Bennett & Roth, 2015; Cvitanovic et al., 2015, 2016, 2017; Nguyen et al., 2017).

Parks and protected areas, whether governed publicly, privately, or through other forms, are chronically underfunded, and thus lack sufficient resources to mobilize knowledge. Globally, most park agencies have little capacity to produce in-house social science or natural science research, or to conduct meaningful knowledge exchange with Indigenous and local communities (Fisher et al., 2018; Lemieux et al., 2018).

This Special Issue seeks to assemble papers that broadly explore knowledge mobilization in parks and protected areas, including research that addresses successes and failures, barriers and enablers, diverse theoretical frameworks, structural innovations, and more that support effective knowledge mobilization. In many parks, efforts to mobilize knowledge, or move knowledge into active service, have largely focused on (1) the use of natural science research, and (2) achieving nature conservation rather than other park mandates. Park agencies and other conservation organizations now realize that understanding how social forces affect, and are affected by, park management is as important as knowledge of natural systems. Realizing that park-related knowledge mobilization is needed for effective park management, and that human factors have been neglected, the goal of this Special Issue is to enhance the generation and use of knowledge, especially social science (Bennett et al., 2016; Gruby et al., 2015), local (Charnley et al., 2007; Failing et al., 2007; Raymond et al., 2010), and indigenous knowledge (Berkes et al., 2000; Ens et al., 2015; Houde, 2007), for parks and protected areas policy, planning, and management.

Prof. Dr. Glen Hvenegaard
Dr. Elizabeth Halpenny
Dr. Jill Bueddefeld
Guest Editors

References

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• knowledge mobilization
• protected areas
• management
• planning
• evidence-based decision-making
• case studies.