Unravelling stakeholder participation under conditions of neoliberal biodiversity governance in Catalonia,Spain

Abstract

The restructuring of biodiversity governance in Europe during the last two decades has been, inter alia, based on the argument that effective conservation hinges on consensual decision-making involving all relevant stakeholders. This has given rise to various network-based forms of governance and participatory arrangements in protected areas reinforcing the involvement of business and non-state actors, particularly through the creation of profitable public–private partnerships. Even though this shift has been framed as promoting stakeholder and public participation, in practice it has often hampered democratic decision-making and community empowerment. In this paper, we investigate the restructuring of biodiversity governance through the establishment of participatory arrangements in the governance of the natural park of Sant Llorenç del Munt i l’Obac, a place whose history has been linked with the emergence of one of the first environmental movements in Catalonia (Spain). We pay particular attention to the role of participatory arrangements in transforming power relationships and in promoting a neoliberal mode of biodiversity governance. We find that governance restructuring under the rhetoric of promoting stakeholder participation has in practice led to the exclusion of key social actors from the management of the natural park and favoured the inclusion of actors with mainly economic motivations further embedding a neoliberal agenda in the governance of the park and ultimately disempowering local community.

Keywords

Biodiversity governance neoliberal conservation participatory arrangements natural park consensus depoliticisation

Introduction

A key argument for the restructuring of biodiversity governance in Europe, especially during the last two decades, has been that effective conservation hinges on consensual decision-making processes involving all relevant stakeholders. This has given rise to various network-based forms of governance and participatory arrangements. Stakeholders’ participation is generally considered to increase the social and political acceptance of protected areas potentially contributing to their successful management (Borrini-Feyerabend et al., 2013; Dudley, 2008; Stoll-Kleemann and O’Riordan, 2002). It is also supposed to contribute to environmental justice¹ by giving all relevant stakeholders the right to influence the management of their area (Brechin et al., 2002; Hajer, 2003; Paloniemi et al., 2015).

However, these new forms of governance do not always enhance democracy or empower citizens (Swyngedouw, 2005). Actually, the shift from top down state government to the promotion of these networked governance forms composed by a broader representation of the state-civil society-markets ensemble has been marked under neoliberalism (Harvey, 2005). In the case of environmental governance, this has often led to institutional arrangements which favour market-based actors and practices (Bridge and Perreault, 2009). In this context, profitable public–private partnerships and increased business involvement are a priori considered key factors for the success of nature conservation concealing the wider socioeconomic and historical context where the restructuring of biodiversity governance occurs and thus the actual drivers of governance change (see Apostolopoulou et al., 2014).

In particular, the above-mentioned changes in biodiversity governance are intertwined with increased global and European trends towards a neoliberal mode of biodiversity conservation (Apostolopoulou and Adams, 2015, 2017; Apostolopoulou et al., 2014; Spash, 2015). These processes have intensified in Europe, especially since the financial crash of 2008 and the extensive budgetary cuts associated in some countries with the implementation of bailout packages and in other countries with governmental austerity policies (see e.g. Apostolopoulou and Adams, 2015; Apostolopoulou et al., 2014; Santamarina, 2009). However, despite these general trends, important differences exist among the implementation of neoliberal conservation in diverse contexts and it is, thus, necessary to understand the concrete ways through which the logic of market-driven conservation advances in different realities (Roth and Dressler, 2012). Recent calls are made in the scientific community for more studies to predict whether emerging new governance arrangements would favour community participation and promote environmental justice or would disempower local people and less powerful social groups by reinforcing existing power inequalities (Apostolopoulou et al., 2014; Brockington and Wilkie, 2015), particularly in the context of an ongoing economic crisis.

To address this research need, we explore the political implications of the shift towards network-based consensual biodiversity governance by analysing the participatory arrangements established in the natural park of Sant Llorenç del Munt i l’Obac (hereafter Sant Llorenç), located in Catalonia (Spain). This park represents a relevant case as the history of its establishment and its current governance dynamics allows us to analyse how participatory arrangements, firstly introduced in 1986, have transformed power relationships and have contributed to the neoliberalization of biodiversity governance. Towards achieving our key research aim, we explore two central questions: (1) Why is stakeholder participation promoted in the management of the natural park of Sant Llorenç and what participatory dynamics are being developed? And (2) who is included in or excluded from the participatory process? We argue that unravelling the political dimension of stakeholder participation in decision-making can contribute to a thorough and critical assessment of participatory arrangements in the context of an increasing adoption of a neoliberal agenda in biodiversity governance across Europe.

Theoretical background

We draw on the field of the political ecology of conservation by examining the intersection of the socio-economic context, political relations, cultural practices, and ecological processes to highlight how particular environmental governance and management regimes become dominant and how this affects nature-society relations (Bryant, 2001; Neumann, 2005; Walker, 2003). Political ecology focuses on how processes of power shape conservation practice and thus its social and ecological outcomes (Roth, 2015), while it further explores how local-scale social dynamics can be understood within a broader national, regional and global setting (Robbins, 2002; Walker, 2003). One of the key assumptions that underlie the establishment of participatory arrangements is that increased involvement of stakeholders will improve governance by leading to power sharing between the governed and the government. However, participatory arrangements in practice involve various actors and power relations, structural inequalities and different class, ethnic, cultural and gender groups, which may result in the creation of participatory institutions that empower new actors, while disempowering others (Swyngedouw, 2005). Furthermore, participation as praxis is a terrain of contestation in which relations of power between different actors shape and reshape the boundaries of action (Cornwall, 2008). To understand these processes and the associated power dynamics, it is necessary to consider the multiple interests and actors within communities, how these actors influence decision-making over time, and the internal and external institutions that shape the decision-making process (Agrawal and Gibson, 1999).

There is a growing literature explicitly linking the emergence of new participatory governance forms with neoliberalism and particularly with a neoliberal shift in nature conservation (Apostolopoulou et al., 2014; Büscher et al., 2012; Igoe and Brockington, 2007). Büscher et al. (2012: 4) define neoliberal conservation as “an amalgamation of ideology and techniques informed by the premise that natures can only be ‘saved’ through their submission to capital and its subsequent revaluation in capitalist terms”. Neoliberal conservation is focused on strengthening synergies between growing markets, private investments and biodiversity conservation and on how nature is conserved in and through the expansion of capitalism (Büscher et al., 2012). A key idea is that conservation needs to make ‘economic sense’, namely by generating profitable economic activities. Crucially, in neoliberal conservation, capitalism attempts to gain profits from nature by its inclusion in the market not only through direct annexation and exploitation, but also through regulatory acts of conservation (Apostolopoulou and Adams, 2015). Although in the context of neoliberal conservation, nature may not be used directly as a material commodity or as a resource, it is nonetheless consumed and can be transformed to serve new forms of capitalist expansion. For instance, ecotourism is increasingly promoted in protected areas as a means of achieving economic growth, community prosperity and biodiversity conservation (Igoe and Brockington, 2007).

We approach significant changes in governance, including the increasing establishment of participatory arrangements, as a political process and not as a technical one (Adams and Hutton, 2007; Apostolopoulou et al., 2014; Neumann, 2009; Walker and Hurley, 2004). Indeed, participation arrangements, especially formal ones promoted by governmental initiatives and policies, necessarily take place within existing structures where some social groups and classes have more power than others and possess advantages in shaping consensus in favour of the continuation of hierarchical relationships (Peterson et al., 2005). This means that lines of inclusion and exclusion are inevitably established (see Apostolopoulou et al., 2014; Paloniemi et al., 2015).

Looking at participation in technical ways has reinforced the depoliticisation of environmental problems, characterized by the increasing removal of the political dimension, understood as a space of contestation and agonistic engagement (Mouffe, 2000; Wilson and Swyngedouw, 2014), from the public terrain and its substitution by technocratic management and consensual policy-making (Allmendinger and Haughton, 2012; Swyngedouw, 2010). As Wilson and Swyngedouw (2014) explain—even though the precise meaning of the terms ‘post-politics’, ‘post-democracy’, and ‘the post-political’ is contested—they all refer to a situation in which the political is increasingly colonized by politics, understood as technocratic mechanisms and consensual procedures that operate within an unquestioned framework of representative democracy, free market economics, and cosmopolitan liberalism. In post-politics, political contradictions are reduced to policy problems to be managed by experts and legitimated through participatory processes in which the scope of possible outcomes is narrowly defined in advance. These depoliticising strategies are an essential political strategy in the neoliberal era (see Apostolopoulou and Adams, 2017 about how biodiversity offsetting has been used to foreclose and depoliticize public debate).

Finally, we also draw on the literature on stakeholder participation, where two overlapping schools of thought and practice have evolved around the notion of ‘participation’ (Bishop and Davis, 2002; Niedzialkowski et al., 2012; Pretty, 1995) resulting in different typologies (e.g. Arnstein, 1969; Bishop and Davis, 2002; Davidson, 1998; Pretty 1995; Webler and Tuler, 2006; White 1996).

The first school sees participation as a political process where the main aim is to mobilize collective action, empowerment and institution building. Thus, Arnstein (1969) considers that citizen participation is a categorical term for citizen power, meaning that participation without redistribution of power is an empty and frustrating process for the powerless. Arnstein distinguishes between modes of tokenism and modes of citizen power, i.e. citizen participation. The former relies primarily on decision makers informing or seeking public advice on their proposals with no commitment to include their opinions in decision-making, and the later implies giving some level of power to stakeholders.

The second school sees participation as a means to increase the social-political acceptance of policies, in the sense that if people are involved, then they are more likely to agree with and support policies. Here, public involvement in a decision is not considered as inherently good; rather, its desirability depends on the issue at hand. In some cases, extensive involvement is desirable but in others minimal or no involvement is preferable, notably when there is limited social knowledge about the topic (Thomas, 1993 in Bishop and Davis, 2002). As an example, Bishop and Davis (2002) consider that participation needs to be framed less laden by idealist notions of democracy and more defined by the policy tasks at hand. They propose a set of techniques without relying on a continuum ranging from minimum participation to maximum participation.

Study site and methods

The natural park of Sant Llorenç del Munt

Research was conducted in the natural park of Sant Llorenç del Munt (Figure 1) and its surroundings during two periods: from January to November 2013 and from April 2014 to January 2015. Natural parks are a common instrument of nature protection corresponding to category V, i.e. “Protected Landscape”, of the IUCN classification of protected areas, reflecting the ecological, biological, cultural and scenic value of these areas (IUCN, 1994). The park is located in the northeast of Spain, within the Catalan pre-coastal mountains covering 13,694 hectares, and comprising 12 municipalities. It is surrounded by large cities from the Barcelona Metropolitan Region, which contributes to a high frequency of visitors. It consists of a mixture of private (59.20%) and public land ownership – most public land owned by Diputació de Barcelona (regional administration) and the other by Generalitat de Catalunya (Catalan government) (Diputació de Barcelona, 2012).

Figure 1.

Map of the study area.

During the last decades, traditional activities have nearly disappeared (e.g. exploitation of oak to produce charcoal) or have greatly diminished (e.g. agriculture, logging and cattle grazing) (Aguilar, 2012) which has led to a growth of forest cover and to an increase of fire risk (Otero, 2010). Currently, the service sector, particularly tourism, is the largest activity in the park.

The natural park of Sant Llorenç was initially protected in 1972 by the Pla Especial d’Ordenació (Special Land Use Plan) under Franco’s dictatorship (1939–1975). The reason for the initial protection of the area was to legitimize residential areas in the surroundings of the protected area while conserving higher areas (Aguilar, 2012). The protected area was composed by two differentiated zones: an area above 800 meters a.s.l. where urbanization was forbidden (in total 2655ha); and a zone of influence below this threshold where urbanization was permitted, following the model of detached houses with large gardens that had prevailed in the area (in total 4500 ha).

This threat of quick urban spread in an area with high ecological and social value stimulated the emergence of the first environmental movements in Catalonia and the Iberian Peninsula in 1978, the “Coordinadora per la Salvaguarda de Sant Llorenç del Munt i la Serra de l’Obac” (hereafter Coordinadora). This movement led by the Coordinadora was mainly structured around hiking groups present in most villages and cities in the surroundings of the protected area and was highly influenced by the political and social context of the democratic transition period after Franco’s dictatorship (Aguilar, 2013). This meant that there were demonstrations and collective actions in order to ensure the protection of the area. The achievements of the Coordinadora in defending the territory were important to the point that it has been considered a key actor for the institutional protection of the natural park of Sant Llorenç (Aguilar, 2012).

In 1986, a participatory body of the park was established, partly due to the requests of the Coordinadora, in order to ensure the involvement of stakeholders in the management of the natural park. One year later, the area was finally assigned the official status of Natural Park by the Catalan government. However, the Coordinadora continued to be active in defending the conservation of the area, notably after significant conflicts arose in 2006 over the construction of an unpaved road (called Mararodona road) which would pass through the natural park.

Today, the natural park is managed by the Diputació de Barcelona, a regional administration corresponding to the territorial area of the Barcelona Province. The governance of the natural park has one participatory body, the Advisory Committee (AC), established in 1986 (Diputació de Barcelona, 1997). The AC is an informative meeting of stakeholders and park managers open to the public held every six months. Its main objectives are to inform stakeholders about the policies and actions implemented or planned to be executed and to collect the comments of stakeholders on the issues presented. The AC is composed by representatives of the Diputació de Barcelona, representatives of councils of municipalities that have part of its area inside the protected area, and the various social, economic, scientific, cultural and conservation organizations with a stake in the management of the natural park.

In 2010, the AC was joined with another participatory body, the Permanent Forum (PF) of the European Charter for Sustainable Tourism (ECST). The ECST is an initiative of the EUROPARC Federation aiming to promote the development of ‘sustainable tourism’ by establishing a voluntary commitment between the managers of protected areas and stakeholders. Since 2010, tourism is thus officially one of the priorities of the natural park and many resources have been designated to its promotion. The PF discusses and approves the proposals concerning the ECST and further coordinates actions and initiatives developed by diverse stakeholders (both individuals and organizations) to joint efforts in their projects.

Methods of data collection

Review of documents

In order to assess to what extent participation is part of the natural park’s governance, various documents regarding the governance of the protected area were reviewed (e.g. Catalan Law 12/85 on Natural Areas, Decree 328/1992 on Plan for Areas of Natural Interest, Decree 106/87 on Declaration of the Natural Park and the last version of the Special Plan for Protection of the Physical Environment and Landscape of the Natural Park modified in 1997). We further reviewed minutes of the 14 meetings of the Advisory Committee held from 2008 to 2014. We reviewed these documents to assess who participated (which category of stakeholders) and the frequency of their participation.

Non-participant observation

We used non-participant observation techniques to establish contacts and engage with the community, local culture and local social organization in a non-active way (Bessette, 2004). We undertook several trips from January to June 2013 in order to visit the 12 municipalities that have part of their area within the natural park. In addition, we stayed two weeks in July and August 2013 in a farmhouse inside the park to obtain first-hand information about the situation of people living inside the protected area and their perceptions about the role of participation in the park governance. We have also participated in two meetings of the AC in 2013 and 2015 in order to observe how the participatory body works in practice and how the various stakeholders interact in it.

Semi-structured interviews

We conducted 25 interviews with relevant stakeholders concerning participation in the governance of the natural park. Stakeholders were selected on the basis of reputation or recommendation (following a snowball strategy). Interviewees belonged to 10 different categories of stakeholders: local administrations (mayors and councillors of environment), park managers, park employees, representatives of conservation organizations, and workers in agricultural, scientific, tourism, leisure, education, and forestry sectors. The interview questions were formulated in a way to obtain clear insights regarding the respondents’ opinions about the participatory body. They were aimed at assessing respondents’ views on its usefulness, the reasons the park managers promoted it and respondents’ experiences with it. The interviews lasted 1.5 to 2 h and were all tape-recorded.

Participatory workshop

We ran a workshop with 11 stakeholders to assess participation in the governance of the natural park. The selection of stakeholders was based on a previously done social network analysis (SNA) of the communication network of the natural park by two of the authors (see Calvet-Mir et al., 2015 for more details about the SNA conducted). SNA has been proven to be an effective and reliable method to select stakeholders for participatory processes (Prell et al., 2011). The selected stakeholders represented the 10 categories of stakeholders mentioned above plus representatives of civic organizations and various companies related to the natural park. They were all the most central persons in the communication network within their assigned stakeholder category according to the previously done SNA.

We divided the stakeholders into two groups of five and six participants purposefully mixing stakeholders belonging to different categories and thus most probably representing different interests. Each group participated in deliberative discussions following brief introductions to the research topics. The discussions explored the strengths and weaknesses of the AC considering its content, e.g. the issues discussed; and the way it functions, e.g. how discussions and decisions are taken. Selected stakeholders were also asked to provide recommendations for a better functioning of the body. The discussions were facilitated by two of the authors of the article and two research assistants. Each discussion lasted 30 min and all discussions were recorded and reported by taking extensive notes.

Questionnaire

Finally, we asked the 11 workshop participants to fill in a questionnaire (see Appendix 1) that contained both questions about general participation issues and more specific questions about the AC.

Data analysis

In order to explore stakeholder perceptions on why stakeholder participation is being promoted by park managers, we relied on data from the interviews and the questionnaire. A list of viewpoints was compiled and reorganised by aggregating similar statements. We distinguished four types of reasons for promoting participation based on previous classifications (Wesselink et al., 2011): (i) Instrumental, i.e. to make decisions more legitimate, restore public credibility, diffuse conflicts and limit future challenges; (ii) substantive, i.e. to increase the breadth and depth of information and thereby improve the quality of decisions; (iii) normative, i.e. to counter the power of incumbent interests and allow all who are affected by a decision to have influence; and (iv) legalistic, i.e. to meet formal requirements. When a respondent presented a combination of different arguments for participation, these were counted separately, so the total score is higher than the number of interviews/questionnaires.

In order to assess the dynamics of the participatory body, we triangulated information from the review of documents, non-participant observation, semi-structured interviews, the workshop and the questionnaires. The information was analysed following the method of qualitative content analysis (Miles and Huberman, 1994). A list of viewpoints was compiled and reorganised by aggregating similar statements regarding the dynamics of the participatory body. The aim of the analysis was not to compare or count the opinions of various participants, but to provide insights for the characterization of the participatory body. To assess the character of the AC, we relied on data from the questionnaire (see Appendix 1). We asked respondents to rank with a scale from zero to five the character of the AC, with zero denoting “it is not” and five “it is a lot”. Four characterizations of the AC were given: (1) informative, (2) consultative, (3) interactive and (4) decisive (see Appendix 1 for a clarification of the meaning of these four attributes). We then calculated the average punctuation of each of these attributes.

We used the information from the review of documents, the workshop and the questionnaires to analyse the different stakeholders attending the participatory body and their reasons for participating. To assess the perceived influence and relevance of each category of stakeholders, we relied on data from the questionnaires (see Appendix 1). We calculated the average punctuation of the perceived influence and relevance of each category of stakeholders participating in the body.

Results and discussion

Unfolding the reasons for promoting participation

Most research participants (51%, 23 opinions over the total of 45) perceived that the prime driver of stakeholder involvement in the governance of the natural park by park managers was to increase the legitimacy of decisions. As one park employee stated: “the Advisory Committee is a tool to build complicity and consensus”. Nine opinions over the total (20%) considered that participation was promoted to meet formal requirements. One park employee pointed out that participation was enhanced because the Special Plan of the natural park obliged the undertaking of participatory arrangements with stakeholders. Participation to incorporate different types of knowledge was also considered important by making up 20% of the total (9 opinions over the total of 45). A mayor of a village argued that “there are stakeholders that have the solution to the problems faced by the natural park, and the Advisory Committee is a good place to incorporate these solutions to decision-making”. Only four opinions referred to the promotion of participation to allow all who are affected by a decision to have influence, corresponding to the 9% of total opinions. Thus, for example, an employee in the tourism sector argued that “the Advisory Committee is promoted in order to incorporate people’s views in decision-making. People going to the park and people living in it are the ones that best know the challenges of the protected area”. There were some correlations between respondents’ opinions and the stakeholder group to which they belonged. For instance, all farmers and conservationists considered that participation was promoted due to legalistic reasons, this is, to meet formal requirements or instrumental reasons, this is, to make decisions more legitimate.

Some stakeholders explained that the AC was created upon the request of the Coordinadora and its initial purpose was to counter past management trends that focused on economic development instead of nature conservation. The AC was expected to be composed by environmental organizations, researchers and groups interested in conservation. However, park managers changed the composition of the AC during the first years of its setting up by allowing everyone related to the protected area to attend the body. This resulted in an AC composed of people with very diverse interests, from landowners, hunters and people from the tourist sector to conservationists. Interviewees considered that this shift changed the dynamics of the body, making it inoperative because it became too difficult to reach any meaningful consensus. As one of the interviewees from a conservation organization explained: “the democratic argument stated by park managers that everyone should participate resulted in diminishing participation because many conservation organizations stopped participating in it”.

This shows the limits of consensual approaches that are based on the simplistic argument that social groups with differing interests can find mutually beneficial solutions through participatory processes (see also Apostolopoulou and Pantis, 2010). In fact, this may also result in the self-exclusion of certain stakeholders as happened in our case study. Some interviewees pointed out that stakeholders that were previously active in protecting the area have been gradually demobilized due to their participation in the AC. Participation can thus be considered as a governmental tactic of containing and watering down dissent and reducing conflicts by including in the governance of the park organizations that have been critical about the management of the protected area. Moreover, the reformulation of the participatory body by park managers reflected attempts to both exclude and disempower critical voices and to depoliticise the debate over the use of the natural park. This has impeded the development of a different form of governance that had the potential to empower stakeholders that promoted the conservation of the area while eliminating spaces for meaningful contestation. Our findings reinforce the argument that when there is a shift towards more participation at the local level, in most cases, the prime actual driver is to depoliticize previous conflicts and not normative choices as the mainstream governance rhetoric often implies (see also Rauschmayer et al., 2009).

Moreover, some stakeholders (8 out of 25) complained during the interviews about the fact that the participatory body in Sant Llorenç has no binding character. As one interviewee (the mayor of a village) pointed out “people apparently participate because everyone can say what he/she wants, but then nothing is implemented”. As an interviewee from a conservation organization explained, the majority of opinions in the participatory body regarding certain topics were not taken into consideration because of the non-binding character of the body, such as the proposal to prevent the construction of the road of Matarodona in 2006.

Our results also show that the type of participation developed in the AC corresponds to participation by consultation following Pimbert and Pretty’s (1997) classification. This means that people participate by being consulted about decisions already made and decisions that will be undertaken by park managers and their opinions are not necessarily included in the decision-making process. The results of the questionnaire showed the dynamics of the body. Most participants gave the highest score to its informative character (average score of 4.27 on a scale from zero to five) followed by its consultative characteristics (average score of 3.18), i.e. the fact that participants’ opinions were requested without any joint discussion. The AC was also considered as having a rather limited interactive aspect (average score of 2.82), i.e. the engagement in joint discussions among participants leading to new opinions was rare. Finally, the AC was not considered decisive (score of 2.09). The low scores obtained by the interactive and decisive aspects show that discussions between participants to achieve meaningful decisions are infrequent and that the agreements adopted are not executed.

Our results further show that the AC is a structure that is not devoid of power inequalities: park managers are able to control the information by deciding the topics of the meetings, the terms of participation, and whether they will actually implement the decisions made. These critiques emphasize the “tokenism character” of certain types of participation: as explained by Arnstein (1969), stakeholders have the perception that decisions have already been taken and participation is just a tactic used to pretend a false involvement of the community in public decision-making and even demobilizing the stakeholders that have been critical with management decisions. These types of participation contribute to the depoliticization of biodiversity governance (see also Büscher, 2010; Youdelis, 2016). Against this backdrop, participation as praxis is not an immutable process but a terrain where the interaction of participants may require reshaping the conditions of participation, the “boundaries of action” as Cornwall argues (2008).

Who is participating? Unravelling trends towards neoliberal biodiversity conservation

Results from the attendance to the AC indicate there has been a significant shift regarding the representation of different categories of stakeholders. Several important trends can be identified (Table 1). Firstly, representatives of the environmental education and the tourism sectors participate most frequently even though their presence in the AC before joining the PF was almost zero. Secondly, the presence of scientific, civic and leisure sectors in the body has diminished over time. Thirdly, the agricultural, the conservation and the forestry sectors have completely stopped attending the participatory body.

Table 1.

Attendance to the advisory committee and permanent forum through time by different categories of stakeholders.

Different periods	Local administration	Park managers	Park employees	Agricultural	Scientific	Civic	Conservationist	Leisure	Environmental education	Forestry	Tourism	Other companies
AC₀	21	9	4.5	3	10.6	16.7	7.6	19.7	1.5	6.1	0	0
PF₀	22.7	4.5	6	4.5	7.6	12.1	3	6	15.1	3	15.1	0
AC-PF_f	22.9	10.4	4.2	0	2.1	6.2	0	10.4	14.6	0	29.2	0
Average AC-PF	21	8.4	3	3	5.3	13	4.6	13	7.6	6.1	13.7	0.8
Tendency	+	+	–	–	–	–	–	–	++	–	++	+

Notes: Results are expressed as percentages relative to the total number of different persons attending the meetings. When a person attended to more than one meeting of the same period of time, it was counted just once. We considered four different periods of time:

AC₀: attendance to the Advisory Committee before being together with the Permanent Forum [66 different persons in 4 meetings].

PF₀: attendance to the PF before being together with the AC [66 different persons in 3 meetings].

AC-PF_f: last meetings of the AC and FP together [48 different persons in 2 meetings].

Average AC-PF: average attendance to the AC from 2008 to 2014, since 2010 together with the PF [131 different persons in 11 meetings].

The last row shows the tendency of changes in attendance by the different categories of stakeholders to the participatory body. ++ means considerable increase of the presence of the category in the body; + means increase; - means reduction; – means considerable reduction.

The unification of the two bodies (the AC and the PF) in one was a clear tipping point that explains the change in the composition of the stakeholders attending the AC. As explained before, the PF is the participatory body of the ECST which has a binding character. Initially, as it is shown in Table 1, a diversity of stakeholders attended the PF although there was a prominence of representatives of the local administration and the environmental education and tourism sectors. These stakeholders collectively approved an ECST which addressed different issues beyond the enhancement of sustainable tourism in the park, such as the promotion of organic agriculture and biodiversity conservation. However, park managers executed mainly the approved actions concerning tourism and did not implement all the others.

The unification of the two participatory bodies has not only changed the dynamics of the AC by altering the composition of the stakeholders attending it but it has also led to a situation where more time was spent on topics related to the ECST gradually strengthening the role of the tourist sector and related economic interests. Therefore, some stakeholders considered that the way the new participatory body was functioning did no longer represent their interests and stopped participating in it. Thus, for example, an interviewee from a hiking group complained that most people that participated in the PF had direct personal or economic interests, such as restaurants and companies dealing with tourism. Moreover, during the workshop, the representatives of the agricultural and conservation sectors attributed their decision to stop participating to the fact that the body did not represent their interests and that it has become ineffective. In the case of the agricultural sector, the representative explained that park managers did not support their proposals, like the agreement of the ECST to set up a farmers negotiating table to enhance organic production and coordination among them. Meanwhile, conservationists argued that their trust in the AC diminished from the moment the park managers decided to ignore the decision made in the AC to prevent the construction of the road of Matarodona in 2006.

The introduction of participatory arrangements favouring specific actors while excluding others has reinforced and generated unequal power relationships among different social groups. Crucially, debates around more equitable power sharing, conflicts and the unequal distribution of conservation rights and benefits have been concealed by an antipolitical approach of participation.

If participatory bodies in protected areas are not based on serious efforts by park managers to understand local motivations, governance processes may give the superficial appearance of engagement and legitimacy while minimising the potential for those with conflicting views to be given a meaningful voice (Allmendinger and Haughton, 2012). As Allmendinger and Haughton (2013: 7) explain the flip side of allowing communities to play a greater role in identifying and addressing local needs is a significantly reduced role for the state ‘in favour of a plurality of localist interventions’ which, despite the rhetoric, ‘is tightly circumscribed’.

The respondents to the questionnaire were also asked to express which stakeholder groups they considered to have more influence and more relevance in the AC. The results (Table 2) showed that the groups considered to have high influence are park managers and local administrations. The ones considered to have little influence are the agricultural sector, the forestry sector and other companies.

Table 2.

Influence and relevance of each category of stakeholders in the AC.

	Local administration	Park managers	Park employees	Agricultural	Scientific	Civic	Conservationist	Leisure	Environmental Education	Forestry	Tourism	Other companies
Influence	4.2	4.9	3	2.1	3.5	2.9	3.6	3.1	2.8	2.5	2.6	2.25
Relevance	3.64	3.82	3.36	3.73	4.36	3.27	3.73	3.36	3.55	3.82	3.1	3

Note: Results are the average punctuation (on a scale from zero to five) of the perceived influence and relevance of each category of stakeholders participating in the AC. Number of respondents, N = 11.

In the case of the perceived relevance, the groups considered to have higher relevance in attending the Advisory Committee are the scientific sector, park managers, forestry, agricultural and conservation sectors. The categories having little relevance are other companies, tourism sector and civic sector. Therefore, the stakeholders who are considered more relevant are not the ones who more frequently attend the meetings of the Advisory Committee. On the contrary, the tourism sector despite being considered of little relevance is one of the most represented stakeholder groups.

The fact that the most relevant stakeholders have stopped attending the AC is indicative of the weaknesses of this heterogeneous participatory body. This process of self-exclusion is leading to a progressive hegemony of the private sector represented by small-scale companies related with tourism and environmental education. It reveals that the participatory body rather than becoming a tool that empowers the community through its active participation in the park management has in practice resulted in an increase presence of the private sector. Crucially, some interviewees pointed out that they feel uncomfortable with this emerging hegemony. For instance, the representative of the conservation sector, even though stopped attending the AC, considered that their presence was needed again in order to counteract the economic interests of companies. As pointed out by Lane (2003), uncritical engagement of actors in decision-making can lead to the development of privatized, corporatist agreements that fail to reflect diverse values and interests. Corporatist agreements usually reflect the interests of one or two non-state actors, rather than the full array of them. This shows the contradictory character of consensual decision-making: along with the wider inclusion of the business sector, other actors (in most cases local community groups) are being increasingly excluded from decision-making. In thinking about who should be included in a participatory body, a distinction can be made between actors representing self-interests and those representing normative claims to justice or democracy (Young, 1990) which in the case of protected areas can be claims in favour of conservation, public and collective interests.

The increasingly upgraded role of private companies in conservation is evident also in Barcelona’s regional network of protected areas – of which Sant Llorenç is a part. It has to be pointed out here that there are two models of governance of protected areas in the Barcelona regional network: some areas are directly managed by Diputació de Barcelona, whereas in other areas, the responsibility lies on partnerships composed by the Diputació de Barcelona and municipality councils together with other public entities like “Àrea Metropolitana de Barcelona” and private entities like Abertis Foundation.² These new forms of governance that have been promoted through the late 90s and during the 2000s where the role of non-state actors is expanded through various public-private partnerships and the active participation of public, private, and civil actors reflect the strengthening of the neoliberal mode of biodiversity governance (Apostolopoulou et al., 2014; Corson, 2010; Igoe et al., 2010; McCarthy, 2006).

Indeed, the changes in biodiversity governance in Sant Llorenç Natural Park are not coincidental but part of this wider shift. The adoption of the ECST, and the establishment of the PF as its participatory body, shows that often the goal of ‘participatory’ or ‘collaborative’ arrangements is to support and promote ‘innovation’ and entrepreneurship (see Harvey, 1989) of small companies within or near protected areas. The enhancement of entrepreneurship in rural spaces is increasingly been framed as the most viable solution for conservation to succeed in an era of austerity by generating economic activity around protected areas and attracting donations and capital investments (Apostolopoulou et al., 2014). It is also in line with the mainstream discourse that for conservation to be useful, it needs to make economic sense by generating economic activities within and around protected areas. Proponents of a more intense economic exploitation of natural resources usually claim that the legitimacy of nature conservation is essentially based on economic opportunities created for the tourism industry (see Duffy and Moore, 2010; McAfee, 1999; Rytteri and Puhakka, 2012). Ecotourism has been conceptualized as a key example of neoliberal conservation since it is a means of achieving economic growth, community prosperity and biodiversity conservation (Igoe and Brockington, 2007).

In an era of austerity and public sector retrenchment, the proliferation of market-based practices and policies and the strengthening of the business sector in biodiversity governance go hand in hand with a reduction in public funding and a further deregulation (see Castree, 2008a,b) of environmental legislation, all characteristic processes of the neoliberalization of non-human nature. Indeed, some stakeholders highlighted that the authority in charge of the Barcelona regional network of protected areas progressively bets for reconceptualising natural parks as economic self-sufficient entities which should have very limited support from the public budget and generate their own resources for their maintenance. As one park employee argued “this might mean making visitors to pay for some services or enhancing activities that generate profit”. More alarming processes are occurring in protected areas managed by La Generalitat, the regional government of Catalonia.³ In particular, from 2011 to 2014, there has been a reduction of the public budget for natural parks from 49% to more than 60% depending on the protected area (Gepec, 2015). These cuts have reduced or even eliminated actions to conserve biodiversity, the amount of park employees, and forest fire prevention efforts, among others⁴ (see also Apostolopoulou and Adams, 2015; Apostolopoulou et al., 2014 and about similar developments in Greece, Finland, Poland and the UK). Conservation organizations pointed out that this shift in the management of Catalan protected areas has been accompanied by an emphasis on their ‘economic profitability’, the creation of innovative financing mechanisms and further private sector involvement (EA, 2012; Gepec, 2015). The approved Management Plan for Catalan protected areas for the period 2015–2020 (DAAM, 2015) considers that due to the current situation of austerity, protected areas need to be understood as opportunities and not as limitations for the territory. It thus conceptualizes protected areas as places aiming to attract both tourism and investments to create socioeconomic activities and promote economic growth to revitalize these areas, such as promoting sustainable logging. In this sense, conservation should stop being a limitation for exploiting the natural resources within the borders of protected areas. The increasing normalization and adoption of market-oriented values and discourses may erode conceptions and norms that limited the expansion of markets to certain spheres that were previously out of the market, thus driving the symbolic and discursive changes necessary for advancing the further commodification of non-human nature (Gómez-Baggethun and Muradian, 2015). This situation clearly reinforces the establishment of public–private partnerships in which state and business interests collaborate closely to promote profitable economic activities within protected areas and reflects the increasing dominance of a neoliberal conservation discourse and practice in biodiversity governance (Apostolopoulou et al., 2014; Bu¨scher et al., 2012; Igoe and Brockington, 2007).

Conclusions

In this paper, we have explored the political implications of the establishment of participatory arrangements in the governance of the natural park of Sant Llorenç del Munt i l’Obac, in Catalonia (Spain). We have demonstrated that the key reason park managers promote participation is not to allow affected stakeholders to influence decisions but rather to use participation as a means to legitimize their decisions. Our results also show that very often the prime driver for establishing participatory arrangements at the local level is the willingness to superficially cover or depoliticise previous conflicts by promoting the inclusion of organizations that have been critical about the area’s management.

The history of Sant Llorenç’s establishment and its current governance dynamics offers an indicative example of how the establishment of participatory arrangements instead of manifesting a shift towards more ‘democracy’ can actually lead to the exclusion of social actors with key roles in the management of protected areas. This case also show that participatory arrangements can further facilitate and legitimize a neoliberal approach to biodiversity governance by favouring the inclusion of the business sector and actors who aim to gain economic profit from their involvement in the management of the park, such as restaurant owners and tourist companies. The dominance of these stakeholders in biodiversity governance and the expanded role of nonstate actors and the voluntary sector, often in partnership with state/quasi-state, private/market, and civil society actors, goes together with the increasingly hegemonic discourse that natural parks have to become self-sufficient and profitable entities, able to generate their own economic resources and stop depending on public budgets. The above changes are a key part of the wider rescaling of biodiversity governance (see Apostolopoulou et al., 2014) and have been directly related to the increased global and European trends toward the neoliberalization of nature conservation especially since the 2008 financial crisis and the extensive public budgetary cuts not only in Spain but also in many other EU countries. Approaching participation as a political process is necessary if we want to unravel the above links. This is, in turn, of fundamental importance for understanding the political and social implications of the evolution of biodiversity governance, including the introduction of participatory arrangements which even though may superficially seem to enhance democracy, they may actually support neoliberal conservation and further legitimize the reframing of nature conservation as a profitable business.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We thank J van den Bergh and William M Adams for their helpful comments on earlier drafts.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The research was supported by the project ‘‘CONNECT—Linking biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services,’’ which is part of ERA-NET BiodivERsA 2 (). Maestre-Andrés and L Calvet-Mir received national funding from ‘‘Programas Internacionales’’ of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (PRI-PIMBDV-2011–1053). E Apostolopoulou was supported by a Marie Curie Individual Fellowship within the 7th European Community Framework Programme (PIEF-GA-2013–622631, Conservation and Ecosystem Services in the New biodiversity Economy-CESINE).

Notes

Sara Maestre-Andrés, PhD, is a researcher at Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals (ICTA) from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB). Her research is focused on designing strategies and policy tools that improve current biodiversity conservation policies and ecosystem services provision. She is also interested in assessing unintended indirect (rebound) effects and potential ineffectiveness of such policies and advancing knowledge on strategies and governance structures that include intensive stakeholder participation. Her interests also focus on analysing complex social-ecological systems and social network analysis for improving natural resource governance.

Laura Calvet-Mir, PhD, is a senior researcher at Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3), Universitat Oberta de Catalunya and associate researcher at Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals (ICTA), UAB. She mainly works on rural and urban agriculture from the lens of ethnoecology, agroecolgy and political ecology. She has deeply analyzed conservation of agrobiodiversity and traditional ecological knowledge in industrialized settings. She also works in the assessment of ecosystem services in social-ecological systems and the mechanisms to preserve them. Finally, she is very interested in social network analysis to improve governance of natural resources.

Evangelia Apostolopoulou, PhD, works in the Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, UK. Her main research interest is the investigation of nature-society relationships in capitalism, with a particular emphasis on the political ecology of nature conservation. Her current research focuses on conservation in relation to the economic value of nonhuman nature and is guided by radical research on the neoliberalization of nature, the historical-geographic conception of neoliberalism, uneven development, and the capitalist production of nature and space, as well as by Marxist political economy—particularly the Marxian theory of value and rent.

Appendix 1. Structure of the questionnaire

The questions addressed to the research participants covered the following seven topics:

Whether they agreed (or not) with the category of stakeholder to which we have assigned them.

The reasons why they participated in the AC of the natural park, both their individual reasons and the usefulness to participate regarding their category. In case they were not participating, they were asked whether they thought it could be useful to participate.

The reasons why they thought the park managers promoted the establishment of the participatory body.

Whether they thought the participatory body influenced positively the management of the protected area.

Whether they thought the body was effective, the reasons of its effectiveness and the issues that needed to be addressed to increase its effectiveness.

To rank with a scale from zero to five the character of the AC, with zero denoting “it is not” and five “it is a lot”:

Whether the body was informative, meaning that the actions done or planned to be done were explained to participants in a unidirectional way.

Whether it was consultative, meaning that participants’ opinions were requested without a joint discussion.

Whether it was interactive, meaning engaging participants in joint discussions leading to new opinions.

Whether it was decisive, meaning that agreed recommendations were implemented.

To rank with a scale from zero to five, with zero denoting “no influence/relevance” and five “a lot of influence/relevance” the different categories of stakeholders considering:

Their influence in the AC.

Their relevance in terms of attributed importance by others participants in decision-making.

We have to point out that the four first questions of the above list have been presented to the research participants prior to the fieldwork through email. This was done to ensure that their answers would not be affected by the presence of other stakeholders.

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