Reimagining Park Ideals: Toward Effective Human-Inhabited Protected Areas

The concepts "park" and "protected area" are suffused with presumptions about the nature of the places they seek to protect. These presumptions distort our view of the geographical spaces where parks are made. The park can, therefore, be understood as a "heterotopia," an imagined utopia that has a geographical correlate on which those imaginings are projected ( Foucault, 1986 ). Parks, and in particular forest parks, are described in their ideal form as pristine wildernesses, and juxtaposed to places subject to human influence. This has given rise to a long-standing debate about the effectiveness of forest conservation in human-inhabited protected areas. The debate has, however, overlooked the prevalence of human populations in even the world's most remote parks and reserves. Taking the presence of forest peoples to heart, particularly in the tropics, we seek to change the terms of the debate, and reconceive of the ideal form of parks. Rather than asking, "Can conservation be achieved in human-inhabited protected areas?" this article asks, "How can conservation be achieved in such areas?" This re-envisioning will allow policy development to better reflect the reality of forests, and achieve better results for forest conservation and, simultaneously, for forest peoples.