He, S.; Su, Y. Understanding Residents’ Perceptions of the Ecosystem to Improve Park–People Relationships in Wuyishan National Park, China. Land2022, 11, 532.
He, S.; Su, Y. Understanding Residents’ Perceptions of the Ecosystem to Improve Park–People Relationships in Wuyishan National Park, China. Land 2022, 11, 532.
He, S.; Su, Y. Understanding Residents’ Perceptions of the Ecosystem to Improve Park–People Relationships in Wuyishan National Park, China. Land2022, 11, 532.
He, S.; Su, Y. Understanding Residents’ Perceptions of the Ecosystem to Improve Park–People Relationships in Wuyishan National Park, China. Land 2022, 11, 532.
Abstract
A healthy park-people relation depends essentially on the fair and sustainable maintenance of rural livelihood. When protected area is designated, rural people may face restrictions of access to land and resource use for multiple ecosystem services. In Wuyishan of China, we analysed the role of traditional tea cultivation during consistent protected area management to find ways to maintain stability of this social-ecological system in the new national park era. We used an intensive social survey to investigate tea’s role, perception of ecosystem services and impacts on tea cultivation from consistent conservation policies. Results showed that tea cultivation brought major household income and associated with multiple culture services. Protected area management affected land use and conservation outcomes were more obvious to farmers than economic and social ones. From the perspective of a social-ecological system, tea cultivation in national should be conservation-compatible activities from which the potentially lost economic value is remedied by ecological and cultural valorisation. To sustain the resilience of the social-ecological system, we proposed a three-scale management framework to regulate biophysical elements at land plot scale, to link production and market at the mountain level, and to secure tenure and encourage community participation at the landscape level.
Keywords
national park; social-ecological system; ecosystem services; tea cultivation; protected area management
Subject
Environmental and Earth Sciences, Environmental Science
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
