Protected areas, conservation stakeholders and the naturalisation of southern Europe

The critical analysis of conservation conflicts in Protected Areas (PAs) raises interesting questions about the redefinition of human-environment relations in the current ecological crisis. In recent years these debates have unveiled that, in the attempt to define the proper place of humans in nature, PAs have embodied modern dualistic worldviews, which understand nature as a realm different from society, culture and civilisation. This paper suggests that the utilisation of these worldviews should be understood as part of the conceptual apparatus that enables a transition in management roles in Protected Areas, through which new empowered groups are granted the right to control and use natural resources. By analysing the practices and discourses of conservation stakeholders at the Cabo de Gata-Níjar Natural Park, in southern Spain, this paper shows that modern ideas of nature are essential to the collective appropriation of Cabo de Gata by new empowered groups because these ideas justify a new way of managing local resources in accordance with their own interests and desires. This has deep implications for the study of people-park conflicts and the problems associated to the promotion of more environmentally friendly ways of mastering the environment, which must be approached in the light of the power relations associated to the appropriation of territory and natural resources. The paper also concludes that, in order to understand how the nature-society dualism still dictates the way we should relate to the environment, we must trace the practices of those who bear this worldview and unveil the strategies and mechanisms that are used. © 2014 © 2014 Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI).