Environmental services as a means of benefit sharing in national park management in Brazil

The challenges of benefit sharing commitments of the Biological Diversity Convention demand new approaches concerned with environmental services and its implementation strategies connected to protected areas management.

The Biological Diversity Convention opportunities linked to environmental services may be translated through market mechanisms aiming to promote local development and benefit sharing from biodiversity use.  These opportunities refer to ecosystem goods and services, such as nature based products, which are provided on sustainable basis, encompassing natural and cultural heritage products and services.

Brazilian national legislation approach considers environmental services as flows of matter, energy and information from natural capital stock, which combined with the services and human capital building, deliver benefits to the society.

Because of its distributive income potential and consequent benefit sharing possibility, environment services payment cannot only be an important biodiversity conservation strategy, but also social inclusion. 

This can be especially true in the case of national parks which, in the Article 11 of the National System of Conservation Units (9985/2000), have the objective of the preservation of ecosystems of great natural scenic beauty and ecological importance, however, allowing scientific research, environmental education and interpretation activities, recreation and ecological tourism. 

The importance of environmental services connected to park management is justified not only by their possibility to promote biodiversity conservation, but also by their potential to balance social exclusion processes that result from the restrictions of local ways of living in these areas.  It is acknowledgeable that the interdiction of human populations in park areas represent significant source of conflict  which contributes to the resistance to the park as well as its interpretation as an obstacle to local development.  

The present article will discuss possible ways that environmental services connected to park management can be translated as a means to balance the social exclusion generated by in the process of biodiversity conservation.