Copyright © 2012 by the author(s). Published here under license by the Resilience Alliance. Niedzialkowski, K., J. Paavola, and B. Jedrzejewska. 2011. Participation and protected areas governance: the impact of changing influence of local authorities on the conservation of the Bialowieza Primeval Forest, Poland. Ecology and Society 17(1): 2. http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-04461-170102 Research, part of a Special Feature on Ecosystem Services, Governance and Stakeholder Participation Participation and Protected Areas Governance: the Impact of Changing Influence of Local Authorities on the Conservation of the Bialowieza Primeval Forest, Poland Krzysztof Niedzialkowski 1,2 , Jouni Paavola 2 , and Bogumila Jedrzejewska 1 ABSTRACT. According to the new conservation paradigm, protected areas should contribute to the socioeconomic development of host communities, and the latter ought to be included in participatory decision making concerning these areas. However, the understanding of participation is ambiguous and there are at least three major approaches, which may have different impacts on the governance of protected areas. We examine the case of the Bialowieza Primeval Forest in order to trace the effectiveness of changing modes of participation as well as to discuss the limitations and problems of public participation. Between 1918 and 2010, the role of local authorities changed from no influence to limited control over decision making regarding designation and enlargement of the Bialowieza National Park (BNP). As a result of these changes, attempts to enlarge the BNP over the whole forest were undermined. The evidence shows that power relations and instrumental reasons constituted the main drivers of the changing participation pattern with deliberative rationale lacking. As a result, the conservation goals were only partially achieved. We argue that when interests are clearly conflicting and win–win solutions are difficult to reach, room for constructive participation may be limited. In these circumstances, public involvement may turn into yet another venue for a power play between actors with vested interests, without bringing gains in legitimacy or new policy options. This is especially the case for countries with a relatively short democratic record where the government lacks the consistency and capacity to steer the process over the longer term. Key Words: Bialowieza; biodiversity conservation; governance; national park; participation; Poland; protected areas INTRODUCTION Today, it is accepted that a key prerequisite for sustainable management of ecosystem services is governance involving all stakeholders in the decision making (Chopra et al. 2005, Irwin and Ranganathan 2007, Blanco and Razzaque 2008). Earlier, conservation of biodiversity was mainly sought by establishing protected areas through an exclusive, top-down, government-led process (Berkes 2004). Host communities were not involved in decision making concerning protected areas and were often prohibited from using their territories. This created negative attitudes in local communities toward protected areas, which hindered their establishment and enlargement (Pretty and Pimbert 1995). These problems contributed to a shift in protected areas governance that stressed the importance of public participation in decision making (Phillips 2003). Following on the first wave of enthusiasm concerning public input into environmental decision making and governance, there is now growing recognition that participation is not a panaceum for all problems of biodiversity conservation, and that it can also bring about undemocratic and counterproductive results (e.g., Wells and McShane 2004, Rauschmayer et al. 2009). The way participation is understood by different actors and the way it is codified in law and then implemented vary considerably. Therefore, in order to assess the effectiveness of participation in protected areas governance, different understandings of participation must be identified, and their implications for outcomes assessed. We identify three major understandings of participation. The first one treats participation as a power-sharing exercise aimed at implementing democratic ideals into policy making (Arnstein 1969). The second—deliberative understanding of participation—in turn, sees its main purpose in improved understanding and subsequent improved quality of decisions (Renn 2006). The third way of conceptualizing participation consists of treating it as a pragmatic tool for reaching governmental objectives (Bishop and Davis 2002). These three understandings correspond to the three rationales for participation—normative, substantive, and instrumental— identified by Fiorino (1990) and subsequently developed by Stirling (2006, 2008). These incommensurable rationales, considered as distinct approaches, were used by Bickerstaff and Walker (2001), Blackstock and Richards (2007), and Wesselink et al. (2011) to analyze participant perspectives about their reasons for participation. They found that participants focus mostly on instrumental aspects of participation, with some emphasis on substantive motives, including generation of new ideas. Normative aspects such as transfer of power were mostly ignored. We examine the results of increasing role of local communities in the governance of protected areas by using the Polish part 1 Mammal Research Institute, Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland, 2 Sustainability Research Institute, School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, UK