Governance for Protected Areas “Beyond the Boundary”—A Conceptual Framework for Biodiversity Conservation in the Anthropocene

While biodiversity enhances human resilience to the impacts of rapid global change, the capacity for protected areas to adequately contribute to biodiversity conservation is increasingly questioned. Conventional protected areas, often referred to as “fortress conservation” or the “Yellowstone model”, certainly maintain important roles, however, this is insufficient when considering the characteristics of biodiversity and the Anthropocene. The notion of protected areas should change dramatically to incorporate people living “beyond the boundary” of conventional protected areas. In those areas, complex land ownership, diverse stakeholders, overlapping laws and institutions, and consequent weak authority need to be addressed. To effectively manage “beyond the boundary” areas, the role of environmental law will need to shift from conventional “regulation and sanctioning” approaches to those that are more integrative. This paper takes Japan’s national parks and UNESCO’s Biosphere Reserves as typical “beyond the boundary” models to discuss integrative management approaches: comprehensive inclusion of stakeholders, partnerships and utilization of soft laws. Comprehensive inclusion is indispensable not only to deal with complex land ownership and overlapping legal systems, but also to complement weak authority by utilizing partner-centric approaches and soft laws. Laws can support this approach by stipulating ideas for future direction(s), integrating the fragmented policies among agencies and incentivizing collaboration.