Dealing with Volcanic Terrains: Conflict Management at Protected Areas

Many protected areas struggle with balancing their goals: conservation of fragile nature and promoting recreation. Conflicts arise, which challenge the management to look behind the surface of conflict issues and deal with the subjective forces involved. This book takes a human perspective of stakeholders on issues related to protected area management and presents a communicative model to manage conflicts and create consensus. The literature research explores techniques in conflict management and a survey is used to evaluate the opinion of stakeholder concerning the themes of conflict, communication, and consensus. The survey focuses on the Daisetsuzan National Park in Japan and the Vatnajökull National Park in Iceland with the aim to formulate a suited conflict management approach that can be used in protected area management in general. The findings suggest that despite difference in cultures a communicative approach to conflicts in protected area management may support forming consensus regarding the issues at stake. The findings help managers of protected areas as well as anyone interested to gain better understanding of conflict issues and the valuable tools at their disposal.