Background

In context of protected areas (PAs), governance can be defined as a set of processes, procedures, resources, institutions and actors that determine how decisions are made and implemented. Current governance modes of forest PAs are multilevel and complex, with a variety of actors, different levels of power sharing, various formal and informal rules and vested interests. However, there is no systematic information on how different local governance modes and day-to-day decision-making processes within forest PAs may cause a change in PA effectiveness in terms of producing desired conservation outcomes. In this review we aim to assess relative effectiveness of forest PAs worldwide with respect to different governance modes and linking them to the multiple outcomes in order to discern the effective governance strategies for biodiversity and forest conservation. We will evaluate effectiveness of forest protected areas by multiple outcome measures: 1) attitudes of local stakeholders towards forest protected area governance, 2) conservation-related behaviour of local stakeholders, 3) ecological parameters such as forest cover, biodiversity level, density, overall forest condition and/or health as well as 4) existence of local spillover effects defined as social, institutional and ecological effects in surrounding social-ecological systems.

Methods

To gather empirical evidence on the effectiveness and outcomes of different governance arrangements of forest protected areas, we will search electronic databases, organizational websites, use web search engines and perform a bibliographic search. Articles will be filtered by title, abstract and full text. To facilitate understanding of predictors and conditions for effective PAs, both qualitative and quantitative data from the relevant studies will be extracted and integrated. Multivariate statistical analyses will be performed to give insights into association between different governance modes, their characteristics and PA effectiveness. Finally, the review will report on data gaps and potential for future empirical research.