Session 4: Women, Youth, and Indigenous and Local Communities in Protected Areas

This session will highlight the important roles of women, youth, indigenous peoples, and local communities as integral to biodiversity conservation efforts, with a spotlight on ecosystem restoration. It will explore the challenges and best practices for park managers to   collaborate with these stakeholders. The session hopes to engender park managers empathy for the different stakeholders involved, with the ultimate goal of improving conservation and management outcomes. It also intends to create awareness of biodiversity conservation and collaborative management in and surrounding protected areas. 

The session will be a mix of conventional presentations by speakers, as well as an unconventional role play approach. Participants will be divided into groups and provided a specific scenario to be enacted. Each group will be guided by a facilitator. The roleplay session will encourage the participants from different backgrounds and perspectives to learn from each other, and engender empathy. Finally, the session will end with reflection and debriefing to generate insights and recommendations for how to better recognise and promote the roles of various stakeholders in conservation and protected area management. 

Session Objectives:

The objective of the session is to voice out the roles of women, youth, indigenous peoples, and local communities, especially those who are living inside and around protected areas, in their efforts to maintain biodiversity, restore ecosystems, and improve livelihoods. 

Experiences from a range of stakeholders (including communities, government agencies, NGOs, and others) in collaborating with park management will be presented in the form of challenges and best practices. It is hoped that the session will provide lessons learned for protected area management in ASEAN in their efforts to maintain biodiversity conservation and livelihood improvement of the people.