An article on Conservation and Society examines how participatory conservation has adapted to new demands for social inclusion, and people-friendly protected area management in the form of buffer zones and policies to make conservation more menable to local people's interests in Nepal.

The article 'Nature's Discontent in Nepal' by Ben Campbell of University of Manchester looks at contrasting institutional situations of an old national park under reform (Langtang), a new national park combined with a conservation area (Makalu-Barun), and a conservation area of high tourist interest (Annapurna).

The article draws on extensive ethnographic knowledge in the first case, and discusses the experience of interactions with local villagers during treks in the other cases, to question the responsiveness of participatory conservation to local people's needs, and their perceptions of changed relationships to their environments under these different regulatory regimes.

The paper argues that the framework in which material incentives are provided for villagers to forego traditional environmental entitlements, fails to recognise the cultural transformation entailed in constituting the environment as an object (for protection), external to people's varied kinds of interactive practice. The aim of integrating indigenous knowledge with conservation goals is shown to be elusive when culture is seen as a resource for conservation, rather than a view on environmental relationships.

Ben Campbell. Nature's Discontents in Nepal. Conservation and Society, Pages 323-353. Volume 3, No. 2, December 2005