A COMPARISON OF THE ENFORCEMENT OF ACCESS RESTRICTIONS BETWEEN XISHUANGBANNA-NATURE-RESERVE (CHINA) AND KHAO-YAI-NATIONAL-PARK (THAILAND)

Given limited budgets to enforce access restrictions, protected area ( PA) managers and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in developing c ountries employ a range of policy instruments to conserve the area's n atural resources. Natural characteristics of the PA combine with the m anagers' enforcement activities and other policy instruments to create a set of incentives to which local people respond in making decisions about extracting resources from the PA. The different management appr oaches employed in the Xishuangbanna Nature Reserve (XNR; China) and t he Khao Yai National Park (KYNP; Thailand) and the reaction to the inc entives which they create are compared. KYNP managers use policing and punishment mechanisms, in conjunction with limited NGO-supported inco me-generation projects, to deter resource use. In contrast, XNR manage rs rely on extensive cooperation with local people and trade-offs betw een current resource degradation and increased rural incomes. As predi cted by the economic enforcement literature, rural people respond to t he threat of punishment, and its reduction of the expected benefit of an illegal activity, by reducing that activity, but may undertake soci ally-costly avoidance activities to avoid punishment. This literature also correctly predicts that XNR managers will concentrate less on pur e enforcement than KYNP managers because, as a result of a difference in government mandates, the XNR managers consider the value of the ext racted products and the non-PA productivity in their decisions while t he KYNP managers do not. In both PAs, rural people's actions affect th e quality of resource conservation. In KYNP, natural characteristics a nd the policing activities deter resource extraction and encroachment in the central core of the Park. Even NGO projects, however, have not controlled extraction, and even agricultural encroachment, in the oute r third of the Park, which has caused over-extraction of some resource s and has left a ring of highly-degraded land. In contrast, XNR's coop erative management approach has generated more control over the amount and the spatial configuration of resource degradation. XNR's control, however, comes at the cost of reduced area and level of current conse rvation.