By Milena Gross, Tuyeni Mwampamba, John Sanya, Jasmine Pearson, Jennifer Sesabo, and Berta Martín-López
Involving different groups of people in conservation efforts is important. Understanding preferences between groups and within one group helps create conservation strategies that account for the diversity of people’s preferences. But there’s a risk of stereotyping and oversimplifying preferences for nature’s benefits within one group.
Drawing upon a list of 25 benefits, we wanted to understand which benefits different stakeholder groups prefer from nature at Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania. To do this, we talked to 50 nature conservationists, 55 tour guides, and 156 tourists. Almost half the nature conservationist, and more than half of the tour guides, belonged to Kilimanjaro’s local communities, while all tourists were foreign to the area.
We found the three groups preferred many but also different benefits from nature. Nature conservationists mostly wanted tangible benefits such as food, and benefits that influence environmental conditions, such as providing clean water, purifying the air, and regulating a good climate. Tourists wanted more intangible benefits, for example, opportunities to make new experiences, to hike, and to enjoy the beauty of nature. Tour guides preferred a mix of everything – some benefit preferences similar to nature conservationists and others to tourists – and wanted their children and grandchildren to benefit from nature.
We also studied whether there were different preferences within the groups and found that a person’s education level, how much time they spend in nature, and how much they felt part of nature influenced which benefits they found important. Previous studies that have explored a person’s background found that educational level was associated with particular preferences of nature’s benefits – an unsurprising result – but we additionally revealed that how people interact with nature also matters – a novel insight.
Our findings show the importance of considering not only the diverse preferences of different groups of people but also variations within the groups to avoid simplifying and stereotyping groups of people and by doing so, to more inclusively manage landscapes with protected areas at Mount Kilimanjaro and elsewhere.
Relational Thinking 