Integrating Impact Indicators for Environmental Education in the Planning and Management of Protected Areas

Ramos Muñoz E.F.; Carrión Puelles N.S. · Sustainable Landscape Planning and Natural Resources Management (2025) · DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-82419-7_10

Resumen

Within the global increase of protected areas (PA), local communities (LC) training involvement and engagement have become the key factors for their sustainable planning and management. This role is based on tangible achievements derived from conservation actions implementation, ecosystem services approach embracement, and territorial management improvements. However, not all LC get access to funding or support to monitor and report their progress and achievements. Thus, there is an opportunity to develop and implement managerial tools aim to improve LC’ decision-making processes. Among diverse tools to promote community engagement and sustainability, environmental education (EE) has proven as crucial. EE contributes to individual empowerment in order to face environmental challenges and propose effective solutions. Moreover, its impact is not only limited to knowledge transmission or people training; its success can also be evaluated through tangible or physical improvements within the environment. Furthermore, it is possible to use social and environmental impact indicators, which would improve EE processes impact monitoring, supervising, and measuring. In this sense, through a qualitative approach, we identified indicators used on previous EE processes research and PA’ management reports sent by LC to national authorities in Peru. With selected EE impact indicators, we propose a framework to integrate an educational process with PA’ planning and management processes. We aim to contribute with EE programs development on LC in order to improve the crucial selection of monitoring indicators that would allow results reporting to authorities or interested parties and provides them with relevant data for decision making processes. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2025.

Instituciones: Universidad ESAN