Landscape planning and community participation: Local lessons from Mullaghmore, the Burren NationalPark, Ireland

• Published in: Landscape research 2005-10, Vol.30 (4), p.483-500
• Main Author: O'Rourke, Eileen
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: adaptive management; Burren; community participation; landscape planning; Mullaghmore
• ISSN: 0142-6397; 1469-9710
• DOI: 10.1080/01426390500273205

Issues relating to community participation in landscape management, as well as the manipulation of the community for political ends, are addressed. It is argued that the current fashionable participatory model of development and policy formulation requires closer scrutiny and may be unrealistic in certain contexts. A case-study approach is adopted, whereby the role of the community in attempts to construct a visitor interpretative centre at the foot of Mullaghmore Mountain, within the Burren National Park, Ireland, is analysed. The complexity of the term community is exposed, and important questions about who speaks for the community are raised. It is concluded that local development, including ecosystem and landscape management, is best approached neither from a 'top-down' nor a 'bottom-up' developmental model. It is suggested that insights from adaptive co-management models, which promote a multi-level management approach, whereby local knowledge and experience are incorporated within enabling local and extra-local institutional structures, may provide a viable alternative. Finally, it is argued that human-environmental interaction in a specific place, including the management of common pool resources, needs to be situated within the historical, ecological and cultural narrative of its human ecology.