Protected Areas Planning Framework

Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS)

Download

Abstract: Management plans have the potential to play a crucial role in ensuring the coherent and coordinated development and management of protected areas (PAs), and in mitigating the impacts of the intensifying array of pressures that are currently impacting on PAs. However, although there is a long history of PA planning in Kenya, many of the management plans previously developed have not been used effectively, and have often ended up as reference materials rather than as a practical day-to-day guide and framework for PA management. Recognising this problem, in early 2006 KWS initiated the development of the Protected Areas Planning Framework (PAPF) as a way of ensuring that all new management plans provide practical and effective guidance and support for PA management, that new management plans are developed according to a common process and have a similar and easily understood structure, and that PA plans are actually implemented, rather than gathering dust on shelves. This uniformity in both process and structure aims to not only improve a plan’s usability and ease of implementation (especially as KWS staff are transferred internally between different PAs), but, by removing the need to revisit issues regarding plan process, structure and content each time a new plan is developed, to also enhance the efficiency of new planning initiatives. To ensure that the management plans produced are both realistic and appropriate, and to build wider stakeholder understanding and support for implementation, the PAPF planning process incorporates a high level of stakeholder participation. This is realised through a variety of mechanisms designed to enable stakeholders to meaningfully contribute their ideas and opinions throughout the plan’s development. The structure of the management plans themselves has also been designed to maximise ease of implementation by PA managers as well as by KWS Headquarters, which is achieved through a rigorous application of the Logical Framework Approach in the plan’s management programmes, and the development of 3-year Activity Plans to provide the bridge between the 10-year components of the plan and the annual work planning and budgeting carried out by the PA managers responsible for plan implementation. The following sections provide an overview of the main functions of a PAPF management plan, the key features of the structure of a typical PAPF management plan, and the principal mechanisms for stakeholder and management participation in a plan’s development.