Research

INTRODUCTION

Conservationists, practitioners, and scholars have increasingly advocated for the establishment of terrestrial and marine protected areas (PAs). Calls such as 30x30 (HAC 2023) and the Half-Earth Project (E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation 2023) reflect a growing push for more PAs and contribute to cementing the practice of reserving areas as a main ecological conservation strategy.

The calls for more PAs acknowledge that these and other area-based conservation measures must be “effective” (CBD Secretariat 2020). However, discussions about the effectiveness of PAs have, until recently, largely overlooked the role of these areas in maintaining traditional livelihoods and other small-scale, low-impact activities of human populations. Evidence increasingly shows the positive effects of sustainable-use PAs (Ferraro et al. 2013, Campos-Silva et al. 2021, Elleason et al. 2021), despite ever-present criticism that questions the possibility of achieving biodiversity conservation while allowing for low-level resource extraction (Locke and Dearden 2005, Shafer 2015, Terborgh and Peres 2017). Regardless of whether PA goals are ecological, social, or both, much debate still exists in the literature around what effective or successful protection might mean and, therefore, about not only if but also how PAs are effective.

Regarding how PAs can effectively achieve biodiversity conservation goals, criticisms of this heavy reliance on strict protection, for instance, are becoming more prominent. They range from criticizing the end product, i.e., the possible displacement or physical removal of human populations (Brockington and Igoe 2006, Agrawal and Redford 2009, Bennett et al. 2015), to questioning the operationalization of this massive and very rapid increase in PA spatial coverage.

Focusing on marine environments, Bennett (2018) emphasizes the need for justice and inclusion to play a central role in discussions about public policies for conservation and calls for applied social science research to proactively address issues related to exclusion and injustice. Marine public policies should promote collaborative management and decision-making processes that include Indigenous and traditional communities and other local groups. For example, inclusion and justice are realized by incorporating historical uses and Indigenous rights into processes such as marine spatial planning and fisheries management, leading to the recognition of the rights and historical uses of these historically marginalized groups.

Studies on the exclusion of human populations in the context of coastal-marine PAs typically refer to groups who are Indigenous, traditional, or in some way marginalized, losing access to resources (Satizábal and Batterbury 2018). Documented displacement and exclusion processes in the name of conservation have led to debates within and outside academic circles, culminating in increased calls for recognition and protection of resources, spatial tenure, access, and human and Indigenous rights (Bennett et al. 2021). Specifically for the marine environment, consideration and safeguarding of the access rights and local livelihoods, maintenance and promotion of access to resources needed for food security and well-being, and the development of inclusive and participatory planning and ocean governance processes are increasingly advocated by researchers and practitioners (Bennett et al. 2021).

For both terrestrial and marine environments, inclusion usually refers to stakeholders’ access to governance arrangements, generating community-led conservation initiatives that improve benefit sharing and accrue social and ecological goals (Ullah and Kim 2021). The processes of exclusion and othering, whereby people are perceived or treated as being different or not belonging to a group, have been extensively examined in border studies and boundary research (Fischer et al. 2020). A small detour to explain the choice of terminology is needed at this point. Even though a lot of the research that this article draws on is from the border studies literature, the term “boundaries” is broader in scope than “borders.” Although borders are usually applied to geographical limits, boundaries can also apply to measurements, as in planetary boundaries (Rockström et al. 2009, Steffen et al. 2015). Another relevant use of boundaries, which is why the term is used in this study in lieu of borders, is that boundaries also encompass the lines of division between human and non-human, shaping the discourse on more-than-human relationships. The word boundary is chosen to reconnect to these non-spatial dimensions of conservation, to which the word boundary also applies. However, the characteristics of the boundaries investigated, highlighted later in this study, refer to phenomena that are clearly spatial, even if many other dimensions and manifestations are present in, or derive from, these boundaries, i.e., perceptions or temporal aspects of boundaries, usually not identified as spaces (stricto sensu). For this reason, even if the word border could, in many instances, be used to define this assemblage of manifestations described here, the term “boundary” encompasses a broader semantic spectrum and remains the primary choice throughout this article.

Studies on boundaries frequently refer to the lines between nation-states. PAs are area-based governance measures, which implies that they involve establishing an area or a perimeter, that is, boundaries, within which management occurs distinctly from what happens outside those boundaries. A view of inclusion and environmental justice through a boundary lens can bring new aspects of protection and conservation to light, drawing from border studies and boundary research. Critically analyzing what happens inside PAs means understanding how these boundaries operate, how they affect the relationship between inside and outside, and, therefore, how they emerge from and create tensions and conflicts between groups on either side of these boundaries.

In Brazil, efforts to promote inclusive management face challenges such as inadequate recognition of traditional and Indigenous communities and insufficient social, political, and financial support (Maretti et al. 2023). Establishing Brazilian PAs with sustainable use objectives aims to include these marginalized groups and promote environmental justice, particularly in the case of PAs designated as extractive reserves (RESEXs) and sustainable development reserves. The objectives of these PAs encompass the conservation of biodiversity and the maintenance of human populations’ traditional ways of living. These areas aim to prevent the occurrence of environmental threats while avoiding conflicts related to the use of traditional territories (BRASIL 2000).

Despite the attempts to steer away from exclusion in conservation, recent research has shown that exclusionary mechanisms also emerged along the creation of these RESEXs: while Indigenous, traditional, or marginalized groups maintained access to historically used areas, other traditional groups became legally restricted in their traditional resource use practices and were not included in aspects of the PA management arrangement (Partelow et al. 2018, Borges 2020).

In the RESEXs studied, exclusion does not happen via displacement but rather via lack of access, which is manifested in the management framework, where communities that have their fishing grounds in nearby PAs are not formally admitted into the management council of those PAs (Borges 2020). Albeit in theory prohibited by the exclusivity of the land use concession to town-specific associations, de facto access to these “external” (outside their home PA) fishing grounds remains a reality. However, access to the management arena of these external fishing grounds is not operationalized, leading to a spatial governance mismatch: fishers are not given access to the management of their fishing grounds because of PA boundaries that carved up the region into conservation areas that geographically do not match the areas traditionally used by the local fishing communities (Borges 2020).

Given the historical and boundary-making nature of the creation and management of coastal PAs and unintended consequences such as spatial mismatch and exclusion processes, this study aims to understand how the history of boundary-making and managing affects inclusion and exclusion practices in and around these areas. It seeks to determine how these practices, potential and realized, contribute to or hinder inclusive and just conservation governance, examining the role of path dependency in the impacts of boundaries on conservation governance and exclusionary management practices. Impacts attributed to PA boundaries often originate from previous boundaries and social configurations.

The following questions are asked:

1. What are the social and ecological considerations that underlie the delimitation of boundaries when PAs are created?
2. To what extent are exclusionary processes part of the creation of PAs and their boundaries and how can these be a source of local tensions around resource use and PA governance?
3. What are potential avenues to address challenges arising from exclusionary processes and deriving tensions among local stakeholders?

To answer these questions, I use the case studies of five sustainable-use PAs on the Brazilian Amazon coast.

METHODS

Study site

The research presented in this article is centered around five PAs in north Brazil (Fig. 1). These PAs are categorized as RESEXs: sustainable use, co-managed areas where local stakeholders, especially direct users, have an active, deliberative role in PA management (BRASIL 2000). This type of PA ensures traditional (coastal) land tenure via land use concessions given to local users’ associations and should be managed by a deliberative council composed of government agencies and civil society groups.

The deliberative council, or a management council, in each PA is responsible for making decisions regarding the goals and strategies of PAs in Brazil. The role of these councils in the management of these PAs and disputes with governmental managing agencies will be further discussed in a forthcoming paper. In terms of legal standing, deliberative councils are an alternative to consultation councils, which are designed to be consulted by the PA management agency in relevant decision-making processes. Local users’ groups are located either inside or just outside each PA. They are represented in the closest PA’s management council.

In this region, the mangrove crab (Ucides cordatus) is an important source of income for many local populations (Diele et al. 2005). Resource use also encompasses other fisheries (fish, oyster, shrimp, mussel) and the processing of these fisheries products (Borges 2020). A consolidated overview of dependence on fisheries in the region, including statistical data on landings and sales, is missing. Some sparse and unsystematic information can be found for Bragança, the largest town, where recent studies show that the reliance on crabs as the main source of income remains strong (Oliveira 2015, RARE 2020) and constitutes a source of alternative income in times of economic crisis (Borges 2020).

The larger economy and population size in Bragança are likely to lead to an increase in predatory activities, such as mangrove forest clearing and fishing practices that apply banned gear or catch female or small crabs. This likelihood is embodied in the perceptions of local stakeholders regarding environmental threats in the region (Borges et al. 2021a). In the case of the crab fisheries, for example, other studies have cited that local users believe the installation of processing plants in Bragança to have led to an increase in crab extraction, including the use of methods that are considered predatory and prohibited by law (Partelow et al. 2018, Borges 2020).

The sustainability of the crab fisheries has been discussed since before the creation of the PAs. The crab population has long been considered sustainable (Wolff et al. 2000, Albrecht et al. 2021). However, questions have been raised regarding the sustainability of the fisheries as a traditional practice, with the fear that it could collapse because of social rather than biological risks (Glaser and Diele 2004). According to local perceptions, present-day threats include estuarine pollution, diminishing crab sizes for commercialization and difficulties encountering them in the mangroves, use of prohibitive fishing gear and practices, and emergent tension between crab collectors from different villages and towns (Borges 2020). However, it is unclear how these tensions are related to the history of the region’s town and PA boundaries and the spatial governance mismatch that emerges from the management arrangements around these boundaries.

Data collection and analysis

Semi-structured interviews (n = 30) were conducted in November and December 2022. Interviewees included members (past or present) of groups that are or have been connected to the PA management council. These groups and organizations include user associations, conservation NGOs, academic institutions, local, state, and federal government agencies, labor unions, community leaders, and not formally organized user groups. A final list of the groups interviewed can be found in the Table A1.1.

Key stakeholders, representing groups in the management councils, were interviewed individually. The interviews addressed several topics, with open-ended questions focusing on issues relevant to this article (Table A1.2). These were questions about the creation of these PAs, including (1) how the decision was made about where to place the PA boundaries; (2) the interviewees’ perceptions of these boundaries and their impacts, which often led to answers related to conflicts and disputes over territories and resource use; and (3) perceptions and opinions about the overall PA management. When PA management was approached, interviewees were also asked if the PAs were managed in an integrated manner, i.e., if there was any sort of communication and collaboration in management, and what they thought could be done to improve management. See further questions and possible follow-up questions in Table A1.2.

The responses were analyzed using a coding process in MAXQDA 2022 (VERBI Software 2021). Inductive-deductive coding was used for the initial note-taking, in which themes are developed directly from a close reading of the transcript of the interviews (Peters 2017). A first set of codes was created through identification while reading the documents, including perceptions, opinions, and feelings around the PAs that might relate to the topic of this study.

The following themes were identified, all related to the overarching theme of the existence and creation of the PAs, PA boundaries, and perceptions related to either or both boundaries and PAs: (1) perceptions regarding the existence of boundaries; (2) history of boundaries and of the PAs; (3) present impacts of boundaries and of the PAs; and (4) conflicts. These themes were usually prompted by open-ended questions, as shown in Table A1.2.

To build a time line of the emergence of conservation boundaries in the study area, interview data on the creation of the PAs were complemented with information from both gray and scientific literature on the history of the towns^[1] where the PAs are located, including historical records in a book by the Brazilian Institute for Geography and Statistics (IBGE) dating back to the beginning of European colonization of the region. The following topics guided the analysis of the literature: (1) history of the demarcation of the towns since the 1500s; (2) recent migrations patterns in the study regions; (3) planning and history of PA designation at the national, state, and local levels; (4) legal PA governance framework, with a focus on the study area; (5) identity-building, othering, and conflicts in the study area; (6) transboundary relationships including resource use among the case study PAs.

The following results and accompanying discussions explain the historical development of local boundaries since the first European incursions, the creation of the extractive reserves in the region, and the perceptions of local stakeholders on this process and the potential impacts of the decision to create local PAs based on the town boundaries, including potential conflict emergence in these PAs. This analysis focuses on perceptions of these boundaries and of present-day cross-boundary movements, the history of the creation of town and PA boundaries, and their consequences on identity-making processes and exclusionary practices. Although five PAs are presented, with their particular characteristics, the focus of the analyses is not to compare and contrast them but rather to highlight their interconnections via resource users’ movements across PA boundaries, potential challenges emerging from their interconnections, and the possibility of jointly addressing them via transboundary collaboration.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Current crossings, common complaints

This section provides a brief overview of the coded segments (see Appendix 1 for details). About a third of the people interviewed did not associate the PAs with boundaries. Of those who acknowledged the existence of boundaries, half pointed to the existence of cross-boundary movements, as already shown by Borges et al. (2021b) and Kasanoski (2022). Only a couple of interviewees said that this crossing does not take place.

About a third pointed to current conflicts or disputes among resource users, while a similar number of people complained about “invasions” by outsiders. This shows that, although not prevalent, there are indications of brewing discontent regarding the crossing of PA boundaries and potential disputes over transboundary resource use, confirming similar results found by Borges (2020).

I try to trace the origin of the boundaries and ideas around invasions, showing a centuries-old evolution of boundary making and identity-building processes that entered a new phase with the emergence of the PAs analyzed by this study.

The weight of boundary history

A brief account of the process of creation of towns in Brazil

I approached the creation of towns in Brazil from the colonial era until the 1990s, spanning almost five centuries of local boundary making in the study region. The creation of towns in Brazil has oscillated between centralization and decentralization throughout its history. During colonial and imperial times, town governance was centrally controlled, but the 1891 Constitution shifted this power to states, triggering rapid growth in the number of towns in Brazil. This decentralized approach was reversed for a few years around the mid-20th century, when federal restrictions were imposed, only to swing back to state autonomy under the 1946 Constitution, leading to another period of town growth (Nunes and Serrano 2019). After a period of intense creation of towns triggered by the 1988 Constitution (de Tomio Limas 2002), the pendulum swung toward centralization again with Constitutional Amendment No. 15/1996, which established a moratorium on creating new towns pending federal legislation establishing uniform criteria, including viability assessments and plebiscites (BRASIL 1996). However, because the required complementary law has not been enacted, town creation remains effectively frozen (STF 2021).

Not unlike the Brazilian overview shown above, towns in the region have a dynamic recent history of change, merging, and separation, which includes the creation of new communities, i.e., the emancipation of larger ones. All of them were originally part of the province of Gurupi, before the arrival of Europeans, inhabited by Indigenous populations, but “donated” to the Europeans by the royal courts, who expected to colonize the recently invaded overseas lands.

Town boundaries: circumstances transmitted from the past onto PA governance

The town of Bragança, where the Caeté-Taperacu PA is currently located, was declared a village in 1753. Viseu, a district in Bragança since 1758, was raised to an emancipated village in 1856. The district of Quatipuru was dismembered from Bragança in 1902 (IBGE 1957). In 1961, three neighborhoods of Bragança were emancipated and formed the town of Augusto Corrêa (IBGE 2023b), where Araí-Peroba PA is located today. In 1994, the town of Tracuateua, which currently holds a PA of the same name, was emancipated from Bragança (IBGE 2023c). In this same year, Primavera was emancipated from Quatipuru (IBGE 2023d). The PA Filhos do Mangue is located mostly in Quatipuru but also takes up a small part of Primavera (Fig. 2).

It can be reasonably assumed that the human populations in these towns have similar origins and ethnic compositions. Bragança, as a hub and the largest town in population size, is likely to have received a large number of migrants, especially from northeast Brazil and from areas inland in the state of Pará, even though these migration patterns have been reported for the whole of Pará coast (Cordeiro et al. 2017). This social structure, heavily influenced by migration in the region, has been identified by Krause and colleagues as neo-traditional (Krause and Glaser 2003).

Making history by creating new boundaries

The creation of PAs in Brazil, for both terrestrial and marine environments, has followed an unsystematic pattern, lacking gap analyses or prioritization mechanisms (Medeiros 2006), despite the National Protected Area System law (BRASIL 2000). Consequently, Brazil’s marine PA network fails to reach its Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) targets because of irregular representation across its various ecoregions (Vilar and Joyeux 2021).

The marine spatial planning initiative along the country’s coast started after 2017, when the Brazilian government committed to implementing a planning strategy for its coastal and marine waters by 2030 (Marinha do Brasil [date unknown], MMA 2025). Until the plan has been finalized, the demarcation of PAs continues to rely on unsystematic social mobilization or ad hoc governmental decisions.

Strong social mobilization since 1999 (Abdala et al. 2012) and support for conservation and sustainability from the federal government and other governmental and non-governmental organizations were on the rise at the beginning of the century. Against this backdrop of increasing support for conservation mechanisms such as PAs, in 2005, the federal government designated a coastal RESEX (a PA of the sustainable use type) to each one of four towns out of the six presented in this study (Nascimento 2021). Their management councils currently bring together the main users’ association, the federal agency in charge of PAs at the federal level, and other administrative bodies at the federal, state, and town levels, as well as universities and civil society organizations (Partelow et al. 2018).

Motivations behind the creation of the PAs also connect with conflict situations in the state of Pará. One of the triggers for the creation of RESEXs in the north of Brazil was local disputes over shrimp fishing. In Soure, another town on the Amazonian coast, located about 200 km west of Bragança, local crab fishers feared that fishers from a neighboring town would deplete Soure’s fishing grounds. Concerns around “foreigners” and possible resource overexploitation and depletion led to the creation of the Soure PA. Local users felt it was necessary to draw a line between their fishing grounds and those of neighboring fishers, and this line took the form of a PA in 2001 (Abdala et al. 2012). As explained above, this tension and the need to solve it, added to the political mobilization at the turn of the century, provided the scenario for the push to create coastal-marine PAs along the Pará littoral region. The creation of PAs itself was, therefore, also driven by local disputes and concerns over resource depletion by neighboring towns, as well as a result of national-level political mobilization.

Boundaries on top of boundaries

Some interviewees, who either participated in the PA creation process or were otherwise familiar with it, explained why multiple small PAs were established instead of a single regional reserve. When asked about this approach, they cited primarily logistical concerns related to size as the rationale for designating individual PAs for each town rather than one comprehensive area covering all towns and fishing grounds:

... I think that the division is made precisely by town territory to also achieve the town’s ability to adapt their town legislation to these territories because environmental licensing of activities that may be in the vicinity of the reserve is the responsibility of the towns. So the towns need to legislate on this content, and I think it’s more logical for the territories to be individualized by towns, which is what happens. (One of the Town Secretaries of Environment)

... for me, it would be much more complicated if you had several [PAs] ... it would be much more complicated to monitor ... within the community, because [Viseu has] practically 40-plus communities ... it would be much more complicated for monitors to come here to inspect, to accompany the extractivists ... (Local leader and representative who was active at the time of the creation of the PAs in 2005)

These statements point to the facts that (1) dividing PAs by town territory is perceived as allowing for more straightforward adaptation of local legislation; and that (2) managing a single large PA would be more complicated than several smaller ones.

Another factor determining PA boundaries was the structure of the political movement advocating for their creation. Interviewees who participated in this process described how the movement organized itself town by town, albeit with regional coordination and interchange to exercise political pressure at the national level, as also described by Nascimento (2021). This town-based organization directly influenced the eventual PA boundaries, effectively transferring most of the existing town boundaries onto the new PAs. These inherited boundaries carried with them established political relationships that would significantly shape PA management practices. Furthermore, as discussed later, these boundary decisions influenced local identity formation and created potential for regional conflicts.

The boundaries of these newly created PAs were determined mainly by town boundaries and the extent of mangrove forests, including adjacent restinga,^[2] beaches, rivers, and sea areas. Because the PAs were limited to the coastal features to be included in the conservation scheme, only a few inhabited villages (also known as “communities”) were directly encompassed in the geographical space of this new environmental management instrument. However, nearby villages were also officially incorporated in the impact zones of the PAs, being both positively and negatively affected by the measures related to the created PA.

In Brazil, most PAs must have a buffer zone (BRASIL 2000). However, the procedure to establish this zone is not formally delineated and, therefore, somewhat controversial. The buffer zone does not have to be delimited at the creation of the PA, therefore, not all PAs in Brazil have had one formally established (Farias and Ataíde 2019). Thus, the impact zone refers to a buffer area where people and their activities outside the limits of the PAs are impacted by this conservation tool and its rules. Some of the human communities in the buffer zones can be included as beneficiaries of the PA, receiving equal benefits, such as subsidies, as those within the geographical limits of the PA (Abdala et al. 2012, Partelow et al. 2018). However, in the case of the case study PAs, this is usually restricted to the town where the PA is located. The exception is Quatipuru town, which was included as a beneficiary of Tracuateua PA, because (1) Quatipuru town did not have, until 2024, its own PA, and (2) fishers from Quatipuru use territories within the Tracuateua PA (Borges 2020).

The interviews show that the boundaries of these PAs were not created by largely drawing straight lines on a map, as has been seen in other boundary-making exercises (not least in colonial acts of territory-making) or solely based on biodiversity-related features or resource-use patterns. Few indications exist on the ground that these lines are drawn on paper. Few signs demarcating these reserves exist, and most of them were put up when the PAs were created 20 years ago. Signs have clearly deteriorated over time and are hardly legible (Borges 2020, see image on The Rufford Foundation 2017). Rather, these PA boundaries were based on pre-existing administrative boundaries, inheriting previous social-political structures upon which the new PA governance framework was built.

The PA boundaries both emerged from and reinforced existing social structures. While shaped by previous territorial divisions and relationships, these new boundaries simultaneously transformed those inherited structures, imbuing established patterns of cooperation and conflict with new meanings. Therefore, it is likely that when a PA is created, its boundaries are inevitably affected by pre-existing boundaries, inheriting and reshaping previous social-political structures and relationships. The drawing of the town boundaries is perceived to have been influenced by geo-ecological features, such as rivers and peninsulas in the region:

We only have boundaries through the separation via rivers and mangroves, there is no landmark. The landmarks are the plaques inside the PAs ... Here the [Bragança] RESEX ends, on the other side of the river here, the [Augusto Corrêa] RESEX begins ... On the map, we are separated by the river. (Representative of a national-level association of marine RESEXs, who was politically active in the creation of one of the five PAs in 2005)

However, this reflects the boundary-making process of the towns, not the PAs. The towns have been historically divided by geological features. The difference between terrestrial and marine boundaries is that towns in Brazil do not have jurisdiction at sea. Towns may engage in coastal and marine management through collaboration with federal and state agencies, particularly in integrated coastal zone management and local environmental initiatives. Town jurisdiction is limited to the immediate coastal areas rather than extending into the broader marine space. They are responsible for managing the immediate coastal space. Still, towns can only participate in management activities if they collaborate with state or federal bodies in what the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea defines as “territorial waters.” The histories of town and PA creation, delineated above, address the first question of this study and show how local social and ecological aspects laid the foundation for the delimitation of boundaries established via the creation of these PAs, the most important of which are the existing town boundaries in the region.

Traditions of the past weigh heavily on the practices of the present

New policy mechanisms accompany PA creation, leading to cumulative effects, i.e., new boundary dynamics have been created along with the PAs, and these dynamics have accumulated on top of pre-existing ones. This is part of the biography of boundaries of the PAs analyzed in this study.

Even though the four PAs are in the same category, according to the Brazilian legal PA framework (BRASIL 2000), the legal documents that aimed to integrate the management and rules of these PAs (ISA [date unknown]a, ISA [date unknown]b) state differences in, for example, fishing net mesh size, without, however, specifying if the different rules apply within the different areas or for the associated users of each PA. In either case, considering that fishers often have their traditional fishing grounds in more than one PA (Borges et al. 2021b, Kasanoski 2022) and that most local stakeholders do not perceive PA boundaries in their everyday practices (Borges et al. 2021a), the differentiated rules, added to the lack of sufficient resources by the environmental agencies, make their monitoring virtually impossible.

The crossing of the town boundaries and, more recently, of PA boundaries now entails the crossing of different governance regimes. However, the creation of the PAs and their fishery-related instruments, such as regulations regarding mesh size, has accentuated the transboundary nature of these movements. This means that, before, movements were transboundary regarding only the lines dividing the towns. Now, extra lines have been added on top of those, the PA boundaries, which carry with them within boundary regulations that change with every boundary crossed. The increased “transboudariness” of these movements increases the need for transboundary governance arrangements (Song et al. 2017).

These cross-boundary movements have long been part of these mangrove social-ecological systems and were not fully considered when PA boundaries were established (Borges 2020). This mismatch between traditional fishing patterns and formal boundaries has significant implications for governance and potential conflicts, which will be further explored below.

Previous investigations (Borges et al. 2021, Kasanoski 2022) show that small-scale fishers, who are the primary beneficiaries of local natural resources and also the populations who have long-standing, sustainable relationships with the environment (Glaser et al. 2010), consider areas outside their home towns as part of their traditional fishing grounds. People’s movements, e.g., fishers going from their villages to their fishing grounds or intermediate buyers transporting crabs to processing plants, existed in a variation of their current form long before the establishment of the current town or PA boundaries, despite changes perceived by local users in the years following the creation of the PAs. The dismembering and emancipation of new towns gave these movements their transboundary character, not necessarily because routes were changed but because lines were drawn that now cut across these pre-existing routes and resource use patterns. After this, the new PA boundaries created cumulative boundary effects in addition to those generated by traditional practices.

Boundaring and othering

The biography of PA boundaries shows that they are not necessarily the origin of “us and them” perceptions, of what and who belongs where in relation to the PAs. Othering processes emerged before the creation of PAs and were more closely related to the establishment of town boundaries. Existing boundaries, their evolution (or “boundaring” processes), and current interactions play a prominent role in how PA boundaries are created and affected by movements of local resource users, e.g., to and from fishing grounds, and in how PA boundaries are shaped by and how they shape local governance. A more thorough understanding of the evolutionary history of boundaries provides essential insights for analyzing the role played by PA boundaries and how they impact social-ecological systems. The creation and impact of PA boundaries are, as shown, influenced by historical and existing town boundaries and their interactions, shaping local governance and social-ecological systems.

The materials consulted and interviews reveal that current PA boundary patterns intrinsically depend on pre-existing territorial divisions. While creating these PAs, institutionalized traditional ways of living and local livelihoods, such as small-scale fisheries and other cultural practices, reshaped relationships of belonging and identity (Nascimento 2021). However, this inclusion process necessarily entailed exclusion: not only were harmful practices prohibited, but certain users were excluded, partially or entirely. Users incorporated into the formal governance structure of one PA were excluded from arrangements in neighboring PAs, even when these included their acknowledged traditional fishing grounds (Borges 2020).

Current territory-related identities and othering processes, which carry the potential to turn current tension into conflicts and rifts in social-ecological movements and political action, are explained mainly by boundaries created to delineate towns and provinces that date back to the beginning of the European colonization process in the region. This process has driven away many local Indigenous communities and paved the way to long-lasting and unfolding drawing of town boundaries that ultimately lead to othering processes that directly determined the creation and continue to impact the governance of local PAs. If not alleviated by constant transboundary cooperation efforts, this history of boundary making and subsequent othering processes might undermine unity in the political struggle for biodiversity conservation and the maintenance of traditional ways of living.

The drawing of these lines, while causing some degree of separation and othering, also created new social identities, including a new relationship of identification linked to traditional territories. These identities are also shared by people from the different PAs in the region, forming a general PA identity and the emergence of maretório as part of this identity-making process. Maretórios are, therefore, the coastal and marine spaces where communities live and maintain deep connections with the coastal waters, shaping their identity, culture, and means of existence through their relationship with the surrounding coastal environment. Resource users, via the users’ associations, have been increasingly working together and unifying politically to demand social gains (Nascimento 2021). Stakeholders usually identify with the town/PA where they live or work. For resource users, even those who cross PA boundaries to fish, for example, will still primarily identify with the PA where their village is located (within or adjacent to PA boundaries). At the same time, more local identities emerged, an attachment specific to the particular PA to which the communities were formally linked, even if some of their traditional fishing grounds were also located in other PAs.

Exceptionally, this was not the case for the interviewee who lived in another PA, the PA “Filhos do Mangue,” which was created over a year after the interviews (ICMBio 2024). The case of the recently created PA illustrates how this sentiment of belonging to a governance instrument, in this case, a PA, might evolve. The interview with the local leader, who is also an active crab fisher, shows that fishers from Quatipuru show strong connections to fishing grounds in the nearby PA in Tracuateua.

... [we from Quatipuru] take almost 100% of the crab from the [PA in Tracuateua], but the river is not in Tracuateua, the fish are in the Quatipuru River, so there is this exchange, they [from Tracuateua] come to fish in our river, and we take the crab from their PA. So, instead of this confrontation, why not partner up? (Local leader and crab fisher from Quatipuru)

For these connections, and for the lack of a PA for that town (until 2024), Quatipuru’s resource users have been formally considered part of the Tracuateua PA, forming what is known locally as a PA hub, i.e., a group of communities with a stake in the management of the PA. This community leader expressed what he said to be the perception of fishers from his town: it is normal for users to go to nearby towns to extract resources, and the local boundaries have little influence on these traditional fishing patterns, mainly because they are perceived as an equal and fair exchange (“You come to my town for this, I go to your town for that”). Future research should look into how these local perceptions will change, if at all, with the recent creation of this PA. However, if this pre-PA sentiment ever existed in the other PAs before 2005 when they were created, it indicates that the establishment of PAs and RESEXs led to the formation of new social identities and relationships linked to traditional territories. Further long-term research is needed to test this hypothesis.

Drawing lines and building identities: insides and outsides

The drawing of PA boundaries was based mainly on social-political structures, which, in turn, have been affected throughout the years by geological features, as shown above, and did not consider traditional fishing grounds (Borges 2020). This is not surprising in the case of the towns because, as shown, they have a long and complex history of drawing, redrawing, merging, and splitting that is not based on systematic planning or consideration of local traditional practices. Traditional practices and the spaces where they happen were not considered in boundary-drawing. Because of their diverse and dynamic nature, it is likely hard to map or reconcile in boundary making.

In the Amazonian PAs analyzed here, the different “insides” appear to be formally acknowledged as composed mainly of ecological features: rivers, mangroves, beaches, fish, crabs, etc. Still, they are social-ecological systems: they are, in one way or the other, occupied by humans, albeit briefly, when they visit the mangroves, navigate the rivers, etc. Few villages are within PA lines. As mentioned above, these villages and the human communities that inhabit them are, in many ways, within PAs, in terms of welfare policies and management of these areas. Therefore, these communities can also be considered part of the inside. This represents a different approach to the conservationist ideology discussed above; humans are formally allowed in because these systems are recognized as social-ecological systems. PAs in the Amazon are recognized as social-ecological systems, which is the basis for creating PAs where human presence and activities are not only allowed but also conserved as traditional ways of living within their boundaries.

“Outsides” are also very complex. The adjacency of the case study PAs creates a situation where each one of these PAs is also, to some extent, the outside of the others. In this case, outsides are very similar to the inside: mangroves and adjacent ecosystems. However, outsides also include urban areas, both of the town where the PA is located and nearby towns. Outsides also include human populations and where they live, mostly land-based rural areas right outside the boundaries of the PAs, and their movements across the urban and rural areas surrounding them. These outsides, as well as the insides, are cut across flows of people and ecosystem goods and services. The outsides of PAs, therefore, are complex and include adjacent ecosystems, urban areas, and human movements, influencing the management of these areas.

In this way, the same community can be within the PA boundaries in some respects, for example, while fishing or navigating the rivers, and outside in some other terms, in terms of where people reside, which is often in the impact zones of the PAs. These communities’ movements have an important effect on the management of these PAs. Communities located outside the boundaries of PAs are included in PA governance by being affected by funding mechanisms in the same way as communities or villages inside the PA in the geographical sense. Communities within the boundaries of the PA and communities on the outside but in the “impact area” are treated equally regarding PA governance. The space where governance happens is not always fixed, even on land, but it can be diffuse, and the boundaries between affected communities and those wholly left out of PA formal management are not only soft but also malleable and fluid.

This is also reflected in the construction of the “us vs. them.” Depending on where locals go, e.g., where they fish, in which rivers they navigate, members of the community can be considered locals or foreigners, and these designations, formal or perceived, can change throughout time, as communities and towns evolve, grow, and are dismembered, as villages start to distinguish themselves from others culturally, financially, etc. Therefore, the concept of PA boundaries is fluid and dynamic, affecting both communities within and outside the PAs, with governance adapting to these dynamics.

The legal framework around these PAs shows some inconsistencies, which impacts othering and potential conflicts over intrusions. It is not clear to what extent foreign users can be excluded from extractive activities within the boundaries of the PAs. It is not even clear who foreigners or non-foreigners are, formally speaking. At the time of the creation of the PAs, contracts were signed with the users’ associations whereby use rights were conceded to the users’ associations.^[3] These associations formally represent local users, one association for each PA. However, membership fluctuates considerably. Often potential members have to pay monthly membership fees. Some people, especially in times of economic crisis, distance themselves from the association and do not pay membership fees, a behavior reinforced by widespread disapproval and dissatisfaction with the association’s functioning (Borges 2020). In theory, at least, only users who are also members of the association have legal rights to extract resources from this public land. Inconsistent legal frameworks and fluctuating membership in user associations lead to unclear definitions of who can legally extract resources from PAs, which could raise issues of representativeness and legitimacy in the PA governance structures, especially the deliberative council.

Still, PA co-management has the legal capacity, at any time, to impose more exclusionary boundaries to promote policies that will resemble more and more typical reserves, which would make these boundaries more like lines of division (Steinberg 1999), lines that separate, in this case, human populations and their traditional practices. This points to the need to understand the history of the creation of these PAs, the motivations and perceptions around the conservation tool that was chosen to respond to present and potential environmental conflicts at the beginning of the 2000s. In theory, PA co-management can impose more exclusionary boundaries, highlighting the need to understand the historical context of PA creation.

Users are only allowed to be members of one of the PA users’ association, the one associated with the town where they live. This means that although local fishers often fish in two or more PAs, they can only be part of one association and are legally entitled to the right of use of the PA in which they reside (Borges 2020). In this situation, at least partial exclusion of non-associated people is possible. However, it is not currently socially accepted, an example of a boundary latent manifestation, a potentiality, not implemented so far but legally possible. In this case, exclusion is a potential manifestation that is not being implemented, at least not yet. The historical analysis of the PA boundaries shows that they are inextricably linked to the town boundaries. Promoting integrated management for both PA and town governance is the first step toward reducing conflict and exclusionary practices. Membership restrictions in PA associations create potential but currently non-implemented exclusionary practices, emphasizing the need for integrated management to reduce conflicts.

Conflicts: neither created nor eliminated but transformed

Because the drawing of these PAs did not consider these traditional grounds and movements (Borges 2020), fishers can be seen by others as foreigners or invaders in their traditional fishing grounds. When asked about this situation and possible conflicts that could emerge from this mismatch, interviewees (65% of those who recognized the existence of boundaries) conceded that these “intrusions” and disputes do occur:

... in this region that I am telling you about, most of [the conflict is] overfishing. The resource is dwindling, people are invading, the people who are there, who survive exclusively on it, are feeling harmed ... (Staff at a federal monitoring agency, who has been working in the region for over 40 years)

However, not all boundary-crossing is perceived as an intrusion or contributes to the increased othering attitudes:

This is not the conflict factor. This improvised boundary that we call imaginary is not a problem. The problem of the conflict is something else. The guy from Bragança can fight with the other guy from Bragança if there are no resources if there are no agreements between them. When that happens, there is conflict. That was the case with the people ... from São Caetano and the people from Soure, and they are still fishing today. But the conflict no longer exists because when you respect the agreements, there is no conflict. (Researcher who has been working in the region for over 20 years)

Boundary-crossing as intrusion

Conflicts seem to only emerge from these situations when the “intruders” are perceived as employing predatory extraction methods. This othering process takes on a different role and can now impact people living in the same PA, in which case boundaries are not seen as the trigger of the othering process. There appears to be an interplay between boundary-crossing and fishing practices. In a neighboring state in north Brazil, Amapá, Jimenez et al. (2019) also observed that the main conflict in the local coastal fisheries is that with outsiders. In this case, outsiders were considered fishers from Pará state and French Guiana. The authors additionally indicate that these conflicts are significantly correlated with the depletion of resources, demonstrating the connection between a perceived decline in stock abundance and perceived conflicts with intruders.

Further examination of the relative weights of the factors of predatory fishing practices, resource depletion, and boundary crossing is required. How are predatory practices perceived if they are performed by someone who is not seen as a foreigner? Is there a tendency to see foreigners as those who perform predatory practices? What about other groups in the crab value chain? How are middlemen and the owners of crab meat processing plants perceived? These questions require further investigation.

Recently, fishers are reported to be moving further and further away from their hometowns with the help of technology, such as motorized boats (Borges 2020), which were donated in large amounts by the federal government as one of the first interventions after the creation of the PAs in 2005 (Partelow et al. 2018). Changes in crab stocks due to possible localized overfishing and the arrival of equipment such as motors for fishing boats have changed the spatial distribution of fishing grounds in that some fishers are now looking for grounds that have not been overfished, many of them farther away from previously used areas. This represents an increased number of town boundaries crossed (Borges 2020, Borges et al. 2021b), increasing also the potential for conflicts among resource users in neighboring towns.

Conflicts: spatial and temporal dimensions

In the Bragança region, mangroves do not have a definitive ownership status, as evidenced by the fishers’ testimonies presented by Oliveira and Maneschy (2014). Instead, the concept of territoriality is shaped by temporality, whereby the fishing territory is deemed to belong to the first individual or group to reach it for the duration of their fishing activities in the area. The temporal dimension is, therefore, a salient feature of fishing boundaries, as evidenced by the observation that multiple villages utilize the same fishing grounds (Borges et al. 2021b, Kasanoski 2022). However, as Oliveira and Maneschy (2014) illustrated, these practices do not occur simultaneously. In the context of transboundary use of fishing grounds, local PAs and their static boundaries face a challenge in addressing this dynamic use of these areas. Again, this shows the need for transboundary management of these PAs that considers temporal and spatial dynamics to avoid or reduce conflicts.

As described above, the creation of the studied PAs hinged on a strong political movement. This support was widely present at the national level, leading to the creation of PAs that were to be federally managed, albeit via a local management council. However, interviews showed that, at the local level, town governments and town council members were not all on board with the creation of these PAs. Political arrangements and alliances had to be built. This was done in each town independently since agreements between towns would have been likely more burdensome and required alliances across many more political parties. Creating these PAs needed strong political support and local partnerships, showing that this type of PA is a conflict-ridden political endeavor:

It’s politics. Whichever side of the government the politicians were on, the mayors fought their corner. And then, of course, if [the mayor] is against it, [he doesn’t] even talk to us ... Nobody cares about us [local resource users]. I want to go and talk to [the mayor], but he won’t accept me there, so there’s no point. Then I lose the opportunity to receive that benefit. (Local leader and current president of one of the associations, who was politically active in the creation of one of the five PAs in 2005)

This interview reveals that conflicts extend beyond local resource use disputes such as crab fishing. Although stakeholders now seem to agree that creating these PAs was beneficial, management is widely perceived as deficient and contentious (Borges et al. 2021a). Additional conflicts have emerged from subsidy allocation issues within these PAs (Partelow et al. 2018, Borges et al. 2021a). Notably, many of these disputes occur within individual PAs and are not necessarily related to boundaries or cross-boundary movements.

PA creation and conflict emergence: exacerbation or alleviation?

Disputes between users from different towns did not arise with the PAs. As explained above, the creation of these PAs was born out of a strong nationwide mobilization for social-ecological protection and, at the state level, out of conflicts between fishers from neighboring towns. The new PAs, however, did not eliminate feelings of mistrust and othering in the relationships of these local traditional populations. Instead, the PAs provided a new platform that can both exacerbate and, apparently paradoxically, mitigate conflicts over resource and territorial use in the region. PA governance arrangements offer the possibility of creating mechanisms that promote exclusionary practices or encourage dialogue and cooperation among the various local user groups.

PAs have the potential to both exacerbate and mitigate conflicts, providing opportunities for either exclusionary practices or cooperative dialogue. Although these PAs created new identities and gave rise to an exacerbation of othering processes, they also provide the platform to bring stakeholders from different PAs together and promote a cross-boundary collaboration to avoid conflicts and struggle for further advances in social-ecological protection in a unified manner.

In Amapá state, where no co-managed PAs exist, surveyed fishers perceive these areas as potential solutions to alleviate conflicts between insiders and outsiders and between fishers from very different sectors, e.g., small-scale and large-scale fisheries, fishers and intermediaries, resource users and monitoring agencies (Jimenez et al. 2019). Upon reflection of the experience of the PAs in this study, it can be concluded that there is a potential for an increase in localized conflicts. However, it can also be observed that the PAs have successfully curbed larger-scale threats, such as the intrusion of shrimp farming into mangrove areas in North Brazil, where land-use change has been largely avoided (Hayashi et al. 2023). The potential of conflict resolution through boundary-making processes is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it serves to keep outsiders at bay. On the other hand, it creates new identities of insiders and outsiders, allowing for more legitimate and representative decision-making processes at the local level.

Conflicts and disputes: current status and outlook

After nearly two decades of PA establishment, high levels of conflict have not been observed, and exclusion of nearby users, although present in management regimes, has not materialized in actual territorial and resource use. However, the temporal dimension of boundary making indicates that the potential for change in othering processes is always present. Still, further research and policy discussions are necessary to understand better the potential for the exclusionary manifestation of PA boundaries and to develop governance mechanisms that minimize this risk. Addressing the existing management exclusions within co-management arrangements and deliberative council composition remains crucial to prevent potential exclusionary and unjust practices from becoming a reality, even though high conflict levels have not yet materialized.

Although sustainable-use PAs on Pará’s coast have largely conserved local mangroves with minimal land-use conversion (Hayashi et al. 2023), their implementation and management remain challenging, potentially undermining their effectiveness (Partelow et al. 2018). Understanding PA boundaries’ past and present impacts is crucial for just and inclusive governance. This understanding will determine how these PAs can effectively safeguard these mangrove social-ecological systems.

Although biological sustainability was thought to be secured, Glaser and Diele (2004) highlighted concerns about eroding social and economic sustainability shortly before the creation of these PAs. Their study, conducted before the establishment of the PAs, identified economic viability as a significant concern in these social-ecological systems. At that time, there was considerable optimism regarding co-management’s potential in alleviating socioeconomic risks and avoiding threats to biological sustainability. Similar to observations made during the creation of these PAs, crab biological sustainability appears to remain intact (RARE 2020, Albrecht et al. 2021). However, the governance mismatch identified recently (Borges 2020) and in this study, as well as other worrying aspects of current management systems (Partelow et al. 2018) suggest that concerns regarding socioeconomic sustainability remain valid.

Although including social-ecological interactions, e.g., resource use, this paper left out several connectivity aspects related to non-human elements of the systems analyzed, such as the connectivity of crab populations along the coast via larval dispersal, which remains poorly understood for U. cordatus in Brazil (Britto et al. 2018, de Lima et al. 2022) and provide further arguments for the need for transboundary management of PAs. Another publication in this same study area is currently being drafted that includes some of these ecological elements, but further studies are needed to better understand ecological connectivity in these PAs, such as local movement patterns of species and habitat connectivity via biogeochemical cycles of coastal ecosystems that should also guide transboundary governance strategies.

Because of concerns related to socioeconomic sustainability of the crab fisheries, and against the backdrop of limited recent assessments of the effectiveness of these PAs, so far focused mainly on land-use change (Hayashi et al. 2023, e.g.), further research and policy discussions are therefore needed to understand better the current status of this social, economic, and biological sustainability mismatch, the emergence of conflicts, and the potential for this exclusionary manifestation of PA boundaries. A more comprehensive understanding of the various facets of effectiveness is essential for developing governance mechanisms that can effectively mitigate the risk of this potential exclusion becoming a reality. Although current conflict levels are relatively low, ongoing research and policy discussions are crucial for preventing future exclusionary practices in PA governance.

CONCLUSION

PA boundary effects carry histories, and the roots of boundaries lie in the past, hence the need to understand how these boundaries are born and shaped, i.e., the biography of boundaries. Some aspects may be exacerbated by new boundaries built close to or on top of these original boundaries, but the accumulation of boundaries creates opportunities to overcome long-standing problems. This is particularly relevant for PAs and any governance arrangements they create or modify, as PAs, especially sustainable use PAs, can lead to or exacerbate conflicts over resource and territorial use, as this paper shows.

The transboundary use of resources in the region is well-documented (Borges et al. 2021b, Kasanoski 2022) and represents a common phenomenon, particularly in small-scale fisheries (Song et al. 2017). Even where the possibility of cross-border agreements, between towns or PAs, has historically been neglected in creating and implementing these PAs, examining movement patterns and governance across these boundaries today can identify areas for improvement and help avoid inconsistent transboundary regulations that complicate compliance and render monitoring ineffective. Although both established and newly created boundaries can intensify conflicts, a deeper understanding of their emergence, current structures, and interactions provides opportunities to address persistent challenges in PA governance.

In this paper I argue that the spatiality of boundaries encompasses several other layers or manifestations beyond the purely geographical. As the historical analysis shows, space, understood as a composite of social elements, historical events, perceptions of processes, and other groups, is inextricably linked to time. The two cannot be separated; when we think or refer to space, we refer to “space-time,” because space, including its relations, events, and emotions, is not static but changes over time. This temporal dimension of othering processes in boundary making is key to understanding and addressing potential and actual conflicts and promoting inclusion in environmental governance, as time helps to understand space as more than simple geographical snapshots of reality but as a dynamic stage on which governance processes unfold. The concept of boundaries, therefore, involves temporal and spatial dimensions, which are crucial for understanding and addressing conflicts in PA governance.

It is necessary to address exclusion at the co-management level to mitigate the risk of local disputes escalating into full-blown conflicts, which could lead to the proliferation of exclusionary mechanisms in the form of this vicious cycle. This can be achieved by seeking dialogue and building bridges, as a way to address the non-inclusion of all relevant parties in the co-management arrangement and the composition of the deliberative councils. A conscious effort to include and promote a more just and inclusive governance arrangement is the only path toward the successful implementation of sustainable use of PAs in social-ecological systems where maintaining traditional ways of living of human populations is also an environmental sustainability goal.

__________

^[1] In Brazil, a town (município in Portuguese) is the smallest autonomous administrative division and is defined by the Federal Constitution of 1988, specifically in Articles 29-31 (BRASIL 1988). Throughout this text, the word “town” is used to represent a município.
^[2] According to Brazilian legislation (BRASIL 2012), restinga is a “sandy deposit parallel to the coastline, generally elongated in shape, produced by sedimentation processes, where different communities that receive marine influence are found, with mosaic vegetation coverage, found on beaches, sandy ridges, dunes and depressions, presenting, according to the successional stage, herbaceous, shrubby and arboreal strata, the latter being more inland” (translated by the author from Portuguese).
^[3] This legal instrument is known as concession of real use. For three of the four PAs (Tracuateua, Augusto Corrêa, and Viseu), this concession contract was signed in 2010 and is valid for 20 years (ISA [date unknown]a, ISA [date unknown]b, ISA [date unknown]c). For the Bragança PA, this contract was signed in 2011 and is valid for 50 years (ISA [date unknown]d).

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