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Since the 1990s Madagascar has adopted a territorial-based biodiversity conservation policy. The institutional innovation of community-based resource management now coexists with the older expansionist protected areas model. Recent legislation has given the government the authority to enter into contractual arrangements with communities for the management of forests resources. This national environmental policy carries with it a set of regulations that has repercussions not only on physical spaces but also on access to and control of resources and their marketing. These regulations have generated conflicts over access to and use rights of natural resources. Our study of two rural territories in the Betsileo area examines these newly configured spaces of conservation associated with the transfer of renewable natural resource management (TGRNR) institutions to the western slope of the forest corridor. This paper explores the challenge of a community based forest management. The environmental regulations pose restrictions on resource users and their activities in the context of these conservation territories, knowledge systems, and power relations. The responses of local actors are inscribed in new socio-spatial strategies and practices. They raise questions about the territorial dimensions of biodiversity preservation policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The history of environmental policy in Hungary still seems to bear the marks of the Communist past. Till 1989, the environment came under consideration in planning only as a sectorial policy and was seen only in terms of nature conservation. The central government and bureaucracy, in charge of policy-making, were rather unwilling to regulate pollution and environmental hazards. By the late 1980s, environmentalist movements were objecting to this situation and challenging the declining regime. Despite its obvious willingness to break with the Communist past, Hungary has still not fully erased all traces of previous political and institutional practices. Environmental policy is still technocratic and centralized. Official institutions are struggling to apply European environmental standards based on sustainable development and local initiatives precisely because the latter are lacking. The Communist era's main legacy seems to be the lack of democratic participation at the local level in environmental (or other) matters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]