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Critical analysis of public policies on environmental conservation, management, and tourism development in the protected natural areas of Ecuador to detect their dysfunctions, contradictions, and problems of applicability. A predominantly exploratory research methodology with a descriptive-analytical approach is used when studying and systematizing the different regulations, actions and guidelines existing and implemented by international and national organizations with competencies in environmental conservation and sustainable development. These are systematized and analyzed through the main documents of interest that include principles, strategic guidelines, and specific rules of application. Through primary and secondary sources, and internal documentation of various Administrations we have identified the most visible effects and impacts that these policies have generated in the protection and/or valorization of the natural heritage, as well as in the tourist development compatible with the conservation of these spaces, the generation of complementary income and economic diversification for local communities. We concluded that Ecuadorian regulations on the conservation of protected areas present notable points of collision and lack of coherence or coordination with tourism policies. This is the consequence of two main factors: the lack of a broad strategic vision and comprehensive territorial planning of these territories as sustainable tourist destinations and the lack of a framework for management, planning and collaborative planning between the different local agencies and agents that affect these spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global trend is the concentration of populations in urbanized cities, where there are greater challenges to solve urban, environmental and governance problems, caused by increasing urbanization. An example is the municipality of Acapulco de Juarez, recognized as the first international tourist destination in Mexico, which in 1900 had 16,990 inhabitants and according to the last census in 2015, population growth is 810 669 inhabitants, that is, the territory has more than 793 679 inhabitants. The tourist destination Acapulco suffers from various economic and socio-environmental problems such as: irregular human settlements that lead to environmental deterioration due to the overexploitation of natural resources, as well as various environmental impacts due to the inadequate management of urban solid waste. The social, economic and environmental problem extends throughout the territory, reaching the Protected Natural Area, with the category of the Veladero National Park, which geographically surrounds a large part of the urban area of Acapulco, recognized as the natural lung of the tourist destination. The objective was to determine the generation and characterization of Urban Solid Waste (MSW) deposited by visitors to generate strategies for their management, control and use, achieving environmental awareness to the local population to conserve the environment. The methodology is dictated by the Official Mexican Standards: NMX-AA, -61-1985, NMX-AA-15-198, NMX-AA-19-1985 and NMX-AA-22-1985 allowing the determination of the quantity, composition, by-product characterization and determination of volumetric weight of the MSW, the sites identified with the greatest amount of waste were georeferenced, key actors interviews were applied and finally, with the support in the information obtained, a participatory workshop was designed and applied to the local population, where the current environmental problem was diagnosed, allowing the community to recognize alternatives for the use and mitigation of environmental problems. As a finding, the average daily volumetric weight was 205.7 Kg/m³, during the Holy Week holiday season of 2019, identifying 5 open-air dumps, finally, based on the results proposals were generated to reduce the causes and effects of degradation of natural resources, generating alternatives for environmental awareness and solid waste management aimed at the local population to minimize the impacts of waste in the national park. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to guarantee the protection, conservation, restoration and use of natural resources (water, soil, forest and biodiversity) of an anthropised sector belonging to a protected natural area of the State of Mexico, a management proposal based on a detailed field survey, which allowed to diagnose the main environmental problems is made. After extensive community work, awareness and discussion of best wishes for caring and conservation of the property, a management plan agreed with the community was established, where strategies and action strategies are established according to priority levels. Communal management is maintained as an inseparable element of the process. The project is an example of conjugating the professional area and the citizen involvement in environmental matters in order to preserve the environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last 40 years, all around the plant, a veritable explosion of formally established protected natural areas has occurred. During the 1960s, there were a few more than 1,000 officially protected areas; by 2006, the number reached more than 108,000. In terms of protected surface area, one of the objectives promoted by the World Parks Commission has been surpassed; it had established the need to protect at least 10% of the planet's surface, more than 30 million square kilometers (Dowie, 2006). Protected areas or natural parks have existed in Uruguay since the mid-twentieth century, but their incorporation into a National System of Protected Areas (SNAP-NSPA), managed from the central State, is a novelty dating from beginnings of the twenty-first century. Understood as part of a sustainable development strategy, natural protected areas imply a development model option. This option is valid when the declaration for a protected area is adopted by the environmental authorities, by the communities that live in the territory or around it or even in the definition of the academic or nongovernmental actors applied to the conservation of natural resources. Nevertheless, such an option is not always explicit or obvious to the same degree for all the actors involved. Natural protected areas have social implications; among others, the creation of notions regarding environment and nature, in places where that particular interest has not necessarily existed as such until very recently. On the other hand, social participation, recommended, claimed and assumed, is often seen as an end in itself, as a necessary stage in implementing the protected areas, without questioning the processes, criteria or objectives. The expansion of protected areas in recent years can be understood as part of the globalization process; the environmental question is one of the first necessary, non-local concerns of society, the states and international institutionalism, which has had as a counterpart the identification of biodiversity as one of the first objects of global concern about nature. This advance communication about an on-going research project analyzes the relation between State and the social actors involved in the process of implementing an environmental policy, the creation of a National System of Protected Areas. Focus is on the changes that this process generates in the discourse, representations and practices of the actors regarding a specific territory, the protected area of the Farrapos Estuaries and the Islands of the Uruguay River. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]