CDF is fully involved in creating a new model for conservation management in Galapagos. The 1998 Special Law for the Preservation and Sustainable Development of the Province of Galapagos signaled an important move away from the top-down, centralized decision-making of the past toward a new, participatory and open system of management.
The new management model focuses on long-term ecological, social, and economic sustainability. It takes account of the unpredictability, dynamic complexity, and inter-relatedness of Galapagos ecosystems, and incorporates these into the decision-making process. In particular, it recognizes human beings are part of the Galapagos ecosystem.
Today, there are new laws, new management plans, and new collaborative institutional structures in place. They reflect a new vision: people and nature are considered equally important, a new level of ownership rights has been assigned to local people, the diversity of world views has been recognized, and all stakeholders have been involved in collaboratively developing the plans. While the advances in policies, laws and plans have been substantial, they now need to be fully reflected in the day-to-day realities of resource users and management.
The new ecosystem management model also requires changes in the way Galapagos science is managed and carried out. Research has traditionally focused on protected areas (the National Park and Marine Reserve) with the emphasis on threatened and endangered native and endemic species and on the more aggressive invasive species.
Under the new management model, the people of Galapagos and their activities are part of the ecosystem that CDRS scientists study. As well as offering science a more complete picture of the factors affecting the ecosystem, this means that science becomes more relevant to the Galapagos community and that residents are included in research, not only as subjects, but as collaborators.
Local people are no longer regarded as beneficiaries and depositories for information, but as partners who work together with scientists to undertake research, from its initial design, through implementation, to communicating the results. In this participatory vision of research, scientists work closely with the whole Galapagos community to address shared problems and issues, and their common goal is to find solutions that recognize the needs of the different stakeholders.