When Global Conservation Meets Local Livelihoods : People and Parks in Centralamerica

National park and related forest conservation efforts tend to emanate from core areas of the world and are often imposed on rurai people living on forest fringes in the least developed regions of lesser developed countries. We address the social and cuitural processes that ensue when center-originating conservation meets local people with their resource-dependent livelihoods, and how these vary under different circumstances. We examine and compare local people's environmental and forest-related values and behaviors, using cultural models, after the establishment of nafional parks in two countries with very different social and environmental histories-{osta Rica and Honduras. We find that external cultural models were widely adopted by local people-hegemonic to the extent of structuring even discourse opposing conservation. Local people often expressed environmental values, but used formulaic language that suggested that these values were not well integrated with other aspects of their life and often not motivating. We pay particular attention to relationships befween environmental values and livelihood values, and the varying ways that new, Iocal environmental discourses and values emerge that mediate between these often conflicting value spheres. The recent international increase in national parks is a phenomenon of globalization, and often imposes new conservation practices and environmental values onto local people. While these new national parks have some broad public benefits that can be thought of as global, e.g. their role in