Regional nature parks in France as agents of regional sustainability transformation

In addition to the conservation and enhancement of biodiversity, settled protected areas serve other missions depending on their respective national and international requirements. The generic term ‘sustainable development’ has been established to encompass these additional tasks and protected areas should contribute to sustainable development. Despite many years of efforts, it is not foreseeable that the biodiversity goals and nature and environmental protection goals can be achieved. A new paradigm is emerging: some stakeholders consider social transformation to be unavoidable in achieving goals. This raises the question of whether and under what conditions protected areas can become agents of change. The goal of this study is to gain knowledge in this regard and thus contribute to the discussion on the transformative potential of protected areas. To address this overarching issue, regional nature parks in France—hereafter abbreviated as PNRs for Parcs naturels régionaux—were selected as the research objects. PNRs have a long history with sustainable development and are influential stakeholders in promoting societal change in their territories. Following a systematic literature and document search on the PNR and based on transformation theory, the relevant texts were analysed using a comprehensive qualitative content analysis. A structured portrait was drawn up for each PNR, which, together with the general literature on PNR, served as the basis for the literature and document analysis. The main results are as follows: PNRs fulfil relevant requirements that qualify them as agents of local–regional transformation. They have established participatory governance structures and processes across all administrative levels of governance appropriate to the respective local institutional conditions, practise transformation management on an appropriate normative framework, and promote transformation in relevant transformation areas with diverse transformation levers. However, the PNRs only reach relatively small parts of the local population and all stakeholders. It remains a challenge to involve wider parts of the population and other stakeholders and accelerate transformation. The experiences of PNRs demonstrate how a local–regional transformation process can be initiated and designed and its requirements. This includes the development of appropriate competences and resources, the establishment of participatory governance structures and processes appropriate to the respective local institutional conditions with strong involvement of the authorities, the integration of the concerns of the protected area into the relevant policy fields and institutional framework conditions, as well as the ability to recognise new societal trends and their impacts as early as possible, and the ability to initiate appropriate reflection processes for addressing these trends and their potential impacts.