Assessment of losses to the local population due to restrictions on their ownership rights to land and property assets: The case of the Tunkinsky National Park, Russia

The impact of protected areas on local communities is the subject of intense discussions as part of the implementation of the global ecosystem protection agenda. Conflicts between the interests of environmental protection and the needs of socio-economic development become particularly acute when large areas of land are taken out of economic circulation as a result of organizing protected areas. In this case, there is an urgent need for detailed and reliable information about the social impacts of such land withdrawal on the well-being of the local population. An analysis of the methodological approaches widely presented in the literature, used to assess the social impact of protected areas, testifies to the insufficiency of completed and practically applicable methodological guidelines for the areas with significant restrictions for people who form part of the protected landscape. In this study, we understand the cost estimate of the social impact of national parks on the local population as a quantitative calculation of the losses due to restrictions on their ownership rights to land and property assets. The methodological approach consists in considering the category of losses as a sum total of the actual damage and lost profits. The assessment algorithm includes three stages: systematization of social impacts on citizens, development of indicators and data collection, and calculation of actual damage to the population and lost profits. The assessment is performed using the example of the Tunkinsky National Park located in the Tunkinsky municipal district of the Republic of Buryatia, a region of the Russian Federation, where there are 14 rural settlements with a population of more than 20,000 people. The results of the calculations show that the losses of the rural population due to legal restrictions on the registration of land dealings amount to 170.4 million USD. Taking into account the potential amount of administrative fines and the value of property subject to demolition, the losses amount to 239.2 million USD. It is more than an order of magnitude greater than the amount of own revenues of the Tunkinsky municipal district in 2011–2019. The results obtained demonstrate the real picture of the impact of restrictions on the rights of local people to land within the boundaries of national parks and are useful for developing measures to account for their interests and include protected areas in the socio-economic development of regions. The methodological approach developed by the authors can be used in other national parks, where it is necessary to optimize the policy of improving land use for local residents.