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Abstract
The establishment of protected areas has often been a top-down process, based on elitist
concepts of land use and surrounded by restrictive legislation. Many protected areas and
buffer zones in Bolivia, as in other countries, exist only on paper. The objectives and
guidelines for their establishment are either not viable or unclear, resulting in management
plans being overly simplistic or non-existent. In this study the various problems associated
with the implementation/non-implementation of protected areas and buffer zone are
considered from a systemic perspective. The paper outlines the application of soft systems
methods to approach a complex problematic situation and presents preliminary results for
protected areas in Bolivia.