How to balance ecological protection and community development in national parks: international experiences and China′s exploration

The contradiction between the protection of ecological environment by national parks and the livelihood development of local residents is prominent. How to coordinate the relationship between them is an urgent problem to be solved in the construction of national parks. This paper summarizes the experience and important measures of foreign national park community development, including building gateway towns, developing ecological industries, building national park brand value-added system, building multi-party participation and collaborative governance system, and implementing franchise system, etc. It also sorts out the exploration of balancing the relationship between protection and development of national parks in China in recent years, and looks into its existing problems. Combined with the international experience and China′s national conditions, this paper puts forward several suggestions, such as establishing diversified ecological compensation mechanism, refining franchise system, exploring agreement protection system, guiding and standardizing community recreation and nature education services, and establishing diversified realization mechanism of ecological products′ value, etc., which provides a reference for the establishment of institutional mechanism to coordinate the relationship between protection and development in the construction of national parks in China.