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Protected areas in Malaysia have always been managed using top-down approach that often exclude the local communities, who are the main users of ecosystem services, from the planning and management. However, a newly established multiple-use marine park in Malaysia, Tun Mustapha Park (TMP), aims for inclusivity in managing the park. This research explores different participatory approaches (i.e. participatory mapping and Photovoice) to understand the ecosystem services and the dynamics surrounding the services in TMP. Community-based organisations and a mariculture farm in TMP were invited to participate in this work. The participants mapped the ecosystem services and provided in-depth qualitative data that supported the maps, besides highlighting ecological, sociocultural and economic issues surrounding the ecosystem services. Furthermore, the participants provided suggestions and recommendations that carry political effects. Therefore, the participatory approaches employed here had provided rich visual and spatial data to enhance the ecosystem-based management of TMP besides empowering the participants to voice out for their communities. The results generated from this work were also further utilised to fill in the gaps of knowledge in a separate ecosystem service assessment matrix. However, the output from participatory approaches should not be considered as the ultimate outcome but rather as supplement to the planning and management of TMP due to potential human errors and biases. Although the participatory approaches came with limitations and challenges that may have affected the findings here, these nonetheless had provided support to the capability of local communities to provide information crucial for management of protected areas as well as room for improvement for further work.

As global trends in Marine Protected Area (MPA) management shift towards participatory co-governance, the importance of effective stakeholder engagement in its implementation stages warrant greater emphasis. This case study highlights key lessons learned from the employment of a mixture of focus group discussions (FGDs), interviews and reconnaissance surveys in a preliminary study-site visit to Tun Mustapha Park (TMP), Sabah, Malaysia, where our research team is undertaking a 4-year research and capacity-building project. We found that trust building, understanding the local culture and politics, and recognition of complex stakeholder dynamics were key elements to successful engagement, while identifying key decision-makers for follow-ups were crucial for on-going engagement. This paper presents insights into the types of information collected by our team, which would be useful among conservation practitioners who will be conducting similar engagement work in the future.

Protected areas are established for conservation of unique and pristine environment. Although protected, they are subjected to possible environmental and social impacts due to increasing tourism activities. This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of Kinabalu Park's environmental interpretation in mitigating these impacts through the assessment of visitors’ knowledge. Visitors' knowledge was compared between those who were exposed (post-visit) and not exposed to the interpretive programs (pre-visit). Overall, environmental interpretation in Kinabalu Park is partially successful in influencing visitors' knowledge related to general facts as post-vist samples indicated higher level of knowledge. However, there were no differences in their knowledge related to scientific aspect. Keywords: environmental interpretation; knowledge; protected areas; repeat visitors eISSN 2514-751X © 2019. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open-access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia.DOI: https://doi.org/10.21834/aje-bs.v4i13.344