The economic impact of Welsh National Nature Reserves

Isolated communities, dependent upon fishing, farming and forestry, which are scattered around the North Atlantic coast, have shared a disastrous decline during the last decade. These communities are in the peripheries of advanced industrial nation-states, such as Canada and supra-national alliances, such as the European Community, yet despite this, there are no easy solutions to the development of these regions. This volume argues that the productive assets of these regions, and how they can be used to sustain household incomes, need to be better understood. The assets need to be converted into products and services and they need to be marketed profitably. The diminshing flow of young people who leave these areas to obtain higher education and who do not return must be turned around and efforts must be concentrated on the creation or strengthening of economic conditions which satisfy the younger generation's employment aspirations, consumer requirements and social needs. At present, even the urban centres of these regions are losing their young population and the book suggests that successful regional and community development policies must focus on these centres first. The book argues against excessively 'social' models of development and instead emphasizes applied economics approaches. By placing these peripheral communities in their wider economic contexts and by seeing these communities through the eyes of the young local people, this collection offers insights to and understandings of, the processes which are shaping the future of communities in these regions.