Determinants of access to wetland ecosystem services-application of IPBES framework and access theory (case study: zaribar international wetland in marivan county)

Introduction: Understanding access to natural ecosystems and possible priorities for benefiting from the benefits of nature will be key factors in identifying ways to reduce inequality in access, as well as inform the planning and management of protected areas in the future. The degree to which an individual can access ecosystem services depends on a complex range of mechanisms including social relations, institutions, capabilities, property rights, and various capitals. Various frameworks have been developed to conceptualize these linkages and describe the relationships between ecosystem services and human well-being, which include social and natural sciences and objective and subjective criteria One of the relevant and significant and important frameworks in this field is the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). In this study, by combining the factors of Ribot and Peluso (2003) in the access theory with part of the IPBES framework, this possibility and platform for a scientific investigation and study is provided to determine what factors are effective in determining the level of people's access to Zaribar wetland ecosystem services.
Methods and Material: The current research is applied, qualitative, and has an inductive approach, in order to analyze the data obtained from the semi-structured interviews, the content analysis method was used. The study area for the research is the villages on arouund of Zaribar Wetland in Marivan city, there are 10 villages with a population of 2853 households, which are in close interaction and depend on the services of the Wetland. Non-probability purposeful snowball sampling was used to select the investigated individuals or samples. The selection of samples continued until the adequacy and the theoretical saturation of the data were reached, and finally the researcher reached the theoretical saturation by conducting 22 interviews. In this study, Guba and Lincoln's (Guba & Lincoln, 1989) four criteria including validity, transferability, reliability and verifiability were used to evaluate the validity of the research. Data analysis was grouped around "IPBES framework" and "access theory".
Results and Discussion: The results of this study led to the identification of 5 main categories and themes that affect the accessibility of Zaribar wetland residents. The 5 main categories and themes identified in this analysis are institutional-management, structural-communication, infrastructural-technological, economic-capital and environmental-contextual.The subcategories of these factors also include "membership and institutional participation", "wetland laws and regulations", "integrated ecosystem management", "rights and properties", "social influence and power", "license", "relationships and Social networks", "international agreements", "climate changes", "land condition", "geographic location", "infrastructure and market", "tools and equipment", "labor", "financial capital", "Indigenous and specialized knowledge" and "government facilities".
Conclusion: Access to ecosystem services in wetland communities as well as in Zaribar is complex and changing with the intertwining of relationships and affected by economic, environmental and other factors. The results of this study show that different regulations and organizational arrangements regarding people's access, instead of strengthening interaction and proper relationship, have caused different types of exchange relationships and unequal rights in the field of this ecosystem. Most ecosystem services are produced through both ecosystem processes and social actions, and thus their assessment cannot be separated from the social context in which they are embedded. As a result, it is recommended that more ecosystem service research be done with process-oriented, context-specific and integrated approaches, based on the recognition of the complexity of social-ecological realities.