(Introduction):

Wildlife protected areas are an ideal source of information to analyze the characteristics of social participation in environmental issues because they are spaces where conservation and human development interests coexist.

(Objetive):

To analyze the functional dimension of the social participation in high biodiversity areas, understood as the ability to transform environmental values into development opportunities.

(Methodology):

It focuses on three wildlife protected areas as places where nature and humans interact using ecosystem services provided by them. This generate alliances but also socio environment conflicts that are key in the sustainability of protected areas. Though the Social Network Analysis and the Human Development approach, the characteristics, and influences of the organizational participatory networks in three protected areas of Costa Rica were analyzed.

(Results):

The functional dimension of the environmental social networks is independent of the restrictions or facilities for the use of natural resources but highly dependent on the multisectoral dialogue platforms. This produces high centralized social networks and increases the dependency to the priorities of few and the most influential sectors. A social network with these characteristics is considered a pseudo satisfier according to the human development approach.

(Conclusions):

Conservation actions and environmental education are positioned as synergistic satisfiers since they are key in the articulation of development with the environment around the protected areas of study. Nevertheless, high centralized participatory networks can reduce this role.