Community-Based Conservation

Historical development

Community conservation emerged in the 1980s as an answer to the failures and injustices of fortress conservation. It was argued out in the “people and parks” debates and in the World Conservation Strategy (1980). The IUCN came to recognise several categories of protected area, including areas for sustainable use, and the 1990s brought integrated conservation and development projects.

The early models were community-based natural resource management in southern Africa, including Zimbabwe’s CAMPFIRE programme and Namibia’s conservancies, and joint forest management in South Asia. Grazia Borrini-Feyerabend’s work on types of governance and Ashish Kothari’s on community conserved areas led the IUCN to recognise ICCAs as a form of governance in 2008. The ICCA Consortium, founded in 2010, organised them internationally. The Kunming–Montreal framework (2022) accepts Indigenous and traditional territories as one way of meeting the target of protecting 30 per cent of land and sea by 2030.

The approach has met pushback from two sides. “Neoprotectionists” argue it has sacrificed biodiversity. Advocates of convivial conservation argue it has not gone far enough.

Principal claims

• Local and Indigenous peoples are conservation’s partners and rightful decision-makers. They are not obstacles to it.
• Conservation that excludes people is unjust and often fails. Secure local rights lead to better results.
• Local and traditional knowledge is a resource for conservation.
• Using wildlife, forests and fisheries sustainably is compatible with conservation and often necessary for it.
• Conservation has to bring livelihoods and benefits to the places where it happens.

Policy implications

Supporters want ICCAs and Indigenous protected areas formally recognised, and co-management that carries real authority. They want communities given rights over resources and the revenue from them, a say in planning, a share of benefits, and support to monitor and enforce rules themselves. They want conservation linked to agroecology and local economies, and an end to forced removals of people for conservation.

Internal disagreements

Supporters disagree about how much authority to hand over, whether participation, shared management or full community control. They differ on the role of markets, tourism and hunting, and on whether a community’s own conservation goals must match biodiversity targets set from outside. They also disagree about the proper relationship with the state.

Criticisms and controversies

Neoprotectionists argue that community conservation has protected biodiversity less well than strict protection, and that “the community” is often a fiction that hides local elites. Political ecologists argue that it has often handed communities responsibility without power. Advocates of convivial conservation argue that it stays inside the market economy that drives the loss of nature.

Supporters cite comparative studies that find Indigenous and community lands at least as well conserved as protected areas, and point to growing recognition in international policy.

Relationships to other traditions

Community conservation is the umbrella for CBNRM, rights-based conservation and sustainable-use conservation, and convivial conservation is its radical extension. It rests on Indigenous environmental sovereignty and political ecology. It is the opposite of fortress conservation and in tension with wilderness preservation and wildlife protection.