Enabling Conditions for Community Conservation

Tony Charles, Director, CCRNSharmalene Mendis-Millard, Research Associate, CCRN Communities are tackling complex environmental, social and economic challenges through conservation and livelihood efforts in an era of... [ view full abstract ]

Tony Charles, Director, CCRN

Sharmalene Mendis-Millard, Research Associate, CCRN

Communities are tackling complex environmental, social and economic challenges through conservation and livelihood efforts in an era of multi-level, cross-sectoral governance approaches and layers of policy and jurisdictions. How do local people navigate this context to engage in community-based conservation that fosters viable livelihoods, healthy environments, and strong communities? What constitutes a policy environment to community-based initiatives?

Work by members of the Community Conservation Research Network (CCRN) sheds light on these questions.   We share insights by community-level, indigenous, academic, and non-profit partners in over two dozen sites in twenty countries. These insights are primarily drawn from the experiences of a single community or place-based group tackling their environmental and livelihood challenges. We explore case studies where communities such as Koh Pitak, Thailand and Olifants Estuary, South Africa are working to overcome environmental challenges such as resource depletion, and to improve their livelihoods (e.g. through economic diversification). 

We discuss to what extent policy and other forms of government support can facilitate community actions, and strategies local people employ to work within and around jurisdictional constraints.  We conclude that the conditions that pave the way for local-level actions to be effective at meeting multiple objectives include a policy environment that supports multi-functional land and waterscapes that conserve biodiversity while being socio-economically productive, and governance arrangements that respect multiple knowledge systems and that pay attention to the benefits and costs of outcomes to stakeholders.