Community-Based Conservation: Is It More Effective, Efficient, and Sustainable?

Through a global literature review and an analysis of 4 case studies, this 134-page report offers an analysis of current thinking and trends in community-based conservation. The traditional conservation approach is to establish a protected area and then relocate local people outside the park boundaries. The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation commissioned Future Generations to conduct a global review on the scientific evidence relating to an alternative response (community-based conservation), which seeks to protect larger areas of land by encouraging local stewardship and integrating social and environmental priorities. This approach centres around involving local people in: conserving biodiversity, managing natural resources, meeting social needs (e.g., maintaining local culture, increasing opportunities for income generation, and improving health and well-being), lowering management costs, and sustaining outcomes over time.

The paper first draws out of the peer-reviewed literature the major themes broadly evident worldwide from publications in English during the last 5 years. The final section of this paper is an appendix that gives an annotated bibliography of the reviewed literature. Four key themes that repeatedly appear in the published research include:

1. "Simplistic definitions of community and an unwillingness to address key social issues can doom a community-based project to failure." - One key point discussed here is that socio-economic differences, often related to gender and ethnic issues, are a determining factor in community participation in the conservation effort.
2. "To expect buy-in from communities, they must perceive the benefits - direct economic, indirect developmental, and social or cultural - as greater than the costs of conserving resources." - Example: Ecotourism programmes do provide income, both for conservation initiatives and for the local population, but as numerous studies reveal, the income is not always sufficient to offset the sacrifices.
3. "Community-based conservation can lead to an enhanced capacity of communities to control their own destinies. On the other hand...a lack of developed community capacity can lead to conservation failures..." - An important factor in building community capacity is linkages with outside groups and technologies. Among strategies for increasing community capacity, many studies call for attention to building community institutions.
4. "Success in community-based conservation requires recognizing the contextual constraints and opportunities..." - Social and political issues must be understood at the local scale; temporal and historical context is important. Another contextual theme that appears regularly in the literature is a distrust of government and outside bodies on the part of community members ("...[I]ncorporating indigenous knowledge can be a useful empowerment strategy, and help to overcome distrust of government and outsiders.")
   

The second part of the paper is comprised of 4 case studies (marine fisheries in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, wildlife management in Botswana, ecotourism in Guatemala, and community forestry in Nepal). These case studies dig deeper into issues related to community-based conservation, and they examine in detail community-based approaches to conservation as they are being applied in different environmental, cultural, and political settings.

Here is an excerpt from the "Concluding Discussion" of the Botswana case study: "The importance of local actors is a critical ingredient for making conservation work. However, the illustrations of community strategies highlight a central dilemma of participatory approaches. The need for 'bottom-up' strategies emerged primarily because of the ineffectiveness of state led, top-down approaches. However, participatory development needs an active intervention and support by effective states to be successful....Because the relationship between economic incentives for development and conservation outcomes is politically determined, ...[e]ffective conservation approaches, while grounded in 'community' and attentive to participation, should incorporate an understanding of wider processes and structures, and especially how state and market structures become 'embedded' in institutional and cultural patterns of local communities in new ways."

The third section synthesises the literature review and the case studies for trends in community-based conservation. This analysis incorporates lessons drawn from the authors' decades of professional work in the United States and international settings in community-based conservation. Highlights include:

• For projects to be successful, active community participation and partnership is required.
• To be active partners in conservation, communities need linkages with outside groups and new local institutions to develop ongoing, adaptive capacity.
• Local institutions with goals of equitable social change and nature conservation also introduce a range of social and community benefits. These include: improved social status of women, improved health, social capital and infrastructure, and micro-credit and livelihood opportunities.
• Communities can be strikingly effective at enforcing locally determined regulations. When communities buy into conservation goals, they bring knowledge and local resources, including surveillance and social controls.
• Ongoing community partnership in conservation requires 1) a true local partnership vs. outside groups manipulating community participation, and 2) a local management approach that adapts to changing ecological, economic, and social dynamics.

The report also raises several challenges. While the literature almost uniformly endorses community-based conservation, it gives scant guidance as to how to do it. Another limitation is the lack of measurement tools to understand the interrelationships and integrated results of communities interacting within protected areas: "Measuring conservation alone is not adequate, for community-based conservation is grounded in a synergy between people and protection; looking at one half or the other is to miss the dynamic of interactive empowerment which is what community-based conservation is all about."