Community-based conservation
Community-based conservation involves local communities in decisions and stewardship intended to protect biodiversity and manage natural resources.
Community-based natural resource management: An approach that gives local communities a central role in managing natural resources. This broader management framework often provides the institutional structure for community-led conservation.
Namibia communal conservancies: Community institutions in Namibia that manage wildlife and tourism under devolved rights. They illustrate how legal authority over wildlife can support community conservation and tourism.
Indigenous peoples: Distinct peoples with historical continuity, collective identities, and relationships to ancestral lands and institutions. Indigenous rights and governance are central to many debates about who directs conservation.
Fortress conservation: A conservation approach that protects nature by restricting human settlement or resource use in designated areas. It contrasts with approaches that place local participation and stewardship at the center.
Human–wildlife conflict: Negative interactions between people and wildlife that cause harm to people, animals, property, or livelihoods. Local stewardship must address costs communities bear when wildlife damages crops, livestock, or safety.
Tenure security: The degree to which people can reliably hold, use, and transfer rights to land or resources. Secure rights can give communities both authority and incentives to steward ecosystems.
Nepal community forestry: A system in which local forest user groups manage much of Nepal’s forest area. It is a prominent case of communities exercising formal responsibility over forests.
Indigenous and community conserved areas: Natural or modified areas conserved through Indigenous peoples’ or local communities’ governance and initiatives. This framework recognizes conservation led through community institutions, including outside formal protected areas.
Protected area: A geographically defined area managed to achieve the long-term conservation of nature. Protected areas may be governed by states or communities, so designation alone does not ensure local authority.
Environmental justice: Fair treatment and meaningful participation in decisions about environmental benefits, burdens, and risks. It provides a lens for assessing whose rights and interests conservation decisions protect.