Community-Based Conservation

Community-based conservation is commonly seen as having two central objectives: to enhance conservation of wildlife, biodiversity, and/or the environment; and to provide economic, social, cultural, and political benefits to local people. These objectives are connected; when communities benefit from conservation, they will be more likely to support it. Community-based conservation is also a process achieved by a variety of mechanisms, including devolution of control over resources from states to communities, development of community institutions to manage those resources, meaningful participation of communities in decision making about conservation, and legalization of property rights. Central to the community-based conservation concept is the assumption that people living closest to and depending on a resource will be most affected by its depletion, and thus have high stakes in its ...