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Community-based conservation

Conservation movement emerging in the 1980s

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  • 4 chapters

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A more radical understanding of 'community conservation' highlights the conservation value of the historically careful, sustainable and in many ways protective interaction of human communities with their natural environments. In this light, Indigenous Peoples and local communities have the capacity of being 'custodians' of their 'territories of life'. This capacity comes to life depending on a combination of factors, some of which are intrinsic to the communities themselves and others depend on their ecological, economic and political context. In particular, State governments, international agencies and the private sector need to allow and support communities, rather than impeding them in their custodian role. Colonialism, neo-colonialism, economic growth 'at all costs' and perennial war are the true enemies of Nature. Empowered, aware and self-determined communities are her natural allies. The clearest example is offered by the hundreds of community members killed, and the thousands maimed and oppressed, every year, as they try to defend their environments from extractive and destructive imposed developments.

History

The emergence of CBC is deeply tied to the legacy of colonial conservation practices and the political struggles they provoked. Early conservation efforts, particularly the establishment of national parks like Yellowstone (1872) and Yosemite (1890), followed a "fortress conservation" model: nature was to be preserved by excluding people. This model ignored Indigenous land stewardship and often involved the forced displacement of local communities—an approach later replicated across Africa, Asia, and Latin America during colonial and post-colonial periods. Estimates suggest that more than 20 million people have been displaced globally under exclusionary conservation regimes.

By the mid-20th century, critiques of this model intensified. Scholars and activists pointed to the ethical and ecological failings of removing communities from their ancestral lands. In 1975, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) first acknowledged that traditional ways of life could support biodiversity conservation.

The term "community-based conservation" gained traction in the 1980s and 1990s as both a critique of top-down environmentalism and an alternative rooted in participatory governance, local knowledge, and equitable benefit-sharing. Landmark events helped solidify its legitimacy: the 2003 World Parks Congress in Durban and the 2004 Convention on Biological Diversity meeting in Kuala Lumpur formally recognized the role of Indigenous Peoples and local communities in governing protected areas. This momentum continued with the Sydney Congress in 2014, which affirmed that territories conserved by communities hold conservation value equal to that of state-managed protected areas.

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