Debate about what proportion of the Earth to protect often overshadows the question of how nature should be conserved and by whom. We present a systematic review and narrative synthesis of 169 publications investigating how different forms of governance influence conservation outcomes, paying particular attention to the role played by Indigenous peoples and local communities. We find a stark contrast between the outcomes produced by externally controlled conservation, and those produced by locally controlled efforts. Crucially, most studies presenting positive outcomes for both well-being and conservation come from cases where Indigenous peoples and local communities play a central role, such as when they have substantial influence over decision making or when local institutions regulating tenure form a recognized part of governance. In contrast, when interventions are controlled by external organizations and involve strategies to change local practices and supersede customary institutions, they tend to result in relatively ineffective conservation at the same time as producing negative social outcomes. Our findings suggest that equitable conservation, which empowers and supports the environmental stewardship of Indigenous peoples and local communities represents the primary pathway to effective long-term conservation of biodiversity, particularly when upheld in wider law and policy. Whether for protected areas in biodiversity hotspots or restoration of highly modified ecosystems, whether involving highly traditional or diverse and dynamic local communities, conservation can become more effective through an increased focus on governance type and quality, and fostering solutions that reinforce the role, capacity, and rights of Indigenous peoples and local communities. We detail how to enact progressive governance transitions through recommendations for conservation policy, with immediate relevance for how to achieve the next decade's conservation targets under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity.

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There are disagreements on the use of standard biodiversity monitoring methods to promote community participation. This study combined three methods to investigate questions why monitor biodiversity, what biodiversity to monitor and how participatory biodiversity monitoring can be promoted in central Uganda in East Africa. The question of why biodiversity should be monitored concerns the justification for monitoring, while the question of what to monitor concerns the choice of biodiversity variables, and the question of how to monitor biodiversity concerns the links between the data generated from monitoring and problems associated particularly with regard to community participation. The study selected landscape and sampling scales (i.e. plots) for participatory monitoring of biodiversity. Herders identified main landscape patches and plant species. Herder value-weighted indicators, such as invasive species and range condition scores (i.e. composite indicators representing species palatability, composition, cover, density and richness) were used for measuring biodiversity in their grazing lands. To understand what biodiversity to monitor, we interpreted the correlation between biodiversity indicators and herder value-weighted range conditions. Herders defined biodiversity from a utilitarian perspective, which is inconsistent with the conventional scientific goals of biodiversity conservation which focus on preservation of the total species pool. To address the question of how to monitor biodiversity, evidence from the folk taxonomy of sampled plant species and other proxy biodiversity indicators, including herder value-weighted range condition scores, were compared to understand scale dependence. We inferred that the landscape scale monitoring was more sensitive to measuring biodiversity than the conventional scales of plots.

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