Community-based conservation in a globalized world

Abstract

Communities have an important role to play in biodiversity conservation. However, community-based conservation as a panacea, like government-based conservation as a panacea, ignores the necessity of managing commons at multiple levels, with vertical and horizontal interplay among institutions. The study of conservation in a multilevel world can serve to inform an interdisciplinary science of conservation, consistent with the Convention on Biological Diversity, to establish partnerships and link biological conservation objectives with local development objectives. Improving the integration of conservation and development requires rethinking conservation by using a complexity perspective and the ability to deal with multiple objectives, use of partnerships and deliberative processes, and learning from commons research to develop diagnostic tools. Perceived this way, community-based conservation has a role to play in a broad pluralistic approach to biodiversity protection: it is governance that starts from the ground up and involves networks and linkages across various levels of organization. The shift of attention to processes at multiple levels fundamentally alters the way in which the governance of conservation development may be conceived and developed, using diagnostics within a pluralistic framework rather than a blueprint approach.commons ͉ complexity ͉ governance ͉ institutions ͉ sustainability

Social-ecological interactions, management panaceas, and the future of wild fish populations

“…This can best be achieved by redistributing authority among local level user organizations and higher governance levels (46). The resulting linkages may then help in dealing with multiple objectives by using multiple knowledge systems in the context of panacea management (46), with a view toward avoiding panacea development and facilitating development of adaptive management practices.…”

Collaborative networks and new ways of knowing

“…This blueprinting of practice through instruments like BMPs hinders the employment of local initiative and knowledge in solution generation, as has been argued elsewhere (Lejano, 2006;Berkes, 2007;Lejano and Ingram, 2007). But what allows this is, ironically, the structure of the boundary organization, where one body serves as a centralized hub for, as Cash et al describe, communication, translation, and mediation.…”

Ambiguity: the challenge of knowing and deciding together

“…This type of controversy cannot be solved by appealing to facts, but to value based knowledge that can provide judgments about preferences, tolerance to change and to risk (Schö n and Rein, 1994;Failing et al, 2007). As stated by Berkes (2007) these are 'people issues', that can only be answered by paying attention to the values and beliefs of those who are considered in the decision making process.…”