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Community-led conservation

Community-led conservation refers to a re-imaging of conservation as a primarily locally driven action where indigenous peoples and local communities take the lead in managing natural resources, caring for their lands and resources and sustaining their own cultures.  

By investing in, and supporting, community-led conservation initiatives and enhancing community capacity to monitor and demonstrate biodiversity outcomes, the project contributes to the base of evidence that demonstrates the crucial role of indigenous peoples and communities in biodiversity conservation and sustainable use.  

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Peruvian indigenous youth draw a map of their territory
Wampis Nation students drawing the learnings from their leadership training, one of five delivered over a year by LifeMosaic for the Shawi Leadership School in Peru. Photo by Mikey Watts

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Guardians of the Forest: How Indigenous Youth and Elders Unite to Protect Biodiversity

When we protect the variety of life on Earth, we protect our own future. In the mountains of Northern Thailand, an Indigenous village named Huay Hin Lad Nai is showing the world how to do this right. For over four generations, this community has looked…
Article

From Mercy Farms to Land Rights — Forest Management Lessons Overlooked by the State

FRAMING NOTE: This piece is based on a community visit and field documentation conducted by the Asia Indigenous Peoples Pact (AIPP), Inter Mountain Peoples’ Education and Culture in Thailand Association (IMPECT) and the Indigenous Media Network (IMN). It serves as an advocacy case study on…
Article
Samburu Indigenous Peoples doing Community Resource Mapping at Kiltamany. Photo by Indigenous Information Network (IIN)

Environmental Monitoring Guide Series

The Transformative Pathways project has created a series of four guides on environmental monitoring, both for local organisations who are supporting Indigenous Peoples and local communities, and for communities themselves. Introduction to community-based environmental monitoring: Practical guidance for monitoring of natural resources by Indigenous Peoples…

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Indigenous peoples have developed sophisticated knowledge systems and management practices that have enabled them to live sustainably in their environments for many generations, and in many cases, millennia. By giving them greater control over the management of natural resources, community-led conservation can ensure that these valuable traditions are preserved, and that biodiversity is protected for future generations. 

Over the course of the project, this larger base of evidence will directly impact how much local and national governments recognise and support indigenous peoples’ and local communities’ beneficial roles in biodiversity protection. Consequently, this will also improve the level of protection and recognition of their underlying rights to lands, resources and traditional knowledge.  

These two aspects of the long-term impact are closely connected: sustaining community-led long-term management of natural resources is linked to the security of underlying tenure, yet in many of the project countries customary tenure is insufficiently recognised.  

By demonstrating the valuable contributions that these territories make to national biodiversity priorities, the project makes the case for increasing security of tenure over the longer-term.   

a group of tree seedlings
A tree nursery at Olorukoti resource and knowledge center. Photo by IIN.
women planting trees
Women planting trees in Kenya. Photo by IIN.