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• W4280494537 abstract "Advanced Introduction to Community-Based Conservation. Berkes F. 2021 Edward Elgar Publishing Cheltenham, U.K. xiv+169 >£15.95 . ISBN 978-1-83910-224-0. Humankind has failed to slow the rate of biodiversity loss, and researchers and practitioners are experimenting with new approaches to conservation. One of these is the field's transformation from purely biological management to interdisciplinary governance. My personal view of conservation has also been changing since my graduation in 1990. At the university, we learned how to assess the plants and animals in a protected area and studied ecology to learn how to design a management system that protects target species and ecosystems. Fifteen years later, I became interested in the traditional and local ecological knowledge of people who use some of these protected areas for their livelihood as farmers and herders. I was shocked by the complexity and depth of their knowledge and the diversity of local and external drivers they had to cope with. I slowly realized that the adaptive capacity of local biodiversity-friendly traditional management systems (e.g., extensive herding and hay making) is at its limits. I embarked on knowledge coproduction with these knowledgeable, local land users, and discussed with them possible solutions to protect local natural resources and biodiversity. Fikret Berkes, the author of Advanced Introduction to Community-Based Conservation, witnessed similar changes in conservation and resource management in Canada and other parts of the world. He is one of the key researchers and teachers of this transformation in conservation, which views people as integral parts of ecosystems, rather than merely as “managers” or “stressors.” By Berkes's definition, community-based conservation “includes natural resources or biodiversity protection by, for and with the local (indigenous or other) community, taking into account drivers, institutional linkages at the local level, and multiple levels of organization that impact and shape institutions at the local level.” This approach actively brings locals into the management process and involves mutual social learning. This approach is fundamentally different from expert-based conservation, which usually is top-down or command-and-control decision-making. Berkes argues that biodiversity loss is a collective-action problem that can be tackled more effectively at the local than global level. The author raises serious questions. Do local communities want conservation? What are their own objectives? What kind of capacity development and legal protection would local and Indigenous communities need to counter external as well as internal threats? In this model, improved conservation would lead to increased livelihood benefits relative to old livelihood activities, giving further incentives to mitigate internal and external threats to conservation. Easier said than done. There are many drivers affecting community-based conservation, related to population growth, free trade, multinational corporations, and (currently neoliberal) policies. One of the strengths of the book is the focus on the debates around community-based conservation, providing a critical analysis of case studies and searching for causes of the occasional failures. The book is small, concise, and easy to read, though sometimes it is not easy to digest or accept the author's recommendations and messages. It is not a book of recipes, yet one can start learning how to cook from it. For example, readers can sharpen their hypotheses about actions that may work in local situations or compare their own field experiences with theory and multidecadal case studies. The book was written for a wide audience, so a few chapters and sections may contain little novelty for informed readers, whereas for others these very chapters may provide the first opportunity to learn about Indigenous and local knowledge, key elements of functioning commons, and the basics of governance. All these are discussed from a conservation perspective. Some conservationists may argue that integrating local communities and their needs into conservation efforts is a waste of time, money, and human resources and actually diminishes rather than enhances conservation effectiveness. The author argues that this is not necessarily the case. The first chapter of the book emphasizes that biodiversity loss, like climate change, is a wicked problem that cannot be easily separated from issues of values, equity, and social justice; a problem that lacks clearly definable objectives and social context; and a problem for which an objective, disinterested expert may not exist. Maybe this is the reason Berkes decided not to mention evidence-based conservation in the book. The reader is presented with a brief, critical history of Western and non-Western conservation, emphasizing that all cultures have their own environmental stewardship traditions. Berkes provides examples of what a colonial mentality and poor ecological understanding of landscapes by outsiders has led to: indigenous lands seen as empty landscapes (i.e., not owned) and pristine nature ready for colonial settling or for establishment of parks without the need of local consent. There is also a discussion of the nature–culture divide and of biocultural approaches as a way to reconnect nature and culture. In school I learned that in science everything started with Aristotle and in conservation everything started with Yellowstone National Park. This is simply not true. Perhaps the most serious harm caused by the Yellowstone model is, Berkes argues, that it engenders a world view of human–nature dualism because it alienates people from their land and their stewardship responsibilities. One of the lessons from Indigenous peoples is that humans must be continuously interacting with their environment and using (not only preserving) their biodiversity resources. This way, people can understand the importance of biodiversity and respect it, developing practices, institutions, and ethics to take care of it. A separate chapter examines a set of combined conservation-development projects (Equator Initiative [www.equatorinitiative.org]) that illustrate circumstances under which local communities can be conservation partners. Experience shows that attention to community objectives and livelihood needs are required for a successful partnership. Berkes acknowledges that the idea of multiple objectives in protected areas is a challenge for conservation practitioners, but provides examples that show compromise is possible and even desirable. Indigenous peoples are important for global biodiversity conservation because they own, use, and manage 30–40% of the land that holds the world's remaining biodiversity. But they are also important because of their world views and traditions. I agree with the author's arguments, but feel that he undervalues the role of local (non-Indigenous) communities a bit. Local communities, especially those that use natural resources extensively, are also potential key partners in community-based conservation in another approximately 30–40% of the global land area. Berkes takes a critical look at what the Intergovernmental Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services calls Indigenous and local knowledge or traditional ecological knowledge. This knowledge is important for the knowledge holders themselves and for all peoples as the global heritage of humanity. Fortunately, bridging or weaving traditional knowledge and science works well in conservation. However, it is implicit in the book that we, nonlocal ecologists and conservationists, often do not know what locals know about wild species and ecosystems, their dynamics, and their potential future. This lack of knowledge can easily lead to misunderstandings. In my personal experience, the conservation objectives of locals and conservationists overlap more often than their suggested management practices to achieve them. This is a potential source of conflict that could be mitigated by knowledge coproduction and community-based conservation. Ecologists and conservationists have a huge responsibility to understand local and traditional ecological knowledge (Molnár & Babai, 2021). Participatory practices and respecting rights are fundamental, but we also have to understand each other's ecological knowledge to improve cooperation. The author reminds us that biodiversity constitutes, at the same time, local, regional, and global commons (Ostrom, 1990). Local-level biodiversity commons are used by communities for their livelihood and well-being. Regional-level biodiversity may be important for parks, ecotourism, and economic development. Global-level biodiversity belongs to all, as the common heritage of humankind. He argues that contemporary commons theory is sufficiently mature to identify the conditions under which collective action is feasible for community-based conservation. Under open-access conditions, the “tragedy” of the commons is likely to occur. However, commons scholars challenge the assumption of open access and question whether government regulations and the market are the only necessary conditions to solve the tragedy (Ostrom, 1990). The basic lesson of commons theory is simple: people manage and conserve resources if they are likely to benefit from their own stewardship. According to this view, conservation without use is damaging because it alienates people from their land and their stewardship responsibilities. Furthermore, lack of attention to local needs leads to encroachment and conflict, reinforcing the misguided view that communities cannot effectively conserve their commons. Berkes dedicates a whole chapter to a comprehensive look at governance, discussing globalization, decentralization, and market-based approaches. The chapter addresses the significance of adaptive governance and societal resilience in dealing with rapid global change. He argues that diverse, flexible, and pluralistic governance may provide the best options for biodiversity conservation. Experiments are ongoing. The last chapter provides a synthesis and elucidates 8 principles of community-based conservation. They are all common sense and well supported by evidence: all cultures have nature stewardship traditions (We need to build on them.); nature and culture are interconnected, as are biological and cultural diversity; balancing conservation and use is possible and desirable; Indigenous peoples have a special role in conservation; use of Indigenous and local knowledge is essential for conservation; rights and incentives are key drivers of conservation; institutions and governance in conservation need to be multilevel and participatory; and, finally, diverse, flexible, pluralistic conservation governance regimes help build resilience. Berkes warns that community-based conservation should not be viewed as a panacea. Rather, flexible and adaptive options require a diversity of governance regimes, and community-based conservation is one of them. Community-based conservation has already been tried in many places. The outcomes are mixed. There were many failures at the beginning, and there are still failures, but these often occur due to improper implementation, especially in the devolution of authority and responsibility, and not necessarily due to the weakness of the concept itself (Brooks et al., 2012; Galvin et al., 2018). This small book, by the author's own admission, can only scratch the surface of the state of conservation as it transforms from biological management to interdisciplinary governance. As a botanist and ethnoecologist, I can agree with this. For example, I missed a critical analysis of the effectiveness of community-based management in protecting various elements of biodiversity, including species richness (the conservation of as many as possible native species in an area), common or rare habitat specialist species, large mammals and predators, migrating birds and herbivores, and sensitive ecosystems. There is an urgent need for reviews of these issues in order to fine-tune existing governance practices and improve community-based conservation. Experience shows that the local objectives of biodiversity protection are always multiple. This prompts some conservationists to ask, as Berkes suggests, “[b]ut is this conservation?” He also suggests some Indigenous conservationists may reply with their own question, “[c]an detached science that treats biodiversity as an external and material object lead to conservation?” After all, the main driving forces of biodiversity loss are not the poor people who live in or near protected areas, but the global market economy and the powerful engines of resource extraction. My teenage son said some years ago: “Father, you are studying Central European traditional ecological knowledge and land-use practices to help them survive till after the big global crisis.” In my understanding, conservation has similar goals: keep as much biodiversity and as healthy ecosystems as possible for the future to maintain options for our postcollapse era. Community-based conservation not only protects biodiversity and local livelihoods, but could also help those Indigenous peoples and local communities survive, with their diverse world views, knowledge, and practices, and continue to live with and from nature in a much less harmful way than our dominant Western societies. Berkes’ book is a helpful guide toward these aims." @default.
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