Rethinking Community-Based Conservation

Community-based conservation (CBC) is based on the idea that if conservation and development could be simultaneously achieved, then the interests of both could be served. it has been controversial because community development objectives are not necessarily consistent with conservation objectives in a given case. This article examines two angles: identifying three conceptual shifts and feasibility of CBC as informed by a number of emerging interdisciplinary fields. Lessons form these fields include the importance of cross-scale conservation, adaptive comanagement, the question of investives and multiple stakeholders, the use of traditional econological knowledge, and development of cross-cultural conservation ethic.