Rethinking Community-Based Conservation

A complex adaptive system often has a number of attributes not observed in simple systems, including nonlinearity, uncertainty, emergence, scale, and self-organization (Levin 1999; Gunderson & Holling 2002). These characteristics of complex systems have a number of important implications for conservation and environmental management, as can be seen from a consideration of nonlinearity and scale.

The issue of nonlinearity comes up with respect to management institutions. The older, conventional emphasis on centralized institutions and command-and-control resource management is based on linear cause-effect thinking and mechanistic views of nature. It aims to reduce natural variation in an effort to make the ecosystem more productive, predictable, and controllable. But the reduction of the range of natural variation is the very process that may lead to a loss of resilience in a system, leaving it more susceptible to crises (Holling & Meffe 1996). Nonlinearity is also an issue with respect to specific relationships and processes. Nonlinear effects have been documented in conservation biology—for example, in the interactions of elephants and people. The two coexist up to a certain threshold of human population density, beyond which elephants disappear (Hoare & du Toit 1999).

The issue of scale has implications for the match between institutions and ecosystems and for perspectives that may be held by different agents. Take the question of match. Can a given conservation problem be managed by a centralized agency or are there more appropriate structures of governance in which the scale of management institution is matched to the scale of the ecosystem? Often, one-size-fits-all kinds of management ignore scale issues. Such mismatches of scale may be one of the key reasons for the failure of environmental management regimes (Folke et al. 2002).

One of the insights from complexity thinking is that a multiplicity of scales prevents there being one “correct” perspective in a complex system. Phenomena at each level of the scale tend to have their own emergent properties. The system must be analyzed simultaneously at different scales. In biodiversity conservation, for example, different groups of conservationists focus on different levels of biological organization: they may use different research approaches and principles at the genetic, species, and landscape levels. All these levels are the “correct” level to consider at the same time. Similarly, a number of agents or actors may hold different but equally valid perspectives on a conservation problem. Redford and Sanderson (2000:1364) allude to this phenomenon: “they [forest peoples] may speak for their version of a forest, but they do not speak for the forest we want to conserve” (emphasis added).

There is general agreement that we can ill afford to consider humans separately from nature, especially in today's heavily human-dominated world (Kates et al. 2001; Gunderson & Holling 2002). It has become increasingly important to incorporate the dynamic interactions between societies and natural systems, rather than viewing people merely as “managers” or “stressors.” There is little agreement, however, on how this can be accomplished, conceptually or methodologically.

In our work, we use the term social-ecological system to refer to the integrated concept of humans in nature (Berkes & Folke 1998; Berkes et al. 2003). A number of different terms are in use to denote the idea of humans as part of ecosystems. One of them is the dwelling perspective of Ingold (2000), which refers to the “ … practical engagement of humans with others of the dwelt-in ecosystem.” This practical engagement, building knowledge and ecological relationships, is the basis for putting humans back into the ecosystem. It involves the “skills, sensitivities and orientations that have developed through long experience of conducting one's life in a particular environment” (Ingold 2000:25).

The social-ecological system has many levels. The links between social and environmental systems are different at the level of the community than they are at the level of the nation state. For example, Gibson's 1999 book, Politicians and Poachers, deals with the political economy of conservation in four African countries. It shows that the forces operating at the level of the nation state (many of them related to the peculiarities of postcolonial governments) are quite different from those at the levels of region and community.

Putting humans back into the ecosystem requires using all possible sources of ecological knowledge and understanding as may be available. Using knowledge and perspectives from the community level can help build a more complete information base than may be available from scientific studies alone (Berkes et al. 2000). The partnership of local communities with scientists is not an unusual phenomenon. Details of such research collaboration, and its positive outcomes for ecosystem management, have been documented, for example, by Olsson and Folke (2001), from Sweden and by Blann et al. (2003) from Minnesota (U.S.A.).

A word of caution is appropriate here. The term community in community-based conservation is gloss for a complex phenomenon because social systems are multiscale and the term community hides a great deal of complexity. Idealized “images of coherent, long-standing, localized sources of authority tied to what are assumed to be intrinsically sustainable resource management regimes” (Brosius et al. 1998:165) are just that—idealized. As many conservationists know, it is often difficult to find a cohesive social group to work with in the field. Communities are elusive and constantly changing. A community is not a static, isolated group of people. Rather, it is more useful to think of communities as multidimensional, cross-scale, social-political units or networks changing through time (Carlsson 2000).

Hence, it is more productive to focus not on communities but on institutions, defined as the set of rules actually used, the working rules, or rules-in-use (Ostrom 1990). Institutions are humanly devised constraints that structure human interaction, made up of formal constraints (rules, laws, constitutions), informal constraints (norms of behavior, conventions, and self-imposed codes of conduct), and their enforcement characteristics. I have specifically examined those institutions that mediate between social and ecological systems (Berkes & Folke 1998) and have focused on the dynamics of these institutions: their renewal and reorganization, learning and adaptation, and ability to deal with change (Berkes et al. 2003).

Many of our environmental problems, including those related to conservation, do not lend themselves to analysis by the conventional, rational approach of defining the problem, collecting data, analyzing data, and making decisions based on the results. There is too much uncertainty; targets keep shifting, and the issues must often be redefined (Kates et al. 2001).

These make a class of problems that Ludwig (2001) and others have called “wicked problems,” those with “no definitive formulation, no stopping rule, and no test for a solution,” problems that cannot be separated from issues of values, equity, and social justice. Ludwig (2001) argues that where there are no clearly defined objectives and where there are diverse, mutually contradictory approaches, the notion of an objective, disinterested expert no longer makes sense. Hence, a new kind of approach to science and management must be created through a process by which researchers and stakeholders interact to define important questions, objectives of study, relevant evidence, and convincing forms of argument. This kind of research, referred to by Kates et al. (2001) as sustainability science, requires place-based models because understanding the dynamic interaction between nature and society requires case studies situated in particular places.

To deal with the implications of complex systems, working partnerships can be built between managers and resource users. This is done, for example, in adaptive management, which recognizes, as a starting point, that information will never be perfect (Holling 2001). The use of imperfect information for management necessitates a close cooperation and risk-sharing between the management agency and local people. Such a process requires collaboration, transparency, and accountability so that a learning environment can be created and practice can build on experience. This approach, bringing the community actively into the management process, is fundamentally different from the command-and-control style.

These three conceptual shifts in ecology—toward a systems view, inclusion of humans in the ecosystem, and management by participatory approaches—are related. They all pertain to an emerging understanding of ecosystems as complex adaptive systems in which human societies are necessarily an integral part. We can abandon Enlightenment assumptions of predictability and control; we should at least be very skeptical of them. We need to recognize the limits of expertise and the advantages of participatory conservation and management. Along with the conventional biological science of conservation, there is an emerging social science of conservation that may provide a more nuanced understanding of social systems. To move toward an interdisciplinary science of conservation, we need to learn from the lessons emerging from several new interdisciplinary fields. 

Toward an Interdisciplinary Conservation

Asking whether community-based conservation works is the wrong question. Sometimes it does, sometimes it does not. Rather, it is more important to learn about the conditions under which it does or does not work. A number of interdisciplinary subfields have in fact been pursuing elements of this question and have contributions to make to the conservation dilemma. These include common property, traditional ecological knowledge, environmental ethics, political ecology, environmental history, and ecological economics (Table 1).

These subfields have a number of characteristics in common. All are recent, dating largely from the 1970s and 1980s. All are “bridging” fields, spanning different combinations of natural- and social-science thinking. Each of them developed in response to needs or gaps in understanding the linkages between social systems and ecological systems. All provide insights relevant to the conservation dilemma.

For example, one of the first questions to ask in the common-property approach to conservation is who controls a given area or resource. In the winter of 2000, I was heading out to Misali Island Conservation Area in Zanzibar, East Africa, with a group from the Ford Foundation and the Zanzibar Department of Natural Resources. On the way, we ran into a make-shift processing plant in which a worker was boiling some marine product in a large vat. The worker explained that he was processing sea cucumbers for Japanese buyers (and probably for Chinese markets). We were witnessing, on an outlying island in Zanzibar, in the middle of nowhere (by our standards), an example of global market integration, with local divers responding to East Asian market demands.

For all we knew, these sea cucumber species were not locally used resources and did not come under local controls or common property institutions. Hence they were prime candidates for open-access exploitation and depletion, as common property theory tells us (Ostrom 1990). By contrast, locally used resources are rarely open-access or freely available to all; rather, there are often local rules about how resources should be used. These sets of “rules-in-use,” or institutions, as common property researchers often use the term, may facilitate or constrain conservation (Becker & Ostrom 1995). If local common property institutions are consistent with conservation objectives, as in the case of traditional sacred areas (Ramakrishnan et al. 1998), that is an ideal situation. Then the conservation task is to strengthen these institutions and not to undermine or replace them (Brosius & Russell 2003).

More commonly, however, local rules are about use, allocation, and conflict management and not about preservation per se. Conservation planning becomes considerably more difficult when local institutions are not in line with conservation goals (Becker 1999). The choice of action follows the lines of our conservation dilemma. Either we pursue conservation independently of local resource use and livelihood needs (Redford & Stearman 1993) or we deal with local resource users as potential conservation allies and look for common objectives that would serve conservation while producing community benefits (Alcorn 1993).

In many cases, local common property systems do not exist or are not adequate for the conservation task. If resource users lack rights or incentives to design and enforce rules that control the use of a resource, and government rules are not enforced, open-access exploitation may ensue (Becker & Ostrom 1995). In other cases, local institutions may exist, but the scope of the resource or conservation problem may be beyond the ability of local institutions to deal with effectively (Ostrom et al. 1999). This brings us back to the question of complexity and scale.

Barrett et al. (2001) observed that the current fashion for community-based conservation overemphasizes the role of local communities, much as the previous command-and-control, government-driven model underemphasized it. In discussing tropical biodiversity conservation, they noted that local, community-based institutions are only one level in a complex system, one that is often ill-equipped to deal with the issues. Government agencies in many of these countries also tend to be weak, leaving biodiversity conservation in an environment of weak institutions. What is the alternative? Barrett et al. (2001:497) suggest that the best management designs may “involve distributing authority across multiple institutions, rather than concentrating it in just one,” not an easy task, given the weakness of existing institutions at all levels.

Where institution building is needed, institutions may be “crafted” using the elements of rule-making and self-organization, or institutional capital, that exist in any group or society (Ostrom 1990). The literature on the fields of common property and participatory development suggests that institution building at the community level may take on the order of 10 years for simple, local-level institutions. In the case of institutions that span the scale from local to regional and national levels, as in various comanagement regimes, there is relatively little data on which to base conclusions. This is a current area of research in the common-property field, and preliminary indications are that a decade is certainly not an overestimate for the time required to develop effective cross-scale institutions (Berkes 2002).

The literature on common property and some of the other fields highlighted in Table 1 provides a number of lessons and insights. A full discussion of these insights is beyond the scope of this paper, but I focus on five conceptual themes: the importance of cross-scale conservation, adaptive comanagement, the question of incentives and multiple stakeholders, the use of traditional ecological knowledge, and development of a cross-cultural conservation ethic.

Cross-Scale Conservation: Grappling with Complexity

Adaptive Comanagement: Dealing with Dynamics

Questions of Incentives and Multiple Stakeholders

Use of Local and Traditional Ecological Knowledge

Developing a Cross-Cultural Conservation Ethic

Acknowledgments

This paper was originally presented as a keynote address at the Conference of the Society for Conservation Biology, July 2002, Canterbury, United Kingdom. I thank the conference chair, N. Leader-Williams, for challenging me to communicate the larger picture to the SCB audience. For helpful comments and suggestions, I thank A. Diduck, S. Grant, the Equator Initiative study group, K. Redford, and an anonymous referee. My work has been supported over the years by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and a Canada Research Chair. 

Literature Cited