People in Conservation - Community Conserved Areas in India

In the last two centuries, however, these equations have been radically challenged and threatened by various factors. Among them are a social and political mandate that favors maximum extraction of natural resources to achieve a certain paradigm of ‘development’ and a top-down model of conservation that ignores and threatens the very existence of the first allies of conservation – local people whose lives are deeply entwined with their surroundings for their physical, social, emotional and moral sustenance, in other words, their very livelihood.

In the midst of all this conflict, however, several local communities continue to conserve and sustainably manage eco-systems and wildlife populations around them. These community-based protection and management efforts are either a continuation of traditional practices or a revival of traditional systems or a development of completely new systems based on the local specificities and conditions. These efforts may be self-initiated or started with the help of NGOs or even with the help of government officials.

The community based conservation effort may have many lessons relevant to the formal biodiversity/wildlife conservation strategies, laws and policies. In particular, these lessons relate to institutional structures, the combination of statutory and customary law, the link between livelihood security and conservation, and decentralization of power.

However there is a tremendous paucity of information on the subject matter that even practitioners and policy makers suffer from. Field level workers have even lesser access to information; and even where information does exist, most people and agencies do not have adequate access to it.

The Documentation and Outreach Centre for Community Based Biodiversity Conservation and Livelihood Security Project of Kalpavriksh is a step towards filling this lacuna. Aiming to strengthen the efforts of various stakeholder groups working on community based biodiversity conservation, livelihood security and related issues; it provides an information service to them through various material resources like books, reports, articles, papers and advocacy material.

Featured here is a booklet, intended for advocacy, entitled “People in Conservation – Community Conserved Areas in India” - prepared by Neema Pathak, Tasneem Balasinorwala, Ashish Kothari and Bryan R. Bushley.

About the booklet
Community conserved areas (CCAs) are forests, wetlands, coastal and marine areas, grasslands, or other ecosystems and wildlife populations managed and conserved by local communities for a variety of reasons. Like many countries around the world, India has a rich history and diversity of CCAs. These areas provide immense ecological, social, and economic benefits, including the conservation of threatened species and ecosystems, corridors for wildlife, as well as water and livelihood security for communities

This booklet offers examples and insights from CCAs for resolving conflicts and improving the management of official protected areas. It highlights the need for legal, political, financial or technical support from governments and civil society and suggests the implementation, in India, of provisions regarding CCAs that are now incorporated under the international Convention on Biological Diversity.