Community-based conservation has been named as a solution to build community resiliency to social, economic, and environmental shocks. This paper investigates the impact of a community-based approach and provides evidence for its ability to reduce biodiversity loss and support socio-economic resiliency during the COVID-19 crisis.
Key points
- Integrated community-based conservation approaches can improve social-ecological resiliency and self reliance at the local level.
- Members experiencing economic shocks turned to Conservation Cooperatives for financial support, which was one of the intended strategies of the integrated approach to create economic safety nets for communities.
- Despite significant shocks from COVID-19, local communities who participated in the Core Model, did not turn to exploitative activities inside the nature reserve to overcome economic and social hardships.
Suggested citation
Miller, A. E. (2021).Holistic conservation approaches: Supportingresiliency in times of crisis.Conservation Scienceand Practice,3(10), e514.https://doi.org/10.1111/csp2.5144of4MILLER
The term ‘integrated landscape initiative’ (ILI) has gained popularity as an ‘umbrella concept’ that describes projects that aim to explicitly improve food production, biodiversity conservation, and rural livelihoods on a landscape scale.
It describes approaches that consider the entire landscape, including its environmental, social, and economic aspects, by bringing together diverse stakeholders to manage land use in a way that balances competing needs, aiming for sustainable outcomes across the whole system, rather than focusing on isolated issues within the landscape.