This workshop centered around the fact that fish conservation and resource sustainability are at a crossroads in the current century, and that it is therefore necessary to engage broad societal participation. The session engaged with academia, fishers, NGOs, governmental agencies and others, as Fishers’ Ecological Knowledge (FEK) application is universal to different social sectors. From this basis, the workshop developed a cross-sectoral network of experts who can identify FEK related goals for the next IUCN strategy cycle and work together to build public and political awareness for these goals and to achieve them. Thus, the workshop promoted interactive participation and therefore represents an important opportunity to integrate experiences and knowledge from the marine and freshwater sectors and from a range of different partners.

The goal of this workshop was to:

a) contribute to promoting and consolidating international experiences that show successful examples on FEK application benefits for fish and fisheries conservation;

b) inspire people to follow successful examples where FEK has benefited fish resources conservation and management;

c) consider FEK as a challenge and an opportunity for contributing to developing better conservation practices; and

d) help embed FEK in fisheries conservation and resources management by initiating the development of “how to” guidelines and film.

Key Themes:

Livelihoods, Factors of Success in Community Conservation, Climate & Environmental Changes, Wildlife & Fisheries

Presenters:

Winston Cowie (Environment Agency Abu Dhabi)

Mohsin Al Ameri (Assistant Scientist, Fisheries. Environment Agency Abu Dhabi)

Shaelene Kamakaʻala (Community Based Fisheries Area Coordinator, Hawaii)

Christiana Louwa (El Molo Forum)

Kevin Chang (Executive Director, Kua’āina Ulu ‘Auamo, Hawaii)

Video & Presentations:

This session focused on the varying dimensions of vulnerabilities of resources dependent local communities in the landscapes harboring iconic species such as the tiger. The human dominated landscapes of South Asia are also the home to rich biodiversity. The state in such areas has taken up the initiative to conserve this biodiversity through the declaration of Protected Areas and Tiger reserves, wherein human activity is often severely restricted.

While conservation of such areas has a multitude of benefits for the larger community in terms of the ecosystem services provided, and cultural and aesthetic values, it can potentially pose a challenge for meeting day-to-day requirements of local people who live in their immediate borderlands. Management solutions for addressing the resultant conflict are often inadequate and misdirected as often they lack the experience and the skills to address these issues. The lack of collaboration among development agencies and lack of livelihood opportunities in the larger landscape compound the problems and result in increased social, economic and ecological vulnerabilities of local people. The situation is further complicated by human Tiger conflicts, issues of access and benefit sharing (where permissible), lack of awareness and direct involvement of local communities in the conservation and an imbalance in sharing the benefits of tiger tourism, resulting in a lose-lose situation for both the local people and conservation efforts.

There are several examples across the region that have successfully been able to link conservation efforts and local livelihoods at the Protected Area level, by encouraging local community support for activities that support the park’s conservation objectives. Such models need to be up-scaled and replicated through exchange of experiences and ideas and policy reforms and institutionalization.

Key Themes:

Livelihoods, Wildlife & Fisheries, Indigenous Issues, Conserved Areas

Authors:

Ruchi Badola (Wildlife Institute of India)

Syed Ainul Hussain (Wildlife Institute of India)

Pariva Dobriyal (Wildlife Institute of India)

Nand Kishore Agarwal (International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, Kathmandu)

Archi Rastogi (CBD)

UNESCO Biospheres, such as the Bras d’Or Lake Biosphere Reserve Association (BLBRA – June 29, 2011), promote the growth of environmentally sustainable businesses along with encouraging all people, including industry, with nature to work better together.

In the 1990s an economic benefit was seen to develop gypsum mines within the Bras d’Or Lake watershed but environmental impacts were also recognised. Joe Googoo of We’kokma’q (meaning the end of the bay) started as a full time fisherman at the age of 18 with two licences. He loved oysters but most have been killed off by the MSX parasite that may have been brought in via ballast discharge. Some of his living oysters were overwintered, frozen in shallow salt waters. These seemed to be fighting off the parasite. He fought back using native traditions. Now it is up to the other cultures to determine why he was successful.

Key Themes:

Places & Spaces, Engagement, Education & Empowerment, Livelihoods, Fisheries & Wildlife

Presenters:

Eliot Frosst (BLBRA)

Stan Johnson (CEPI appointi – Eskasoni First Nations Gape Breton)

Small businesses can benefit from using the concept of environmentally sustainable promotion. Examples of this include, Jeremy White of the local craft beer brand, ‘Big Spruce Brewing’ who started to make beer from organically grown hops on the shores of Big Bras d’Or. That which started out as a small ‘fun business venture’ has become a year round operation employing many locals. His craft beer is now sold in the Nova Scotia Liquor stores and at local Farmers Markets. The brewery is open for regular sales of his beer and other social gatherings. His knowledge has been used by many other local sustainable breweries in Cape Breton and Mainland Nova Scotia such as the Tatamgouche Brewery. Eskasoni has started several ecotourism businesses such as guided walks on Goat Island Trail. This with the Iona Highland Village tour fits into the ‘two-eyed seeing’ model. Greg Silver’s sailing operation shows tourists the importance of development in an environmentally friendly way. Ben Eoin Ski Hill overlooks the lake and has developed an ‘Outdoor Classroom’ in collaboration with the BLBRA. This venture as well as with a large citizen science initiative called the ‘Bras d’Or Watch’, are designed to engage and educate residents and visitors about the valuable and charismatic ecosystem of the Bras d’Or Lake biosphere.

The Bras d’Or Lake Biosphere promotes environmentally sustainable development and the ‘two-eyed seeing’ concept in their guiding principles.

Despite the rapid growth of community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) interventions and studies examining these interventions, a limited evidence base describes what works, what doesn’t, and why. Mirroring the evidence base across the broader conservation sector (Bowler et al. 2010; McKinnon et al. 2016), most CBNRM studies are narrowly focused on single cases or single outcomes. As a result, decision makers continue to find themselves “shooting in the dark,” not knowing if their choices will benefit people, nature, both, or neither (Agarwal and Redford 2006).

The Alliance for Conservation and Evidence and Sustainability (ACES) is a newly formed coalition of NGOs and universities that seeks to both generate and synthesize evidence to support CBNRM implementation, and foster evidence-based decision making in conservation practice. The Alliance partners have developed a shared conceptual framework and key learning questions designed to advance the evidence base on the emergence, outcomes and spread of CBNRM, enabling learning to be shared across organizations and the broader conservation community.

The use of knowledge and evidence in CBNRM decision-making is fundamental to the Alliance. As decision-making processes are often political and context specific, there is no single practice or method that is known to effectively foster evidence-based decisions. This knowledge café sought to unpack this challenge and explore broadly questions around evidence-based decision making in community-based conservation, through harnessing insights from the diverse participants at the Communities, Conservation & Livelihoods conference, and bring in diverse perspectives to explore questions such as:

• What are the different decision-making forums where knowledge inform decisions in community-based conservation?
• What are the barriers to evidence-based decision making for conservation and what are ways they can be overcome?
• What are ways to bring together different types of knowledge for decision making?
• What are some of the biggest unanswered questions or knowledge gaps in community-based conservation?

– Shauna Mahajan (WWF), Louise Glew (WWF), Michael Painter (Wildlife Conservation Society) (May 2018)

Key Themes: 

Governance, Rights & Conflict, Engagement, Education & Empowerment, Livelihoods, Wildlife & Fisheries

With a focus on initiatives which are contributing to the enhancement of local landscape/seascape resilience, sustainable use of natural resources, respect of traditional knowledge and culture, and the preservation of threatened biota – while also achieving notable socio-economic benefits, the resources available on this page provide a glimpse into effective ways communities around the world are facing and responding to environmental challenges.

Perspectives from locations such as South Africa, Taiwan, Myanmar, and Canada’s northern territories provide insight into the variety of ways communities value and feel connected to nature. This helps us gain a greater understanding of the needs of communities undertaking conservation projects, how to best support these needs, and how lessons learned at one site can be applied to others.

Key themes:

Places & Spaces, Wildlife & Fisheries, Climate & Environmental Changes

Click titles to explore sections below:

Communities are tackling complex environmental, social and economic challenges through conservation and livelihood efforts in an era of multi-level, cross-sectoral governance approaches and layers of policy and jurisdictions. How do local people navigate this context to engage in community-based conservation that fosters viable livelihoods, healthy environments, and strong communities? How can policy better support local community-based initiatives?

These, among many other difficult questions relating to conservation and environmental policy are discussed through presentations which tie together topics such as social cohesion and comparative systems of management. The information shared here provides insight into processes and outcomes impacting why and how the world and people change, and how the concept of success can be quantified – so that progress in reaching local biological and socio-economic goals can be consistently measured over the long-term.

Key Themes:

Factors of Success in Community Conservation, Engagement, Education & Empowerment, Wildlife & Fisheries

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Conservation practices have largely evolved from ‘fence and fine’ strategies to participatory approaches. It is now widely accepted that conservation initiatives should deliver both socioeconomic benefits and biodiversity protection – while being tailored to local needs as to foster more meaningful community involvement. As the collection of case studies found on this page demonstrate, it is not the way wellbeing is categorized that is most important, but for conservation initiatives to be successful, how the dimensions of wellbeing are interpreted and incorporated in the process of conservation planning has proved to be integral to the project’s success.

There is increasing attention on the efforts of Indigenous Peoples and local communities who implement local-level, ecosystem-based approaches to resource management and sustainability. This is especially true when those communities implement what can be described as a biocultural approach to natural resource management—one the builds from and explicitly includes local knowledges, values, and perspectives. However, developing indicators to assess the local outcomes of sustainability management actions, and linking them to broader national and international policy targets, remains a key challenge. This can become problematic if diverging local, national, and international needs and values lead to misdirection of resources and implementation of programs inappropriate to local contexts. Collaboration between local, national, and international indicator initiatives is essential to synergize cross-scale planning and enhance evidence-informed implementation for sustainability.

The studies included in this section provide insight into the potential advantages of promoting participation in local monitoring networks, increasing awareness of the balance between social and ecological wellbeing, and finding meaningful ways to resolve conflicting values, perceptions and concerns of stakeholders.

Key Themes:

Engagement, Education & Empowerment, Climate & Environmental Changes, Wildlife & Fisheries

Click titles to expand sections below:

A discussion on how conservation can better reflect the needs and values of local communities is built here through case studies shared from locations such as Panama, Brazil, and Columbia – among several others.

Through the resources available to the right of this page, we can gain better understanding of First Nations’ perspectives on land reclamation and restoration, how ecotourism is perceived by local communities, how effective networks can amplify the potential for transformative change through education and empowerment, and how policymakers can determine effective means of providing communities with the freedom to define their own place and purpose while promoting coherence and collective action at higher organizational scales.

Key Themes: 

Engagement, Education & Empowerment, Wildlife & Fisheries, Places & Spaces, Factors of Success in Community Conservation

Click titles to explore sections below:

Small-scale fisheries make vital contributions to conservation, health, livelihoods, and the cultural identities of people across the globe. Despite these social and ecological complexities, fisheries are often treated as a resource to be managed for the purpose of efficiency and economic profit. Increasingly, local communities are resisting prevailing approaches that treat fish as a commodity by engaging in efforts to (re)envision “fish as food.” This session presented a series of place-based experiences that demonstrate ways of using food systems as an organizing concept to protect small-scale fisheries, build sustainable communities and impact fisheries policy by exploring the food-related values that surround fisheries in local communities; the strategies communities are using to support enhanced access to local fish as a part of community-based food systems; and the interactions among food security, livelihoods, and conservation goals in particular settings.

Insights were shared from L’sitkuk (Bear River First Nation, Nova Scotia), Lockeport and Sandy Point, Nova Scotia, Kakisa and Deline, Northwest Territories, and two Indigenous communities from Lake Huron and Lake Superior. Ultimately, the session aimed to foster community capacity through sharing experiences, while offering new insights into community conservation and livelihoods.

Key Themes:

Livelihoods, Wildlife & Fisheries, Climate & Environmental Changes

Presenters:

Kristen Lowitt (Mount Allison University), Charles Levkoe (Lakehead University), Sherry Pictou (Mount Saint Vincent University), Andrew Spring (Wilfrid Laurier University), Colleen Turlo (Ecology Action Centre), Satya Ramen (Ecology Action Centre), Chief Dean Sayers (Batchewana First Nation), Patty Williams (Food Action Research Centre, Mount Saint Vincent University)

Videos & Presentations:

It has been approximately a decade since heavy poaching of elephants, rhinos and growing illegal trade in other high-value species to distant foreign markets gathered pace across Africa; many places experienced the heaviest losses since the late 1970s and early 1980s, and species such as pangolin have increased in demand. Response to the crisis was intense and followed a three-pronged approach: “stop the killing, stop the trafficking, stop the demand”.  It was only in 2013 that people began to look beyond heavy law enforcement approaches and ask “how could we engage the local communities” that live side by side with these highly-valued species to help combat this growing threat.

In response to various policy signals on this issue, IUCN SULi, IIED and partners initiated their “Beyond Enforcement” work in early 2015.  Recognizing the need to operationalize the approach at ground level, IUCN ESARO, SULi Eastern and Southern Africa, IIED, the African Elephant Specialist Group and community partners in Kenya built a new programme, “Local Communities: First Line of Defence” (FLoD) to interrogate, understand, and promote the role that local communities could play in tackling growing IWT.  The project is testing a conceptual baseline “Theory of Change” against the understanding of project implementers and communities regarding the causal links between poaching in their respective areas and four main pathways (i.e. a) disincentivising activities contributing to IWT, b) increasing incentives for wildlife stewardship, c) decreasing the cost of living with wildlife and d) supporting non-wildlife based livelihoods).  Many surprising insights have been gained on community perceptions and realities around these issues, as well as potential flaws in project design.

In this session lessons learned to date were shared by members of the FLoD team, bringing the voices of communities to the front on this important topic.  Experiences from around the world were gathered, helping to build the body of knowledge around this critical yet largely unexplored and previously under-appreciated area of interest.

Key Themes:

Wildlife & Fisheries, Governance, Rights & Conflict, Engagement, Education & Empowerment, Factors of Success in Community Conservation

Presenters:

Diane Skinner (IUCN CEESP/SSC Sustainable Use and Livelihoods Specialist Group)

Holly Dublin (IUCN CEESP/SSC Sustainable Use and Livelihoods Specialist Group, IUCN/SSC African Elephant Specialist Group)

Dilys Roe (IIED, IUCN CEESP/SSC Sustainable Use and Livelihoods Specialist Group)

Presented Material: