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CBCN - Community Based Conservation Network®
Sand County Foundation’s Community Based Conservation Network is supporting citizen-led conservation initiatives. People take care of the things upon which their future depends. The Network builds upon this fundamental human instinct and seeks to broaden the set of conservation success stories that arise when rights and resources are aligned.
Sand County Foundation defines Community Based Conservation as the following:
A process by which landholders gain access and use rights to, or ownership of, natural resources; collaboratively and transparently plan and participate in the management of resource use; and achieve financial and other benefits from their stewardship.
The intellectual basis for Community Based Conservation emerged out of the African experience. There, fledgling constitutional democracies endowed local communities with specific rights over natural resources. Some important conservation successes are recorded where relatively weak central governments encouraged villages or private land holders to develop commercial use of forests and wildlife. In North America, we are just now beginning to see examples of community-led enterprise development in rural areas. Where central government has offered flexible regulatory environments, local citizens have found ways to use resources sustainably while achieving protection of environmental values. Internationally, Community Based Conservation has been formally adopted by the IUCN in its Community Conserved Areas (CCA) program. CCAs are natural and/or modified ecosystems containing significant biodiversity values, ecological services and cultural values, voluntarily conserved by indigenous, mobile and local communities through customary laws or other effective means. CCAs can include ecosystems with minimum to substantial human influence as well as cases of continuation, revival or modification of traditional practices or new initiatives taken up by communities in the face of new threats or opportunities. Several of them are inviolate zones ranging from very small to large stretches of land and waterscapes. CCAs can serve as an important complement to official protected areas (PA) systems.
Sand County Foundation’s Community Based Conservation Network harnesses the experiences of rural people and policies in Africa and North America. Sand County Foundation uses direct project experience, a web-based information network, and exchanges and workshops to support existing efforts and encourage even more. Sustainable natural resource use and protection of environmental values are only possible where communities and their leaders are empowered to be primary resource stewards. The Community Based Conservation Network is a vital tool for reconnecting people and the natural world.
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