Communities and conservation: natural resource management in South and Central Asia

Throughout the world, community involvement in conserving the natural habitat, wildlife and biodiversity is becoming the preferred method, marking a shift away from the top-down approach that has characterized such efforts in the last few decades. This volume of original essays constitutes perhaps the first comprehensive treatment of recent community-based conservation efforts in South and Central Asia and explores a wide range of policies, practices, strategies and issues related to participatory conservation.

The introductory section provides a regional and global overview of the need for, and conceptual and practical issues facing, community-based conservation (CBC). The next section presents country profiles of CBC in India, the Maldives, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The contributors highlight the factors that either assist or hinder CBC. The third section explores a range of emerging issues that confront community-based conservation. These include:
The importance of institutional structures The relevance of traditional and local knowledge
The legal and policy frameworks
Gender and other equity issues
Benefit-sharing
These issues are then examined in a series of case studies from India and Sri Lanka. The case studies have been selected to represent diverse situations such as state-controlled projects, community-controlled ones, and those which are jointly managed.

With its unique blend of theory and practice and its wide comparative coverage in terms of issues discussed and countries studied, this volume will be essential reading for all those involved with environmental studies, natural resource management, bio-diversity, ecology, community development and development studies. It will also be of interest to policy-makers, administrators, NGOs and donor organizations.