Roe, Dilys

Small-scale fisheries provide food security, livelihoods and income to millions of people but their management still presents a challenge to managers and other stakeholders due to problems in gathering suitable information and its incorporation in fisheries policy. Fishers are a key source of knowledge for assessment of both extractive capacity and value in small-scale fisheries, in addition to providing a broad array of cultural knowledge.

This report synthesizes insights and lessons from decades of experience in community wildlife management (CWM), supplementing this with insights from more recent work focused on community-level responses to tackling the current illegal trade in wildlife (ITW) “crisis”.

The symposium ‘Beyond enforcement: communities, governance, incentives and sustainable use in combating wildlife crime’ was organise to explore the role of communities in tackling illegal wildlife trade. The primary objective of the meeting was to explore whether and under what circumstances community-based interventions are likely to achieve success in combating current patterns of illegal use and trade of wildlife (plants and animals).

As a contribution to clarifying the contested claims, IIED, UNEP-WCMC and the African Wildlife Foundation organised a symposium in April 2010. The purpose of the symposium was to explore the current state of knowledge and the evidence base for claims and counter-claims, in order to better understand what is assumption rather than fact.

As a policy research organisation, the International Institute for Environment and Development has evolved key concepts, theories and ways of working in sustainable development since 1973. The big idea we explore here is banking on biodiversity. This approach rests on the fact that much rural poverty is concentrated in the world’s biodiversity hotspots.

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment emphasises the inter-relationship between ecosystem health and human well-being. Most ecosystems are severely degraded and the services that they provide to society are diminishing. As a result, important targets for biodiversity and development are unlikely to be met. Community conservation processes are often isolated and marginalised from mainstream conservation efforts.

More than twenty years have passed since community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) rose to prominence in different parts of Africa as a strategy for rural development, local empowerment, and conservation. Led by new ideas about the merits of decentralized, collective resource governance regimes, and creative field experiments such as Zimbabwe's CAMPFIRE, these community-based approaches evolved in a wide range of ecological, political, and social contexts across Africa.