Conservation and Human Rights

There is an increased expectation that communities will take more responsibility for what happens in their place – that refers to local governance, decision-making, environmental and landscape stewardship and much more. This is a consequence of a combination of factors which vary by location, including dwindling public resources, system failure and over-reliance on short term projects which may potentially fail to tackle the issues they set out to resolve.

Caught up in this mix, natural and cultural heritage conservation measures can seem to further complicate the every-day realities of local or indigenous populations. For example, the formal or legal designation of areas to be protected, for whatever reason, can have consequences for the livelihoods of local populations. These consequences may include prohibiting people from utilising their local resources and traditional livelihood sources, or even removing them from their homelands.

The challenge is to come up with a form of conservation which addresses environmental and cultural concerns with input from those with expert knowledge, but also from idividuals in the community who may potentially be impacted. The aspiration should be to build resilient self-supporting communities and for conservation decisions to become more nuanced to the needs of local communities.

The resources available on this page reflect specifically on IUCN criteria and tools, and strive to respond to questions such as: are conservation initiatives aligned with community needs? Have they become overly complicated or disengaged from local site-specific concerns? Are they inadvertently causing harm or ignoring issues of greater significance to local interests? Can they be improved upon and, if so, in what ways?

Key Themes:

Governance, Rights & Conflict, Engagement, Education & Empowerment, Indigenous Issues, Livelihoods

Presenters:

Aphrodite Sorotou (Institute for Heritage and Sustainable Human Development (Inherit))

Alan Leslie (Institute for Heritage and Sustainable Human Development (Inherit))

Chris Dalglish (Institute for Heritage and Sustainable Human Development (Inherit))

Alexios Katsaros (Mediterranean Institute for Nature and Anthropos (MedINA))