Engaging local communities in stewardship at landscape level: Lessons learned from an international initiative

This presentation will feature international experience from an innovative model for engaging local communities in stewardship of World Heritage sites, Biosphere Reserves and other globally significant protected areas.

 For over a decade the Community Management of Protected Areas Conservation (COMPACT) initiative has been working with communities at landscape level within and near World Heritage sites in Africa, Asia, Meso-America and the Caribbean.  To-date an initiative of the UNDP/GEF Small Grants Programme (SGP), with partners including the UN Foundation and the UNESCO World Heritage Centre, the COMPACT model is now being replicated by other partners at new sites in Africa.  Through extensive on-the-ground experience, and using a participatory methodology that takes a common systematic approach in the participating sites, COMPACT is engaging communities in conservation and shared governance of globally significant protected areas.  It offers an example of best practice in this area, tested at site-level in eight very different settings representing a variety of geographic regions.

A brief review of COMPACT’s experience will highlight issues that are key to sustaining the landscapes/seascapes of World Heritage Sites and Biosphere Reserves, and widely relevant to protected areas generally. These include: fostering equitable and effective governance, techniques of community engagement, revitalizing traditional ecological knowledge, implementing ridge-to-reef conservation, and linking food security and conservation.  Key lessons learned from the decade of work will be discussed.