What’s New, Webby?
Community conservation network
By Anthony Charles (tony.charles@smu.ca), Senior Research Fellow, University of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
The Community Conservation Research Network (CCRN) is an international initiative focused on understanding and supporting the efforts of local communities around the world to link environmental conservation and sustainable livelihoods. The CCRN emphasizes the need for government policy to be improved in order to better engage with local communities and indigenous rights-holders, to better utilize community knowledge, and to better support community conservation and livelihood efforts. This recognizes the strong two-way connection between the health of local ecosystems and the well-being of local communities.
The CCRN website (www.CommunityConservation.net) is a platform for learning about how local communities around the world use environmental conservation to ensure sustainable livelihoods and healthy local economies. The resources available there include many videos and community stories, guidebooks on governance and social-ecological systems, and a variety of other tools for community based conservation. The newest addition to the CCRN website is the initiative, Communities in Action, which uses an interactive map of the world to place the spotlight on the amazing diversity of community efforts globally that are linking conservation and local livelihoods. This is a participatory resource which encourages communities, and informed individuals or organizations working with communities, to provide their local examples, which then appear on the map.
For more details visit the website www.CommunityConservation.net.