ABSTRACT
Possibly the most exciting conservation development of the 21st century is the global recognition of community conserved areas (CCAs). The conservation of sites and species by indigenous peoples and local communities is age old; but the fact that these are equivalent in many ways to conventional government-managed ‘protected areas’ has not been recognized until recently. It is only with the struggles waged by communities for recognition of their initiatives and rights, along with the work of some international organizations and the exploration of new conservation models by some countries, that CCAs have burst into the global scene during the first few years of this century. In particular, the two events that marked this recognition were the Vth IUCN World Parks Congress in 2003 and the Seventh Conference of Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 2004. A definition of CCAs that emerged from the congress was:
… natural and modified ecosystems with significant biodiversity, ecological and related cultural values, voluntarily conserved by indigenous and local communities through customary laws or other effective means.
