ABSTRACT
Protected areas comprise over 12 per cent of the Earth’s terrestrial surface and the Aichi Targets of the Convention on Biological Diversity aim to expand this coverage to 17 per cent by 2020. Increasing the coverage of protected area networks is challenging, however, as the 87 per cent of the terrestrial surface beyond protected areas is a mosaic of land uses. “Community” is a simplistic term used to denote self-regulating groups of natural resource users; the value of this term has been debated. The multi-dimensional description of successful community-based conservation counterbalances conservation’s focus on total protected area as the primary metric of conservation success. There is an increasing recognition that the success of conservation efforts should be measured not only by the size of the area conserved, but also by the interaction between local communities and the environment.
