Why do some communities relate to nature in ways that are more lasting, satisfying and inspiring than others? Why do some territories conserve their integrity and nourish the wellbeing of their residents while others become degraded and fail? This work finds answers in a journey across lived experiences and examples of conserved and protected areas on all continents, integrating insights from political economy and human ecology.
The answers emerge in five features of their governance institutions that appear associated with vitality. The same features characterise communities that bond with their territories via a powerful combination of ties— livelihoods, symbolic meanings, emotions— and who become custodians of their land and nature. Yet, custodianship does not secure survival, as shown by the clashes that communities governing their territories have experienced against the hubris of modernity in the last centuries. This work describes some such clashes while tracing the surprisingly recent— and uneven— history of community conservation as a policy approach. Even the current recognition crescendo of the benefits of community conservation may provide welcome support to communities caring for their territories of life, but may also introduce disruptions and conflicts… a sort of kiss of death.
Responding to the calls from Indigenous and non-Indigenous voices for decolonisation, resurgence, resistance to the commercialisation of nature and community self-strengthening, this work offers tools to self-assess governance vitality (after all, awareness of one’s vitality affects vitality itself…). It also offers specific suggestions to design policies in support of custodianship, to secure the long-term collective governance of territories, protect them from unbridled commercialisation and degradation, and allow them to sustain bio-cultural diversity and the life-supporting functions of nature.
The recognition of the multiple values embedded in communities bonding with their territories, finding place-based and culture-based solutions to problems, and engaging in territorial governance and self-determination offers a cornerstone for a different worldview, where the quality of the relations that keep communities together as custodians of their territories is as important as other dimensions of social and environmental justice.
Custodianship by self-determined communities can complement other types of territorial governance, integrate the achievements of modernity and globalisation, and enhance the chance of conserving the diversity of nature and cultures. It may seem a novel perspective to some but, arguably, custodianship has been the kernel of life as humans evolved on Earth. It may return to being so in a more conscious, peaceful, sustainable and vital future.
