Community and Conservation

The interrelationship of the communities and their ecosystem is recognized by their conservation efforts and sustainability strategies. Marginal and indigenous communities who are dependent on the goods and services of their natural habitat had understood the conservation priorities much earlier, and thus in very many aspects, the traditional practices have better resilience to climate impacts and added advantages in conserving the ecosystem. However, socio-political decision making in agro-ecology and farming practices have always gone global and tried to take leverages of the same by modifying and selectively adopting the systems. This chapter documents several case studies of indigenous practices in farming from Southeast and South Asian countries and interprets these in the current context, whereas widely practices systems of social forestry, community-based conservations and agroforestry interventions are also evaluated in this chapter through the climate sustainability lenses.