Building from the ground up: Opportunities to scale locally-led monitoring of the social impacts of conservation

1. Existing monitoring frameworks, both led by international organizations and emerging through the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), largely overlook the social components of the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), particularly those related to equitable governance, Free Prior Informed Consent (FPIC), participation, traditional knowledge, and land tenure security. Monitoring efforts led or co-led by Indigenous Peoples and local communities are crucial for addressing existing gaps in monitoring of the social implications of conservation, both to guide methodologies and contribute grounded, applicable data.
2. Extensive, detailed and robust local-level monitoring of the social dimensions of conservation already occurs, with data and information being collected at large scales and widely distributed across regions, geographies, and types of conservation: these initiatives demonstrate the feasibility and benefits of community-based or locally-led monitoring and could provide considerable complementary data for evaluating governance and social outcomes.
3. There is a lack of secure funding for such grounded monitoring, which impacts on continuity: more direct funding to Indigenous Peoples, local communities, and representative organizations is required to scale up, share lessons, enhance consistency, and provide the structures and capacities to collate information at relevant national, international, or regional scales. Funding such community-led monitoring should be integral to more conservation initiatives, so the scope of funded projects extends beyond the implementation of conservation actions.

This paper is number 7 of the briefing series Transforming Conservation: from conflict to justice.