Community-Led Conservation: Exploring the PARTNERS Principles for Conservation

Community-led conservation is more than just working with communities; it’s about empowering them to drive conservation decisions and actions. That was the key takeaway from a recent workshop held by Ewaso Lions in collaboration with the PARTNERS Conservation Alliance. The workshop, which took place on February 5th and 6th in Samburu, Northern Kenya provided an opportunity for conservation practitioners to share ideas and experiences on community-led conservation.

Led by Dr. Shivani Bhalla, Director of Ewaso Lions, Dr. Justine Shanti Alexander, a Senior Conservation Scientist at the Snow Leopard Trust, and Jeneria Lekilelei, the Director of Community Conservation at Ewaso Lions, the workshop drew upon their collective experiences from Ewaso Lions’ 15 years in conservation, experience in snow leopard conservation across High Asia and the PARTNERS Conservation Alliance workshop held in Kyrgyzstan in 2022.

Participants explored what community-led conservation entailed across different settings. One group visualized the community as the rain and the roots of any conservation initiative. Their culture, opinions, and thoughts are the rain, the roots are the community making decisions, management, and actions in conservation, and the leaves represent the concerted efforts from all stakeholders and partners in conservation, including the government, conservationists, the private sector, and the media, among others.

Jeneria Lekilelei, Director of Community Conservation at Ewaso Lions, shared the essence of community-led conservation;
“Community-led conservation is a process where the community is in charge, they make the decisions, and have ownership of the conservation activities. When the community faces a challenge, they come up with their way of figuring things out, and always respecting their culture.”

During the workshop, the PARTNERS Principles – Presence, Aptness, Respect, Transparency, Negotiation, Empathy, Responsiveness, and Strategic Support – were utilized as the framework to explore how to effectively and ethically conduct conservation. Developed by Charudutt Mishra and his partners from the Snow Leopard Trust in the High Asia region, these principles were integral to the discussions held during the workshop.

The workshop was interactive, and the team worked with Ewaso Lion staff who were also community members to define the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of community-led conservation in their own words. Team members highlighted the need for conservation initiatives to be rooted in local culture and build on indigenous knowledge. They also emphasized the need to engage the next generation as they were the guardians of their culture and ways of life.

Overall, the workshop provided participants with a platform to enhance their skills, reflect on challenges and opportunities encountered in conservation, and strengthen their ability to engage with communities in conservation.

“The manner in which the PARTNERS training was held was superb and a true way of working together with the community (in this case – the participants). The way the two facilitators, Justine and Shivani, did the training was in such a way that the participants were fully engaged and the ideas and thoughts came from them – as opposed to the trainers giving out long endless presentations. The training was a true way in which all community led-conservation work should be done (with the communities (and the trainees in any training) at the center).” Toby, Operations and Impact Director, Ewaso Lions

© All photos by Ewaso Lions