Postmodernism and African conservation science

In Africa, the movement away from traditional protectionist conservation to community-based approaches is partially related to postmodernist influences. Proposed transfrontier conservation areas will incorporate local communities, and a clearer understanding of the limitations of community-based conservation is thus needed. The sustainability of community-based conservation projects is questioned on economic and other grounds, and many African countries lack the prerequisites (ecological, demographic and sociological) for successful programmes. The romanticisation of pre-colonial societies gives undue weight to traditional systems of resource management, and we challenge the postmodernist notion that traditional peoples practised sustainable harvesting of natural resources. It is suggested that this will occur only under unlikely conditions of low human population density, lack of access to modern technology, and limited exposure to consumerism. In agriculture, postmodernists interpret the overstocking of livestock as a rational socioeconomic response, thus giving the practice unjustified legitimacy. The allied proposition that peasants enjoy a rich diversity of farming practices is largely unfounded, at least in some parts of Africa. We conclude that postmodernist thinking has had a significant negative impact on conservation science in Africa, largely by marginalising the central issue of human population pressure. Towards more effective African conservation, we suggest roles for the ecologist, for the social scientist, and for the donor community.     

Wildlife control,access and utilisation: Lessons from legislation,policy evolution and implementation in Zimbabwe

This paper retraces: (1) the promulgation of protectionist wildlife policies by colonial administrators at the turn of the 19th Century in Zimbabwe, and their evolutionary trajectory over distinct time periods, (2) the paradigmatic shift and the extent of evolution of wildlife policies with respect to the devolution thrust and local community participation to date. The aim is to re-ignite and keep alive the debate for the improvement of local community livelihoods by meeting their aspirations and addressing poverty. Another section explores the robustness of local community institutional framework following decades of research on their efficacy in the face of internal weaknesses and external pressures. This is discussed in the context of contested devolution and decentralisation concepts which not in the distant past became fashionable rhetoric in the field of local community empowerment in natural resource management. Areas of contests have been explored using a case study approach. Extensive literature consultation and gleaning of 127 published and relevant sources cutting across national, regional and global realms reveal that Zimbabwe and most southern African countries have evolved progressive policies. However, consistent with most literature, the implementation of these otherwise progressive policies remains problematic. Hence, the question, ‘when will community-based wildlife conservation initiatives like communal areas management programme for indigenous resources (CAMPFIRE) achieve their initially intended goals of devolution?’ remains largely unaddressed.     

Perceptions of the Forestry and Wildlife Policy by the local communities living in the Maputo Elephant Reserve, Mozambique

A survey was undertaken in the Maputo Elephant Reserve to establish the level of people's dependence on wildlife, and their perceptions of the extant Forest and Wildlife Policy and the associated legislation, including the new Land law. The underlying assumption was that the local communities residing in the Reserve may not have been involved, or consulted in the process of formulating the policy and legislation. Results overwhelmingly confirmed this hypothesis – as 65% of the community members interviewed were unaware of the approved Forest and Wildlife Policy, and associated Legislation. 74% had never even heard of the new Land Law, 88% indicated they were not involved in any management of natural resources in the Reserve, and the majority, 53% had never even heard of any community-based natural resource management programme. The widespread unawareness of the various enabling mechanisms established by the Mozambican Government to ensure that rural people actively participate in, and sustainably and tangibly benefit from the management of natural resources is of great concern. More particularly so, as the frameworks, and strategies for achieving this have been developed under the Transfrontier Conservation Areas Project (TFCA). This study recommends, inter alia: (i) that the Directorate for Forestry and Wildlife establishes a Community Education and Public Relations Unit (CEPRU) in the Maputo TFCA in order to improve community awareness of the opportunities, and various enabling policies and legislation, especially with respect to communities' rights vis-à-vis ownership of land and the associated natural resources; (ii) the introduction of community-based tourism as a means of diversifying communities' income base. Currently nearly 82% of community members in the Reserve depend on consumptive use of wildlife, and as the human population grows the pressure may overwhelm the resource base. Generation of revenues through community-based tourism may be an incentive for communities to adopt biodiversity conservation based market economy as an alternative to their subsistence livelihood styles.     

Minimizing the Livelihood Trade-Offs of Natural Resource Management in the Eastern African Highlands: Policy Implications of a Project in “Creative Governance”

The highlands of Eastern Africa are characterized by high population densities and tightly coupled interactions between adjacent landscape units and users. Effective formal or informal natural resource governance is necessary to mitigate the potential negative social and environmental effects of individuals’ behavior. Yet many natural resource management and development problems that require or benefit from collective solutions remain unresolved (German et al. Environ Dev Sustain 8: 535–552, 2006a; German et al. 2006b; German et al. Q J Int Agr 47(3): 191–216, 2008). We argue that many of the more intractable problems in improving governance stem from the trade-offs that underlie them, which may include a loss of livelihood options for at least some households, leading to governance break down. Following a brief introduction to natural resource management and governance in Eastern Africa, we analyze the results of participatory by-law deliberations by distilling the restrictions proposed governance reforms pose to certain local stakeholders. We recommend that future policy for improved landscape governance couple institutional reforms with livelihood alternatives that reduce the burden of good governance on households.     

Biodiversity loss and the taxonomic bottleneck: emerging biodiversity science

Human domination of the Earth has resulted in dramatic changes to global and local patterns of biodiversity. Biodiversity is critical to human sustainability because it drives the ecosystem services that provide the core of our life-support system. As we, the human species, are the primary factor leading to the decline in biodiversity, we need detailed information about the biodiversity and species composition of specific locations in order to understand how different species contribute to ecosystem services and how humans can sustainably conserve and manage biodiversity. Taxonomy and ecology, two fundamental sciences that generate the knowledge about biodiversity, are associated with a number of limitations that prevent them from providing the information needed to fully understand the relevance of biodiversity in its entirety for human sustainability: (1) biodiversity conservation strategies that tend to be overly focused on research and policy on a global scale with little impact on local biodiversity; (2) the small knowledge base of extant global biodiversity; (3) a lack of much-needed site-specific data on the species composition of communities in human-dominated landscapes, which hinders ecosystem management and biodiversity conservation; (4) biodiversity studies with a lack of taxonomic precision; (5) a lack of taxonomic expertise and trained taxonomists; (6) a taxonomic bottleneck in biodiversity inventory and assessment; and (7) neglect of taxonomic resources and a lack of taxonomic service infrastructure for biodiversity science. These limitations are directly related to contemporary trends in research, conservation strategies, environmental stewardship, environmental education, sustainable development, and local site-specific conservation. Today’s biological knowledge is built on the known global biodiversity, which represents barely 20% of what is currently extant (commonly accepted estimate of 10 million species) on planet Earth. Much remains unexplored and unknown, particularly in hotspots regions of Africa, South Eastern Asia, and South and Central America, including many developing or underdeveloped countries, where localized biodiversity is scarcely studied or described. "Backyard biodiversity", defined as local biodiversity near human habitation, refers to the natural resources and capital for ecosystem services at the grassroots level, which urgently needs to be explored, documented, and conserved as it is the backbone of sustainable economic development in these countries. Beginning with early identification and documentation of local flora and fauna, taxonomy has documented global biodiversity and natural history based on the collection of "backyard biodiversity" specimens worldwide. However, this branch of science suffered a continuous decline in the latter half of the twentieth century, and has now reached a point of potential demise. At present there are very few professional taxonomists and trained local parataxonomists worldwide, while the need for, and demands on, taxonomic services by conservation and resource management communities are rapidly increasing. Systematic collections, the material basis of biodiversity information, have been neglected and abandoned, particularly at institutions of higher learning. Considering the rapid increase in the human population and urbanization, human sustainability requires new conceptual and practical approaches to refocusing and energizing the study of the biodiversity that is the core of natural resources for sustainable development and biotic capital for sustaining our life-support system. In this paper we aim to document and extrapolate the essence of biodiversity, discuss the state and nature of taxonomic demise, the trends of recent biodiversity studies, and suggest reasonable approaches to a biodiversity science to facilitate the expansion of global biodiversity knowledge and to create useful data on backyard biodiversity worldwide towards human sustainability.     

Mountain biodiversity conservation and management: a paradigm shift in policies and practices in the Hindu Kush-Himalayas

Mountains occupy 24% of the global land surface area and are home to 12% of the world’s population. They have ecological, aesthetic, and socioeconomic significance, not only for people living in mountain areas, but for those living beyond. Mountains need specific attention for their contribution to global goods and services, especially by developing and implementing mountain specific policies. Conservation policies have evolved from the protection of charismatic species, to habitat and ecosystem/landscape conservation, and, finally, to people-oriented conservation approaches. This paper, with particular reference to paradigm shifts in the Hindu Kush-Himalayan (HKH) region, discusses the evolution of conservation policies, developments in conservation practices, the status of protected area management, wetland conservation initiatives and the landscape approach, community-based conservation initiatives, and the convergence of policies and practices. In the HKH region, conservation efforts now adopt participatory approaches, implement policies of decentralised governance for biodiversity management, and empower local communities in biodiversity management. The paradigm shift in the policies and practices related to conservation has been gradual and has included the acceptance of communities as an integral part of national level conservation initiatives, together with the integration of many global conventions. There are many successful pilots in the HKH region that deserve upscaling by the countries from the region. Realising the importance of mountains as hotspots of biodiversity, and due to their role as providers of global goods and services, the Convention on Biological Diversity adopted the Programme of Work on Mountain Biodiversity. Such a decision specific to mountains provides enormous opportunities for both conservation and development. Recent challenges posed by climate change need to be integrated into overall biodiversity conservation and management agendas, especially in mountain areas. The HKH region has been identified as a blank spot for data by the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change, indicating the need to develop regional database and sharing mechanisms. This is a tall task, but one that holds enormous opportunity for the HKH countries and institutions with regional mandates to address the emerging challenges of climate change on biodiversity conservation by reducing scientific uncertainty.     

Customary management as precautionary and adaptive principles for protecting coral reefs in Oceania

Marine conservation programs in Oceania are increasingly turning to precautionary and adaptive management, particularly approaches which emphasize local participation and customary management. Although the application of community-based natural resource management is widespread in the region, the full integration of local knowledge and practices into the design, implementation, and monitoring of community-based conservation programs has been limited. There is also little empirical data to show whether or not community-based conservation projects are meeting their stated objectives. This paper summarizes an integrated method for selecting Marine Protected Area (MPA) sites and presents empirical evidence that illustrates how an MPA that was largely conceived using indigenous ecological knowledge and existing sea tenure governance (i.e., customary management practices), as part of a regional precautionary and adaptive community-based management plan, is showing signs of biological and social success. More generally, the paper shows how hybrid natural and social research approaches in tandem with customary management for designing MPAs can protect coral reefs in Oceania.     

The community resource management area mechanism: a strategy to manage African forest resources for REDD+

Climate change poses a significant threat to Africa, and deforestation rates have increased in recent years. Mitigation initiatives such as REDD+ are widely considered as potentially efficient ways to generate emission reductions (or removals), conserve or sustainably manage forests, and bring benefits to communities, but effective implementation models are lacking. This paper presents the case of Ghana''s Community Resource Management Area (CREMA) mechanism, an innovative natural resource governance and landscape-level planning tool that authorizes communities to manage their natural resources for economic and livelihood benefits. This paper argues that while the CREMA was originally developed to facilitate community-based wildlife management and habitat protection, it offers a promising community-based structure and process for managing African forest resources for REDD+. At a theoretical level, it conforms to the ecological, socio-cultural and economic factors that drive resource-users’ decision process and practices. And from a practical mitigation standpoint, the CREMA has the potential to help solve many of the key challenges for REDD+ in Africa, including definition of boundaries, smallholder aggregation, free prior and informed consent, ensuring permanence, preventing leakage, clarifying land tenure and carbon rights, as well as enabling equitable benefit-sharing arrangements. Ultimately, CREMA''s potential as a forest management and climate change mitigation strategy that generates livelihood benefits for smallholder farmers and forest users will depend upon the willingness of African governments to support the mechanism and give it full legislative backing, and the motivation of communities to adopt the CREMA and integrate democratic decision-making and planning with their traditional values and natural resource management systems.     

Lessons from community-based payment for ecosystem service schemes: from forests to rangelands

Climate finance investments and international policy are driving new community-based projects incorporating payments for ecosystem services (PES) to simultaneously store carbon and generate livelihood benefits. Most community-based PES (CB-PES) research focuses on forest areas. Rangelands, which store globally significant quantities of carbon and support many of the world''s poor, have seen little CB-PES research attention, despite benefitting from several decades of community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) projects. Lessons from CBNRM suggest institutional considerations are vital in underpinning the design and implementation of successful community projects. This study uses documentary analysis to explore the institutional characteristics of three African community-based forest projects that seek to deliver carbon-storage and poverty-reduction benefits. Strong existing local institutions, clear land tenure, community control over land management decision-making and up-front, flexible payment schemes are found to be vital. Additionally, we undertake a global review of rangeland CBNRM literature and identify that alongside the lessons learned from forest projects, rangeland CB-PES project design requires specific consideration of project boundaries, benefit distribution, capacity building for community monitoring of carbon storage together with awareness-raising using decision-support tools to display the benefits of carbon-friendly land management. We highlight that institutional analyses must be undertaken alongside improved scientific studies of the carbon cycle to enable links to payment schemes, and for them to contribute to poverty alleviation in rangelands.     

Inadequate community engagement hamstrings sustainable wildlife resource management in Zambia

We propose improvements for addressing the inadequate sustainable use of wildlife resources in the community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) programme in game management areas (GMAs) using case study data from Mumbwa and Lupande GMAs in Zambia. Firstly, we assess the sustainability of wildlife resources in these GMAs using design principles for enduring common pool institutions. Secondly, we propose the steps required to address the lack of sustainability of wildlife resources in the CBNRM programme in the two GMAs by building on indicators suggested by Ostrom's principles. The resource use patterns in the two GMAs were assessed according to their socio-economic and institutional factors. Comparisons were made between the two GMAs in relation to Ostrom's design principles. Accordingly, the combination of socio-economic and institutional factors restrains the sustainable use of wildlife resources in the two GMAs. Unless the Zambian government provides local communities with meaningful decision-making powers and benefits for the utilisation and management of wildlife, this resource is likely to disappear outside national parks.     

Local Ecological Knowledge and Institutional Dynamics for Ecosystem Management: A Study of Lake Racken Watershed, Sweden

The sustainable use of resources requires that management practices and institutions take into account the dynamics of the ecosystem. In this paper, we explore the role of local ecological knowledge and show how it is used in management practices by a local fishing association in a contemporary rural Swedish community. We focus on the local management of crayfish, a common-pool resource, and also address the way crayfish management is linked to institutions at different levels of Swedish society. Methods from the social sciences were used for information gathering, and the results were analyzed within the framework of ecosystem management. We found that the practices of local fishing association resemble an ecosystem approach to crayfish management. Our results indicate that local users have substantial knowledge of resource and ecosystem dynamics from the level of the individual crayfish to that of the watershed, as reflected in a variety of interrelated management practices embedded in and influenced by institutions at several levels. We propose that this policy of monitoring at several levels simultaneously, together with the interpretation of a bundle of indicators and associated management responses, enhances the possibility of building ecological resilience into the watershed. Furthermore, we found that flexibility and adaptation are required to avoid command-and-control pathways of resource management. We were able to trace the development of the local fishing association as a response to crisis, followed by the creation of an opportunity for reorganization and the recognition of slow ecosystem structuring variables, and also to define the role of knowledgeable individuals in the whole process. We discuss the key roles of adaptive capacity, institutional learning, and institutional memory for successful ecosystem management and conclude that scientific adaptive management could benefit from a more explicit collaboration with flexible community-based systems of resource management for the implementation of policies as experiments. Received 26 April 2000; accepted 13 October 2000.     

Caring for Country,a Form of Bureaucratic Participation. Conservation,Development, and Neoliberalism in Indigenous Australia

‘Conservation-as-development’ policies are increasingly implemented for and by Indigenous peoples across the world. In particular, such policies have been introduced and adopted in many Indigenous communities of northern Australia since the 1990s. In this context, the transnational model of community-based natural (and cultural) resource management has produced the ‘ranger system’: a multi-actor, multi-rationale, and multi-level system articulated around job opportunities in the domain of ‘caring for country’. In this paper, I explore how the ranger system reflects and extends a process of neoliberal bureaucratisation into Indigenous communities, and to what extent this process can be described as a form of ‘bureaucratic participation’. I argue that the notion of ‘bureaucratic participation’ contributes to the investigation of existing entanglements between rationales of empowerment and neoliberal principles in Australia and beyond. My analysis is based on the ethnography of the daily work of the Indigenous rangers operating from a remote community in Arnhem Land in 2009 and 2010. I examine the complex relationships between local practices and bureaucratic requirements imposed by the Australian state at the core of the Indigenous ranger jobs.     

The challenge of participatory natural resource management with mobile herders at the scale of a Sub-Saharan African protected area

In Sub-Saharan Africa, the management of rangelands used by mobile populations, such as transhumant herders, must include large scale, sometimes cross-border, components. This mobility, common and significant in transhumant livestock production systems is, in most cases, not taken into account in conservation and natural resources management strategies around protected areas. Most conservation projects which include a development goal are designed to provide support to sedentary subsistence agricultural populations. Securing “pastoral lands” is seldom included as part of protected areas land management approaches. This paper focuses on the difficulty of integrating pastoral, agricultural and conservation issues into a regional land management plan. Based on a case study in Chad (Zakouma National Park), we pay particular attention to local mechanisms of land tenure negotiation, the mobile actors and the complex political landscape that this creates.     

A review of sustainable sanitation systems in Africa

Access to proper sanitation is still elusive in many parts of Africa. While significant improvement in global sanitation has been realised, the sanitation situation in Africa is still appalling with almost 20 % of the population reported to still practice open defecation in Sub Saharan Africa. The impacts of poor sanitation systems range from negatively impacting natural resources water quality, to causing health risks to the populations involved. Obviously, the current sanitation systems have gaps and can barely help the situation, which points to the necessity of a paradigm shift in the wastewater management to include interventions that would make proper sanitation achievable for all. Such interventions include decentralisation and resource recovery, which will not only produce environmentally acceptable effluents, but are also pertinent in achieving decreased costs for sanitation systems, hence making them more affordable. The decentralised system is cheaper than the centralised system, mainly due to decreased sewer needs and combining it with resource recovery. This provides an opportunity of decreasing costs further due to the several economic benefits attached to the recovered products. Whereas sanitation involves both wastewater and solid waste, this review paper discusses the current sanitation situation in Africa and proposes a wastewater management plan that could contribute to improvement for small agricultural communities. The plan encourages zero waste generation through decentralisation and recovery of water, energy and by-products such as nutrients and organics relevant to the local community. Apart from the proposed technological strategies, a winning sanitation management plan should also be appreciated and supported by all stakeholders, which can be achieved through proper communication and integration of local user needs.     

Monitoring Matters: Examining the Potential of Locally-based Approaches

Monitoring of biodiversity and resource use by professional scientists is often costly and hard to sustain, especially in developing countries, where financial resources are limited. Moreover, such monitoring can be logistically and technically difficult and is often perceived to be irrelevant by resource managers and the local communities. Alternatives are emerging, carried out at a local scale and by individuals with little formal education. The methods adopted span a spectrum, from participatory monitoring where aims and objectives are defined by the community, to ranger-based monitoring in protected areas. What distinguishes these approaches is that local people or local government staff are directly involved in data collection and (in most instances) analysis. In this issue of Biodiversity and Conservation, 15 case studies examine whether these new approaches can address the limitations of professional monitoring in developing countries. The case studies evaluate ongoing locally-based monitoring schemes involving more than 1500 community members in 13 countries. The papers are based on a symposium held in Denmark in April 2004 (www. monitoringmatters.org). Here, we review how the case studies shed light on the following key issues concerning locally-based methods: cost, sustainability, their ability to detect true local or larger-scale trends, their links to management decisions and action, and the empowerment of local constituencies. Locally-based monitoring appears to be consistently cheap relative to the costs of management and of professional monitoring, even though the start-up costs can be high. Most local monitoring schemes are still young and thus their chances of being sustained over the longer term are not yet certain. However, we believe their chances of surviving are better than many professional schemes, particularly when they are institutionalised within existing management structures, and linked to the delivery of ecosystem goods or services to local communities. When properly designed, local schemes yield locally relevant results that can be as reliable as those derived from professional monitoring. Many management decisions emanate from local schemes. The decisions appear to be taken promptly, in response to immediate threats to the environment, and often lead to community-based actions to protect habitats, species or the local flow of ecosystem benefits; however, few local schemes have so far led to actions beyond the local scale. Locally-based monitoring schemes often reinforce existing community-based resource management systems and lead to change in the attitude of locals towards more environmentally sustainable resource management. Locally-derived data have considerable unexplored potential to elucidate global patterns of change in the status of populations and habitats, the services they provide, and the threats they face, but more effort is needed to develop effective modalities for feeding locally-derived data up to national and international levels.     

What would Darwin have written now?

We often wonder how many of the pristine places left on Earth we can protect from deterioration before it is too late. The assumption that remote regions remain pristine plays a key role in directing policies for regional environmental management and conservation, and affects the local and global financial impetus to do so. In this paper, we use Argentinean Patagonia and the SW Atlantic as examples to argue that the assumption ‘remote region = pristine region’ is unjustified and based on a lack of information rather than on scientific evidence. We also discuss the major existing environmental threats to this supposedly ‘pristine’ region, and use emblematic examples to provide a more realistic picture of the regional environmental integrity and to set recommendations directed to improve environmental management and conservation within this context.     

Participatory Resource Monitoring as a Means for Promoting Social Change in Yunnan,China

Recent international forest policies stimulate involvement of communities in forest management as a strategy to improve biodiversity conservation and the quality of local livelihoods. Increasingly, the role of local people in monitoring forest resources is also acknowledged. This paper presents a participatory resources monitoring (PRM) system developed and implemented by representatives of 12 villages, six each within and adjacent to two nature reserves in Yunnan, China. The short-term objectives are to monitor resource and wildlife abundance, resource use, wildlife damage to crops, and land use. Main methods used by the village monitoring team are: (1) observation through forest walk, (2) village interview, and (3) market survey. Monitoring is implemented throughout the year to fit in the daily work of villagers. Staff from the nature reserve or forestry bureau provide support by visiting the villages several days per year. Results indicate that participatory monitoring is a valuable tool for villagers to engage in self-owned management actions. We discuss how monitoring is also a process which could lead to social change. Based on narratives we suggest that participatory monitoring builds trust between stakeholders, changes perceptions and attitudes and leads to more democratic and transparent decision-making. In discussing accuracy, we argue that all stakeholders perceive and interpret nature differently based on different worldviews, knowledge systems, values and beliefs. We argue that if participatory monitoring is to be sustainable, community-based monitoring – preferably linked to scientific monitoring and patrolling – should be designed as a discursive institution where the process of building social capital and inter-actor learning is extremely important. Finally, we briefly reflect upon efforts to scale up participatory monitoring.     

Participatory forest monitoring: an assessment of the accuracy of simple cost–effective methods

International forest policies have recently increased the focus on involvement of local communities in forest monitoring and management as a strategy to improve biodiversity conservation efforts and local livelihood in developing countries. However, little is known about feasible methods, costs and accuracy of participatory monitoring schemes in developing countries. This paper examines the costs, accuracy and local reproducibility of three simple cost–effective methods for monitoring forest disturbance by local participants: (1) 20-trees method, (2) Bitterlich gauge method and (3) Disturbance Checklist transect. Using one of these methods the costs of monitoring forest habitats are only between US$ 0.04 and 0.12 ha⁻¹ annually, depending on the methods used, this is significantly cheaper than the costs of traditional scientific methods for biodiversity monitoring. Results indicate that local community members without former scientific training can collect accurate data on habitat loss and forest disturbance after only a few days of introduction to the methods, and thereby contribute with valuable information for natural resource management. The strengths and weaknesses of monitoring done, respectively, by local community members and educated biologists, respectfully, are discussed. It is suggested that these approaches should be seen as supplements to each other rather than substitutes. Finally, it is argued that monitoring schemes in developing countries can be sustained after donor funds have ceased only if the local communities play a central role and clear financially and/or socially incentives for members of the local community are incorporated.     

Arapaima co-management through the lens of the Protected Areas Assets Framework

An extensive network of Protected Areas (PA) has been established across the Brazilian Amazon, but this PA system still suffers from a shortage of funding resources and environmental managers. New conservation strategies that successfully align social aspirations with biodiversity conservation are therefore imperative. Although approaches exist that demonstrate the value of biodiversity conservation for society and the local/national economy, these do not always manage to capture intrinsic values or local perspectives on natural resource conservation, and this can generate limitations in the use of these approaches as conservation tools. Here, we assessed the case of arapaima (Arapaima spp.) co-management, a well-consolidated community-based conservation initiative, through the lens of the Protected Areas Asset Framework (PAAF) to investigate the material and immaterial value of PA assets. Arapaima was clearly recognized as a key biophysical natural asset by local communities, with a significant role in terms of food, cultural, economic and conservation importance, in addition to its status as an iconic and emblematic species. This study reinforces the potential of the PAAF to identify the diverse range of values associated with PAs. Our results also encourage wider support to strengthen collaborative sustainable natural resource management programmes such as arapaima co-management, which is achieving remarkable social and ecological outcomes in rural Amazonia.