Community nurseries within natural protected areas (NPAs) represent an attractive option to link biodiversity conservation with socioeconomic development, yet their functioning lacks proper assessment. Here, we analyse the national context of community nurseries in Mexican NPAs and suggest a specific framework to evaluate their viability. First, we examine the impact of a major governmental funding programme on these projects. Next, we conduct a case study in a focal nursery to identify challenges faced by its operation. Despite the large number of community nurseries funded by the programme, current performance indicators are not suitable to assess their viability. In turn, the case study reveals this nursery’s partial success, with a clear contribution to social development but a limited impact on economic improvement and vegetation conservation. Regardless of the characteristics of individual community nurseries, we suggest a framework that is potentially useful for evaluating community nursery viability, which enables agencies to detect problems, find solutions and use resources efficiently, while balancing biodiversity conservation and development.

Population, health and environment (PHE) projects are an increasingly popular strategy for addressing lack of access to healthcare and livelihood opportunities in settings with threats to biodiversity loss. PHE projects integrate services and messaging from different development sectors, including health (particularly family planning), conservation and livelihoods. However, a question remains: do such projects produce value-added outcomes; that is, synergistic effects as a result of integration across sectors? Using qualitative data to explore value-added outcomes resulting from a PHE project serving communities along Lake Victoria in Kenya and Uganda, this study explores several theories about why this integrated project may be generating value-added outcomes, including changes in established gender roles, as well as substitution of time and investment of new income into sustainable livelihood activities, particularly among women. Integration led to several value-added benefits, particularly for women, although long-term sustainability of project outcomes remains a key concern.

The Socotra archipelago, Yemen, in the north-west Indian Ocean, has outstanding endemic biodiversity, and was listed as a World Heritage Site in 2008. Although inhabited for 6 millennia Socotra only began to open up to the outside world in 1990. With conservation interventions starting prior to major developments, and building on centuries-old low-intensity resource management, Socotra has been in a unique position to practice pre-emptive conservation. In 1997 modern conservation started with biodiversity and socio-economic surveys, with inputs from communities and decision makers, which fed into the Conservation Zoning Plan. Approved in 2000, this has been the archipelago’s principal conservation planning and management tool. Regulations and bans on fishing practices, the collection of coral stones and export of biological materials have all been relatively well complied with by local communities and authorities. Inappropriate road construction, however, driven by non-islanders, has demonstrated the limits of the Conservation Zoning Plan, highlighting significant institutional challenges in planning and coordination. The capacity of the Socotra-based conservation institution has increased dramatically over the last decade. Its personnel are generally respected, largely because their roles include assisting local communities with development initiatives, underlining the importance of integrating conservation and development at the onset of conservation. Although the integrity of the landscape will inevitably decline, especially along the northern coastline, Socotri conservationists, backed by international support, are in a unique position to shape the archipelago’s future.

Based on ethical, theoretical and practical concerns, community-based conservation projects have developed over the past 2 decades as alternatives to traditional protected areas. Recent criticisms of such programmes by biologists and social scientists involve a debate on who should manage our natural resources. Such criticisms have focused on large integrated conservation and development projects (ICDPs) and have largely ignored the successes of small community conservation projects. Practitioners of ICDPs have also been disappointed with the results of their projects and are seeking answers from ICDP failures. Two important differences separate community conservation projects and ICDPs and have led to the success of the smaller projects: (1) community conservation projects see local rural people as the solution to habitat degradation whereas ICDPs see them as the problem, (2) the scale of the smaller projects is at the community level but can use the same methods regionally, whereas ICDPs are large in scale and cost. We discuss, from a practitioner’s viewpoint, the strengths that contribute to the successes of community conservation projects, including actually functioning at the community level, creating an empowered community group to carry on the social sustainability of the project, continuous basic level funding, and the importance of monitoring.