Impact & Research
Library
Alongside our own impact evaluation data, the outcomes of the Thriving Futures Process are supported by decades of evidence and research across conservation social science and community-led development literatures. We have highlighted a selection of peer-reviewed articles from our external research library below, particularly research demonstrating that community ownership, inclusion, asset-based planning, and Indigenous and local community leadership results in better conservation and community well-being outcomes.
Community ownership improves development and conservation outcomes
A Sense of Ownership in Community Development: Understanding the Potential for Participation in Community Planning Efforts
Community Development, Volume 39, 2008
The term “sense of ownership” is frequently cited as a significant characteristic of community development. While there is increasing use of the terms ownership or sense of ownership, there is a paucity of research regarding what these terms mean, how this body of knowledge influences community development, and the various approaches that can be applied in contemporary community research and practice.
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Critical Analysis of the Relationship between Local Ownership and Community Resiliency*
Rural Sociology 22 October 2009
The term “sense of ownership” is frequently cited as a significant characteristic of community development. While there is increasing use of the terms ownership or sense of ownership, there is a paucity of research regarding what these terms mean, how this body of knowledge influences community development, and the various approaches that can be applied in contemporary community research and practice.
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Social Sustainability in Development: Meeting the Challenges of the 21st Century
New Frontiers of Social Policy, World Bank Group
All development is about people: the transformative process to equip, link, and enable groups of people to drive change and create something new to benefit society. Development can promote societies where all people can thrive, but the change process can be complex, challenging, and socially contentious.
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A Learning Agenda for Community-Driven Development: Responding to Complex Contextual, Evaluation, and Inference Challenges
World Bank Group
Governments and nongovernmental organizations around the world utilize Community-Driven Development (CDD) approaches to address complex and overlapping development challenges. Despite consistent evidence on some impacts of CDD—especially improvements in basic services—there is significant variation in most outcomes and several unanswered questions.
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Twelve principles for successful governance of community-based coastal marine restoration
Conserversation Society, 12 May 2026
Global agreements, such as the Global Biodiversity Framework, call for urgent, large-scale action to halt biodiversity loss through a whole-of-society approach. Community-based restoration can play a crucial role in achieving this goal, yet there remains limited understanding of what makes these projects effective and sustainable.
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Intentional inclusion leads to activation, collective action, and civic engagement
Conservation and natural resource management: where are all the women?
Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2021
There is evidence from the development and humanitarian sectors that purposeful engagement of women can increase the impact of development. We conducted a literature review to examine whether this is also evident in conservation and natural resource management.
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Transformation of Marginalised through Inclusion
Dylan O'Driscoll, 2024-09-05
This rapid review synthesises literature from academic, policy and non-government organisational (NGO) sources on the process of including excluded groups in the decision-making process or wider political system. Excluded groups refers to all groups that are marginalised, whether exclusion is based on race, sexual orientation, age, disability, gender, etc.
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Inclusion in the Policy Process: An Agenda for Participation of the Marginalized
Journal of Policy Practice, Volume 7, 2008
The past few decades have seen an increase in social exclusion, prompting governments and concerned publics worldwide to call for the creation of a “society for all”. Creating space for marginalized individuals and groups to participate in social, economic, and political exchange appears to be elusive despite great strides in technology, medicine, human and civil rights.
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A Learning Agenda for Community-Driven Development: Responding to Complex Contextual, Evaluation, and Inference Challenges
World Bank Group
Governments and nongovernmental organizations around the world utilize Community-Driven Development (CDD) approaches to address complex and overlapping development challenges. Despite consistent evidence on some impacts of CDD—especially improvements in basic services—there is significant variation in most outcomes and several unanswered questions.
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Asset-based planning improves community and conservation outcomes through holistic and sustained priorities
Developing biocultural indicators for resource management
Conservation Science and Practice, 2019
Resource management and conservation interventions are increasingly embracing social–ecological systems (SES) concepts. While SES frameworks recognize the connectedness of humans and nature, many fail to acknowledge the complex role of sociocultural factors in influencing people's interactions with the environment.
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Centering Communities in Conservation through Asset-Based Quality of Life Planning
Conservation and Society, 2023
Healthy environments are fundamental to the quality of life of communities worldwide. Yet, many efforts to integrate environmental conservation with human well-being have struggled to center local people or failed to be flexible enough to accommodate a diversity of priorities. We present a methodology for community engagement known as Quality of Life (QoL) Planning—a form of rapid assessment, reflection, and consensus-building rooted in community assets.
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Biocultural approaches to well-being and sustainability indicators across scales
Nature Ecology & Evolution, 2017
Monitoring and evaluation are central to ensuring that innovative, multi-scale, and interdisciplinary approaches to sustainability are effective. The development of relevant indicators for local sustainable management outcomes, and the ability to link these to broader national and international policy targets, are key challenges for resource managers, policymakers, and scientists.
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Culturally Grounded Indicators of Resilience in Social-Ecological Systems
Environment and Society, 2017
Indigenous and other place-based, local communities increasingly face an assortment of externally codified development and sustainability goals, regional commitments, and national policies and actions that are designed, in part, to foster adaptation and resilience at the local level. Resilience refers to the capacity of a system to absorb shocks and disturbances and to catalyze renewal, adaptation, transformation, and innovation (Béné et al. 2013).
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A new approach to conservation: using community empowerment for sustainable well-being
Ecology and Society, 2017
The global environmental conservation community recognizes that the participation of local communities is essential for the success of conservation initiatives; however, much work remains to be done on how to integrate conservation and human well-being.
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Indigenous and local community-led conservation improves outcomes and wellbeing
Is it just conservation? A typology of Indigenous peoples’ and local communities’ roles in conserving biodiversity
One Earth, 2024
As conservation initiatives expand in response to biodiversity loss, there remains limited understanding about what forms of governance and roles for different actors produce the best ecological outcomes. Indigenous peoples’ and local communities’ (IPs’ and LCs’) roles extend beyond participation to more equitable governance based on relative control and recognition of their values and institutions, but the relationship with conservation outcomes remains unclear. We review 648 empirical studies to develop a typology of IP and LC roles in governance and, for a subsample of 170, analyze relationships with reported ecological outcomes.
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The role of Indigenous peoples and local communities in effective and equitable conservation
Ecology and Society, 2021
Debate about what proportion of the Earth to protect often overshadows the question of how nature should be conserved and by whom. We present a systematic review and narrative synthesis of 169 publications investigating how different forms of governance influence conservation outcomes, paying particular attention to the role played by Indigenous peoples and local communities.
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Advancing social impact assessments for more effective and equitable conservation
Conservation Biology, 39, 2025
Social objectives for conservation have expanded beyond consideration of material costs and benefits to recognize Indigenous Peoples’ and local communities’ rights, the importance of their full and effective participation, and the contribution of customary institutions and plural knowledge systems. Social impact assessment can help conservation professionals understand how social principles are reflected in practice and inform governance improvements.
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Shifting Power in Practice: Implementing Relational Research and Evaluation in Conservation Science
Social Sciences, 13, 2024
Elevating Indigenous leadership in conservation science is critical for social and ecological wellbeing. However, Indigenous knowledges are frequently undermined by persistent colonial research standards. In response, calls to implement ethical guidelines that advance Indigenous research and data governance are mounting. Despite this growing movement, most environmental studies continue to follow largely colonial, extractive models, presenting a widening gap between ethical guidelines and practical applications across diverse research contexts.
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Indigenous-led conservation improves outcomes in protected areas
Nature Reviews Biodiversity, 2025
We were very pleased with the editor’s decision to publish the Comment by Rakotonarivo et al. (Rakotonarivo, O. S., Shyamsundar, P., Kramer, R. & Hockley, N. Conservation practice must catch up with commitments to local people for 30 × 30 success. Nat. Revs Biodivers. 1, 84–85 (2025))1. The authors put forwards a very strong argument for Indigenous and local involvement in the designation, design, monitoring and management of protected areas, and admirably declare the need for a ‘culture shift’ within the biodiversity and environmental protection arenas.
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