If community conservation is the answer in Africa, what is the question?

Proponents of community conservation present it as a means of reconciling c onservation and development objectives by ensuring that the interests of lo cal people are taken into account in making trade-offs. Conservation critic s see it as a challenge to the state-led, scientific management that is nec essary to guarantee the preservation of biodiversity. In this paper, we arg ue that community conservation is not one thing but many. It is evolving bo th as a concept and as a practice that must be built on. It is not a projec t or policy 'choice' that can be simply accepted or rejected. The key quest ions about community conservation are who should set the objectives for con servation policy on the ground and how should trade-offs between the divers e objectives of different interests be negotiated.