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Localism “Reimagined”: Building a Robust Localist Paradigm for Overcoming Emerging Conservation Challenges

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Abstract

Governance gaps at both the federal and state level increasingly necessitate local action and remain a key driver of community-based solutions. A localist paradigm—encompassing models such as community-based management, citizen science, and cooperative research—offers a promising approach for bridging governance gaps by engaging citizens, co-producing knowledge, fostering trust, and developing innovative solutions to address complex conservation challenges. Yet, despite notable successes, significant barriers constrain widespread implementation of localist approaches. This is particularly evident in natural resource-dependent communities. Rural communities are increasingly faced with a range of conservation challenges related to rapid climate and land-use changes but often they lack the capacity to support locally based initiatives to better anticipate, plan for, and mitigate these changes. We examined four diverse conservation cases based on localist approaches in Maine, USA, to bring to the fore key factors that influence outcomes in different social-ecological contexts. We compared cases along three frequently discussed dimensions—governance systems, social adaptive capacities, and technology and data characteristics and found that localist outcomes vary widely depending on key metrics within each of these dimensions. There is no single way to advance localism, but we offer multiple ways to incorporate a community-based perspective into management. This synthesis of data from our collective participatory research projects provides guidance to maximize the potential of localist conservation approaches in complex social and biophysical arenas.

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Acknowledgements

Support for this research was provided by the Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions at the University of Maine. This material is based upon the work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1828466. This project was supported by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Hatch (or McIntire-Stennis, Animal Health, etc.) Project number ME0-5501288 through the Maine Agricultural & Forest Experiment Station. Maine Agricultural and Forest Experiment Publication Number 3785.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Conservation Biology, University of Maine, Orono, ME, USA

    Jessica Spelke Jansujwicz, Aram J. K. Calhoun & Carly Sponarski

  2. Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions, University of Maine, Orono, ME, USA

    Jessica Spelke Jansujwicz, Aram J. K. Calhoun, Karen Hutchins Bieluch, Bridie McGreavy, Linda Silka & Carly Sponarski

  3. Environmental Studies Program, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA

    Karen Hutchins Bieluch

  4. Department of Communication and Journalism, University of Maine, Orono, ME, USA

    Bridie McGreavy

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  1. Jessica Spelke Jansujwicz
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Jansujwicz, J.S., Calhoun, A.J.K., Bieluch, K.H. et al. Localism “Reimagined”: Building a Robust Localist Paradigm for Overcoming Emerging Conservation Challenges. Environmental Management 67, 91–108 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-020-01392-4

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