The thesis that underpins this volume is that the principal conservation paradigm has been flawed in the way that it construes the relationship between local communities and their environments. The contributors to this volume reverse the popular problematic that assigns responsibility for environmental degradation to proximate communities and asks how the global conservation community can help these communities to reform. Instead, the contributors first ask what local communities are already doing that contributes to environmental conservation and then ask how the global community can avoid undermining these efforts and perhaps even support them.