Environmental Conservation 37 (3): 347–355 C  Foundation for Environmental Conservation 2010 doi:10.1017/S0376892910000548 THEMATIC SECTION Community-based natural resource management (CBNRM): designing the next generation (Part 2) Of biodiversity and boundaries: a case study of community-based natural resource management practice in the Cardamom Mountains, Cambodia AMANDA LO CASCIO AND RUTH BEILIN ∗ Department of Resource Management and Geography, University of Melbourne, 3010 Australia Date submitted: 1 September 2009; Date accepted: 5 May 2010; First published online: 16 September 2010 SUMMARY In the Cardamom Ranges (Cambodia) community- based natural resource management (CBNRM) is proposed by the international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) community as a natural resource management strategy to achieve the targeted outcomes associated with the protected area (PA) management plan. Local people are expected to participate in CBNRM projects such as community forestry (CF) in order that the protected area management plan can be realized. The experiences of the local people are juxtaposed against the aims of these local biodiversity projects. Overall, it is accepted by the NGOs and government agencies that communities need to be involved in the design and management of the PA and that the protection of biodiversity resources can only occur with the provision of alternatives for local livelihood options to decrease land clearing for agriculture and harvesting of wild foods and animals. This case points to a basic misalignment between biodiversity conservation and CBNRM. Participants in this study contested the meaning and usefulness of the PA and the CF projects. Their concerns were cultural, social, economic and political, exposing uneven relations of power and uncertainty associated with the long term outcomes. Participation itself required scrutiny in this situation, as did the promotion of a global biodiversity ‘good’ over local understandings of place and landscape. Lessons from more than 20 years of participatory CBNRM may be used to reconfigure the CBNRM ideal, to assist planners and implementers towards an integrated approach with biodiversity values reflected in both conservation and local production systems, acknowledging that these systems are culturally constituted. Keywords: biodiversity conservation, community-based natural resource management, landscape, participation, protected area management ∗ Correspondence: Dr Ruth Beilin e-mail: rbeilin@unimelb.edu.au INTRODUCTION Global environmental change proceeds at a rapid if uneven pace and biodiversity conservation has emerged as a set of practices that interact with a proliferation of bottom-up participatory approaches, many under the broad definition of community-based natural resource management (CBNRM). Since the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 (UNCED 1992), and the Convention on Biological Diversity (United Nations Environment Programme 1992), what was previously all of ‘nature’ and its ‘conservation’ has been reduced in the scientific literature to ‘biodiversity’. Global conservation organizations refer to ‘biodiversity’ as if there is a universal meaning for the word (Dore 1996; FFI [Flora and Fauna International] 2000). Its specific characteristics are rarely defined at a local level despite local people being expected to manage their landscapes for these internationally established values (FFI 2000; UNDP [United Nations Development Programme]/GEF [Global Environment Facility] 2003; Brockington et al. 2008). Global biodiversity is implicitly framed by wealthier nations and many conservation non- governmental organizations (NGOs). As such, it becomes a kind of global commodity, even while this would be the antithesis of what many conservation scientists intend (Jepson & Canney 2003). Invoking community participation to protect global biodiversity through conservation programmes that are specific to place, creates the bizarre situation of decontextualizing the meaning of local with the imposition of cultural expectations and values focused on specific species rather than landscapes (West 2006). This is transformed by well-intentioned promoters as a ‘new’ or ‘better’ way for local people to manage their landscapes. The Cardamom Mountains are the largest and highest upland area in Cambodia, peaking at Phnom Aural (1813 m). The mountains contain the largest tract of intact forest in mainland South-East Asia and are a biodiversity ‘hotspot’. FFI (2001) reported that a range of globally threatened species, including tiger (Panthera tigris), Asian elephant (Elephas maximus), crocodile (Crocodylus siamensis) and tortoise (Indotestudo elongata) were present (IIED [International Institute for Environment and Development] 2008). CBNRM in Cambodia is intended to promote biodiversity conservation and local community development. The