This article should be cited as: Vazhayil, A.M., Wantzen, K.M. (2023): Community-Based Conservation Ini- tiatives in India: A Participative Movement driven by River Culture. In: Wantzen, K.M. (ed.): River Cul- ture – Life as a Dance to the Rhythm of the Waters. Pp. 837–851. UNESCO Publishing, Paris. DOI: 10.54677/ MPAL7650 34 Community-Based Conservation Initiatives in India: A Participative Movement driven by River Culture Vazhayil, Alvin M. 1 , Wantzen, Karl M. 1, 2 1 CNRS UMR CITERES, University of Tours, Tours, France 2 UNESCO Chair River Culture, University of Tours, Tours, and CNRS UMR LIVE, University of Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France "True democracy cannot be worked by twenty men sitting at the center. It has to be worked from below, by the people of every village." Mahatma Gandhi Summary This paper explores how River Culture (living with the river, learning from the river, identification with the river) can be inspired by Community-Based Conservation Initiatives (CBCI) in river conser- vation and vice versa. Humans are proactive in conserving things that are of value to them. When humans see the ecosystem as a part of themselves beyond the utilitarian perspective, they develop an emotional connection, which leads to taking sustainable actions for environmental protection. The River Culture approach goes beyond ecologism, exploring the feelings and care for rivers that people have, as we would do for a fellow human being. It brings various community actors together, providing knowledge on the importance of living with the river. Such an idea that connects rivers with our lives can motivate a society, eventually resulting in practical collaborative actions such as community-based conservation. In the case studies discussed, environmental awareness through re- ligion and education, volunteering mentality, quick reaction to a natural disaster such as floods, and strong local governments incentivized people to take actions and transfer their ideas. CBCIs may serve as examples of how to mobilize people to take action in favor of rivers or nature in general, also in other places of the world. 34.1 Introduction Many ecological movements in the world focus on the restoration of rivers, but still few studies have analyzed the communalities between these projects with people's drivers and the motivations to get engaged (e.g., Wantzen et al. 2019, and see chapters on the Isar, Seine, and Dordogne, this volume). Humans depend on the ecosystem for their ecological services, including intangible ser- vices, which have produced a long-term systemic interaction between people and their surround- ings (Johnston et al. 2011, Wantzen et al. 2016). Over time, humans realized that an analogous loss of cultural diversity with biodiversity occurs (Sadowski 2019). Societies started recognizing the need to take action against climate change and reduce environmental impact during the 1980s, a decade when the importance of biocultural di- versity was first acknowledged, and it has been growing ever since (Sadowski 2017). According to the IUCN/WWF/UNEP World Conservation Strategy Definition, conservation is the "mainte- nance of essential ecological processes and life-support systems, the preservation of genetic diversity, and the sustainable utilization of species and ecosystems", which represents an ethical imperative and has a stable moral basis appealing to human value sys- tems (Mishra 2016, Talbot 1980). Management of natural resources is not a search for an optimal solution to one problem but