In many countries, efforts are being made to enhance involvement of rural communities and the poor in the tourism industry. Community involvement offers the prospect of enhanced rural development, conservation, and a more broadly-based tourism industry. However, experience to date has also thrown up many limitations and challenges. This paper explores some of those challenges and identifies strategies for addressing them, based on experiences in a range of countries. It aims to provide practical examples and an analysis of key issues for those who are also wrestling with the issues.

Recent legislation in Namibia has enabled the people who live in communal areas to establish a ‘conservancy’ on their land in order to utilise natural resources, including wildlife. However, a number of problems have already arisen in developing such common property resource management institutions. These include: the definition of community and of boundaries; competing interest groups within communities; competition between conservancies and other institutions; differences in scale between appropriate social units and resource management units; uncertain land tenure, and differential support capacity to assist all the communities wishing to form conservancies.~Even so, many communities have managed to overcome these difficulties and though it is too early to measure the impacts of conservancies on wildlife or local livelihoods, there are indications of small, but positive trends and benefits. Benefits to local communities are of both a financial and non-financial nature, including the provision of accountable leaders and a participatory decision-making process that includes women. If these benefits are to continue however, a more co-ordinated government support must remain responsive to community needs. Indeed, much will depend upon the extent to which conservancies can fit into nested levels of decision-making and defend their rights at higher levels.

Articles Include: We live on prayers: the use of video in community development. Walking a tightrope: using PRA in a conflict situation around Waza National Park, Cameroon. Project benefit-matrix impact from the Maldives - a method for participatory evaluation. Complementary methods to understand land-use changes: an example from the Ethiopian Rift Valley. ~Special Issue: Community Water Management. ~Strengthening community water management. ~An introduction to Participatory Action Development (PAD).~ A detailed look at the PAD approach. ~Aguacatán in Guatemala: how seven communities joined hands. ~Women’s involvement: a switch in thinking, Hoto, Pakistan.~ Convincing people to pay for water: Nkouondja in Cameroon. ~Experimenting to solve water management problems: Lele community in Nepal. ~Sparkling ideas in Campoalegre, Colombia: managing the watershed to sustain the water supply. ~What stimulating and committed leadership can achieve: Nkouondja, Cameroon. ~Pakora in Pakistan: moving towards democratic management. ~Participatory evaluation of a community water project in Tanzania.~ Lessons learned by communities and the PAR team – Nepal. ~PAR outcomes in Nyakerato in Kenya.