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Overview

The Liguang Community Conserved Area is located in Liguang Village, Yunnan Province, China. Lisu minority are the indigenous residents. There are about 1,370 people engaged in simple planting and breeding of livestock. The community conserved areas have been under construction since May 2015. By the end of 2017, a total of 12 villager groups' community conserved areas had been established, covering approximately 77 square kilometres, accounting for over 52% of the overall area of Liguang village.

The characteristics of the ICCAs

The indigenous residents in the communities are rebuilding their community governance mechanisms, including by establishing village rules and regulations, in order to increase the sense of community identity for all members of the community, and to achieve common management and supervision of the community conserved areas. While carrying out the construction of community conserved areas, each local community (through the support of local NGOs) acquires more sustainable development knowledge, ideas and technologies. In particular, the communities are beginning to develop ecological agriculture to increase their income, improve livelihoods, and further promote community conserved areas and achieve sustainable regional development.

The process of constructing the ICCAs

The important premise is the consensus among villages on the importance of ecological protection. Villagers have meetings to discuss and make regimes of forestry resource management or ecological protection, identifying methods that do not interfere with production or living and are compatible with sustainable utilisation and ecological protection. It involves the following aspects:

• Delimit and ascertain the size of the conserved areas: establish areas with clear ecological functions such as forest for water resource conservation, fertiliser source forest, scenic forest, fuel forest, non-commercial forest and river.
• Formulate corresponding protection provisions: determine how to protect forest and utilise the resources (branches and leaves, pine leaves, mountain soil, medicinal plants, indigenous fish, etc.) within the conserved areas, being as specific as possible, even including discussing when to utilise the resources.
• Clear rewards and penalties: resolutely punish acts in violation of the protection regulations. At the same time, enlarge the scale of the community supervision and reward the villagers who report these acts.
• Elect managers in charge: the community holds an election to select the managers to undertake the responsibility. The managers are responsible for receiving reports on violations, organising villagers to prevent vandalism, and reporting to the forestry department to deal with any violations according to law.

The effect of the ICCAs

Community conserved areas have multiple ecological functions. Water resource forests provide clean and safe drinking water for villagers in local communities. Fertiliser source forests accumulate enough organic matter for community villagers to improve and regulate agricultural soils. Scenic forests provide sufficient safety barriers to avoid soil erosion, debris flow and other geological disasters. Fuel forests provide resource storage, supporting sustainable development. River conservation makes the environment more appealing, encouraging local tourism. In addition, endangered plants such as Taxus yunnanensis in the forest area and endangered fish in the river, known as Gymnocypris firmspinatus, are well conserved.

The ICCA peer-review process in China

Liguang Community Conserved Area was one of the first ICCAs in China to go through a locally-defined peer-review process in support of its registration with the ICCA Registry. Through this mechanism, indigenous peoples and local communities support each other's processes of self-determination, helping to build a robust and accurate global registry of ICCAs. More information is available as PDF download at wcmc.io/iccadatamanual.

黎光社区保护地

概况

黎光社区保护地位于中国云南省丽江市玉龙县黎明乡黎光村。当地居民主要是傈僳族，约1370人，从事简单的种养殖业。该社区保护地自2015年5月开始建设，至2017年底，共建成12个村民小组的社区保护地，总面积约77平方公里，约占黎光村整体面积的52%。

保护地特色

社区原住民通过重建社区治理机制，如制定村规民约，来提高社区全体成员对于社区保护地的家园认同感，进而实现共同管理、监督社区保护地的建设。在开展社区保护地建设的同时，当地社区在地方公益组织的支持下，通过学习培训获取可持续发展知识、理念与技术，以发展适合当地的生态产业来提高村民收入、改善生计，进而促进社区保护地的保护，实现区域可持续发展。

建立过程

社区村民形成生态保护的共识是重要前提。社区村民充分表达，依据已有的自然认识与利用经验，通过会议讨论制定林业资源管理或生态保护制度，即不妨碍生产生活，同时达到可持续利用与生态保护效果。具体包括以下几个方面：

l划定保护地区域、确定面积：具有明确的识别标志与生态功能，例如水源林、肥源林、风景林、薪炭林、公益林、河流；

l制定适当的保护规定：就如何在保护地区域内保护树木、利用资源（枝叶、松毛、山积土、药用植物、土著鱼类等）进行说明，甚至具体到什么时间、是否要进行会议讨论；

l辅以明确的奖励与惩罚措施：对于违反保护规定的行为，社区予以坚决的惩罚；同时扩大社区监督，对于举报村民予以奖励；

l产生具体的管理负责人：社区选举具体的管理负责人，将责任落实；负责人承担接受举报、组织村民制止破坏行为、上报林业部门依法治理的责任。

保护地影响

社区保护地具有多重生态功能，水源林则为当地社区村民提供清洁安全的饮水，肥源林则能够积累足够的有机质用于社区村民改善和调节土壤，风景林则能够提供足够的安全屏障避免水土流失、泥石流等地质灾害，而薪炭林则为社区可持续发展提供了资源储蓄。河流保护则能够为当地的旅游开发提供良好的卫生环境。

此外，森林区域内的云南红豆杉（ Taxus yunnanensis）等濒危植物得到保护，同时黎明河内当地濒危灭绝的鱼类硬刺松潘裸鲤（当地称为“竹根鱼"，Gymnocypris firmspinatus）也得到了良好的保护与增殖，效果明显。

中国的ICCA同行评审

黎光社区保护区是中国首批通过本地定义的同行评审程序支持其在ICCA注册系统注册的社区保护地之一。通过这一同行评审过程，当地居民和社区相互支持社区自主进程，帮助建立一个强大而准确的ICCA全球注册机制。有关更多信息，请访问 wcmc.io/iccadatamanual。