From Empowering to Powering Communities:
why we must strike the word empower from our conservation vocabulary
At Community Conservation (CC), we think of communities not as passive recipients of aid but as leaders, stewards, and decision-makers. They already hold agency, responsibility, and authority in the landscapes they call home.
And yet, we’ve noticed that we often slip into using the word empower to describe our work. It even shows up on our homepage! But behind the scenes, we’ve been working to strike the word from our vocabulary. Why? Because words matter.
Partner Olivia Cosby in the field with young conservationists
Why the word “empower” misses the mark
The term empower suggests that power is something given from the outside, bestowed by one group onto another. It implies that communities lack the ability to act until someone arrives to hand it over. In reality, agency and strength are already present within every community.
Similarly, over time the word empowerment has also begun to feel overused, and even paternalistic. It positions conservation organizations as givers of capacity rather than collaborators who recognize and support the capacity that already exists.
Tuai Ruman (meaning headwoman), a leader at one of the Borneo longhouses
When Empowerment Truly Applies
There is, however, one important exception. At the level of national or regional policy, empowerment can take on a different meaning, one that is both necessary and appropriate.
When governments establish or revise laws to give communities legal authority over forests, wildlife, or natural resources, they are indeed empowering them in a formal, structural sense. Policy reform can shift the balance of power by codifying community rights, granting legal recognition, and transferring decision-making authority from the state to the people.
In these cases, empowerment describes a concrete process of granting legal power, an act that enables communities to legally exercise the agency they already possess.
Shifting Our Language to Better Reflect Our Values
At CC, we’re shifting from language that implies bestowal to language that reflects partnership, recognition, and support. We don’t want to perpetuate the idea that people must be convinced, benefited, or empowered to conserve biodiversity. Instead, we want to highlight how communities themselves lead the way, and how our role is to stand alongside them, providing resources, solidarity, and amplification.
Training locals to identify wildlife
As part of this shift, we’ve been developing alternative language that better matches our philosophy and practice. Here are some of the terms we now use, organized by theme:
When Supporting Community Leadership
- Facilitate community-led initiatives
- Foster community-driven conservation
- Support community-led efforts
- Enhance self-determination
- Foster autonomy
When Strengthening Capacity
- Build on local leadership and expertise
- Provide access to information, resources, and tools
- Equip communities with knowledge and skills to steward biodiversity
- Strengthen agency and resilience
- Expand capabilities and opportunities
- Enable action and adaptive capacity
When Centering Local Voices
- Amplify voices
- Center local leadership
- Strengthen representation
- Uplift local knowledge
When Working in Partnership
- Partner with communities in conservation
- Work alongside communities
- Co-create solutions
- Shift decision-making power
- Strengthen stewardship
Words as Action
This is more than semantics. The language we choose reflects how we see communities and how we engage with them. By scrubbing empower from our vocabulary, we aim to reinforce the truth that communities are not waiting for power. They already have it. Our role is simply to recognize, respect, and support that power.
Teri D. Allendorf, PhD, is the Executive Director of Community Conservation and a conservation biologist affiliated with the Dept of Forest and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in the US. She has worked on issues of communities and biodiversity conservation in Nepal and globally for three decades.