At a special session of the World Parks Congress held in Sydney, Australia, on November 2014, David Western gave a presentation on the role of community-based conservation in winning space for wildlife beyond national parks and in reducing human-wildlife conflict.   

Amboseli played an important role in gaining recognition for community-based conservation as a complement to national parks when David Western gave a presentation at the World Parks Congress in Bali in 1982. The first of its kind in Kenya, the initiative launched in Amboseli in the early 1970s led to a new nation policy aimed at ecosystem-wide conservation through the engagement and to the benefit of local communities.

Amboseli has since been a test-bed for new conservation policies and practices that have become widespread throughout Kenya and internationally. The most recent advances are the adoption of the Amboseli Ecosystem Management Plan following the completion of a Strategic Environmental (SEA) commissioned by the National Environmental Management Authority. The SEA approval makes the Amboseli ecosystem plan to first of its kind to be given legal recognition and enforcement through the higher national authority.

A full account of the role Amboseli has played in developing and promoting community-based conservation and the success of the movement over the last forty years can be found in the accompanying article: Finding space for wildlife beyond parks through community-based conservation: the Kenya experience. David Western, John Waithaka and John Kamanga. Parks 21. 1. 2015.