Balancing biodiversity conservation and community livelihoods is a major challenge for sustainable management of protected areas (PAs) in East Africa. Considering PAs as typical social-ecological systems (SES), here we construct a generic conceptual framework with three key feedback loops designed to capture the main drivers and feedbacks of the SES. The framework highlights the crucial role of economy (market regulation), government (macro-control), and human value (cultural role) in shaping the complex interplay of SES. New opportunities to reconcile biodiversity conservation and rural livelihoods could be derived from changes in conservation philosophies to incorporate benefits to local people, and also need a revolution of human value towards a sustainable planet where people live in harmony with nature.

平衡生物多样性保护和社区生计是东非保护区可持续管理的一项重大挑战。考虑到PA是典型的社会生态系统（SES），在这里我们构建了一个通用的概念框架，其中包含三个主要的反馈环，旨在捕获SES的主要驱动力和反馈。该框架强调了经济（市场监管），政府（宏观调控）和人类价值（文化角色）在塑造SES复杂相互作用中的关键作用。保护思想的变化可能带来新的机会来调和生物多样性的保护和农村生计，从而为当地人民带来惠益，并且还需要对人类价值进行一场革命，朝着人类与自然和谐相处的可持续地球发展。