Environmental governance and sustainability: re-valuing conservation in Transguinea (West Africa) - Within the EU environmental cooperation Agir program, the Transguinea experience shows a move from a participatory to a community approach in the management of natural resources. Based on the conceptualization and the empirical knowledge provided by a geographic team from L’Aquila University, the environment is intented as a territorial resource rather than a quality to be protected. Through its conservation, this resource is a starting point for local sustainable development. Putting itself in a perspective of deliberative democracy, the Agir program stop being a purely intervention mechanism, becoming gradually a planning framework. Agir does not execute goals anymore, but engages itself to create conditions to implement development and conservation activities. The final outcome will be the land security achieved through the acknowledgement of the local communities’ rights on both space and natural resources.