Engaging Simplifications: Community-Based Resource Management, Market Processes and State Agendas in Upland Southeast Asia

Abstract

In the struggle to secure resource rights for rural populations who gain their livelihoods from state-claimed lands, advocacy agendas highlight community interest in, and capacity for, sustainable resource management. In the uplands of Southeast Asia, the strategic simplifications of CBNRM advocacy are being translated into legal frameworks and program initiatives which make rights conditional upon particular forms of social organization and livelihood, as well as conservation outcomes. When set in the context of agricultural intensification among both indigenous and migrant populations, and the desire of many upland dwellers to claim the benefits of a fuller citizenship, CBNRM offers a problematic basis for justice.

Adapting to climate change through local municipal planning: barriers and challenges

“…Essentially, local, place-based communities are thought to be more familiar with their own particular challenges and thus better able to inform an appropriate planning process (Lane and McDonald 2005;Li 2002). On the basis of developing local 'ownership' of problems, CBEP is thought to lead to more legitimate processes than top-down planning which can isolate some stakeholders due to externally generated interests (Scott 1998).…”

Protecting the Forest or the People? Environmental Policies and Livelihoods in the Forest Margins of Southern Ghana

“…In this case, not only does it seem that initiatives to allow forests to be managed jointly by the forestry department and local village committees are ineffective in gaining local participation, but also that such new institutions have been imposed over local existing arrangements for forest use. For the uplands of Indonesia and the Philippines, Li (2002) argues that community-based management may do little to achieve ecological or social goals, partly since the interests of local forest-users are so diverse.…”

“…No wonder then that some authors (for example Brown, 1999;Li, 2002;Sundar, 2001) stress the importance of giving definite rights, and power, to locals as a precondition for effective participation. 15 The other theme is that decentralization requires a sustained and skillful application of measures appropriate to the context, including the evolution of local capacity for public decision-making and implementation.…”

Adaptive collaborative management of community forests in Asia: experiences from Nepal, Indonesia and the Philippines

“…Forest resources may be sufficient to provide economic incentives to the POs for a certain period of time, but in general, their tenurial areas are of marginal economic importance. As Li (2002) points out, the upland communities of the Philippines were given management rights over state forestland only after the most profitable opportunity-timber extractionhad run its course and the elites had found better investments elsewhere. DENR views nonforest income-generating activities as viable alternatives for meeting the POs' needs and in controlling people's dependency on forest resources.…”

“…This strategy, however, may also have reinforced two weakness of the programme. First, the granting of forest management rights to people's organisations can sideline other forest users and push them into marginal economic niches (Li 2002); by working directly with the POs and increasing their social capital, the ACM team may have compounded the power imbalance between the POs and the marginalised groups. Second, by helping the POs meet DENR's technical, legal, and administrative requirements, the team may have inadvertently reinforced these constraints.…”