The conceptual evolution and practice of community-based natural resource management in southern Africa: past, present and future

Child, Brian; Barnes, Grenville

doi:10.1017/s0376892910000512

Cited by 59 publications

(51 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…The latter involves the governance of economic processes, property right, and local political organizations [12]. It implies replacement of fiscal centralization, fees and bureaucracy which have undervalued natural resources to provide comparative economic advantage to small land holders with community incentives.…”

Section: New Research and Analytical Toolsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Climate Change and Soil Degradation Mitigation by Sustainable Management of Soils and Other Natural Resources

Lal

2012

Agric Res

138

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Soil, an important component of land, has numerous functions and ecosystem services essential to all terrestrial life. Soil degradation, decline in its capacity to support functions and provide ecosystem services, is caused by accelerated erosion, salinization, elemental imbalance, acidification, depletion of soil organic carbon (SOC), reduction in soil biodiversity, and decline in soil structure and tilth. Desertification, a sub-set of degradation, specifically refers to decline in soil quality and functions in arid climates. Climate change affects and is affected by soil degradation through a positive feed back due to increase in mineralization of SOC pool and the radiative forcing. Desertification may lead to a net increase in temperature despite change in albedo of the denuded surface. Feedbacks and threshold amplify the risks of degradation, and the projected climate change may exacerbate all four types of drought (i.e., meteorological, hydrological, pedagogical, and ecological). The mutually reinforcing positive feedbacks between soil degradation and climate change are strongly influenced by social, economic, political, and cultural factors. There exists a strong link between poverty, desperateness, and societal collapse on soil degradation and climate change. Restoration of degraded and desertified soils, converting marginal agricultural areas to rangeland and forest land, and adoption of recommended management practices have a large technical potential to sequester carbon and off-set anthropogenic emissions, improve the environment, and enhance and sustain agronomic productivity. Important among recommended management practices are using conservation agriculture and mulch farming, establishing cover crops, adopting strategies of integrated nutrient management, and those which create positive C and nutrient budgets and soil/water conservation within a watershed. Long-term research is needed which is hypothesis-driven, uses modern innovative research and modeling tools, is based on community involvement, and provides decision support systems to policy makers and land managers.

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Section: New Research and Analytical Toolsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The resource governance should be shifted to the community, thus benefits can be shared at the local level. To be successful, CBNRM strategy must be accountable, transparent, and based on equitable governance at micro-and meso-level [12].…”

Section: New Research and Analytical Toolsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate Change and Soil Degradation Mitigation by Sustainable Management of Soils and Other Natural Resources

Lal

2012

Agric Res

138

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“…The second most important element after devolution for a community to manage natural resources sustainably is its capacity to self-organise, which in turn presumably depends on the quality of community institutions. Devolving property rights to communities shifts resource governance, responsibility and benefit appropriately to the local level (Child and Barnes 2010).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of institutions in community wildlife conservation in Zimbabwe

Ntuli¹,

Muchapondwa²

2018

Int J Commons

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Abstract:Institutions play a significant role in stabilising large-scale cooperation in common pool resource management. Without restrictions to govern human behaviour, most natural resources are vulnerable to overexploitation. This study used a sample size of 336 households and community-level data from 30 communities around Gonarezhou National Park in Zimbabwe, to analyse the relationship between institutions and biodiversity outcomes in community-based wildlife conservation. Our results suggest a much stronger effect of institutions on biodiversity outcomes via the intermediacy of cooperation. Overall, the performance of most communities was below the desired level of institutional attributes that matter for conservation. Good institutions are an important ingredient for cooperation in the respective communities. Disaggregating the metric measure of institutions into its components shows that governance, monitoring and enforcement are more important for increased cooperation, while fairness of institutions seems to work against cooperation. Cooperation increases with trust and group size, and is also higher in communities that have endogenised punishment as opposed to communities that still rely on external enforcement of rules and regulations. Cooperation declines as we move from communal areas into the resettlement schemes and with increasing size of the resource system. A very strong positive relationship exists between cooperation and biodiversity outcomes implying that communities with elevated levels of cooperation are associated with a healthy wildlife population. Biodiversity outcomes are more successful in communities that either received wildlife management training, share information or those that are located far awayThe role of institutions in community wildlife conservation in Zimbabwe 135 from urban areas and are not very close to the boundary of the game park. Erecting an electric fence, the household head's age, the number of years in school and number of years living in the area negatively affect biodiversity outcomes. One policy implication of this study is to increase autonomy in CAMPFIRE communities so that they are able to invest in good institutions, which allows them to self-organise and to manage wildlife sustainably.

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“…Community-based conservation initiatives across Africa have, however, shown varying degrees of success (Brosius et al 2005, Buzwani et al 2007, U.S. Forest Service 2008, Roe et al 2009, Child and Barnes 2010, Dressler et al 2010, Shackleton et al 2010). This is not least because conservation initiatives implemented at the local level are typically brought in by outsiders (Duffy 2006, Dressler et al 2010, who fail to fully capture and appreciate the heterogeneity of local communities and the complexity of natural resource governance institutions (Leach et al 1999, Ostrom andCox 2010).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evolving hunting practices in Gabon: lessons for community-based conservation interventions

Walters¹,

Schleicher²,

Hymas³

et al. 2015

E&S

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ABSTRACT. Addressing today's environmental challenges is intimately linked to understanding and improving natural resource governance institutions. As a result conservation initiatives are increasingly realizing the importance of integrating local perspectives of land tenure arrangements, natural resource rights, and local beliefs into conservation approaches. However, current work has not sufficiently considered the dynamic nature of natural resource governance institutions over time and the potential implications for current conservation interventions. We therefore explored how and why hunting governance has changed since the precolonial period in two ethnic hunting communities in Gabon, Central Africa, integrating various ethnographic methods with resource-use mapping, and a historic literature review. In both communities, hunting governance has undergone significant changes since the precolonial period. A closed-access, lineage-based system of resource use with strict penalties for trespassing, has evolved into a more open-access system, in which the influence of customary governance systems, including magico-political aspects, has declined. These changes have occurred mainly in response to policies and governance structures put in place by the colonial government and postindependence, early state laws. This included a policy of merging villages, the introduction of more modern hunting techniques such as guns and wire cables, and a shift from community to government ownership of the land. Current governance structures are thus the product of a complex mixture of customary, colonial and state influences. These findings suggest that a historical perspective of resource governance, gained through indepth and long-term engagement with local communities, can provide important insights for community-based conservation approaches, such as helping to identify potential causes and perceptions of environmental change and to design more suitable conservation initiatives with local people.

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The conceptual evolution and practice of community-based natural resource management in southern Africa: past, present and future

Cited by 59 publications

References 27 publications

Climate Change and Soil Degradation Mitigation by Sustainable Management of Soils and Other Natural Resources

Climate Change and Soil Degradation Mitigation by Sustainable Management of Soils and Other Natural Resources

The role of institutions in community wildlife conservation in Zimbabwe

Evolving hunting practices in Gabon: lessons for community-based conservation interventions

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