Natural Resource Management & the Environment
The term "natural resource management" (NRM) encompasses a broad spectrum of activities
and projects. This information bulletin is focused on those NRM
activities that specifically require the participation of local
communities for their sustainable management. Examples of these
kinds of projects include: micro-watershed management, irrigation
water management, soil and water conservation, community
forestry, community-based coastal zone fisheries management, and
conservation of biodiversity.
Experiences have shown that centralized "top-down" conservation is only effective
with large expenditures on enforcement or under undemocratic
circumstances. As an alternative, participation of different
types of stakeholders is now considered to be essential for
effective and sustainable management and conservation of natural
resource systems. It is generally accepted that participation by
local communities can be fostered by a significant degree of
decentralization.
While focusing on decentralization to communities, the note recognizes that there are theoretical
and practical arguments for higher level governments and the
international community to play an active role in NRM. Management
and utilization of the natural resources has implications for
sub-national, national, and supranational territorial units,
because of diverse costs and benefits associated with how and
where they are managed. Furthermore, numerous dangers exist in
delegating responsibility for management to local entities and
communities that may themselves be undemocratic, unaccountable,
and controlled by a small and powerful local elite.
The following table outlines some of the general principles for assigning functions, while the rest
of the note elaborates on guidelines for decentralizing natural
resource management to communities.
Function
|
Assignment/Rationale
|
| Central
Government |
Local/Community |
| Coordinating
compensation for resources.The market does not always compensate for
resource use: management and exploitation of resources by
one community can lead to negative externalities for
another community. One frequently effective means of
resolving the conflicts which arise from these
externalities is to compensate affected communities.
|
Higher
levels of government, possibly even international bodies.
An example of this pattern is the well known example of
rich countries compensating poorer countries to maintain
forest reserves, in order to slow ozone depletion. |
|
| Specific
Resource Management |
Resources
(e.g., rangeland management) where the the minimum unit for sustainable
management is too large, or the resource users cannot be
clearly identified.
|
Most
other resources. |
| Implementing
environmental strategy |
Should
create conditions for large-scale adoption of successful
local efforts, also facilitate coordination between local
units. |
Perform
day-to-day resource management: levy user charges,
enforce compliance with exclusion orders, manage
financial resource, etc. |
Three inter-related issues need to be considered when seeking to understand the relationship between
decentralization and natural resource management:
1) Enabling policy and institutional environment
Decentralization policies have potential to encourage the evolution of community-based
institutions to manage natural resources locally. The propensity
of individuals to organize themselves into institutions for
collective action will be partly determined by the expected
pay-offs. The benefits of cooperative management will, in turn,
be affected by the:
- nature of property rights for resources (i.e., whether private or common, and how
well-defined)
- legal status of community-based institutions and whether they have
authority to manage financial resources, levy user charges, enforce compliance with exclusion orders, etc.
- macro-economic conditions affecting the financial viability of small producers
- extent of rural infrastructure which affects the ease of access to arkets for local producers
2) Participatory processes for establishing community-based groups
Evidence suggests that community-based groups are an effective means of managing the
free-rider problems associated with most resource management
regimes. Decentralization policies on their own, however, are not
necessarily sufficient to result in the formation of these
community-based groups. Catalytic external agencies using
participatory processes are also required to facilitate and build
local organizational capacity, effective community participation,
and local control and authority over decisions and resources.
Important issues to consider in strengthening local
organizational capacity are:
- entry point subprojects that result in positive financial and/or economic returns to
local communities while attaining sustainable resource
management goals - the incentive for collective action
- benefits from management of natural resources must accrue quickly, locally,
transparently, and as equitably as possible given the resource constraints - providing incentives to as many
resource users as possible
- externalities and asymmetric costs and benefits associated with most natural resource management activities means that appropriate financial
incentives are required for co-financing entry point subprojects with local communities -- improving the
incentives
3) Effective operational linkages between institutional actors to
facilitate large-scale adoption of sustainable NRM practices.
There are many successful examples of using participatory processes for the formation of local
management systems. However, most of these successes only operate on a small scale. The challenge lies in creating the conditions
for large-scale adoption of successful community-based management systems. This requires effective operational linkages between the
public sector, private sector, and community-based groups. Issues to be considered include:
- review and restructuring of public sector agencies to become more responsive to
clients
- decentralization of
responsibility and authority for resource management decisions to the most appropriate level (subsidiarity)
- design of appropriate decentralized financial instrument (e.g., social fund,
demand driven rural investment fund, or local development
fund) for financing community-based resource management
initiatives
- decentralized financial instruments must enable community-based local procurement
of goods and services.
It must be recognized that knowledge and examples of good practices in this sphere are
limited. Therefore, all decentralized systems of resource
management must pay particular attention to monitoring and
evaluation. Apart form regular financial and physical tracking of
program performance, the monitoring systems need to assess the
participatory processes, transparency, accountability, equity,
effectiveness of institutional and operational linkages, and
technical aspects of local management regimes. Furthermore, the
impacts of the institutional arrangements need to be regularly
assessed in order to ascertain whether the welfare of the poor is
being adversely affected by resource management regimes. |
