Talk on CBNRM projects: April 30, 2008

Managing the Complexities of CBNRM

Presented by:

Mike Jones: Africa Director of Sand County Foundation

When: April 30, 2008. From 12:00 Noon to 1:00pm
Where: WWF’s Conference Room # 2004B

Summary:

Community Based Natural Resources Management (CBNRM) has been part of mainstream conservation strategy in southern Africa since 1990. It has failed to meet the expectations of many of the donors, scholars and practitioners involved and with a few exceptions, CBNRM has not led to real empowerment of rural communities or realized significant economic benefit. In general, the rural poor remain poor, they have not been empowered to any great degree and they still bear an inequitable portion of the costs of conserving resources such as wildlife and forests. The robust devolution that was necessary for the emergence of effective local management regimes has not been achieved (Murphree, 2000) and a number of authors have questioned the efficacy of CBNRM as a conservation and development strategy (Hutton, Adams & Murombedzi, 2005; Agrawal & Redford, 2006; Blaikie, 2006.



Is there really a crisis in CBNRM, or are there deeper changes occurring at a slower pace which indicate that CBNRM might be a sound strategy, despite the short-term failures and disappointments that have occurred?



This presentation examines the issues of CBNRM through a lens of complexity, adaptive social ecological systems and the Panarchy (Holling, 2001). One of the underlying causes of issues in CBNRM is the misapplication of linear reductionist approaches to the “wicked problems” (Rittel & Webber, 1973) posed by the social and environmental problems of deepening poverty and resource scarcity. In contrast, assessment of an (ACM) strategy based on an understanding of complexity (Ruitenbeek & Cartier, 2001) suggests that new institutions for natural resource management will emerge, provided that the conditions of emergence are protected by policy.


Mike Jones:

Is the Africa Director of Sand County Foundation's Community Based Conservation Network leading a program that brings communities of natural resource users, conservation and development practitioners, scholars and policy makers into a learning network that seeks innovation and disseminates new approaches to community based conservation. Aims of the program are to promote resource stewardship based on Aldo Leopold's land ethic which views people, land and natural resources as integral part of the same community of life and to enable rural communities to improve their livelihood and their husbandry of natural resources