Community Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) has been popular since the 1980s. Donors, developing country governments and non-governmental organisations have supported this policy and it continues to be popular, despite repeated failures to deliver benefits.

The theory behind CBNRM argues that the best way to manage natural resources is for local people to use their local knowledge and technologies. However, research from the University of East Anglia in the UK argues this theory has not been reflected in practice and most CBNRM schemes fail.

CBNRM aims to achieve both sustainable environmental management and community development. The key arguments for CBNRM are:

• it contributes to poverty reduction by using local labour and investment
• it promotes the use of local knowledge and local technologies, which helps to preserve these
• local management means local people have power and make decisions, creating accountable and democratic local institutions
• the use of resources is enforced locally by people who have a stake in its protection, which is more effective than government enforcement
• it is a better solution to conservation than fencing off natural resources and excluding people from them.

The idea of community management is attractive to policymakers, programme designers and donors. However, because the theory is attractive, policymakers and environmental managers use biased ‘success stories’ to support the theory. In reality, the communities involved are usually disappointed with the process.

There is also often a contradiction between the scientific, ecological principles of natural resource management and the aims of a community. For example, migratory animals or fish do not respect a boundary created for a community-managed area.

CNBRM uses participatory processes and decentralised decision-making to give power to local people. This can also help them to understand the importance of managing local resources, such as a community forest. However, these methods often reinforce existing power structures, such as chiefdoms. If power is not shared equally, CBNRM can also be used to impose the views of outsiders. For example, ecologists can choose to work with local customs and practitioners that support their views.

Whilst policymakers and practitioners tell each other success stories about CBNRM, there appear to be few examples of programmes that have improved environmental management and the well-being of local people. The author suggests several reasons for this, which policymakers should consider before supporting CBNRM:

• There is no comprehensive evaluation of CBNRM programmes. Monitoring and evaluation is complex and needs to cover environmental issues, poverty reduction and institutional changes.
• Without evaluation, supporters of CBNRM can always find some level of ‘success’ to justify the use of CBNRM.
• Bureaucracies want models that they can repeat, but communities and their relationship with the environment are too complex for this to work.
• CBNRM depends not only on suitable conditions in the community but also on supportive government and local elites, whose own interests often take over.

Source(s):
‘Is Small Really Beautiful? Community-based Natural Resource Management in Malawi and Botswana.’ World Development Vol. 34, No. 11, pp. 1942–1957, by Piers Blaikie, 2006

Funded by: United Kingdom Department for International Development (DFID)

id21 Research Highlight: 20 February 2007

Further Information:
Piers Blaikie
School of Development Studies
University of East Anglia
Norwich, NR4 7TJ
UK

Tel: +44 (0) 1603 592807
Fax: +44 (0) 1603 451999
Contact the contributor: p.blaikie@uea.ac.uk

University of East Anglia, UK

Other related links:
'Community-based tourism: failing to deliver?'

'Managing natural resources to benefit poor communities in Mozambique'

'Are governments out of the woods? Returning Africa’s woodlands to communities'

See id21's links for conservation and biodiversity

The Community-Based Natural Resource Management Network