Policies promoting joint management (between the state and the users) of natural resources such as forests or water are increasing in India and elsewhere: decentralised administration has advantages that are tempting. However, joint management, implying as it does a redistribution of power, is profoundly political.
If successful, this type of management cannot be fully explained in terms of a rent-seeking, all-powerful, bureaucratic state. An Overseas Development Institute (ODI) Natural Resource Perspectives paper examines the complex politics underpinning joint management. It assesses interaction between the political and administrative wings of government and the influence of semi-autonomous actors such as donors, NGOs and academics. What future is there for increased but gradual decentralisation?
Recent uptake of the terms ‘joint forest management’ (JFM), ‘participatory irrigation management’ (PIM) and ‘irrigation management turnover’ (IMT) epitomise the change in government attitudes towards common pool resources. Despite the enthusiasm of governments and NGOs, the implementation of such programmes, especially in India, has left a less than rosy picture on the ground. Progress and success has been slow, or has resulted in potentially unsustainable outcomes.
Why are states, whose raison d’être is the accumulation of authority, material resources, and legitimacy, interested in decentralising and devolving real power? Would the forest department, owning 23 percent of the country’s land, really be willing to hand over forest areas for villagers to manage? Would the department be satisfied with a monitoring and technical advisory role? Or is government merely a bureaucracy?
Policy conclusions
- Conventional analyses of joint management are rooted in organisational theory; their apolitical character severely limits their explanatory power.
- Joint management falls far short of full community involvement in the planning and use of natural resources, so that in effect the state is giving up very little power.
- Joint management, however, is here to stay and its varying performance across regions needs to be understood.
- The state favours joint management as it helps avoid a fiscal crisis by passing costs to resource users. Local government has seen fit to support joint management further because of populism or an ideological commitment to decentralisation.
- Other actors – despite apparent commitment to joint management – have had only limited influence. State departments are aware of the constraints they face - donors’ need to meet spending targets, for example - and have little difficulty circumventing outside ideas to their own advantage.
- In the long run, NGOs and academics will do well to pressurise the political arm of the state, which needs to be convinced of the electoral gains from decentralisation.
Source(s):
‘Godsend, sleight of hand, or just muddling through: Joint water and
forest management in India’, ODI Natural Resource Perspectives #53 by S. Lele
(2000) Full document.
‘Village voices, forest choices: Joint forest management in India’, Delhi,
Oxford University Press, by M. Poffenberger and B.McGean, 1996
Funded by:
DFID and others
id21 Research Highlight: 30 January 2001
Further Information:
Sharachchandra Lele
Ecological Economics Unit
Institute for Social and Economic Change
Nagarabhavi
Bangalore 560072
India
Fax:
+91 80 321 70008
Contact the contributor: slele@isec.kar.nic.in
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