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Understanding CBNRM in South Asia

CISED Research Team: Ajit Menon, Praveen Singh, Esha Shah, Sharachchandra Lélé, in collaboration with Suhas Paranjape and K.J. Joy 

 

CISED’s review of successful multi-sectoral initiatives in community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) across South Asia, was aimed at understanding the normative underpinnings of these initiatives, the strategies by which they pursued their goals, and the resultant processes and outcomes of such initiatives.

We looked at how these NGO-driven initiatives dealt with the question of intra-community differentiation, the tension between common and private resources, cross-scale impacts of micro-level resource management, balancing local knowledge and resources with external expertise and finances, and the challenge of integrating with external markets.

The study included a review of the literature, developing of typologies, conducting of e-discussions, and performance of detailed case studies based on field visits to about five or six such innovative initiatives. A final workshop was held in December 2005, to disseminate the results; the workshop also helped to generate directions for future collaborative work on these issues. A book,Community-Based Natural Resource Management: Issues and Cases from South Asia, has also been published in 2007 by SAGE.

Our findings suggest that outcomes of interventions are significantly influenced by the manner in which project implementers envisage change. Further, instead of long-term changes in governance structures, the state and donor agencies have co-opted CBNRM for well-funded but inappropriate projects. This narrowing of the practice and vision of CBNRM has also reduced the space available to independent initiatives that may be trying to promote more democratic and responsible resource management. 

Contact: cised@isec.ac.in

 

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