CBNRM Succes Includes You!

Community Based Natural Resource Management has become a buzzword of our time when it comes to natural resource management. What does this new approach actually include, and what are the strengths and weaknesses of this approach, which seeks to combine rural development and conservation of natural resources at the same time?

By Astrid Ornas

Community Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) is a new approach emerging in Zambia as well as in other parts of the world. It is an approach that is trying to combine rural development and conservation of natural resources.

This approach is to a large extent replacing the conventional top-down conservation approach, which only sought to protect the wildlife and the forests from the people with comprehensive environmental and developmental consequences.

Involvement of people

First of all CBNRM provides a tool to combine conservation of natural resources and rural development, which traditionally have been contradicting each other.

Secondly, CBNRM brings attention to the involvement of people and the sharing of rights, responsibilities, benefits and obligations between people and the state, contrary to the former top-down approach. Thirdly, CBNRM has been linked to poverty reduction because it suggests that people can develop from the sustainable use of the natural resources found in their close environment.

It is from this background that the international donor community and other stakeholders have focused on CBNRM the last decades, and why several Southern African countries have embraced CBNRM as a rural development strategy. In Mozambique for instance, poverty reduction through access to natural resources is one of the main themes of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) signed for 2001-2005 by the Mozambican government.

Definition and objectives of CBNRM

CBNRM is a resource management model that assigns all or a proportion of ownership, rights and control over natural resources to a designated group of local people or a designed local institution. CBNRM is embracing the theory and principles of decentralisation of control and decision-making and community participation and empowerment.

The main assumptions behind the CBNRM approach are that communities are interested and willing to engage in CBNRM as long as the total benefits exceed the total cost of participating, and secondly, that control and responsibility over natural resource management is given to the local communities. If these two assumptions are not met, it is likely that the CBNRM project will fail.

Capacity to manage power

When local communities are given the opportunity to decide over the natural resources in their area and responsible for implementing democracy and property rights, they become responsible for the development of effective and sustainable natural resource management strategies.

However, it is important to ensure that the communities have the capacity to manage this power, which is often not the case. Therefore it is advisable that the project management is shared between the state, community and donors.

The Joint Forest Management (JFM) projects in Zambia are examples of where such a management strategy is promoted.

The decision-making capacity of the communities can be enhanced by continuous empowerment of the people enabling them to manage their power and taking control over the activities that affect their lives. This mobilisation of their own capacities makes them become social actors, rather than passive subjects.

People may have other concerns

A danger in taking decentralization and participation too far is that the communities may have a totally different agenda than the CBNRM project planners. What a CBNRM project defines as a problem (which may be the entire reason for the project’s existence), e.g. deforestation or decline in the wildlife population, may not be a concern for local communities, which are more likely to be concerned with day-to-day survival issues.

Thus, need to balance local participation and interest in conservation, to avoid potential conflicts between project agendas and communities concerning participation.

Like in all other development projects it is important to ensure that the communities are agreeable to the objectives of the project.

Communities have to be real participants

As a consequence of the fact that communities may have a different agenda than the CBNRM project planners, (and which may or may not match the objectives of various projects or donors), true participation is often only developed after a project has already been accepted and is under implementation.

When participation in development and conservation projects is treated as a means rather than as a primary objective; when the communities are just ‘invited’ to participate as a means to obtain sustainable resource management, there will always be a danger that the communities develop a negative attitude towards the project.

This may undermine the success of CBNRM. Thus, these factors are important to take into consideration when natural resource management projects are designed and implemented.

There has to be something in it for you & me

To give people incentive to engage in CBNRM, it is crucial that the total benefits exceed the total costs. Local communities have to receive sufficient benefits to change their behaviour from exploiting forest resources and wildlife, to conserving it.

Thus, this perspective suggests that it is an economic rationale that forms the various ways in which forest resources and wildlife are managed. People will manage their resources in the way that gives them the most benefit.

Ways to generate benefits is through income generating activities like beekeeping, pit sawing, fruit collection etc. The key is to establish one or more livelihood activities that are linked to and directly dependent on the biodiversity. This leaves solid incentives for the communities to manage and protect the natural resources.

Fair distribution of the benefits

One thing is the benefit generation, but another issue is the benefit distribution and use. It is necessary to consider how the benefits and costs are distributed within the community and between the communities and other stakeholders. If certain key groups who make sacrifices or carry significant costs are excluded from receiving benefits, then this will work against the success of CBNRM.

CBNRM have different mechanisms for distributing benefits and thereby give people an incentive to participate in CBNRM. One benefit-sharing arrangement includes payment of dividends to each household, or community members may receive a share according to the amount of work they have put into the project.

The beaty of this approach is the immediate and direct benefit to the individual and household. However, the shares in this individual benefit sharing arrangement in most cases become too small and insignificant and do not meet people’s day-to-day income needs, consumption goods and employment that should prevent them from engaging in activities which damage wildlife or forests.

The other alternative is common sharing where the benefits are used communally (health centres, schools, roads etc.).

These are valuable benefits, but may not give direct benefits to the individual who may find this kind of bene-fit sharing a drawback in relation to the livelihood needs, where it becomes difficult to meet basic needs such as food, school fees etc. Secondly, using common benefits derived from CBNRM on social services, which are normally a responsibility of the government, can be questioned.

Future challenges for CBNRM

First, a major challenge on institutional level is shifting the attention away from conservation per se, and focus more specifically on addressing livelihood and rural development at a household level – not simply as a means to achieve conservation, but as an important objective in its own right.

This can be done by shifting the attention to supporting local capacity to address improved participation and, in doing so, develop a more inclusive approach to planning that specifically addresses issues of livelihood security and diversification at a household level. In doing this, CBNRM would become more of a rural development strategy than it is in its current manifestation.

Secondly, if CBNRM is going to become a viable strategy for poor rural people to engage in, their legal land tenure rights have to be secured. Otherwise the risk of involvement and investment in CBNRM is too high and uncertain for rural populations and the economic benefits threatend.

Thirdly, to raise the environmental awareness among the local communities, to make them realise that they, for their own future’s sake, also should be interested in sustainable utilisation of the natural resources, remains a substantial challenge.

From this background top down approach can be justified towards environmental awareness raising and natural resource management projects. It is argued that local people’s knowledge within the environmental area is not profound enough to grasp and realise the harm that they cause to the environment and their own development potential today, which will cause the downturn of their livelihood in future.

Fourthly, a key challenge for CBNRM projects is to make sure that the total benefits exceed the total cost of participating. Without being able to create such a situation, it is unlikely that CBNRM projects will succeed. Establishing of various low-cost income generating activities can be a solution for people to generate an income that exceed the costs of a more controlled management; and secondly it will give the communities incentives to improve the management and protection of the resources.

Fifth, to make CBNRM a useful development concept, there is need for clear definitions, which outlines useful designs and implementations. Furthermore, it is necessary for the countries implementing CBNRM to ensure that harmonised CBNRM policies exist for use in managing wildlife or forests, or other natural resources.