Sierra Ison, Jeremy Hills, Cherie W. Morris, Selina M. Stead
Marine Protected Areas (MPA) are mostly studied from an environmental context. A review of available information identified a lack of knowledge in sustainable mechanisms to finance MPA networks. At the United Nations Ocean Conference in 2017, Fiji reaffirmed its voluntary commitment to make 30% of its inshore and offshore marine area MPAs by 2020 under Sustainable Development Goal 14. The work presented here uses empirical data to explore potential benefits from selected community-based MPAs to recipient local stakeholders. A Willingness to Pay (WTP) and Willingness to Contribute Time (WtCT) method was used to explore the extent to which bottom-up governance systems represent a potential financing mechanism of a MPA network. Results of 115 interviews concluded that proximity to a fishing market, dependence on marine resources, food security, income and international commitments were significant variables influencing stakeholder's WTP and WtCT to manage a MPA. We argue that there is a discrepancy between WtCT and WTP driven by income constraints. Thus, by using WTP and WtCT to support financing of a MPA network, a Provincial Trust Fund (PTF) could promote an equitable and benefits-based contribution. Equally important, a PTF has a polycentric and decentralized governance model, which endorses sustainable management of traditional fishing communities. The conclusions provide insight into a bottom-up approach for long-term financial sustainability of Fiji's national MPA commitments.
Open access
Economic and Environmental Valuation
Coral and Marine Ecosystems Studies
Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management
In this policy review, we analyze two payments for hydrological services matching programs operating in the Antigua water basin in the state of Veracruz, Mexico. Mexico’s Matching Program was created to transition from the national payments for hydrological services program to programs that would be financed by local governments, local water users and the private sector. Based on the analysis of organizational documents and key informant interviews with institutional actors, we describe the distinctive origins and organizational structures of these two programs, and how these differences have led to unique challenges for each program. We conclude that payments for ecosystem services programs that incorporate community-level organization and extensive technical assistance, along with expanded direct payments from ecosystem service users, have the greatest potential for achieving long-term sustainability.
Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management
The last forty years has seen both unprecedented loss of natural tropical forests and innovation in forest governance, implying that more work is needed to refine the theory and practice of forest governance in a carbon challenged world. This dissertation used the Tanzanian case of the recently introduced international program to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) to empirically explore the design and performance of emerging forest governance arrangements. Drawing from extensive ethnographic field data (participant and non-participant observations, oral histories, key informant interviews, focus group discussions, documentary reviews and household surveys) conducted over five years (2009-2014), with actors in Kilwa and Lindi Districts in South-Eastern Tanzania, this dissertation makes several contributions organized into three substantive chapters. The first chapter, entitled “Negotiating forests under the REDD+ context in South-Eastern Tanzania” provides descriptions of how local forest residents creatively deploy the use of modern technologies of mobility (cellphones and motorcycles) and the discourses of decentralization, democracy and participation to continue performing otherwise banned cultural-ecological practices of shifting cultivation and wood extraction blamed for the reported forest disappearance. The second chapter, entitled “Deliberative democracy and the making and unmaking of illegitimate forest institutions” exposes and analyzes the paradoxical eruption of REDD+ resistance despite the adoption of participatory and democratic processes in making and implementing REDD+ interventions arguing that the adoption of deliberative democratic processes remain alien to local residents and has resulted in the production of legally legitimate but democratically illegitimate and often unfair forest institutions pushing local residents to opt for resistance as alternative mechanisms for contesting the introduced forest institutions. The third chapter, entitled “Mismatched: why do REDD+ payments fail to avoid deforestation in human dominated miombo ecosystems?” challenges and expands on the application of recently introduced carbon payment as an innovative financing scheme for encouraging adoption of sustainable forest management practices in the tropics. I argue that when those inadequate payments are aligned to seasonality of cultural-ecological practices causing forest change and if injected at the appropriate spatial scale (individual and/or community) where decisions affecting forests are made, they have a greater chance of achieving intended impacts.
Open access
Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management
A Bertrand, Sigrid Aubert, P. Montagne, AC Lohanivo · 5 authors
Les auteurs dressent une rétrospective de la mise en oeuvre de la politique environnementale et forestière 1990-2013 qui repose sur quatre lois, à savoir la Charte de l’environnement (loi 90-033 du 21 décembre 1990), la GELOSE (loi 96-025 du 30 septembre 1996), la loi forestière (loi 97-017 du 8 août 1997) et le Code des Aires protégées (loi 2001-005 du 11 février 2003). Vingt ans après l’adoption de la Nouvelle Politique Forestière, un bilan est possible. Ces textes ont connu un début d’application avec un bilan décevant dans un contexte surtout marqué par une extension de la superficie des aires protégées. Dans le même temps, des évolutions importantes et positives sont apparues. Avec la décentralisation, l’.é.tat de droit s’est construit quotidiennement au niveau des communes à travers les guichets fonciers, les contrats de transferts de gestion et les expériences positives de contrôle forestier décentralisé. Ont également été réalisées des expériences concluantes de valorisation économique des ressources forestières exploitées dans le cadre des transferts de gestion : bois d’oeuvre, bois énergie, raphia, huiles essentielles. Il est donc possible, en novembre 2013, d’envisager de façon réaliste une relance vigoureuse de la politique forestière en tenant compte des invariants comme les faibles effectifs de l’administration et la modicité des financements extérieurs aléatoires. Il est d’abord nécessaire de répondre aux urgences : décrets à publier et à appliquer ; mise en oeuvre systématique des avantages économiques prévus pour les communautés de base signataires des contrats de transfert de gestion. . . . ; sécurisation des espaces communs sous contrats de transfert de gestion. Il faut enfin et surtout faire de la valorisation conservatoire des ressources des produits forestiers ligneux et non ligneux le moteur du développement local.This paper presents a retrospective on the implementation of Malagasy environmental and forest policy between 1990 and 2013 on the basis of four laws, namely the Environmental Charter (Law 90-033 of 21 December 1990), GELOSE (Law 95-025 of 30 September 1996), the Forest Law (Law 97-017 of 8 August 1997) and the Protected Areas Code (Law 2001-005 of 11 February 2003). Twenty years after the adoption of the new forest policy, an assessment is possible. These texts have started to be applied but with disappointing results, primarily centered on the increase of protected area coverage. Nevertheless, important and positive changes have occurred. With decentralization, the reach of the law has increased day by day in communes through land offices, management transfer contracts, and positive experiences of decentralized forest control. Successful experiences of the economic valorization of forest resources (such as timber, fuelwood, raphia palm and essential oils), have also been gained within management transfers. It is therefore possible, in December 2013, to realistically envisage a strong revival of forest policy, even accounting for permanent constraints such as the weakness of the forest administration and the uncertainty of external funding. It is first necessary to respond to urgent needs; to publish and apply un-finalized decrees, to systematically establish the economic benefits anticipated for the community signatories of management transfer contracts, and to secure common property areas within management transfers. Most importantly, the sustainable economic valorization of woody and non - woody forest products should be used as a tool for local development.
Open access
French Urban and Social Studies
Agriculture and Rural Development Research
Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management
Dieudonne Alemagi, Peter A. Minang, Mireille Feudjio, Lalisa Duguma
Cameroon has been a keen participant in Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation plus conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of carbon stocks (REDD+) negotiations since 2005 and has engaged in activities to enhance the implementation of REDD+. This article reviews progress on REDD+ readiness in Cameroon based on a multiple REDD+ functions framework. Results show that some progress has been made in terms of planning and coordination, institutional development, and the development of some REDD+ projects. Absence of a legal framework, inadequate procedures for stakeholder participation, slow progress in the development of a national strategy, monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) challenges, and weak financing remain prominent constraints. Despite having one of the slowest REDD Readiness Preparation Proposal (R-PP) processes in the Congo Basin, stakeholders feel strong ownership because the R-PP was done almost entirely by Cameroonian experts. Some opportunities for improving REDD+ can be considered going forward, including the establishment of procedures for a broader participatory process, speeding up the operationalization of the National Observatory on Climate Change, making use of the ongoing forestry law reform, consideration of a carbon concessions concept, tapping from international initiatives to build on MRV, and improving benefit sharing and financing through the development of an appropriate and decentralized mechanism. Enhancing these opportunities is fundamental for successful REDD+ implementation in Cameroon.Policy relevanceThis article offers a new multidimensional approach to assessing the REDD+ readiness process in Cameroon. This critical assessment, which is done using six key functions, provides an opportunity for enhanced understanding of the process by policy makers, decision makers, and professionals with a view to enabling improvements in the readiness process. Furthermore, the article proffers a series of opportunities that the government and other relevant stakeholders can capitalize on to overcome current hurdles affecting the REDD+ readiness process. It is hoped that policy makers driving the REDD+ process in Cameroon will be able to incorporate the findings of this research into their strategic policy, formulated to advance the REDD+ readiness process. More importantly, it is hoped that the multidimensional framework applied in this study could be useful for assessing REDD+ in similar contexts in the Congo Basin.
Open access
Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management
Gebara M.F., L. Muccillo, May P., Claudia Suzanne Marie Nathalie Vitel · 6 authors
Key lessons While the constitutional rights (e.g. property rights) of indigenous peoples (IP) are strong in Brazil and may help to overcome their vulnerability, they are rarely enforceable and do not offer sufficient safeguards. Informed consultation and a structured free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) process that considers cultural issues are fundamental to ensuring acceptance and consent by IP. Local environmental funds can be a tool for increasing autonomy and decentralization while sharing benefits with IP and financing long-term and specific demands that can change over time. Safeguard strategies implemented by the Amazon Fund to avoid conflicts of interest may result in restrictions on the participation of IP, having implications related to the legitimacy of decision-making in the distribution of benefits. The absence of timely financial flows to meet IP needs may be a considerable risk since it can encourage environmentally damaging activities. Relying on the voluntary market may be risky for IP initiatives because of market instability and possible lack of funding.
Open access
Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management
Key messages In different provinces or districts, the same laws can be applied in very different ways. Participation of customary land users and local communities remains ad hoc and requires that implementing regulations are strengthened, as the existing safeguarding laws are not sufficiently specific. Further developments of safeguarding laws and regulations (specifically the distribution of benefits from carbon financing) need to be well defined and better aligned with decentralization processes. Subnational actors are unclear on their role in a national REDD+ strategy and how they will be involved in decision making. REDD+ is challenged by a misalignment between land use decision-making powers and REDD+ management powers allocated to different bodies and levels.
Open access
Indonesian Legal and Regulatory Studies
Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management
Sandra De Urioste-Stone, William J. McLaughlin, Nick Sanyal, Ella Inglebret · 5 authors
Co-administration, as a joint protected area governance approach, has increased substantially around the world. In Guatemala, one of the most rapidly growing forms of co-administration is that of protected areas managed by municipal governments in conjunction with central government agencies. There are high expectations for these protected areas coadministered by municipalities to ensure local participation and strengthen the government’s ongoing decentralization and conservation processes. However, little research has been conducted on the outcomes of these types of arrangements. This study presents an in-depth understanding about the co-administration of the Regional Municipal Protected Area of Zunil, from the perspective of different stakeholders. The Participatory Action Research Methodology was used to promote participation, learning, and action. The key area of strength of the current co-administration efforts in Zunil identified by co-participants was increased institutional coordination as reflected in such operational programs as environmental education, wildlife monitoring, and patrolling. The key area of weakness identified by co-participants was administrative structures and processes such as inadequate financing mechanisms, lack of processes to increase capacities of personnel, high and frequent rotation of personnel, and lack of active involvement of local stakeholders. In this case, successful co-administration required building human and social capital; ensuring mutual benefits for stakeholders involved; promoting involvement and active participation of local communities; negotiating and signing a shared co-management agreement; engaging in inclusive decision-making; improving organizational structures at the local level; and promoting sustainable development initiatives (e.g. tourism).
Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management
A theory of payment for ecosystem services (PES) pricing consistent with dynamic efficiency and sustainable income requires optimized shadow prices. Since ecosystem services are generally interdependent, this requires joint optimization across multiple resource stocks. We develop such a theory in the context of watershed conservation and groundwater extraction. The optimal program can be implemented with a decentralized system of ecosystem payments to private watershed landowners, financed by efficiency prices of groundwater set by a public utility. The theory is extended to cases where land is publicly owned, conservation instruments exhibit non-convexities on private land, or the size of a conservation project is exogenous. In these cases, conservation investment can be financed from benefit taxation of groundwater consumers. While volumetric conservation surcharges induce inefficient water use, a dynamic lump-sum tax finances investment without distorting incentives. Since the optimal level of conservation is generated as long as payments are correct at the margin, any surplus can be returned to consumers through appropriate block pricing. The present value gain in consumer surplus generated by the conservation-induced reduction in groundwater scarcity serves as a lower bound to the benefits of conservation without explicit measurement of other benefits such as recreation, biodiversity, and cultural values.
Open access
2 source records
Economic and Environmental Valuation
Water resources management and optimization
Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management
R. Lilian E. Painter, Alejandra Alfonso Durán, E. MIRO
One of the central conservation debates over the last quarter of a century has been the effect of conservation initiatives on local livelihoods. Most recently, numerous negative evaluations have been made of both coercive top-down approaches to management of protected areas, which were dominant before the 1980s and focused on enforcement of protection, and efforts to decentralize governance and increase local participation in resource-management initiatives linked to markets. These critiques are subsets of the general criticism of neoliberal conservation, which is characterized by a lesser role for the public sector, privatization of natural resources, and a greater role for market forces (McCarthy & Prudham 2004; Igoe & Brockington 2007). When natural resources are treated as commodities and state control over them is reduced, local stakeholders in remote rural areas, in particular indigenous peoples, can lose access to critical resources for their livelihoods to economic elites with greater resources to respond to economic opportunities. In this essay, we discuss what conservation means for the indigenous peoples living next to Madidi and Pilon Lajas protected areas in the Bolivian Amazon, a region of high species diversity and levels of endemism, where the state, local stakeholders, and several nongovernmental organizations have implemented numerous projects focused on maintaining biological diversity and improving local livelihoods. These conservation initiatives have strengthened management of protected areas and buffer zones, promoted sustainable natural-resource-use projects, and strengthened mechanisms for local participation in management of natural resources and protected areas. In addition, governance conditions have enabled alliances between conservation organizations and indigenous peoples. Of particular importance, a strong indigenous political movement has established partnerships with conservation practitioners. These partnerships are based on the recognition of rights of indigenous peoples to develop their own representative organizations and secure legal property rights over their ancestral lands. In 1990, before most of the protected areas in Central and South America were established (UNEP-WCMC 2010), the indigenous peoples in the Bolivian Amazon mobilized to obtain legal recognition of their territorial rights. Hence, the importance of indigenous territories for the cultural survival and livelihoods of Amazonian groups, as well as their entitlement to maintain or develop organizational and representation structures and promote traditional practices of natural resource use, has been recognized since the creation of the national protected-area system in Bolivia. The majority of protected areas in Latin America were established after constitutional reforms recognized the multiple cultural and ethnic characteristics of their countries (Van Cott 2010). The principal focus of these reforms was the design and consolidation of democratic institutions, but indigenous movements capitalized on the reforms to demand political inclusion and minimization of the negative effects of development in their traditional lands. The reforms built on the global indigenous mobilization to obtain recognition of their rights through the International Labor Organization No. 169 Convention on Indigenous and Tribal People in 1989. Bolivia is in the heart of South America where the Andes, Amazon, and Chaco come together; thus, it is one of the most species-rich countries in the world (Ibisch & Merida 2003). This high species richness is accompanied by a high cultural diversity. The 30 different indigenous groups present in the country represent 66% of the population, the highest percentage in Latin America (Del Popolo & Oyarce 2005). Forty-four indigenous lands are linked to protected areas in Bolivia, 30 are in the buffer zones; 5 are entirely within a protected area, and 9 overlap partially with a protected area (Salinas 2007). The relation between biological and cultural diversity is exemplified in northwestern Bolivia, a region of exceptional species richness resulting from topographical and climatic diversity and where the Bolivian government established three protected areas: Madidi National Park and Natural Area of Integrated Management (1895750 ha), Apolobamba Natural Area of Integrated Management (483744 ha), and Pilon Lajas Biosphere Reserve and Indigenous Territory (400000 ha). Seven indigenous lands overlap or border these protected areas: the Lecos Apolo, Lecos Larecaja, San Jose de Uchupiamonas, Mosetene, Takana I, Takana II, and Pilon Lajas (T’simane Mosetene). The meaning of conservation, as used by contemporary conservation practitioners, in relation to these seven indigenous groups has evolved as a result of threats to biological diversity that also threaten indigenous lands and livelihoods, in particular illegal timber extraction, new settlements, and, more recently, large energy and infrastructure projects. These shared threats have brought together conservation and indigenous organizations in efforts to preserve biological diversity and develop sustainable economic activities, based in natural resource extraction and ecotourism, to improve indigenous livelihoods. There has been increasing consensus among Bolivian conservation practitioners that empowering local communities through the consolidation of their territorial rights establishes a strong constituency for maintaining protected areas. The Amazonian Bolivian indigenous movement worked for land reforms to establish indigenous lands as collective property which cannot be sold or divided. This has prevented land titling from opening up these areas to private markets and has led to strengthening access by indigenous communities to their traditional indigenous lands, including those overlapping protected areas. Under this approach the Bolivian Protected Area Service (SERNAP) and Wildlife Conservation Society have worked to support effective participation of the indigenous communities and their representative organizations in the land-titling process by developing their capacity to use spatial analyses to guide internal consensus and negotiations with nonindigenous neighbors. As a result, legal titles have been obtained for over 672941 ha of Takana, Lecos Apolo, and Lecos Larecaja indigenous lands. The Bolivian government has also recognized the San Jose de Uchupiamonas and T’simane Mosetene indigenous lands, which completely overlap with Madidi and Pilon Lajas protected areas. Parallel to the process of land titling, the indigenous organizations have received support from the Bolivian government and international and Bolivian nongovernmental organizations to develop and implement indigenous territorial plans (CIPTA 2002; CRTM-SERNAP 2007; CIPLA 2010; PILCOL 2010). Indigenous communities have received support to control illegal timber extraction, wildlife hunting, and forest clearance by outside settlers. As a result, deforestation rates within the indigenous lands are similar to those in neighboring protected areas and are much lower than in unprotected areas in the region (Forrest et al. 2008). Monitoring of wild animals has shown that current hunting levels are sustainable, connectivity for movements of these animals between the protected areas and surrounding indigenous land is being maintained, and illegal hunting is being prevented (Chumacero et al. 2010; R. Wallace, private communication). Several community-based tourism, cacao, handicraft, coffee, and palm-management initiatives have been established with support from the protected-area service and nongovernmental organizations, and these provide increased family incomes and greater control of the land by indigenous peoples. For example, in 1992, no indigenous forestry-management organizations existed in this region and indigenous peoples were engaged in forestry as contract laborers under unfair terms. Today, there are over 20 indigenous, community-level forestry associations. Hence, conservation programs have favored devolution of natural resource management to the indigenous organizations and promoted both social justice and conservation. Democratization of decision making has replaced a system in which decisions were made by local nonindigenous elites. Indigenous communities have established internal consensus, developed their technical capacity, and then engaged other organizations from a position of strength. The last 25 years have marked a transition period for the valuation of indigenous culture and for indigenous peoples’ leadership in the establishment of protected areas that are integrated with indigenous lands in landscapes managed for both improved indigenous livelihoods and conservation. The support of conservation organizations has been critical to the development of indigenous capacity to manage their land and resources and has avoided the problems associated with devolution of regulatory responsibility to local organizations without the necessary skills (McCarthy & Prudham 2004). The Bolivian experience supports the hypothesis that when indigenous peoples have recognized land rights, autonomy, and establish clear regulations about access to and use of natural resources, relatively large forest areas are less likely to be intensively exploited (Chhatre & Agrawal 2009). Indigenous organizations in Bolivia have exclusive land rights, and consolidating their organizational and technical capacity is critical to ensure they continue to protect the ecological integrity of their territories from expanding extraction of natural resources. In the next quarter century, indigenous organizations need to monitor the effectiveness of their territorial management plans and develop sustainable finance strategies to implement the plans that include the contributions of community natural resource management to the collective costs of territorial defense. They also need to develop incentives for maintaining vulnerable areas without human extractive uses (e.g., valuing environmental services). The external challenge to meeting indigenous demands for greater political and administrative autonomy is state development of road, mining, and energy projects throughout the Amazon. Conflicts with gold miners, loggers, and large development projects are intensifying and conservation professionals and indigenous peoples are allied to improve practices and governance of these projects. Traditionally, Amazonian indigenous institutions base decisions on consensus and encourage widespread participation. Accordingly, strengthening their capacity for conflict resolution could also help increase transparency and broaden citizen participation during the consultation processes associated with these projects. Two aspects have facilitated the alliance between conservation organizations and indigenous organizations in Bolivia. First, the political strength of indigenous organizations established a favorable legal framework for recognition of their territorial rights. Second, human population densities within Amazonian indigenous territories are relatively low, so there is still opportunity to achieve goals for improved livelihoods through natural resource use and conservation and to reconcile these two purposes. Indigenous peoples in Amazonia use a wide range of forest products that require sustainable management of large areas. Their capacity to articulate and defend their traditional rights on the basis of these requirements will determine the future of much of the Amazon. Conservation professionals have important roles to play in identifying critical connectivity requirements between strict protection cores and the surrounding matrix; identifying the area of indirect effect of development projects by modeling land use resulting from changes in economic drivers, political and regulatory conditions, and local topography; guiding implementation of actions to achieve no net loss of biological diversity and local livelihoods, as represented in indigenous territorial plans; and documenting the importance of territorial rights over natural areas for indigenous livelihoods and cultural survival. Lilian Painter is a Bolivian wildlife ecologist who has worked with the Wildlife Conservation Society in northern La Paz since 2001. She supports Takana, Lecos, T’simane, and Mosetene indigenous communities in land-use planning. Angel Duran is a Leco indigenous leader and ex Vice-President of the Lecos Apolo organization. He has led the land-titling and land-planning processes of the Leco communities and successful negotiations with nonindigenous neighbors, local authorities, and the protected-area service. Edwin Miro is the past president of the T’simane Mosetene Regional Council and has led the land-titling and land-planning processes of the communities in the Pilon Lajas Biosphere Reserve and Indigenous Territory. As a result Pilon Lajas is jointly managed by the indigenous organization and the Bolivian protected-area service. We thank K. Redford and E. Fleishman for their valuable comments on this essay.
Open access
Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management
Governing Africa's Forests in a Globalised World (2010) is the result of a collaborative effort of many different parties in government and university. The authors include foresters, anthropologists, social scientists and geographers. This mix makes the work comprehensive and multidisciplinary and multi-stakeholders approach for drawing implications from the empirical findings for policy and practice. There are two main sections in the work: the first deals with decentralization, livelihoods and sustainable forest management, and the second covers international trade, finance and forest governance reforms.
African history and culture studies
Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management
Biodiversity conservation outcomes are closely related to the rules and institutions governing resource use. Creating local incentives for conservation through more secure resource tenure is central to conservation outcomes on private and communal lands, where the preponderance of biodiversity occurs. Conservation efforts in sub-Saharan Africa are therefore centrally concerned with governance dynamics and institutional reform processes, such as the decentralization of property rights, and how best to achieve such reforms. Traditional mechanisms for financing conservation efforts in Africa rely heavily on funds channeled through multilateral and bilateral aid agencies. The history of development aid highlights a range of constraints these aid agencies face in terms of working toward more effective resource governance arrangements and promoting reforms. Government aid agencies possess incentives for promoting large-scale and short-term projects that maximize expenditure volumes and tend to define issues in technical rather than political terms. The history of development aid suggests that these and other characteristics of aid agencies impedes their ability to influence governance reform processes and that aid funding may discourage the adoption of reforms. Greater emphasis in African conservation financing needs to be placed on flexible, small-scale investments aligned to local interests and constituencies that prioritize innovation, learning, and experimentation. Additionally, more research is required that explores the linkages between conservation funding, donor decision-making processes, and governance reforms.
Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management
On January 8, 1997, the former President of Brazil, Fernando Enrique Cardoso signed the National Water Resource Policy into law (Law No. 9.433, 1997). The key principles of the National Water Policy include: an integrated approach with the river basin as the planning unit, water as a fragile and finite resource, water as an economic good, and finally, decentralized and participatory management of the resource (Formiga and Scatasta, forthcoming). The legislation provided for the implementation of bulk water pricing with the resulting revenues meant to finance the activities mandated by basin committees in the watershed area of Rio Paraíba Do Sul (in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, and also in the state of Minas Gerais, that basin committee is Comitê para Integraςão da Bacia Hidrográfica do Rio Paraíba Do Sul (CEIVAP) (Abers and Keck, 2004). To improve the sustainability of many different resources it is a widely accepted concept that charging a fee for something will spur sparing use by the target audience, particularly if the price is high. One-hundred percent of the collected monies have been invested within the basin; mainly designated to the following: non-structural institutional interventions, sediment control projects, and municipal wastewater treatment. Payments from agriculture and small hydroelectric plants have been mostly symbolic or non-existent and payments from other sectors have not been high enough to maintain a sustainable system. Convincing those that have not been actively participating is central to the success of this initiative: this paper will explain a framework called Social Marketing which is becoming more widely used throughout the globe to inspire behavior change. Social Marketing is a tool that can be used to persuade more users to pay the cobrança.
Open access
Water resources management and optimization
Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management
Nelson Turyahabwe, C. J. Geldenhuys, Stephen Watts, A.Y. Banana
Uganda is one of the sub-Saharan African countries that has devolved the management of forest resources. Meaningful devolution, however, requires that local governments and other community organizations should have capacity in terms of adequate and competent human resources, finance, information, skills, and the appropriate legal framework to effectively deliver services. This paper examines the technical and institutional capacity in selected local organisations to manage decentralised forest resources in Uganda. We found that technical and institutional capacity to implement decentralised forest governance exists in local organisations through partnerships with other actors in the productive use of the available resources. Local organisations mobilised and managed human, physical and financial resources for decentralized forest management. They also demonstrated the capacity to make and implement integrated plans and budgets and formulated byelaws regulating forest use. Our findings, however, revealed that none of the organisations had either the legal mandate or sufficient human and physical resources to govern forest resources unilaterally due to inadequate devolution of decision-making powers and inadequate fiscal support from the central government. The findings suggest a need for local organisations to recruit more technical staff, strengthen internal sources of revenue and networking amongst organisations both at local and national government levels for effective management of decentralised forest resources.
Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management
Abstract This paper is contextualized within postcolonial movements for social justice and ecological restoration in India, enabled through the emergent participation of diverse and subaltern stakeholders. This paper engages shifts in forest management in India. Within this frame, it refers to public forest lands reform initiatives in Orissa, a state in eastern India. In 1997-98, assisted by the Swedish International Development Agency, a review was conducted of forest management systems in Orissa. The intention was to understand microlevel frameworks within the state toward the transfer of authority over public forest lands from the government to local communities. Using information generated by this review, this paper discusses critical concerns in Orissa. ********** Explanations Within movements for social change currently underway in South Asia and India, development reforms imply a multitude of contradictions and complexities to a diverse constituency of stakeholders. Such reforms instigate discussions and debate on sustainable development and raise strategic questions related to the role and responsibility of the State and international agencies to marginalized rural communities, and of community access to livelihood resources. It speaks to possibilities of social and ecological restitution that confront critical concerns of governmental decentralization, and relocation of authority and resources. This paper is informed by research connected to public forest lands reform in Orissa, a state in eastern India. In 1997-98, the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA), the Swedish Government's international development assistance program, aided a review of forest management systems in Orissa. The intention was to understand microlevel frameworks within the state of Orissa toward the decentralization of forest management. A primary objective was to reframe the fabric of donor-community-government collaborations. The aim was to operationalize development mechanisms that embody the ethical commitments of postcolonial advocacy and action in India. I was involved in this process, and responsible for conducting a Statewide participatory assessment of management systems related to public forest lands. (See Chatterji, 1998.) The SIDA review supported participatory and generative methods of inquiry. It produced openings for limited participation of citizens in decision making within consultative governmental forums on public forest lands management. The review submitted its recommendations to SIDA in 1998. These recommendations constituted a proposal for future action linked to the devolution of authority over public forest lands, requesting SIDA financing for an implementation phase in Orissa. This implementation phase would facilitate capacity building for public lands reform through a reorganization and decentralization of the forest department and support to community institutions. In 1998, India conducted nuclear experiments, and in 1999-2000 SIDA retracted its support, citing its differences over India's nuclear politics as a primary reason for its withdrawal. While implicitly committed to anti-nuclear military policies, I would like to acknowledge the problematics of North-South relations where attempts at political/military self-assertion by ex-colonies are policed and met with punitive aid sanctions. (1) Reciprocal penalties are not enforcible on countries of the Global North as they continue to set the standard for nuclear stockpiling or participate in nuclear proliferation. The history of manufactured debt, and the plundering of the resources of former colonies, makes donor aid a critical component of human rights activities in the Global South. This is especially true as the debt of the colonizers to the most underprivileged sections of these societies have never been calculated or repaid. Revoking aid impacts the most margilanized sections of these societies who, ironically, do not have access to decision making that relate to nuclear policy. …
Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management
The Earth Summit of 1992 ushered in art era of global environmental management based on conventions signed by governments, international panels of experts, global environmental monitoring centres, and interventions of international non-governmental organization (NGOs) working in collaboration with donor nations and aid recipient governinents. The framework for global environmental management articulated within the Report of the United Nations Commission on Environment and Development (UNCED) is based upon a conception of sustainable development which draws together strands of economic development based on neoliberal, free market development with environmental protection. Breaking with previous conceptions of environmental protection, as being dependent upon a transformation of world capitalist markets and a limitation of economic growth, it is argued that environmental protection is dependent upon sustained economic growth and the expansion of new technologies that make more efficient utilisation of natural resources possible without depleting the natural environment. The UNCED report is participatory and inclusive. It places a special emphasis on community participation in the management of resources within localities and addresses the needs of ensuring the rights of minorities to natural resources and to participation in environmental management, including the rights of worriers and people. This is clearly seen in the capacity building programme on promoting Sustainable and Rural Development of UNCED, which lists as its objectives; a) To promote greater public awareness of the role of people's participation and people's organizations, especially women's groups, youth, indigenous people, local communities and small farmers, in sustainable agriculture and development; b)To ensure equitable access of rural people, particularly women, small farmers, landless and indigenous to land, water and forest resources and to technologies, financing, marketing, processing and distribution; c) To strengthen and develop the management and internal capacities of rural people's organizations and extension services and to decentralize decision-making to the lowest community level (UNCED 1992:185) This marks a turning point away from earlier mainstream approaches to environmental management, which were essentially based on legislation and regulations enacted and implemented by specialised government departments. The new emphasis is on a greater participation of civil society in managing the environment, empowerment of women in environmental decision-making, and respect for the cultural integrity and rights of people and the sharing of experience and knowledge. But does this really represent the empowerment of rural and their increasing control over the management of natural resources and their associated production systems? Participation may also be a device through which are cajoled into implementing systems of environmental management which they have not made an input in determining and which do not reflect their immediate interests. As Henkel and Stirrat (2001: 1834 84) argue; The attempt to empower through the projects envisaged and implemented by the practitioners of the new orthodoxy is always an attempt to reshape the personhood of the participants... [P]articipatory approaches to development, far from marking a radical shift away from an ethnocentric concept of modernity are intimately part of the process of modernization itself. In fact, we argue, they might provide even more
Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management