2.1.3 Approaches to natural resource management:
It is clear that natural resources are important. What is not clear is why the world is responding so poorly to the issue of NRM, and why natural resources are facing challenges regarding efficiency of use and sustainability. The question is whether this is due to the lack of management policy or to inappropriate implementation of this policy. Sterner (2003) asserts that the main reason is the latter since:
‘‘policy does not function in a vacuum; it is heavily dependent on the overall policy environment. If the economy is not competitive and if the bureaucracies are not
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honest, well-informed [and] well-funded to carry out their responsibilities, then no policy instrument will work perfectly–although some will work better than others’’
(Sterner 2003:67).
A range of studies have aimed at generating better practical knowledge to help to improve current management policies, methods, techniques and implementation. The terms environmental governance (United Nations Development Program, et al, 2003; Murphree, 2004) and sustainable NRM (McLain and Jones, 1997; Bocoum, et al, 2003; Lynch, 2009;
Bringezu and Bleischwitz, 2009) are now used to focus on appropriate approaches for NRM.
Environmental governance encompasses a wide range of practices, including sustainable natural resource management, and is simply defined as "the exercise of authority over natural resources and the environment" (United Nations Development Program, et al, 2003:4).
Moreover, the term 'sustainable natural resource management' (SNRM) identifies the management methods that result in the sustainability of natural resources. The World Bank (2006:1) definition is "the sustainable utilization of major natural resources, such as land, water, air, minerals, forests, fisheries, and wild flora and fauna". This means ensuring better efficiency in our use of natural resources, protecting and enhancing their important characteristics, including wildlife and landscapes, and minimizing pollution and waste (SEEDA, 2002). It also means leaving options open for future generations (McLain and Jones, 1997). Relating to this notion, Bringezu and Bleischwitz (2009) identify a way by which we can develop a vision and appropriate institutions to govern change in natural resources. In this way, the use of natural resources is restricted to a sustainable level by activating the inherent tools of human beings. This means societies should use their intrinsic discernment to not only enlarge their stock of knowledge and social capital, but also utilise it
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to use fewer natural resources (Bringezu and Bleischwitz, 2009). They invite a development vision and the institutions needed to govern this type of change.
This change requires a switch to sustainable resource management protocols, which need to achieve the following seven principles:
‘‘1) secure adequate supply and efficient use of materials, energy and land resources as a reliable biophysical basis for creation of wealth and well-being in societies and for future generations; 2) maintain life-supporting function and services of ecosystems; 3) provide for the basic institutions of societies and their co-existence with nature; 4) minimise risks for security and economic turmoil due to dependence on resources; 5) contribute to a globally fair distribution of resource use and an adequate burden sharing; 6) minimise problem shifting between environmental media, types of resources, economic sectors, regions and generations; and 6) drive resource productivity at a rate higher than GDP growth’’ (Bringezu and Bleischwitz, 2009:8).
These principles could be directed – in some manner – by the seven elements of environmental governance that are cited in the book of the United Nations Development Program (2003). Some of these elements are:
‘‘1) Institutions and Laws: Who makes and enforces the rules for using natural resources? What are the rules and the penalties for breaking them? Who resolves disputes? 2) Accountability and Transparency: How do those who control and manage natural resources answer for their decisions, and to whom? How open to scrutiny is the decision-making process? 3) Property Rights and Tenure: Who owns a natural resource or has the legal right to control it? Land titles; water, mineral, fishing, or other use rights; tribal or traditional community-based property rights; logging, mining, and park recreation concessions; and 4) Markets and Financial Flows: How do financial practices, economic policies, and market behaviour influence authority over natural resources?’’ (United Nations Development Program, et al, 2003:7).
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In order to apply these principles and elements, more effort is needed to circulate their benefits to ensure environmental sustainability. The framework for monitoring environmental sustainability suggested by the World Bank (2008) in turn could properly guide these strategies. This framework illustrates the relationship between the economy and the environment: on the one hand is the production of people-made goods and services, which contributes to household well-being; while, on the other hand, is the wealth that sustains production and may also contribute directly to well-being. Wealth in such a framework unavoidably goes beyond physical and monetary resources, to include natural resources and intangibles such as human capital. Production processes may involve the exhaustion of resources, as may the direct use of resources by households, whereas other uses of resources are non-exhausting, fallowing the agricultural land is an example of which. Production and consumption both lead to pollution and waste, and modify the quality of natural resources (World Bank 2008:179-180). This means that in order to safeguard future wellbeing the existing unsustainable patterns of production and consumption have to be radically changed.
Although the management toolset is important, other elements should also be taken into account. These elements might be gathered in a set of governances that could include the decision-making framework – the laws, policies, regulations, bureaucracies, and formal procedures – within which managers make their decisions. It sets the larger context that either enables or constrains management (United Nations Development Program, et al, 2003).
Murphree (2004) examines communal approaches to NRM of wildlife in Africa. He presents a conceptual conflation and acronymic profusion, which are among the major drawbacks of policies and programmes that suggest the tag of communal approaches, for example,
‘‘Community Based Conservation (CBC), Community Conservation (CC), Integrated Conservation and Development Projects (ICDPs), Community Wildlife Management
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(CWM), Community Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM), Co-Management (CM) and Adaptive Co-Co-Management (ACM), all perceived as falling within a general family of related perspectives but each exhibiting differences of intent, emphasis and substance’’ (Murphree 2004:203-204).
Applied to Africa, he suggests three congruent and synergistically interacting objectives:
conservation, economic development and adaptive institutional capacity. He indicates that the approach cannot contribute to these objectives unless there is a 'good' understanding of the whole situation. His argument about rural institutional and organizational development proposes it as an instrumental input to the other objectives of conservation and economic development. He asserts that if the communal system is to contribute to these objectives, it must be organized and trained to do so (Murphree 2004:207). This means, that communal approaches can create viable regimes of communal property use and management if collectives of land and resource users are institutionally well-trained to interact at local levels.
By this, they can ensure a relatively normative consensus. His argument continues with the suggestion that conservation could be correctly understood in terms of changeability,
‘‘predictable states; it is better perceived of as resilience in a complex, evolving biophysical-cum-social system comprised of structures which interact across scales of place and time and which move through adaptive cycles of growth, accumulation, restructuring and renewal’’
(Murphree 2004:209). In his view, communal approaches can be important for the evolution of governance in Africa in cases where these approaches are to address effectively the arena of governance and civil organization, requiring the collective management of common pool resources. It needs also to recognize the relevant tradition of this institution, integrating into it capacities to deal with a modern African world, with changes shaped by 'commoditization, rural market penetration, socioeconomic differentiation and globalization' (Murphree, 2004:210).
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This introduces us to another diagnosis raised by Bruce and Mearns (2002) who analysed common property regimes. They see that NRM as a developmental concern, particularly on developing countries, requiring poverty eradication. This focuses on the success of natural resource projects that pose special issues for land policy and administration. They asserted that:
‘‘Natural resource management has thus taken its place alongside agriculture as a major rural development concern. New insights have emerged, which include a more integrated picture of rural livelihoods, and the understanding that they depend to a significant extent on forest and animal products extracted from beyond the farm.
There is also growing appreciation of the viability of production systems that make extensive but sustainable use of fragile resources, such as those of pastoralists’’
(Bruce and Mearns, 2002:1).
Such common resources can create their own challenges for management such as:
1. The resource accessibility with the need to create stronger user incentives for sustainable use and management;
2. The struggle between common property managers and the state system being undermined by outside pressures to re-engineer the existing system or to partition the resource users;
3. The unsuccessful state management of the resource and its use, as management, and maybe tenure, is devolved to smaller community units or households (Bruce and Mearns, 2002;
Quinn et al, 2007).
Consequently, these scholars argue for the workability of common property regimes. This acceptance is attributed to its simplicity, which is much the same as individual property, ‘‘to increase security of expectations while reducing externalities and internalizing the costs and
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benefits of use decisions, thus increasing incentives for efficient and sustainable use. The incentives are for the group, rather than the individual’’ (Bruce and Mearns, 2002:3) (see also Mehta et al, 200; Quinn et al, 2007). However, they caution about the complexity of common property regimes, as these can exhibit many of the problems of collective action. In order to solve these problems and ensure the success of these regimes, legal empowerment over the resources is required, adequate institutional capacity for decision-making and enforcement should be arranged, and sufficient community capital is needed to operate it. They suggest that interactive choices can be made to scale control over the resource. The community must be empowered to manage the resource, and that implies the power both to control use by members, and to exclude or limit access by non-members. The state and its management institutions tend to mistrust local users and seek to maintain a residual title and ultimate control over use of the land. Conversely, local users distrust the motives of such attempts to maintain control (Bruce and Mearns, 2002:3-4).
Rasmus (2002) agrees that common ownership has distinct advantages, such as equity and insurance functions, but he mentions the ‘free rider' problem that has to be overcome for communities to establish effective management. Management creates enforcement and conservation rules to prevent the risk of degradation and overuse. Generally, Rasmus believes that common property management systems deserve respect. Policy makers should avoid ignoring them and should support them with legal recognition. He wonders if common property institutions can be reasonably formed by policymakers and donors to undertake resource conservation, in case of the failure of sustainable management techniques to emerge spontaneously (Rasmus, 2002). In addition, in some studies the risk of degradation and overuse of natural resources is linked to the collapse of the regional and local common
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resource management regimes and the correlated individualization of use rights to resource units. Gerber et al,(2008) describe the situation after this type of a collapse in Switzerland as:
‘‘A heterogeneity of practices which proved difficult to coordinate at that level of resource systems (e.g. the hydrological cycle, landscape, ecosystem, biodiversity, climate, endangered plant and animal species, etc.). Because it prevents the definition of use quotas at the resource system level, the uncoordinated attribution of use rights is one of the main causes of overexploitation’’ (Gerber, et al, 2008:225).
They concur with Murphree (2004) that it is vital to take into account the fundamental role that public policies play in the regulation of natural resource use.
In short, the main theoretical approaches that clarify the evolution of NRM include the classic, the neo-liberal and neo-populist paradigms, community-based management, and integrated management. These approaches have a significant influence in the development paths of SD around the world (Pelesikoti, 2003). Table 2.1 illustrates some of these approaches and their main characteristics.
In the case of Oman, particularly the AAR, communal approaches can generate viable regimes of communal property use and management if cooperatives of land and resource users are institutionally well-trained to interact at local levels. However, to re-engineer the existing system in the region or to partition the resource users could result in a struggle between common property managers and the state. This could be solved by the successful state management of the resource and its use, as management, and maybe tenure, is combined with the traditional practices in terms of NRM.
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Table 2.1 Approaches in Natural Resources Management and their main characteristics.
The Approach Main characteristics
The ‘classic’
approach.
Its sources are from notions relating to rural development and environmental management.It was dominant from 1950-1975.
External agents (government officers, donors, researchers etc.) identify perceived problems.
External agents formulate the technical measures but the measures require community cooperation.
A combination of encouragement, persuasion, and subtle threats provide motivation to implement the plan.
This approach views local knowledge as defective and non-scientific;
it prefers to replace it with expert-led knowledge.
The neo-liberal The neo-liberal approach is associated with the World Bank.
This approach relies on incentives and regulations and is related to the economics of externalities and property rights.
The neo-populist paradigms The neo-populist paradigm rejects the top-down, techno-centric, and
state-led model of technology transfer.
It promotes a participatory style, and it became central to the development agencies by the 1980s.
The approach uses a ‘demand-driven’ model and local management or co-management of resources and services.
It chooses applicable aspects of the local knowledge.
Integrated Environmental Management As the name suggests, this approach integrates various measures (e.g.
for pollution prevention, nature conservation, and the creation of environmental facilities).
It establishes environmental policy objectives agreed-on by all stakeholders (local authorities, the local people and developers).
This approach needs quality information, monitoring, flexibility, greater environmental awareness, and good leadership.
It sees local knowledge as an integral part in the management plan.
Participatory Management Approaches, or
‘Community based’
management.
This approach allows greater community involvement in policy formulation and decision-making processes.
It promotes a transparent and accountable management authority.
It creates a responsive community in implemented management programs.
Local knowledge is conveyed through community involvement.
Source: Adapted from (Barrett, 1994; Fisher, 1995; Berkes, et al., 1989; Varady, 1999;
Imperial, 1999; Imperial, 1999; Bruce and Mearns, 2002; Pelesikoti, 2003).
29 2.1.4 The future of natural resources management:
Some scholars, researchers and related organizations summarize their future visions to approaches of common resource management regimes in terms of the key characteristics that resource management regimes should possess to ensure their continuous workability (McLain, and Jones, 1997; United Nations Development Program, 2003; Murphree, 2004).
Drawing on Murphree (2004), some of these characteristics are:
1) ''Institutional Resilience'', a key variable for communal approaches in determining their success or failure. This resilience should consider the local landscape, where the necessary social capital provides for the emergence of natural resource regimes with consensual legitimacy. However, such emergence demands decentralization of power, a transformation where power and desirable change are not heading to conflicting directions;
2) ''Selective Application'', which means to select the proper realm of communal approaches.
Because these approaches are not a panacea for the problems of environmental governance, the paramount consideration should be whether they are applicable for aligning institutional and ecological landscapes;
3) ''Systemic Integration'', which means the need for communal approaches to be dealt with as strategies that ‘scale out’ natural resource governance. In order to guarantee its workability, continuity and consistent ecosystem management, resource control needs to be dispersed between regimes of authority and responsibility. These regimes require institutional linkages between each other and between other (state or private) regimes, which could promote coordination and collaboration;
4) ''Adaptive Contextual Disaggregation'', which is a requirement of communal approaches, on the one hand, to disaggregate their endeavours to accommodate the variation involved,
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such as the local contexts and the contexts of national macro-economic systems. On the other hand, care needs to be taken not to adapt these approaches as an operation in abstract typology but rather to avoid misplaced emphases and to enhance their responsiveness to change; and
5) ''Interdependent Reciprocity in Learning'', meaning the co-dependence between communal actors and the community of scholars, practitioners, donors and policy makers. Local institutions and scholarship need each other, because the local institutions is a real lab for research in communal institutional resilience, in addition, scholarship needs to learn from local contexts, and this learning in turn needs to be relocated above the current sterile debate.
The success of communal approaches to NRM regimes rely on society participation (McLain, and Jones, 1997; United Nations Development Program, et al, 2003; Bocoum, et al, 2003;
Murphree, 2004). However, Algotsson (2006) argues that these approaches, or 'people-centred approaches' as he designates them, fail to deal with violations of natural resource laws (particularly wildlife laws, because of a misdirected emphasis on subsistence poaching).
In his view, these programmes have been ineffective to activate the policy goals of biodiversity conservation and SD as a transparent plan for implementation. Instead of addressing the important issues of resource utilization, legal instruments and implementation plans tend to focus on the benefit-sharing factors of community participation. He differentiates between 'benefit-sharing paradigms' in which society members are given a share of the profit from wildlife, and 'power-sharing paradigms' in which society members are given rights and responsibilities to manage parks and protected areas. He believes that in the latter case, ‘‘people-centred approaches to NRM can significantly contribute to the sustainable management of wildlife’’ (Algotsson, 2006:85). Thus, effective communal participation, described as 'social inclusion', in the decision making process is a pre-requisite
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for equitable and sustainable NRM (Bocoum, et al, 2003). People-centred approaches can be seen as an attempt to re-label NRM and to get people engaged and participate in the existing strategies of NRM.
In addition, with regard to land resource management, social factors are most influential in the adoption of land management technologies. Based on research in two mountain watersheds in Nepal, farmers adopted several types of structural and biological land management practices to control land degradation (Giridhari et al, 2004). However, this adoption depends on many factors, the most important being social, such as ‘‘caste affiliation of farmers, household agricultural labour force, training in land management, schooling period of the household head, participation in joint land management activities’’ (Giridhari et al, 2004:35). These issues are difficult to achieve unless there is good environmental governance in which citizens, government managers and business owners can foster better NRM decisions – decisions that meet the needs of both ecosystem and nation, with justice and equilibrium (Cousins, 2000; Mehta et al, 2001; United Nations Development Program, et al, 2003).