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Managing Natural Resources: The Issues
What do fishermen from San Salvador Island in the Philippines have in common with farmers on irrigated land in South India, forest user groups in Nepal, or pastoralists in Uganda? They are all part of reform efforts to improve the management of natural resources by increasing the participation of local resource users.
For a long time, many countries maintained that the government should be the owner and manager of critical natural resources such as land, water, forests, and fisheries. In many cases the government took over land or other resources that had historically been the property of local communities. Government bureaucracies were charged with regulating use of the resources.
But few governments have had adequate finances or manpower to monitor the use of large areas of forests, fisheries, rangelands, or irrigation systems. At the same time, user groups who once managed their own areas now have little authority to set rules or enforce them, and their local knowledge has not been tapped. As a result, these resources have not been properly managed, and deforestation, overfishing, overgrazing, and deterioration of irrigation facilities have become major problems. What’s worse, many governments, facing growing financial crises, have cut back even further on their budgets and staffing.
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Members of a fishermen's association show trophies they won for their work in preserving the coral reef by setting up a marine sanctuary.
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Now, in the wake of reforms, policymakers in many countries are seeking to address these problems by involving users through partici- patory management or comanagement approaches. Governments in Asia, Africa, and Latin America are transferring responsibilities and rights over forests, coastal areas, rangelands, or irrigation systems to organized groups. For these groups to manage resources successfully requires a concerted effort to build local collective action to make decisions, monitor use, and even invest in maintaining or developing the resource base. Success is not guaranteed. However, it is now apparent that this approach has benefited rural households and helped sustain natural resources. For example:
- In San Salvador village in Zambales, Philippines, collective action on the part of the village fishers, local government units, and the Haribon Foundation, a non- governmental organization (NGO), has led to the establishment of a 127-hectare marine sanctuary and marine reserve. Under comanagement, resource access was redefined, fishers were encouraged to shift to nondestructive practices, and measures were formally instituted to guard the coastal waters from poachers and illegal fishers. In the process, remarkable improvements occurred in coral reef conditions and fish catch per fishing trip.
- In Andhra Pradesh state, India, more than 10,200 water user associations have been organized to take an active role in man- aging their irrigation systems, which cover 4.8 million hectares. Part of the irrigation fee goes to the farmers to do repairs on the system. “We were able to get maintenance work done that has not been done for 30 years,” reported one farmer. In the pilot projects, irrigated areas increased from 30 to 60 percent of the possible command area when simple repairs such as removal of accumulated silt were undertaken. Devolution of managerial functions has significantly affected the lives of farmers in Andhra Pradesh.
- In Niger, 1993 legal reforms recognized traditional resource management systems, particularly of pastoralists, and involved local decisionmakers in promoting better natural resource management and conservation practices on pastures as well as agricultural land.
- Recent research on community forests in Nepal has shown that many user groups are able to devise rules that are well matched to the ecological problems they face. These locally crafted institutions have enabled these groups to sustain, and in some cases, improve the condition of their forest.
These and many other examples offer important lessons about what works (and what doesn’t) in programs designed to devolve resources from the state to users.
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