1. Community-Driven Development and Natural Resource Management
IFAD Workshop on Community-Driven Development
Casa San Bernardo, Rome : 4-5 June, 2004

2. Background Experience in Community-Based Natural Resource Management
Philippines – coastal fisheries management
Vanuatu and Fiji – fisheries and coral reef management
Bangladesh - floodplain fisheries management
Indonesia – floodplain fisheries management
India – research on poverty in coastal areas

3. Conditions for “successful” community-based natural resource management
“Homogeneous” communities – common objectives, recognised common interests, social cohesion
Benefits exceed costs
Clearly defined boundaries to resources to be managed
Limited uses and users
Decentralised decision-making
“Simple” administrative structures
“Friendly” – or at least neutral - power structures
An “enabling” environment - institutional, political, social, cultural and economic

4. The “Enabling” Environment
Devolution of power – choice, including choice about natural resource priorities
Legal rights to natural resources
Devolution of resources (money)
Institutionalisation / mainstreaming of participatory approaches – willingness to “hand over the stick”
Flexibility – time frames, funding mechanisms
Long-term engagement
Leadership -“champions” to lead the process

5. Issues Natural resource management is rarely a priority of the poor
Is there any such thing as a “neutral” or “friendly” power structure
The minute we intervene, power structures change
Structures/institutions invite “elite capture” – they are instruments of power
The poor are “attracted” to make use of diverse natural resource “niches” with poorly defined use-rights
Better definition invites control – control attracts those able to exert it

6. Issues The importance of knowing:
what do we mean by “poor” ? (if the focus is poverty alleviation)
understanding who different actors are – there is no substitute for detailed stakeholder analysis down to the micro-level
understanding what the incentives of different actors are – what benefits will be generated and for whom?

7. Questions Who sets the natural resource management “agenda”
How well do we know what a “community” really is?
If the “community” drives development, what, or who, drives the community?
Although experience indicates “best practice” in CBNRM, it is consistently ignored – why? (disbursement and activity-based monitoring & evaluation, messy, too slow)
Do “organisations” and “institutions” benefit the poor or increase their exclusion?