Approaches to community-based natural resource management tend to vary among programmes based on the needs and characteristics of the communities in which the programmes operate. Variation also exists within individual programmes, creating the potential for conflict if management does not recognize that these differences can indicate competing interests and needs. In this study we examine livelihood activities at the household level in a wildlife conservancy along the Kwando River in the Caprivi region of Namibia. We ask how people in the conservancy make their livelihoods and what differences exist between the conservancy’s riverside and inland populations. The study finds that the inland population, c. 20 km from the river on slightly heavier soils, engages in fewer livelihood activities and has greater food security than does the riverside population. We further establish that differences between the two populations are significant enough to indicate two distinct combinations of livelihood activities with different environmental interactions. These findings suggest that any management action taken by the conservancy will affect household livelihoods differently based on location and that these differences must be considered if the conservancy is to make a successful transition from a subsistence-based agricultural system to a wildlife-based economy.

Building local civil society constituencies for conservation is a particularly high priority in Indochina given the regional prevalence of weak and highly-centralized government institutions with an inability or lack of will to enforce protection on the ground. BirdLife International has developed and piloted a small-scale, community-based Local Conservation Group approach to site-based conservation globally. In Indochina a number of important lessons have been learned, particularly related to the need for participatory project and activity planning, increased attention to provision of tangible benefits that clearly meet both conservation and development objectives and are tailored to heterogeneous communities, increased support for awareness-raising activities, clear monitoring of activities and impacts, and truly committed partner support for implementation.

Despite sound logic supporting decentralized resource management, the results of community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) efforts have been mixed. Many conditions are thought to contribute to the sustainable use of common pool resources, but as practitioners evaluate the likelihood of CBNRM success, it is necessary to understand which particular conditions have the greatest impact and how these differ across contexts. This paper describes the harvest of the matsutake mushroom and its decline in two rural communities in Bhutan that possess many of the conditions thought to facilitate resource management. Data from surveys, informal interviews and focus group meetings suggest the decline in the matsutake harvest can be attributed to the absence of a small number of enabling characteristics and an additional factor that is often overlooked in the CBNRM literature. Factors contributing to the decline include environmental dynamics, lack of leadership, and the difficulty of monitoring and enforcing harvesting guidelines. However, communities are reluctant to absorb the costs of developing institutions owing to the lack of perceived scarcity and salience of matsutake and, perhaps most importantly, to a historical dependence on a paternalistic government. This reliance on the government may preclude communities from assuming the responsibilities of matsutake management and enforcing rules to assure a sustainable harvest, a trend seen elsewhere in Bhutan. CBNRM may succeed if governments can simultaneously build capacity in communities while empowering them to take ownership over resource management. Though a relatively small number of factors have impeded CBNRM in this case, many of the obstacles can be overcome and these efforts should be considered a work in progress in Bhutan.

This paper reviews the concept and practice of community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) as it has evolved in southern Africa, with a particular focus on Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia and, to a lesser extent, Zambia. It recognizes that, like democracy, CBNRM is both an imperfect process and a conceptual goal. The governance of economic processes, property rights and local political organization lie at the heart of CBNRM. The first challenge is to replace fiscal centralization, fees and bureaucracy (and the subsidization of alternative land uses) that have historically undervalued wild resources, so that CBNRM's comparative economic advantage is reflected in landholder and community incentives. Second, devolving property rights to communities shifts resource governance, responsibility and benefit appropriately to the local level. This necessitates accountable, transparent and equitable micro-governance, which in turn is linked to effective meso-level support and monitoring and cross-scale linkages between central government and local communities. This paper outlines the evolution of current models of CBNRM in the region and suggests core strategies for the next generation of CBNRM.

The performance obstacles surrounding community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) in southern Africa have much to do with understanding of environmental governance systems and how these are devolved. CBNRM appears to be failing because of flawed environmental governance systems compounded by their ineffective devolution. A case study in Zambia is used to illustrate why and how one CBNRM scheme for the most part faltered. It draws on practical experiences involving the devolution of decision-making and benefit-distribution processes on a floodplain wetland known as the Kafue Flats. While this CBNRM scheme was designed to facilitate the devolution of key components of an environmental governance system, the resultant efforts were largely unsuccessful because of the poor social relationships between government actors and local rural communities. It is argued that in Zambia, at least from an environmental governance system perspective, CBNRM has mostly failed. While generally bringing some marginal improvements to local communities, the construction and execution of an effective environmental governance system have been largely flawed.

Community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) has been on the ascendancy for several decades and plays a leading role in conservation strategies worldwide. Arriving out of a desire to rectify the human costs associated with coercive conservation, CBNRM sought to return the stewardship of biodiversity and natural resources to local communities through participation, empowerment and decentralization. Today, however, scholars and practitioners suggest that CBNRM is experiencing a crisis of identity and purpose, with even the most positive examples experiencing only fleeting success due to major deficiencies. Six case studies from around the world offer a history of how and why the global CBNRM narrative has unfolded over time and space. While CBNRM emerged with promise and hope, it often ended in less than ideal outcomes when institutionalized and reconfigured in design and practice. Nevertheless, despite the current crisis, there is scope for refocusing on the original ideals of CBNRM: ensuring social justice, material well-being and environmental integrity.

Biodiversity management has traditionally followed two contradictory approaches. One champions ecosystem protection through rigorous law enforcement and exclusion of humans. The other promotes community-based sustainable use of natural resources. Participatory conservation, a major paradigm shift, nowadays strongly guides the concept of UNESCO Biosphere Reserves (BRs). In this paper, the rationale for community participation, and the perception of its effectiveness among BR managers are analysed. Within the World Network of BRs (553 sites in 107 countries) diverse participatory approaches are being tried to advance community-based natural resource management (CBNRM). Data from two parallel surveys, involving managers from 276 BRs worldwide, reveal how far this participation paradigm shift has really occurred, and its influence on managers’ self-evaluated effectiveness. There is substantial regional disparity, although in general BR managers endorse inclusive conservation, despite critical implementation hurdles. The process of participatory conservation carries new dangers for effective biosphere reserve management, when the aspirations of communities and other stakeholders do not ‘fit’ with a predetermined interpretation of sustainable development.

In the globally significant Australian tropical rainforests, poor performance of community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) approaches mandated by national policy highlights the importance of the global search for better models. This paper reports on co-research to develop, apply and test the transferability and effectiveness of a new model and tools for CBNRM in biodiversity conservation. Adaptive co-management, designed with specific communities and natural resources, recognized as linked multi-scalar phenomena, is the new face of CBNRM. New tools used to achieve adaptive co-management include a collaborative focal species approach focused on the iconic southern cassowary, scenario analysis, science brokering partnerships, a collaborative habitat investment atlas and institutional brokering. An intermediate-complexity analytical framework was used to test the robustness of these tools and therefore likely transferability. The tools meet multiple relevant standards across three dimensions, namely empowering institutions and individuals, ongoing systematic scientific assessment and securing effective on-ground action. Evaluation of effectiveness using a performance criteria framework identified achievement of many social and environmental outcomes. Effective CBNRM requires multi-scale multi-actor collaborative design, not simply devolution to local-scale governance. Bridging/boundary organizations are important to facilitate the process. Further research into collaborative design of CBNRM structures, functions, tools and processes for biodiversity conservation is recommended.

Community based natural resource management (CBNRM) engages groups of citizens in collective action towards sustainable conservation and natural resource management (NRM) within and across various tenure regimes. Substantial differences exist between developing and developed countries in terms of conditions conducive to CBNRM. There are also contextual differences from national to local scales, across different ‘spaces’ and ‘places’ within each. This paper focuses on developed countries in deriving and synthesizing some concepts from systems theory and landscape ecology, with lessons from facilitating novel CBNRM arrangements. Understanding the landscape context of interacting levels and scales of social and ecological systems can inform institutional development of resilient CBNRM. Efforts to increase the scale and effectiveness of social-ecological sustainability can benefit from novel arrangements facilitating holistic integration of environmental conservation across levels of institutions of communities and government, including tenure regimes (type and ownership of resources as ‘property’). Property and policy, together with ‘place’ attachment of communities can be viewed within a landscape framework. Such a ‘landscape lens’ provides an interdisciplinary meld that is important to sustainable CBNRM, but sometimes forgotten (or avoided) in government planning, policy deliberation and action.

This study investigates the attitude of communities adjacent to the Chobe National Park in Botswana and the South Luangwa National Park in Zambia with regard to local stewardship over natural resources and associated revenues implemented via community based natural resource management (CBNRM). This included measuring the extent to which community expectations were met. The survey revealed a general incongruence between community perceptions and expectations of the purpose and roles of the Community Resource Boards in Luangwa and the Community Trusts in Chobe and those of the respective wildlife authorities. After 2 decades of implementation there appears to be significant confusion among communities regarding CBNRM that seems to translate into unfulfilled expectations and frustrations. These factors highlight inadequacies in implementation with regard to outreach and inclusion.