THE THEORY OF CO-MANAGEMENT AND ITS APPLICATION IN SOUTH AFRICA’S PFM POLICY
5.2. THEORIES OF PARTICIPATION AND CO-MANAGEMENT
5.2.3. The concept of participatory forest management
democratic transition, have, in turn, influenced South African resource management policy.
Co-management has become an influential approach in the management of natural resources such as game reserves, indigenous forests and coastal zones. It is an approach that demands a significant change in environmental governance and management practices. In the context of forestry, Hobley (1996) notes that for the most part, conventional foresters find the switchover from controlled scientific management to devolved communal responsibility to be a challenging task, and Grundy (2002) questions whether forests and woodlands can be managed simultaneously for production, conservation and development, as is proposed by co- management theory.
“out of the convergence of thinking and debate in three major schools of thought. The first is the conservation movement and its focus on global biodiversity reserves; the second is the concern of political scientists for democracy and the well-being of local peoples; and the third is the development lobby and its call for sustainable use of natural resources”
(Hobley, 1996:337).
There is a growing recognition that the biodiversity in pockets of natural forests and woodlands in the developing world is declining. This is a result of the stress being placed on them by population growth, economic development, global climate change and diminishing opportunities to establish new protected areas (Bell, 1987 and Isik et al., 1997). Where in the past a protectionist management approach would have been acceptable, resulting in the creation of forest reserves that excluded local people from access to and use of forests and forest products, conservationists became aware that this approach did little to alleviate the pressure placed on forests in the developing world and their decline. New emphasis was placed on sustainable use and a collaborative management approach to conservation. Sustainable use implies a level of utilisation that:
a. Addresses local economic needs but does not compromise ecological stability
b. Proceeds on a participatory basis to reduce poverty whilst simultaneously maintaining human and moral capital
c. Does not disrupt the environment’s ability to act as a source and a sink for resources d. Enables future generations to benefit from the resource in its totality and to not be in a
worse position than the present generation (after Goodland, 1995).
Referring to Borrini-Feyerabend’s (1996) co-management continuum in Figure 5.2, there are many differing opinions as to what kind of relationship between managers and local community members constitutes a co-management arrangement. Fundamentally, a collaborative management approach involves local people working with officials to set priorities. This would suggest that the strong extreme of the continuum is not considered co- management, as the state is not understood to have total control over decision-making.
However, Grundy and Michell (2004) maintain that it is the officials who are responsible for the process. This would indicate that the weak extreme of the co-management continuum is not considered a form of co-management. PFM is therefore an approach to forest management that has collaborative management and sustainable utilisation as its core components.
This shift in forestry is not an isolated phenomenon; it reflects the international trend towards democracy, and attention to the predicament of the poor and powerless in world politics.
Campbell and Luckert (2001, cited in Grundy and Michell, 2004:680) comment that the focus
for development practitioners on technical solutions to problems has given way to greater attention being paid to “the socio-economic aspects of rural development, and to understanding social processes in rural systems”. A significant social aspect that has gained increasing recognition is the need to fundamentally change the balance of power concerning protected areas management and local communities back towards local communities and others who were disempowered under the colonial and apartheid states. Concerning this, Vira (1999:264) believes that participatory management approaches call for a:
“re-orientation of the hierarchical, control-and-regulation-orientated structure of state forest management which has evolved over the last century in a number of countries…The new paradigm of management sees the forest bureaucracy playing a supportive role, encouraging community initiatives and sharing management responsibility”.
Grundy and Michell (2004:680) have termed the 1990’s the “decade of PFM”, as it has been the decade that has seen a proliferation of ideas about the linking of social, economic and environmental aspects of forest management and the encapsulation of this thinking in policy and legislation. Rastogi (1995 in Vira, 1999:264) regards PFM as an integrated approach designed to “link the socio-economic interests of the rural dwellers in and around the forests with the sustainable management of these areas while maintaining environmental stability and ecological security”. Connecting resource management with local interests suggests a change in access and use regulations that enables people to derive benefits from forest resources, without compromising the biological integrity of forests. This infers that sustainable use of natural resources is integral to participatory management approaches.
PFM is reminiscent of the Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE) formalised in the early 1980’s in Zimbabwe (Child, G., 1996). Here the focus was on conservation through the sustainable utilisation of wildlife18 outside protected areas (Murphree, 1993; Child, B., 1996; Child, G., 1996). Much can be learnt from CAMPFIRE, which is a decentralised decision-making programme in which communities could participate voluntarily (Child, G., 1996). The aim of the programme was to devolve ownership of wildlife to landholders and local communities and ensure that these owners realised the economic potential of wildlife resources. The motivation was that the profit derived from wildlife conservation was sufficient to “justify selecting wildlife in preference to
18 The CAMPFIRE model was intended to apply to all wild resources, which includes forest products, grazing and water (Child, G., 1996). However Child (Child, B., 1996) regards its application to wildlife resources to be the most successful.
other land use options”(Child, B., 1996; Child, G., 1996:366). Proponents of the CAMPFIRE project believe that in order for this devolution of ownership to be successful, it is necessary that the balance of power be shifted from centralised to community-based management (Child, B., 1996). This requires that “central government give power to local government and communities” (Child, B., 1996:317).
Child. G (1996:365) believes that CAMPFIRE has “generally benefited wildlife, rural land use, and the people in remote areas”; however it is not without its critiques (Bell 1987; Gibson and Marks, 1995; Alexander and McGregor, 2000; Campbell et al. 2001; Grundy and Michell, 2004). CAMPFIRE as a collaborative initiative is an “antidote to the colonial legacy of technocratic and authoritarian development” (Alexander and McGregor, 2000:605). According to Alexander and McGregor (2000) it was the prototype of collaborative resource management approaches and therefore many lessons were learned from the programme and used to shape later collaborative programmes. One criticism raised by Grundy and Michell (2004) is that these earlier programmes and initiatives tended to be unilateral, where the initiative was undertaken by outsiders with local government leaders and was mistrusted by other stakeholders such as community members. This is supported by Alexander and McGregor (2000:625) comment that “elected councillors were strongly influenced by, and institutionally subordinate to, civil servants who continued to adhere to technocratic and authoritarian attitudes to planning”. Similarly Gibson and Marks (1995:952) who reflect that the balance of power sits with government employees who “make the most important decisions about wildlife-related revenues and quotas”. PFM differs from CAMPFIRE in that it purports to result from a multi-stakeholder process where the initiatives therefore reflect a range of these stakeholders’ values (Bass, 2001a, cited in Grundy and Michell, 2004).
A second criticism raised by Alexander and McGregor (2000:624) concerns CAMPFIRE’s assumption that giving people both an economic and managerial stake wildlife resources would “rectify the legacies of the colonial period when people were deprived of control over game, and create conservationist attitudes towards animals”. This assumption is problematic because it ignores the influence of local context, particularly the histories and aspirations of the people which influence their attitudes towards wildlife (Alexander and McGregor, 2000).
A third criticism of CAMPFIRE, as with other community-based wildlife management schemes, is that it does not adequately comprehend the importance of wildlife to rural residents
and subsequently the incentives for them to stop hunting are insufficient (Gibson and Marks, 1995). A final criticism of the CAMPFIRE scheme that is discussed here is the reliance of these schemes on considerable donor support (Gibson and Marks, 1995). Donors play a considerable role in providing both intellectual support and funding for these programmes, which compromise the goal of sustainability because this flow of aid is not guaranteed indefinitely (Gibson and Marks, 1995).
Grundy and Michell (2004) suggest that the adoption of PFM by protected area authorities holds a number of implications for management. Firstly, there is the recognition that communities have an important role to play in environmental management and development in the forest region. Secondly, forest management plans would include the needs of surrounding communities for forest based resources and would be developed through a decision-making structure that involves a partnership between local people and forest department representatives. Thirdly, in this partnership, local people would gain increased involvement in management and decision-making, legalised access to adjacent forests and woodlands and regulated harvesting of natural forest resources in protected areas. In return, local people should protect forested areas, prevent free grazing of livestock and assist in preventing illegal activities by outsiders. Fourthly, in order for this participatory relationship to achieve its purpose of sustainable forest management, access and participation should be matched with imparting skills and building the knowledge of local people to manage the forest resource sustainably, so that all understand the thinking behind and can contribute effectively to the management plan. In addition, the forest department representatives should be skilled in participatory techniques (Grundy and Michell, 2004).
These are significant changes to traditional ‘command and control’ management approaches that have predominated in natural resource management, and therefore require a serious commitment to the process if the benefits of PFM are to be attained. These factors will be considered in relation to PFM in the southern Cape context in the empirical study.
5.3. CO-MANAGEMENT AND PARTICIPATORY FOREST MANAGEMENT IN