Management Of Natural Resources Institutions For Sustainable Livelihood

First Published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First Published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Articles with reference to India.

Management of local resources has a greater chance of a sustainable outcome when there is partnership between local people and external agencies, and agendas relevant to their aspirations and circumstances. Managing Natural Resources for Sustainable Livelihoods analyses and extends this premise to show unequivocally that the process of research for improving natural resource management must incorporate participatory and user-focused approaches, leading to development based on the needs and knowledge of local resource users. Drawing on extensive and highly relevant case studies, this book presents innovative approaches for establishing and sustaining participation and collective decision-making, good practice for research, and challenges for future developments. It covers a wide range of natural resources - including forests and soils, and water and management units, such as watersheds and common property areas - and provides practical lessons from analysis and meta-analysis of cases from Asia, Africa and Latin America. It offers insights on how to make research participatory while maintaining rigour and high-quality biological science, different forms of participation, and ways to scale up and extend participatory approaches and successful initiatives. This book will be invaluable for those professionally involved in natural resource management for sustainable development and an essential resource for teachers and students of both the biophysical and social science aspects of natural resource management.

Natural resource policies provide the foundation for sustainable resource use, management, and protection. Natural Resource Policy blends policy processes, history, institutions, and current events to analyze sustainable development of natural resources. The book’s detailed coverage explores the market and political allocation and management of natural resources for human benefits, as well as their contributions for environmental services. Wise natural resource policies that promote sustainable development, not senseless exploitation, promise to improve our quality of life and the environment. Public or private policies may be used to manage natural resources. When private markets are inadequate due to public goods or market failure, many policy options, including regulations, education, incentives, government ownership, and hybrid public/private policy instruments may be crafted by policy makers. Whether a policy is intended to promote intensive management of natural resources to enhance sustained yield or to restore degraded conditions to a more socially desirable state, this comprehensive guide outlines the ways in which natural resource managers can use their technical skills within existing administrative and legal frameworks to implement or influence policy.

The way that humans organize both resource access and resource use is vital to the management of natural resources. Within different contexts, institutional arrangements (such as the rules of common and private property rights) become levers by which human behaviours can be modified and steered towards the goals of sustainable natural resource management. Featuring contributions from leading thinkers in the field, this groundbreaking volume examines institutional dynamics from the perspective of natural resource management. The book is organized into four parts. The first discusses institutional diversity and contextual change. Following this, institutional misfit is analysed with a strong focus on the long-term impacts of colonial structures in the Asia-Pacific region. The book then discusses experiences with institutional dynamics in order to ease the tension of such misfits before examining future research needs. Ultimately, through careful argument and by deploying original research, the authors make the case that institutional arrangements cannot be perceived as a set of parameters that can be optimized and locked in for the most efficient functioning of a system; nor can institutions be evaluated outside the context in which they were developed. This is powerful, thought-provoking and important reading for academics, researchers, policy-makers and professionals in resource, institutional and environmental economics and land use planning and policy across the full range of natural resource sectors from forestry to agriculture. Published with CSIRO. Cover image: Blue Flower of Life (c) Theresa J. Richardson 2006

Papers presented at the workshop.

This book brings together several systems-level approaches to the consideration of the interaction of livelihood choices, natural resource management and participatory action research on sustainable development. By focusing on these approaches to community change, the volume hopes to encourage readers to consider how they might adopt methods such as Sustainable Livelihoods Approach (SLA), Community Capitals Framework (CCF) and Participatory Action Research (PAR) in their own research, practice and teaching. Thus, this volume will engage readers in reflection about the importance of systems-level approaches that address poverty from the perspective of the poor, natural resource management that maintains the resource for future generations, and the engagement of local people in designing and implementing, and thus owning, strategies that address equity as well as economic security and the environment. This book was originally published as a special issue of Community Development.

The developing worldOCOs poorest people live in marginal, often harsh rural environments. The natural resource base tends to be fragile and highly vulnerable to over exploitation. Yet these rural people depend directly on access to the food, forage, fuel, fibre, water, medicines, and building materials provided by local ecosystems. What types of natural resource management (NRM) can improve the livelihoods of these poor people while protecting or enhancing the natural resource base they depend on? New approaches to NRM are needed OCo ones that move beyond the earlier narrow focus on productivity (such as crop yields), to include social, institutional, and policy considerations."

From the first vague idea to use Konrad Hagedorn’s 60th birthday as an inspi- tion for taking stock of his vibrant academic contributions, this joint book project has been a great pleasure for us in many ways. Pursuing Hagedorn’s intellectual development, we have tried to reflect on the core questions of humanity according to Ernst Bloch “Who are we?”, “Where do we come from?” and “Where are we heading?” In this way, and without knowing it, Konrad Hagedorn initiated a c- lective action process he would have very much enjoyed ... if he had been allowed to take part in it. But it was our aim and constant motivation to surprise him with this collection of essays in his honour. Konrad Hagedorn was reared as the youngest child of a peasant family on a small farm in the remote moorland of East Frisia, Germany. During his childhood in the poverty-ridden years after the Second World War, he faced a life where humans were heavily dependent on using nature around them for their livelihoods; meanwhile, he learned about the fragility of the environment. As a boy, he - tended a one-room schoolhouse, where his great intellectual talents were first r- ognised and used for co-teaching his schoolmates. These early teaching expe- ences might have laid the foundations for his later becoming a dedicated lecturer and mentor.