By Dr Hemant R Ojha
The evolution of cross-scale regime
Many countries in the Asia-Pacific region have developed strategies for community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) to achieve the twin goals of environmental conservation and better livelihoods. But underlying these policies is a wrong assumption that CBNRM is purely a local practice – such that it can be strengthened through a policy instrument or a program with some targets and a set of specific interventions at local level. On the contrary, it is important to recognize that CBNRM is not just about how local communities are organized for the management of natural resources, but more about how communities are linked to politics at multiple scales of governance. Experience from Nepal’s 40 years of community forestry demonstrates that diverse forms of politics happening at multiple layers are more important than how communities organize themselves for the management resources locally.
Glocalization as a key driver
There have been attempts to tackle the environmental risks and challenges by focusing on the type of social organization that has loosely been defined as community. With a variety of forms ranging from place-based groups to interest-based alliances, the community has emerged as a distinct category of human organization for environmental management. Accordingly, many countries in the Asia-Pacific region have devolved power to such communities in a move to utilize resources in a prudent manner and enhance local development. However, as recent research shows, local community practices are not isolated from the rest of the world, and serious attention needs to be paid to how communities are influenced by outside processes positively and negatively.
The multi-scale dynamics are thus essential part of CBNRM development globally. With ‘glocalization’ – a phenomenon involving both localization and globalization simultaneously – becoming the reality, local communities are also becoming part of this complex world. Such multi-level dynamics are manifest in terms of ever proliferating networks of power, nexus of benefits sharing, platforms of knowledge exchanges, business value chains, migration and social networks, civic movements and party-based political organizations. It makes us rethink the CBNRM as a multi-scalar process.
Multi-scale regime as a site of politics and social learning
I do not mean to say that the community-based approach has become irrelevant; it is indeed a very important tool for social and political action. My point is that putting emphasis on community scale interventions alone without exploring its links at higher levels is not sufficient for achieving the goals of equitable livelihoods and environmental sustainability. Programs on conservation and development must look at how communities are linked to higher levels of governance – in terms of power, knowledge, resources, services and subsidies, and value chains. Such cross-scale dynamics are also linked to processes of learning, negotiation and experimentations, all of which are critical to the successful development of CBNRM. Nepal’s case of community forestry shows that the outcomes of CBNRM are clearly related to the degree and ways in which the regime actors engage in deliberative, experimental and social learning processes. Where regimes became more deliberative and supportive, communities have also excelled. The opposite is the case when regimes became more parasitic and disabling.
The regime view also suggests that CBNRM cannot be defined so clearly by a national law. The legal definitions of community rights are mediated in practice by the power relationships between state officials and local groups, besides the various actors in the multi-scale regime. This is true because there is often an absence of sharp boundary between the state and community. Particular configurations of state and community agents interact to negotiate the allocation of resources, benefits and powers, operating beyond the formal realm of CBNRM.
The regime’s existence is also linked to inherent contradictions and resource conflicts. Nepal’s case of regime politics in community forestry clearly shows that beneath the widely celebrated success, there are narratives of resistance, discontent, betrayal and imbalances, which are found within and are constitutive of the complex regime itself. Given this, the future of local community forestry practice rests on the quality of deliberation, transparency in the processes, and the degree to which the disadvantaged actors come forward and articulate their views, not just locally but at all scales of regime politics. This is happening to some extent – as seen in the ways in which federations of local communities, grassroots women, indigenous groups, and so-called low caste groups have emerged to articulate their resource rights. All this suggests that the future of community forestry, in Nepal as well as elsewhere, relies on how political, civic, bureaucratic, and intellectual networks of actors mediate the ideas of fairness, accountability and transparency in the politics around the regimes of community forestry.
Regime view offers new insights to policy and programs planning
The focus has shifted to the cross-scale dynamics. It is a welcome conceptual innovation, but researchers are yet to explore – both conceptually and empirically –how such politics unfold in specific social, ecological and political circumstances. It is important to see how a program can best support a community forestry system without creating dependency on external funding, or without being subjected to external hegemonic ideas and ideologies, or without distorting locally organized democratic possibilities. In other words, how an actor located at national or international levels can catalyze truly transformative change without creating dependency or distorting local innovations, while still offering new ways and innovative solutions at the local domain. It will have implications for making new plans and projects, engaging communities and non-local actors for the common purpose, and then handing over the leadership to the local actors.
Multi-scale lens also offers fresh insights into the links between policy and practice. Nepal case shows that community forestry evolved through a multi-scalar process involving iterative links over time between policy and practice. Broadly speaking, the approach has this sequence: First a modest step of policy reform (such as in 1978 Panchayat regulation), followed by innovation in practice on the ground beyond the boundary of the formal policy space, and then feeding back to policy for radical reform (as found in the 1993 Forest Act). This means that how policy and regulatory system can evolve to enable CBNRM practice cannot be understood adequately without looking at the regime level politics.
In conclusion, in order to deliver the goals of prosperity and sustainability, it is important to understand how communities interact with the outside world, and not just what happens inside. Much of the potential for what communities can do is defined and shaped by external factors, in today’s increasingly mediatized and politically networked world. A responsive public policy should be able to recognize and enable progressive dynamics happening within local communities and between these groups and the wider world.
“Views expressed here are personal and not associated with any affiliated organisations”.
Available at: http://setopati.net/opinion/5790/
