Community-Based Natural Resource Management: Strengths and Weaknesses for Sustainable Development and Resource Governance in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

Climate change is the greatest challenge our generation will face. This remains brutally true for the continent of Africa who stands to experience the greatest negative impacts as a result, and while paradoxically having contributed the least to causing its effects, remains in the least able position to adapt to and mitigate its effects. The continent enjoys considerable resource wealth, but due to a long history of poor resource governance, millions on the continent live in poverty and have suffered from long and protracted underdevelopment. Much of this has stemmed from problems such as neopatrimonialism and what can be called the resource curse but all add up to the continents resources benefitting the few in an extremely inequitable fashion that has also led to massive environmental degradation. Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) has developed out of development discourse, through ideals such as ‘ownership’ and ‘participation,’ developed in the 1990s and solidified in the 2005 Paris Agreement. It has come about as a set of practices that are presented as a possible way to overcome many of the challenges of resource governance in Africa, through devolution of the control of resources from central governments, into the hands of the people in local communities. This paper will examine the strengths and weaknesses of CBNRM with a focus of its effects on sustainable development in Africa. It will examine the tensions that are placed between the environment and economic growth on the continent through three case studies: Namibia, Zimbabwe, and Tanzania through their respective versions of CBNRM.