Community-Based Natural Resource Management

Community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) has been characterized as both a practice, the management of local resources by a geographically limited community, and a process, the shifting or devolution of power and authority from bureaucrats working within national or state governments to more local and often indigenous institutions and peoples. Though theoretically feasible for any number of natural resources, in practice, community-based management has been almost exclusively limited to flow resources such as forests, fish, and game, which, as common property, have tended to suffer from overexploitation. CBNRM has received increasing attention of late in geography and related disciplines, which likely stems from the fact that it stands in marked contrast to the still dominant distant-centered model of resource management used throughout the world and ...