From "Project" to "Context": Community Based Natural Resource Management in Botswana

Larry A. Swatuk

Global Environmental Politics, 2005, vol. 5, issue 3, 95-124

Abstract: Community based natural resource management (CBNRM) programs presently proliferate across the Global South. In Southern Africa, CBNRM overwhelmingly focuses on wildlife conservation in areas adjacent to national parks and game reserves. The objects of these development activities are remote communities that exhibit the highest levels of poverty in the region, the consequences of which are sometimes resource degradation. CBNRM seeks to empower and enrich the lives of these communities through the active co-management of their natural resource base. Almost without exception, however, CBNRM projects have had disappointing results. Common explanations lay blame at the feet of local people who are seen to lack capacity and will, among other things. This paper contests this explanation by subjecting the particular case of Botswana to a deeper, critical political ecology analysis. Drawing on insights from Homer-Dixon regarding resource capture and ecological marginalization, and from Acharya regarding the localization of global norms, the paper argues that CBNRM is better understood as a discursive site wherein diverse actors bring unequal power/knowledge to bear in the pursuit of particular interests. In Botswana this manifests at a local level as an on-going struggle over access to land and related resources. However, given that CBNRM is supported by a wide array of international actors, forming perhaps the thin edge of a wider wedge in support of democratization, good governance and biodiversity preservation, locally empowered actors are forced to adapt their interests to the strictures of emergent structures of global governance. The outcome is a complex interplay of activities whereby CBNRM is realized but not in a form anticipated by its primary supporters. Copyright (c) 2005 Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Date: 2005
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1162/1526380054794925 link to full text (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tpr:glenvp:v:5:y:2005:i:3:p:95-124

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://mitpressjour ... rnal/?issn=1526-3800

Access Statistics for this article

Global Environmental Politics is currently edited by Steven Bernstein, Matthew Hoffmann and Erika Weinthal

More articles in Global Environmental Politics from MIT Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by The MIT Press ().