Local Governance Institutions, CBNRM, and Benefit-sharing Systems in Namibian Conservancies (original) (raw)
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ECOLOGY AND SOCIETY
This study explores and interprets relevant literature to construct a typology of benefit sharing arrangements for the governance of social-ecological systems in developing countries. The typology comprises three generic categories of benefit sharing arrangements: collaborative, market-oriented, and egalitarian. We contend that the three categories provide a useful basis for exploring and classifying the different societal arrangements required for governance of social-ecological systems. The typology we present is founded on a related set of explicit assumptions that can be used to explore and better understand the linkages among ecosystem services, benefit sharing, and governance. Issues that are strongly related to sustainability in developing countries form the core basis of our assumptions. Our aim is not to write a definitive exposition, but to spark debate and engage ongoing dialogue on governance and benefit sharing in the field of social-ecological systems.
The Journal of Social Sciences Research, 2015
This paper establishes the importance of good governance in improving local livelihoods and support for conservation. The study uses empirical realities from Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, an afromontane Gorilla sanctuary that was recognized by UNESCO in 2005 as a world heritage due to its rich biodiversity. Governance is an important procedural dimension of equity that entails decision making processes and how local people are involved in matters that most affect them. The paper uses a Policy Arrangements Approach to illustrate the procedural dimension of the Justice and Equity Framework. A mixed method approach was used to generate results in this paper. Household surveys, key informant interviews and Focus Group Discussions were employed for data collection. Linear and Multi Logistic Regressions were used to determine the level of significance and relationships that exist between governance, people’s livelihoods and conservation support. Polychoric Principal Component Analysi...
Benefit Sharing Among Local Resource Users: The Role of Property Rights
World Development, 2015
Skewed distributions of benefits from natural resources can fuel social exclusion and conflict, threatening sustainability. This paper analyzes how user-group property rights to harvest forest products affect the distribution of benefits from those products within user groups. We argue that groups with recognized harvesting rights share benefits more equally among group members than groups without such rights. We test this argument with data from 350 forest user groups in 14 developing countries. Our results suggest that securing harvesting rights for local user groups can contribute to more equal benefit sharing, especially in ethnically homogenous groups.
Communal governance, equity and payment for ecosystem services
Land Use Policy, 2018
Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) presents a number of complex equity concerns when implemented in the context of communal resource management. This analysis contributes to our understanding of intracommunity equity and the role of communal governance in determining distributional equity outcomes, specifically in collective PES arrangements. The study examines the relationship between local governance and the distribution of collective payments in an Ecuadorian payment for conservation program implemented in communities in the Andean highlands. We use data from approximately 200 households living in six participating communities to examine how communities distribute collective payments across community members, and identify the household and communal attributes that influence (i) the likelihood that a household will receive a benefit, (ii) perceive the distribution of benefits to be fair, and (iii) perceive that the PES program itself is fair. The results highlight the important role of communal governance mechanisms in promoting participatory and transparent decision processes, and the resultant distribution of benefits. Households in more organized communities are more likely to receive a benefit and are more likely to perceive that the distribution is fair. In contrast, those in less organized communities are less likely to have budgetary information or agree with how the collective payment is spent. The results also indicate that communities generally distribute the benefits based on egalitarian principles and point to a potential disjuncture between communal equity principles and the individual costs incurred under the PES program land-use restrictions. Findings suggest that PES practitioners and researchers pay greater attention to, and support, the governance capacities of communities prior to implementing a PES program. The findings also call attention to the potential conflict between PES distributional principles and communal distributional norms.
International Journal of the Commons, 2013
Reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD+) in tropical countries is now a critical piece of any international agreement that aims to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. An important issue refers to the distribution of benefits or, in other words, benefit sharing mechanisms. In this paper, I examine the degree of local participation in benefit-sharing mechanisms in the case of the Juma Sustainable Development Reserve in the State of Amazonas, Brazil, and assess how local participationor lack of it-affects the outcomes, particularly with regard to equity. The analysis seeks to address the gap between theory and practice by considering the main concerns regarding equitable benefit sharing for REDD+, namely, the types of benefits to be distributed, eligible beneficiaries, the structure of benefits, and mechanisms for distributing them, and by identifying the possible negative and positive effects of benefit-sharing mechanisms. In doing so, my aim is to contribute to the more effective design and implementation of benefit-sharing mechanisms and to expand debate on the topic. The main research question of this paper is: how important is local participation for achieving equity in benefit-sharing mechanisms for REDD+? The results of this analysis indicate that the adaptation and mitigation goals of REDD+ are more likely to be achieved if the development and implementation of benefit-sharing mechanisms involve democratic and interactive processes for local participation, because such processes will lead to greater flexibility in the definition of benefits and distributional mechanisms. I draw the following conclusions: (1) the criteria for equity should be considered when benefits are defined, rather than when they are distributed and (2) given the complex and diverse relationships and issues involved in deforestation, it is important to adopt a multidimensional approach when identifying beneficiaries and benefits and designing benefit-sharing mechanisms.
Southern Forests: a Journal of Forest Science, 2018
One of the dominant challenges facing the South African forestry sector is the issue of land restitution. The aim of this study was, therefore, to assess the perception of beneficiaries of benefit-sharing modalities for forest-based land reform initiatives in their locality. A random sampling technique selected 140 and 175 households in Ama-Bomvini and Cata communities in Kwazulu Natal and Eastern Cape Provinces, respectively. The household beneficiaries have shown a lack of knowledge of the criteria used for the disbursement of the benefits. In addition, over 70.0% of household beneficiaries in Ama-Bomvini, compared to far less than 70.0% in Cata, preferred using rental income for infrastructure development in their respective communities. The results further showed that the relationship between the responses of the respondents from both Ama-Bomvini and Cata communities regarding their perception on the existence of the criteria established to share the benefits, was statistically significant (χ²=34.452, df=4, p<0.005). However, a lack of transparency, trust and greed were among the factors that household beneficiaries identified as the root causes to the poor benefit-sharing mechanisms. Therefore, it is recommended that there should be political will and commitment from government in order to ensure the development and strengthening of existing benefit-sharing policies for the improvement of livelihoods of the land beneficiaries.
East African Journal of Forestry and Agroforestry
It is generally accepted that equitable benefits sharing from protected areas (PAs) is a probable technique for both sustainable management and PA conservation. Evidence however, suggests that this might not be entirely true since such benefits might not be equitably shared among local communities as they would have wished. This research compares benefits received by Collaborative Forest Management (CFM) community members with those of non-CFM community members adjacent to Echuya Central Forest Reserve (ECFR). The study further assesses the most preferred benefits by local community members around ECFR and the perceived barriers to equitable benefit sharing. It provides insight into how benefit sharing under CFM influences the conservation of protected areas. We conducted 458 household interviews, 26 key informant interviews and 4 focus group discussions to obtain data from CFM and non-CFM community members, government institutions, conservation organisations and local community lea...
Assessing equity in protected area governance: Approaches to promote just and effective conservation
With the inclusion of equity concerns in Aichi Target 11 of the Convention on Biological Diversity, equitable management has become an important objective for the world’s protected areas. The way equity is defined and operationalised influences whether this strategic shift can help identify pathways commensurate with conservation effectiveness. We examined equity around a protected area in Laos, combining quantitative and qualitative methods to explore the three dimensions of procedure, recognition and distribution. Local understandings of equity depended on discrete, evolving issues, with attention to informal decision making and dynamic values required to uncover suitable solutions. We show that equity definitions focused on material distribution and assessments reliant on standardised indicators may result in inadequate responses that sustain local perceptions of inequitable management and miss opportunities for effective conservation. Equity should be considered a management goal to continually adapt towards, informed by stakeholder dialogue.