Strengthening Local Resource Management

Inappropriate land tenure policies are key negative pressures on the rangelands, and strengthening local resource management is a key policy option. Local management:

- builds on local knowledge of rangeland conditions
- builds on indigenous institutions, whose effectiveness is increasingly recognised
- motivates rangeland users to invest in range management
- provides a legal framework to resist encroachment by private ranchers or cultivation
- takes pressure off scarce administrative resources.

The arguments for local management of resources can be generalised into three principles:

- flexibility and diversity to respond to temporal changes and geographical variability
- subsidiarity or carrying out administrative tasks as near to user level as possible
- reducing transaction costs of administration.

In practice, strengthening local resource management is likely to mean building on indigenous institutions, but may mean establishing new primary-level institutions, such as herder associations. The arguments for federating local resource management institutions into regional or national bodies (not only on account of their resource management functions, but also their possible service delivery and advocacy functions) must be considered. Key tasks of a management system, at various geographical scales, must be apportioned in various degrees between different local institutions and the local representatives of central authority. In some areas, there will be difficult issues of reconciling the objective of strengthening traditional institutions with objectives of overcoming discrimination against women, and against formerly servile groups.

Related Policy Options

- promoting conflict resolution mechanisms
- curtailing direct control of stocking rates
- introducing well-designed grazing fee regimes
- drought management policies
- zoning of rangelands

Research/Appraisal Methods

The strengths and weaknesses of existing institutions and the socio-economic context for local resource management can be assessed using combinations of anthropological research, PRA and more specialised techniques such as participatory SWOT analysis. The design of institutions for local resource management must be based on an understanding of the ecosystem dynamics [ non-equilibrium environments] and of the theoretical basis for understanding collective action.

Key References

Swift, J. 1994. Dynamic Ecological Systems and the Administration of Pastoral Development, in I. Scoones (ed.) Living with Uncertainty: New Directions in Pastoral Development in Africa, Intermediate Technology Publications, London.

Shanmugaratnam, N et al. 1992. Resource Management and Pastoral Institution Building in the West African Sahel, World Bank Discussion Paper, Africa Technical department Series 175, Washington.

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