Do community based approaches to natural resource management work?

Abstract

Community-based natural resource management has been advocated as a way of ensuring that communities have appropriate incentives to manage their natural assets so as to maximise the benefits and ensure that resources are preserved for future generations. This article examines a community-based approach to sustainable forest management in Fiji and attempts to identify the necessary conditions for community-based schemes to succeed in meeting the dual objectives of sustainable resource use and livelihood improvement. Agricultural development is often seen as a threat to effective forest management. Any approach to forestry management therefore needs to be pay sufficient attention to the agricultural needs of communities to ensure that agriculture becomes part of the solution rather than the problem.