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Communities, Livelihoods, and Natural Resources presents cases from some of the poorest parts of Asia to illustrate how local innovations in participatory natural resource management can strengthen livelihoods, build capacity for local governance, and spark policy change.
Communities, Livelihoods, and Natural Resources synthesizes results from a seven-year programme of applied research on community-based approaches to natural resource management in Asia. By presenting field reports of innovative approaches to poverty reduction and sustainable resource use, it provides practitioners with models of 'good practice' in participatory, community-based resource management, and it demonstrates how site-based research contributes to broader learning in the field of natural resource management and policy.
Communities, Livelihoods, and Natural Resources features a foreword by Dr David Kaimowitz (a well known authority in the forestry field and former Director-General of CIFOR) and 11 case studies from some of the most marginal areas of rural China, Mongolia, Laos, Viet Nam, Cambodia, the Philippines, and Bhutan. The cases (each one authored by local researchers) illustrate lessons derived from the application of a participatory action research framework that engaged resource users, local governments, and researchers in collaborative learning. They illustrate practical innovations to strengthen livelihoods through improved collective resource management practices and broader technology choices. These experiences point to changes in well-being and empowerment for the rural poor.
The comparative assessment and syntheses across cases demonstrate how local successes have led to reconsideration of policy assumptions, and to new ways of approaching rural poverty reduction, resource management, and local governance. Communities, Livelihoods, and Natural Resources concludes that positive outcomes demonstrated in the participatory research cases come largely from practices of shared, adaptive learning through field-based assessment and action.
Contents: Foreword
Acknowledgements
List of figures
List of tables
List of boxes
Acronyms and abbreviations
Biographies of authors
Part I: 1 Introduction
1. Introduction: poverty and environment in practice
2. Community-based natural resource management: a research approach to rural poverty and environmental degradation
Part II: Community-based natural resource management in action
3. Community-based natural resource management and decentralized governance in Ratanakiri, Cambodia
4. Participatory local planning for resource governance in the Tam Giang lagoon, Vietnam
5. Towards upland sustainable development: livelihood gains and resource management in central Vietnam
6. Co-management of Pastureland in Mongolia
7. Exclusion, accommodation and community-based natural resource management: legitimizing the enclosure of a community fishery in southern Laos
Part III: From local action to policy impact
8. Building networks of support for community-based coastal resource management in Cambodia
9. Scaling up community-based natural resource management in Guizhou province, China
10. Walking the extra mile: from field learning to natural resource management research and policy in Bhutan
11. Strengthening local voices to inform national policy: community forestry in Cambodia
12. Harmonizing ancestral domain with local governance in the Cordillera of the northern Philippines
13. Shaping the key to fit the lock
Part IV: Poverty, community and policy impact in action research
14. Creating options for the poor through participatory research
15. Exclusive, moi? Natural resource management, poverty, inequality and gender in Asia
16. Community-based natural resource management communitiesin action
17. Shaping policy from the field
18. Conclusions: community-based natural resource management in action
Notes
References
Index
Stephen R. Tyler is the President of Adaptive Resource Management Ltd. and programme team leader with the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and has worked with partners throughout Asia on applied research in the field of environment and development for 16 years. He served as a consultant to the Asian Development Bank, World Bank, CIDA, and has a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.
