Exclusionary Spaces: Power, Poverty and Community-Based Natural

5 Exclusionary spaces Power, poverty and community-based natural resource management in West Africa Marlène Buchy and Roy Maconachie Introduction Over the past three decades, participatory natural resource management has undergone a significant transformation. Originally conceived as an innovative, groundbreaking philosophy and methodology (Chambers 1997), it has more recently been subject to accusations of tyrannizing those it is supposed to empower (Cooke and Kothari 2001), despite being mainstreamed in the world of international development. Indeed, no well-intentioned development project today would be given the green light without having some participatory component in its programming (Cornwall and Brook 2005). In situations where natural resource management is a key aspect of project activities, this rise to institutionalization has also taken place in parallel with genuine policy changes in resource governance at global, national and local levels. The devolution of natural resource management structures and the decentrali- zation of decision-making around resources have also come of age as community- based natural resource management (CBNRM) has emerged in its modern form in South Asia – that is, in India and Nepal since the 1970s in the forestry sector – and spread to other parts of the world more recently (Larson 2005; Ribot et al 2006). While CBNRM is an approach to resource management that is designed to give communities the legal rights, local institutions and economic incentives to take substantial responsibility for the sustained use of their resources, local people have of course, in many cases, been managing their resources communally and ‘sustainably’ for centuries. However, colonial regimes of centralized and extrac- tive management have often disrupted these pre-existing systems of community stewardship. Today, these same local-level processes continue to be shaped by wider power structures, most notably the commodification of natural resources through global market exchange and the impact that this has on state-level decision-making. In this chapter, that is the context in which we are concerned by the paradoxes contained within the more recent advent of ‘invited spaces’ (Gaventa 2006) of CBNRM – those created in-country by governments to hand over the responsibility for sustainable resource management to local communities. The benefits and limitations of participatory natural resource management have been well documented elsewhere (Agrawal and Gibson 1999; Cleaver 1999; Exclusionary spaces 95 Khadka 2009) and much has been written about the need to enhance popular participation and empowerment in resource planning and decision-making. How- ever, it is an unfortunate reality that apart from a few flagship projects (such as the Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources [CAMP- FIRE] initiative in Zimbabwe (Alexander and McGregor 2000), CBNRM has fallen short of delivering significant poverty alleviation, social and gender equity or sustainable management (Buchy and Rai 2008). Even the most widely hailed success stories, including CAMPFIRE, have recently come under attack from crit- ics (e.g. see Alexander and McGregor 2000; Logan and Mosely 2002; Dzingirai 2003). Drawing on case studies in the mining and forestry sectors in West and Central Africa, we argue that it is the systematic ignorance of power relationships and how they shape social structures that compromises the chances of promoting social change and poverty reduction in resource-rich communities. A framework for power relations To understand how power relations are inextricably linked at different levels and places, but are also multifaceted, we draw upon the concept of the power cube developed by the Participation Group at the Institute of Development Studies in Sussex. Power, according to Gaventa (2006), is three-dimensional: it operates at different scalar levels (international, national and local) and within different spaces (closed, invited and claimed), and it can be of different dimensions (visible, hidden or invisible – i.e. internalized). In this chapter, we explore the notion that CBNRM initiatives are invited spaces: within a country, they are initiatives designed and launched by the government, and often managed by the state bureaucracy (the forest department or the ministry of mines), functioning according to non-nego- tiable rules. Communities are ‘invited’ to participate in the initiatives, but the modality for their participation has already been defined and legislated by more powerful actors. Within such spaces, all three types of power are present. Visible power is situ- ated within the explicit rules and regulations and the local and state institutions represented in the CBNRM initiative. Hidden power is embedded within the tacitly observed rules of socialization (for example, women knowing not to speak in pub- lic in front of their husbands, and especially not to contradict them) which govern social relationships in the community. A seasonal labourer who depends on a landlord for employment may not be willing to lobby for decisions that would threaten the landlord’s status at community level. Invisible power is the internalization of defined social orders, often prevalent where one social group has historically domi- nated another. For example, many Dalits (formerly known as ‘untouchables’) in India have internalized and accepted the norm that they are destined to be at the bottom of the social hierarchy and thus do not claim the rights granted to them by the Indian constitution and law. Such hidden and invisible forms of power are usually separated by a very fine line. For example, in some cultures, many women have internalized that men are 96 Marlène Buchy and Roy Maconachie superior and should rightly control them (invisible power), and also understand that in certain contexts they need a man to access livelihood resources, such as land, to ensure household survival (hidden power). This is despite the fact that women may have more rights de jure (visible power). Where women can legally inherit land from their fathers, in practice they may choose not to claim their share. This is because in the case of divorce or widowhood, they would need to rely on their kinship for survival, which would be difficult if they had dismantled the family assets. In this case, refusal to claim the land that a woman is entitled to is partly an insurance policy, but also an expression of the de facto power imbalance. The motivation to analyse and understand power structures is linked to the premise that development interventions and especially CBNRM aim to facilitate some form of social change which will ensure more sustainable futures. However, the belief that community-based approaches will deliver more equitable outcomes for the poor and the marginalized has confused origins and has often been an after- thought rather than the initial driving factor. The history of wildlife conservation practices in southern Africa is a case in point. Management policies that initially excluded local populations in conservation practices have gradually elevated those originally labelled as ‘poachers’ and ‘encroachers’ by the colonial administration to the status of co-managers (Carruthers 1985). Similarly, Aboriginal people in Australia were initially excluded from the management of Kakadu National Park because their traditional use of fire as a management tool was deemed destructive. However, many Aboriginal groups have subsequently become co-managers, largely because scientists now realize that fire has been used for hundreds of years to maintain the unique Kakadu landscape (Baker et al 2001). Such examples of the promotion of local communities to co- management thus originate in a functional approach rather than an adherence to rights principles. Deeply rooted in conservation policy is the proposition that local people who depend on natural resources for their livelihoods will become ‘poachers’ and ‘encroachers’ if they do not somehow benefit from that policy. As many develop- ing countries have limited resources to control vast areas of land effectively, the tactic of involving local people in management is seen as a win-win situation. The substantial international aid contributions – in the form of loans, grants and project resources – that support the development of these models also partly explain their popularity. In Nepal and, to a lesser extent, India – two countries with a very long history of modern community forestry management – the move to involve local communities was initially driven by donors (see Khadka 2009). It can also be argued that the policy shift toward more decentralized governance is a response to inefficient and centralized systems of state governance and is aimed at improving resource conservation and local livelihood benefits. This idea hinges on the belief that if local people have an economic incentive to protect their resources, they will manage the resources more effectively than the state, and at a much lower cost. There are many different models of CBNRM around the world, but typically a CBNRM approach is based on the legally binding handing over of a resource (e.g. Exclusionary spaces 97 a patch of forest, a section of a mine or an area of national park) by the state to a formal community group composed of local residents and governed by a board of elected committee members. The board usually deals with the day-to-day running of the operation, while the general assembly of members meets

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