Community-Based Natural Resource Management Network (CBNRM Net): About, Overview, Introduction

CBNRM Net

The Community-Based Natural Resource Management Network

Worldwide, people working on Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM), as practitioners, managers and researchers, are talking about an urgent need for capabilities that enable direct communication between them. Such CBNRM networking capabilities would make it possible for people to exchange experiences, manage relevant knowledge, and support learning across countries, sectors, cultures, and languages, and in this way achieve better results.

The context for these changes includes increased emphasis on culture, local institutions, traditional knowledge, participation and participatory approaches, and NGOs and civil society, within an overall nation-state framework characterized by increasing weight on decentralization, governance and transparency.

CBNRM Net is a response to this call. It provides a powerful set of broad, robust and useful networking tools aimed at linking stakeholders. As a complete, integrated, and adaptable knowledge management tool, CBNRM Net is presented as a service to the global CBNRM community of practice.

To address these issues successfully is certainly a tall order. There are, however, three main reasons why one can be optimistic in this regard. First, there already are a very large and growing number of people that are practicing CBNRM, at the local level and beyond, as well as others working towards the same goals in other ways, as managers, funders, researchers and in the private sector. Second, these CBNRM stakeholders are increasingly connecting with other CBNRM stakeholders. Thirdly, the growing availability of fast and cheap means of communication, that is, email and the World Wide Web, function as facilitating and amalgamating factors in making CBNRM stakeholders located in different countries and regions aware of each other and of the body of knowledge that constitute CBNRM, in short, in amalgamating and solidifying a CBNRM community of practice. Thus, the field of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is very important for advancing the CBNRM agenda on a global level.

This Category traces the development of these factors, and looks at the implications of their interaction and coming together, specifically the synergies. Also, discusses the role of CBNRM Net in: (1) exploring the implications of these factors, (2) contributing to create the means for communicating knowledge and data between the CBNRM stakeholders that constitute this community of practice, and (3) defining and moving this CBNRM process and agenda forward.

It is important to understand that CBNRM to a large extent is a grassroots agenda, a bottom-up approach to understanding how best to achieve results in connecting people around specific problems and developmental tasks, along both horizontal and vertical channels of communication and integration. CBNRM is an approach to building upon what exists at the local level, as well as at other societal levels, and connecting it. CBNRM is about taking local communities as a point of departure and empowering them, and create a social movement around managing local natural resources. In achieving this, CBNRM Net can contribute in important ways, including: : (1) providing the tools and opportunities for CBNRM stakeholders globally to exchange views and experiences, (2) giving local communities a say in determining their future and in presenting this future to the outside, and (3) providing opportunities for CBNRM practitioners and other stakeholders to influence the development of CBNRM. While a causal logic between these factors can be seen to exist - as presented above - this causality is more complex and there is in reality a complex dialectic and reinforcing relationships between them.

What is CBNRM? We can say something in response to this query with certainty. It came about, to a large extent, as the result of two types of processes. One process is a grassroots, bottom-up agenda, inspired by the goals of sustainable development and biodiversity conservation, gradually broadening and transforming itself to include also a social agenda, and becoming a broad social movement of sorts. The other process is a macro-level, top-down effort spear-headed by multilateral funding agencies, bilateral donors, and, above all, transnational NGOs and organizations devoted to practical work and research. The many actors, that is, stakeholders, and agendas that constitute these two processes are increasingly meeting, somewhere in the middle, aligning their experience, realizing that they have the same goals, and that they stand a greater chance of making a difference by joining hands, as well as their often different means and resources.

Beyond this, it is in the nature of CBNRM that it is not easy to define. It is so broad and vibrant as to elude easy classification and definition. The growing number of activities within the realm of CBNRM, as witnessed, for example, by the number of websites that discuss or are devoted to CBNRM is testimony to this. Also, it is very much an evolving agenda. Finally, many argue that CBNRM is a composite, an amalgam of different insights, methods, tools and approaches. A very important aspect of CBNRM is that it is not "owned" by anything or anybody, be it a discipline, a sector, a methodology or an approach, and that it should continue in this way. That is, we must strive to prevent the institutionalization and formalization of CBNRM, that it ends up as yet another catch-phrase devoid of political content and loses its ability to inform, support and guide local people to change their lives for the better. Above all, we must resist that it be reduced to yet another tool that is automatically employed. Thus, in a situation where people utilize CBNRM based on specific needs and idiosyncrasies and contribute their own knowledge to the existing knowledge base, a ready-made and straightforward definition may not only be difficult to arrive at, but may work against the very essence and broad goals of this subject.

Thus, it may be counterproductive, as well as defeating the purpose of the growing global CBNRM project, to try to do so at this point in time. A formal definition of CBNRM will accordingly not be provided here. There are, however, several instances where CBNRM can be demarcated, through tracing its perimeter to what lies beyond (see Category Terminology, specifically Group CBNRM, Processual terms and Page Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM)).

Further down the road, the experiences with ICT in connection with CBNRM will be useful for implementing such technologies in other sectors and development aid arenas in developing countries and countries in transition. Likewise, as CBNRM develops into its own, we need a discussion of CBNRM itself, a meta- or outside approach to the relationship between CBNRM, on the one hand, and a host of other issues, including the development business itself, on the other hand. Included in this are how these changes and developments impacts and affects CBNRM as a body of knowledge. There will be room for this too as CBNRM - and CBNRM Net - develops.

The argument proceeds in a logical way. It starts with a broad overview of the Background to CBNRM, including the various existing initiatives and approaches and the experiences and lessons resulting from them, and leading to a set of Propositions about what needs to be done to advance the CBNRM agenda. In Rationale and Goals and means the reasons for proposing a global CBNRM networking capability, together with associated goals and means, are put forth. The issue of Knowledge management and knowledge sharing in connection with devising and implementing such a networking capability is treated in detail. From this follows a detailed overview over the Architecture and content of CBNRM Net together with some key Design principles. There are a number of Challenges with creating and implementing such a CBNRM networking capability that merits close attention and discussion. Key aspects of the Implementation of CBNRM Net are presented, including the pilot phase that lasts through September 2001. Finally, important aspects of The future, that is, the period beyond the pilot phase, are discussed, and some Final comments are given.