Community-Based Natural Resource Management Network (CBNRM Net): About, Overview, Knowledge management and knowledge sharing

CBNRM Net

The Community-Based Natural Resource Management Network

Knowledge management and knowledge sharing in the context of CBNRM is concerned with identifying relevant knowledge, managing and analyzing knowledge, disseminating knowledge, and producing new knowledge. As part of the growing emphasis on knowledge management and knowledge sharing, a specific CBNRM terminology is emerging (see Category Terminology).

It is a fundamental premise that the stakeholders have to be directly involved in all knowledge management and knowledge sharing activities. In the context of CBNRM Net this means user involvement in determining the website's architecture and content, as well as in managing and maintaining it. This is fundamental in order for CBNRM Net to become a useful tool for the global CBNRM community of practice.

Valuable experiences to come out of these initiatives contributed in a decisive way to a needs assessment and the subsequent decision to set up CBNRM Net. Both seminal initiatives in the emerging global CBNRM community of practice, they are featured prominently: CPRNet as an integral part of CBNRM Net's knowledge management and knowledge sharing structure, and the workshop as a source of CBNRM knowledge. CBNRM Net is building upon the substantial momentum created internationally by these and other advances.

Whereas the May 1998 workshop gave major emphasis to institutions, and to institutional and organizational aspects of CBNRM, CBNRM Net addresses also other important issues, largely located in the realms of culture, environment and law. This is not to say that these issues are more important (they are not), or that they do not have institutional aspects to them (they most certainly do). However, issues like culture, environment and law are clearly important in their own right, and merits a special focus.

The conceptualization and understanding underlying these initiatives were informed and complemented by experiences and results from other events, notably a regional CBNRM workshop for West Africa (Niamey, Niger, October 1998) that broke important ground in several respects.

Regular and extensive contacts between a large number of CBNRM practitioners and other stakeholders worldwide are also important elements in this learning process. The increasing involvement of CBNRM practitioners and CBNRM Net users in guiding the development of CBNRM Net are also important elements of this learning process.

The knowledge on CBNRM Net is organized in a system of knowledge management elements that are structured hierarchically (see Group Structural terms):

All knowledge management elements are extensively linked and cross-referenced throughout CBNRM Net. Depending upon the character of the knowledge in question, the knowledge elements 'KM Group' and 'KM Page' may or may not be available.

The key knowledge management Sections are: (1) Resources, and (2) Members. Section Resources contains knowledge on a wide range of activities, events, issues, resources and topics, and Section Members contains, among others, several types of structured CBNRM knowledge.

The outlined approach to, and process of, knowledge management and knowledge sharing is, to a large extent, an extension of the emphasis on user involvement and user management. This determines overall website management (see Page Design). Specific aspects of this include: no frames, boiled down HTML coding, no imagery, short pages, material in PDF format for easy and fast downloading, decentralized management, user involvement and user management, parallel emphasis on production and use of CBNRM knowledge, and strong emphasis on using, producing and sharing knowledge via email and the CBNRM Net Newsletter.

At the same time, the implications of using the Internet, specifically WWW, as a means of establishing contact between CBNRM stakeholders, as well as the limitations of the Internet for optimal and effective CBNRM knowledge management and knowledge sharing, and how to address any limitations of this approach, have to be focused upon.

CBNRM Net addresses the growing need for broad, in-depth and multi-faceted communication and sharing of data, information and results - that is, knowledge - between CBNRM stakeholders worldwide. The fundamental connection between use and production of CBNRM knowledge is a key driving force behind CBNRM Net, and it includes a broad spectrum of networking tools, approaches and services aimed at connecting the emerging global CBNRM community of practice. The intention is to contribute to managing global CBNRM knowledge through identifying, producing, collecting, analyzing, organizing and disseminating such knowledge, and, furthermore, to use this knowledge, and through this bridge the gap between policy and practice .

For many, knowledge management and knowledge sharing is closely connected with ICT. From the point of view of knowledge management and knowledge sharing, ICT is often understood as providing the arguments and tools with which to achieve the goals of knowledge management and knowledge sharing, partly through providing the necessary economy of scale. From the point of view of ICT, knowledge management and knowledge sharing is often seen as a possibility for broadening this technology beyond the traditional realms of the technical/technological sphere into the society at large. It is important to understand that there is no easy and straightforward connection between the two.

It is basic to CBNRM Net's approach to knowledge management and knowledge sharing that the promise of ICT not be accepted wholesale, but rather cautiously. CBNRM Net aims to try and avoid the several pitfalls of ICT in connection with management and sharing of developmental knowledge in various ways, as argued throughout the website. In its strong emphasis on user involvement and user management, CBNRM Net will contribute to implementing the recommendations in recent writing on ICT, and hopefully move beyond them, while maintaining a clear view of both the promises and limitations of ICT.

CBNRM knowledge is identified and prepared in collaboration with CBNRM practitioners and CBNRM Net users. Content provision and management responsibility for a large part of CBNRM Net will, in this way, over time be decentralized to Distributed Web Teams. These Web Teams will be responsible for determining, locating, producing, preparing, writing and submitting CBNRM content, as well as maintaining and updating such content (see Page Terms and conditions). Guidance on how to prepare and submit CBNRM knowledge is available (see Category Guidance).

It is important to be very open in determining what CBNRM is. The task of doing this is not about what to exclude but what to include. At the same time, the outcome is not the establishment of borders between what is inside and what is outside, what is considered to be important and what is not. Rather, it is the establishment of relevant categories of natural and social (including cultural, economic, political and social organizational) foci, or nodes, that exist on several levels, the knowledge that constitute these nodes, and the multiple and crosscutting relationships, or links, between them. Finally, the outcome implies increased ability to organize and generalize the resulting interactive knowledge, and share and disseminate it.

The CBNRM knowledge network has an open and adaptive architecture. There are two important aspects of this: (1) the borders that separate the realm of CBNRM are not fixed, but gradual, and (2) the knowledge nodes will change over time, as will the relations between them and, accordingly, the position and character of the border area between the CBNRM knowledge web and the outside.

In this way, CBNRM will appear as a networked web of knowledge that consists of, and are organized around, nodes that are linked in various ways, directions and strengths. Some of the nodes in this knowledge network or web are core and permanent, with strong positive and negative links to each other. Moving gradually away from the core towards the periphery, one encounters smaller nodes that are linked to fewer of the core nodes and to increasing numbers of other peripheral nodes, in causal relationships that are less deterministic and/or of a more transient nature. This web of CBNRM knowledge should be understood as existing in a three-dimensional spatial continuum.

This understanding and representation makes clear the two-sided and mutually reciprocal structural and processual character of CBNRM. It also points to some important implications for accessing, using, producing, managing and sharing CBNRM knowledge that are networked in this way: (1) Knowledge is time-, level- and space-specific but also general, (2) knowledge is factual but also relational, and (3) knowledge is concrete but also relative.

Specific local CBNRM issues or problems will, to a large extent, determine the exact node or point where one enters the knowledge web, how one goes about navigating and searching for relevant knowledge, and how one accesses and utilizes this knowledge. The open architecture means that CBNRM stakeholders largely will come to CBNRM through self-definition, and that - in each case - their relationship with CBNRM as a field of knowledge and practice is likely to be unique.

As a result of this, as well as the specific needs, interests, and agendas of individual CBNRM stakeholders that utilize the network, it will appear different to each. Because of this, they are likely to use and produce different knowledge. This will contribute to maintaining and developing CBNRM as a composite, robust and alive web of knowledge that will continue to inform, guide, instruct and benefit future generations of CBNRM practitioners.