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International Workshop on CBNRM

Name of event

International workshop on Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM)

Date and place

Washington D.C., United States, 10-14 May 1998

Description

The World Bank Institute of the World Bank, in conjunction with Ford Foundation, International Development Research Center and Rockefeller Brothers Fund, organized the workshop. In addition to the above Sponsors, there were a number of Partners to the workshop: Africa Resources Trust, World Bank Group's Common Property Resource Management Network (CPRNet), Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, International Association for the Study of Common Property (IASCP), and IUCN-The World Conservation Union.

Objectives

The overall objective with the workshop was to give the participants, the Partners and Sponsors, as well as World Bank staff, an opportunity to learn more about how to institutionalize community-based natural resource management effectively. From this overall objective followed these more specific objectives:

• To facilitate a learning dialogue among participants from all over the world in relation to institutional reform with respect to community-based natural resource management;
• To identify and promote awareness of key institutional issues with respect to community-based management of natural resources;
• To generate information and to learn about viable institutional options for community-based management of natural resources; and,
• To enhance the capacity of existing communities, networks, stakeholder groups, and international donors to bring about positive institutional reforms with respect to community-based management of natural resources.

Themes

The workshop Themes were a way of operationalizing and achieving the objectives through focusing attention on specific issues.

In order to provide a guiding structure to the workshop, as well as achieve the Objectives with the workshop, four themes were identified. The selected themes should be understood as a way of operationalizing the objectives and making them more concrete. While closely related, as well as overlapping, the themes are, at the same time, focusing on issues that are distinct enough to warrant separate treatment. Taken together, they form an overall conceptual framework for how community-based natural resource management was presented and analyzed at the workshop.

The themes structured the overall workshop, including the Plenaries and the Case Studies, in the following way: Four of the plenary presentations each addressed one of the four themes, and thus presented a framework for the set of case studies that addressed each theme. The themes are:

• Theme no. 1: The Process of Establishing an Enabling Policy and Institutional Environment.   This process takes place at both the macro and micro levels, and fosters the emergence of community-based institutions to manage natural resources locally. This theme includes the establishment or codification of well-defined property rights and responsibilities - whether state, individual, or common - with respect to natural resources.
• Theme no. 2: The Participatory Process of Organizing Effective Community-Based Groups.   This process, operating on a large scale, contributes to community-based groups effectively managing their natural resources locally. This theme includes the role of catalytic organizations, such as regional and local governments and non-governmental organizations.
• Theme no. 3: Effective Operational Linkages Between the Public Sector, the Private Sector, and Community-Based Groups in the Management of Natural Resources.   Such linkages will, in a formal sense, be established between the government (located on national, regional, or local levels) and community-based groups in the management of natural resources. This theme includes fiscal arrangements between governments and communities, institutional arrangements to make governments more client-responsive, and monitoring and evaluating the impacts of new institutional arrangements.
• Theme no. 4: Alternative Approaches to Conflict Management in the use of Natural Resources.   Such approaches are addressing conflicts found at all levels, including the local, regional, national, and international levels, including conflicts within and between communities, between various levels in the management of a natural resource, such as a river system, and between nations. This theme, and the papers presented under it, were developed in collaboration with the International Development Research Centre.

Organization

The workshop was organized around: (1) a series of plenary presentations and (2) discussions of 20 selected papers. The plenaries and case studies each addressed one of the four themes of the workshop. At the same time there was a clear regional angle to the discussions, as all participants organized themselves in regional working groups. These working groups produced detailed recommendations to various stakeholders based on the experiences and lessons learned during the workshop.

Output

The workshop produced the following material: (1) plenary presentations, (2) case studies, and (3) regional working group recommendations. Together with other material, this output was made available on a dedicated workshop website (Comment: this website was available until November 2001, when it was taken down). A lot of this material is available on the CBNRM Net website, see below.

Documents

Workshop documents

Key material produced by the workshop is available via CBNRM Net. In addition, material produced in connection with the workshop that is not available on the workshop website - specifically hundreds of case studies - can be accessed via CBNRM Net.

1. Plenary presentations
   • Hanna, Susan. 1998. "Co-management in small-scale fisheries: Creating effective linkages among stakeholders." [download]
   • Lindsay, Jon. 1998. "Designing legal space: Law as an enabling tool in community-based management." [download]
   • McCay, Bonnie J. 1998. "Co-managing the commons." [download]
   • Murombedzi, James C. 1998. "The evolving context of community-based natural resource management in Sub-Saharan Africa in historical perspective." [download]
   • Ostrom, Elinor. 1998. "Self-governance and forest resources." [download]
   • Uphoff, Normann. 1998. "Community-based natural resource management: Connecting micro and macro processes, and people with their environments." [download]
2. Case studies (to be made available)
3. Regional working group recommendations
4. List of participants

Other documents

Some organizations that were involved in the workshop, as Sponsors, Partners or participants, subsequently prepared reports on the workshop. The following reports are available in understanding with the authors and respective organizations:

1. Gerrard, Christopher D. 1998. "Co-management and collective mechanisms for environmental management." Powerpoint presentation, training workshop 'Institutional frameworks for environmental management', World Bank, Washington D.C., 17-18 November 1998. Keywords: co-management, collective action, natural resource management. [download]
2. International Development Research Centre. 1998. "Alternative approaches to managing conflict over natural resources." Prepared by John Eberlee. September 1998. Canada: IDRC. Comments: This web page reports on the workshop theme of conflict management and discusses the papers that were presented on this topic. A Spanish version is available. URL: web.idrc.ca.
3. Soeftestad, Lars T. 1999. "The 'International workshop on Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM)', Washington D.C., United States, 10-14 May 1998. Workshop report." Washington D.C., United States, World Bank. Comments: This is the official World Bank workshop report. [download]
4. USAID. 1998. "Seminar on community-based natural resource management. Summary report." Prepared by Bruce A Byers. [download]
5. World Bank Institute. 1998. "Core Course: Community-Based Natural Resource Management." World Bank Institute, Evaluation Unit. No. 18, October 1998. Comments: this is the World Bank's internal evaluation of the workshop. [download]

The International CBNRM workshop web site

The World Bank's dedicated web site for this workshop was prepared by Lars T. Soeftestad, one of the coordinators of the workshop, and last updated in September 2000. In 2002 the site was restructured, that is, material was removed and it was simplified, and it was moved into an an archival site. The original site is available via www.archive.org at this address.

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