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The Community-Based Natural Resource Management Network
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Background
For a correct understanding and analysis of CPRs, it is important to separate natural resources as such from the tenurial aspects of managing these resources. CPRNet is concerned with the latter institutional modalities.
CPRs cover all types of natural resources which are shared by a group of people or communities, including transboundary resources of two or more countries. They include: closed water bodies, coastal zones, community forests, mountain areas, open seas, pastures, rangelands, rivers and river basins, sacred groves, uncultivated waste areas, and wetlands. There are resources like air, climate and the open seas where the CPR is referred to as a global commons. Whether localized or global, these resources continue to be important parts of community resources in developing countries.
In comparison with privately owned and managed, as well as state-controlled resources, CPRs play a crucial role in: (i) Reducing rural poverty and inequality; (ii) Maintaining local-level biodiversity and micro-level environmental stability; (iii) Enhancing agricultural productivity and diversity; and, (iv) Promoting collective sharing and group action. These issues constitute key areas of concern for the World Bank Group.
The focus of the World Bank Group's work has, so far, largely been restricted to resource management issues where tenure is fairly clear, and to specific natural resources. Thus a large amount of work has been done on, for example, land tenure and administration in countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. There has so far been less focus on examining other, more complex and/or traditional, forms of tenure and management, as well as other natural resources, including aquatic areas, forests and rangelands. This focus on one, and neglect of other natural resources, and, by implication, the people dependent upon them, has sometimes had damaging effects on CPRs and those depending upon them.