West Africa : Community Based Natural Resource Management

This has to be accomplished against a
background of high illiteracy rates, rapidly growing
populations, low and erratic rainfall, inherently infertile
soils, and development strategies which have had a strong
urban bias. Under such conditions, traditional production
systems are unable to sustain the population. Without
significant change, land degradation will accelerate and the
natural resource base on which agricultural production
depends will continue to decline. The efforts made in the
1970s and 1980s to tackle this problem were not particularly
successful. They tended to focus too much on production and
did not attempt to involve the local population in
decision-making and management. Drawing on the lessons
learned from these projects, governments, and donors
initiated a new generation of community-based,
decentralized, multi sectoral Natural Resource Management
(NRM) projects. Starting as a series of pilot operations in
the late 1980s, this approach sought to ensure local
community participation in the identification development
and implementation of NRM projects, while building
institutional capacity for effective resource use planning
and human resource development.