Community participation

The views of border fishing communities and their leaders on the challenges and opportunities for improved fisheries management at the international border areas on Lake Victoria are documented. The report is based on discussions with fishing communities and district leaders in the Kenya-Uganda, Kenya-Tanzania and Tanzania-Uganda border areas, carried out from 22 to 29 April and 5 to 12 June 2002.

IGAD and IUCN-EARO collaborated to develop a Community Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) project for the IGAD region. As a result six detailed country studies were undertaken for Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan and Uganda, and a regional analysis. Country and regional workshops were convened to deliberate and agree on the major issues and activities.

IGAD and IUCN-EARO collaborated to develop a Community Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) project for the IGAD region. As a result six detailed country studies were undertaken for Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan and Uganda, and a regional analysis. Country and regional workshops were convened to deliberate and agree on the major issues and activities.

Conventional approaches to managing protected areas have often seen people and nature as separate entities. They preclude human communities from using natural resources and assume that their concerns are incompatible with conservation. Protected area approaches and models that see conservation as compatible with human communities are explored. The main themes are co-managed protected areas and community conserved areas.

At the heart of ‘co-management’ of natural resources is a process of collective understanding and action by local communities and other social actors. The process brings about negotiated agreements on management roles, rights, and responsibilities, making explicit the conditions and institutions of sound decentralised governance. De facto, co-management is about sharing power.