ABSTRACT
For many years Zimbabwe was one of the leading countries in Africa in terms of its innovative community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) initiatives, with the Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE) being one of the most well-known. But the growing political upheavals in the country have changed many aspects of life dramatically. Although forest and wildlife governance reforms through decentralization have aimed at giving rural citizens rights to benefit from natural resources within their areas of jurisdiction, political uncertainty has affected this decentralizaton Zimbabwe in numerous ways. This chapter uses a detailed case study approach to distil lessons from experience for policy-makers and practitioners on devolution of natural resource management. It assesses the impact of political uncertainty in the new millennium and its social, institutional and ecological effects on community-level natural resource management.
