ABSTRACT
In Africa repeated efforts to impose land, water, forest, and wildlife management practices on different groups dating back to the colonial period (Beinart, 1984; Peters, 1987; Anderson and Grove, 1987; Neumann, 1992; 1995; Bonner, 1993; Bassett, 1993; Leach, 1994; Hodgson, 1995; Fairhead and Leach, 1996) have generated a legacy of 'suspicion and mistrust' toward environmental programmes (BSP, 1993: xiv). Local groups, wielding the threat of sabotage and asserting long-standing claims to property, resources and place-based identities, have responded to environmental initiatives with demands for greater recognition of their needs. Sympathetic 'liberation ecologists' positioned in NGO and state agencies have backed these claims for a more equitable distribution of resources and power by promoting more extensive community involvement and participation (Peet and Watts, 1996). To save face, and blunt criticism, donors such as the World Bank and some of the major environmental non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have followed suit, embracing 'the community' as a basic unit of environmental planning and project implementation (see IIED, 1994).
