ABSTRACT
Throughout southern Africa, ordinary men and women are managing and using natural resources (for example, plants, animals, forests, wildlife and crops) in ways that enhance their lives. They get their food, fuel, building materials and spiritual nourishment from natural resources and, either consciously or unconsciously, manage these resources through the local rules, taboos and belief systems that they have developed in particular contexts. Although natural resources have long been an integral part of rural southern African livelihoods, it is only in recent decades that outsiders have sought to promote natural resource management as a rural development strategy – which is partly why this book is being written. The concern of governments and donor agencies with community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) arose mainly from a widespread assumption that the rural poor are exerting unsustainable pressure on their natural environment. Better use practices, policies and management systems, it was argued, could halt this environmental degradation. This led to the formulation and implementation of ‘formal’ CBNRM programmes in many countries of the subcontinent, most of which were driven, and often even initiated, by a combination of government, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), community-based organizations (CBOs) and, sometimes, the private sector.
