ABSTRACT
Resource constraints are barriers to development erected by the simple unavailability of needed resources. These may be physical, human and/or financial. Most of the time the resource constraints faced by nations, regions, communities and enterprises are a combination of all three, each impinging on and aggravating the others. Constraints imposed by nature are perhaps the most stark of all, particularly where they constitute non-renewable or very-slowly-renewable resources. At the local level, where rural development and social forestry activities take place, the problem of financial resource mobilization is especially acute, principally because whatever taxes are to be raised will have to be paid by the better off, for the rural poor really cannot pay much in taxes. Rural institutions help to manage available resources, and to increase their utility and availability to broader constituencies, but unfortunately cannot usually augment the resources themselves, especially from outside sources.
