ABSTRACT
Natural resources such as forestry, grazing land and fisheries provide critical services (including food, livelihoods, and cultural/spiritual services) to dependent communities. However, these resources are facing multiple challenges, including overextraction, illegal harvesting, the impacts of climate change and other human activities that pollute and degrade natural resources. These challenges undermine the quality and scope of services they provide. Grounded on a qualitative literature review, this chapter unpacks the challenges associated with the management of natural resources. It argues that poor/weak governance regimes have often been identified as a primary factor that undermines the sustainable use of natural resources. The identified barriers to the governance of natural resources include weak legal frameworks, lack of transparency, limited participation, exclusion of local and vulnerable groups, conflicting interests, power imbalances and weak enforcement and monitoring regimes. The chapter argues that the cooperatives’ values of self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, equality, equity and solidarity can be leveraged to address these challenges associated with the governance of natural resources. By drawing lessons from case studies documenting the governance of natural resources by cooperatives, the study identified the linkage between their governance regimes and the cooperatives’ values. It recommends that the cooperative approach to the governance of natural resources can enhance their sustainability in the context of increasing pressures from exploitation and the impacts of climate change.
