In seeking new ways to determine the suitability of different types of management schemes in order to facilitate better forms of governance and revenue distribution for community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) projects, the authors present a new framework termed, 'threshold-based resource management.' It is used to make policy recommendations that address “a core problem of development administration...[i.e.] matching the resources and management regimes” (p.174). The authors' consideration of two separate CBNRM projects in southern Africa grounds the framework and a new conception of CBNRM is offered.

Commencing with a list of the assumptions upon which today's popular CBNRM projects are based, the article then provides summaries of the Communal Area Management Program for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE) project in the town of Masoka, Zimbabwe and of the Tchuma Tchato programme in Mozambique. Strengths and weaknesses, and differences and similarities of the projects are touched upon. Both projects feature communal land comprising fenced-in local agriculture and wildlife hunted by safari companies that lease licenses from the local people. The proceeds from the joint ventures with the companies have benefited local infrastructure in both cases, but lack of basic village control over proprietary rights and revenue distribution are problematic. These situations are seen to be exemplary of CBNRM in southern Africa, and the authors set about describing a new framework that could aid in identifying the anthropogenic status of an ecosystem and pairing it with an appropriate management regime.

The four categories of ecosystems described and their corresponding management schemes follow:

1. areas only minimally affected by human impact, e.g. wilderness or remote areas
   -self-sustaining management;
2. locations sparsely inhabited by humans, e.g. large national parks
   -adaptive management;
3. areas of increasing conflict between natural systems and human impacts, e.g. many rural villages
   in developing countries
   -case-by-case management;
4. areas highly populated by humans regularly extracting resources for high-reliability purposes,
   e.g. fully developed urban ecosystems of villages, towns or cities
   -high reliability management.

Essential definitions of each management scheme can be summarized as such: self sustaining management – ruled by internal, natural “complex adaptive systems” (p.176) that operate along the lines of homeostasis; adaptive management – an experimental and responsive approach that continually builds upon its findings to improve itself; case-by-case management – a highly variable and evolutionary approach that draws from all the other schemes to analyze each case on its own merits and is assessed according to multiple criteria; high reliability management – advanced technical organization of complex activities bolstered by high incentives and shared expectations, and producing secure and reliable outcomes. Summaries of the prevailing theories and analytical approaches that guide resource management designations per ecosystem category are provided.

The authors argue, that contrary to literature and general perceptions, most CBNRM is not a form of adaptive management, rather it is better classified as case-by-case management. Furthermore, forces that increasingly summon forms of high reliability management manipulate sites of communal conservation. The authors then assert that “what has never been sufficiently appreciated in the rural development literature is that smallholder crop and livestock agriculture is the world's most reliable production system, and it is within that system that wildlife management production will be co-opted” (p.183). Smallholders are explained to possess all of the features ascribed to high reliability managers, and the trial and error experimentation characteristic of adaptive management schemes is shown to be incompatible with the peak performance standards under which smallholders are accustomed to operating. This modus operandi discourages locals from involving themselves in 'wildlife experiments' unless the new CBNRM project can be proved to be more reliable than their former livelihoods.

In conclusion, the authors answer the questions that guided their paper: 1) the appropriate scale and levels of natural resource management depend on its ecosystem category. The case studies are in zones that fall under case-by-case management, and it is judged that eventually high-reliability management will constitute the ideal regime for such scenarios; 2) program policies must sanction local people to operate in imaginative and collaborative site-specific ways to manage their resources; 3) what these findings imply for effective management of project revenues is the central importance of devolution of governance and management powers to local participants.

Prepared by Megan Glore