Turner examines CBNRM projects and programs implemented throughout southern African countries in the last decades in order to determine if their overall lack of efficacy places the application of this integrated development-conservation strategy in a state of crisis. He considers the variety of natural resource sectors that CBNRM serves and recognizes the inherent differences between intervention-driven versus traditional forms of resource management. This contributes to the broader picture of CBNRM that his paper portrays. Taking a holistic view of the issue, he points to a fundamental variable of CBNRM that is often at the root of CBNRM failures. He notes that sound local governance, an essential element of CBNRM, is lacking in most cases. He declares the issue of local governance to be the real crisis of CBNRM in southern Africa and cites its oversight as a factor that compounds the problem. Turner advocates for more research and development directed towards the enhancement of local governance in communities.

Despite the prevalence of CBNRM projects in southern Africa that concern wildlife conservation and eco-tourism, Turner reminds us that both externally- and internally-initiated CBNRM applies to other natural resource sectors, as well. Range or pasture management, forestry, fisheries, and water management are relevant domains of communal stewardship that are objects of study and development.

He differentiates between 'focused' CBNRM initiatives that are brought to local communities by external actors, and 'everyday' or 'general' CBNRM of common-pool resources that stems from indigenous practices and is still governed, at least partially, by traditional authorities. As 'everyday' CBNRM is ubiquitous and persists throughout the region, Turner argues that scholarship and intervention must be refocused to specifically support these management schemes rather than pouring funding and research into new projects that rarely meet with success. This call to enhance 'everyday' CBNRM is justified by the majority numbers of people affected by it compared to those involved with 'focused' CBNRM, and by the prediction that communal areas will retain their prominent role in the economies and societies of impoverished rural communities into the future. Urgency for this change, this affirmation of 'the commons', is implied as he cites the rapidly changing political and social forces that bear down upon traditional institutions.

Turner suggests ways that scholars can contribute to the affirmation of the commons and the improvement of local governance. To attract greater policy support, research yielding data on market and income values of products from natural resources under communal management is needed.

Research revealing the detrimental costs of negligence to support local governance will highlight the importance of endeavouring to enhance it. Researchers must innovate low-cost, large-scale ways to support local governance and 'everyday' CBNRM. Turner stipulates that these strategies should operate through a general framework of local governance and be applicable to all scenarios of natural resource management, rather than limiting themselves to a myopic focus on sector-specific initiatives. In addition, for countries featuring a dichotomy of communal land users and freehold land owners, the differences in their rights must be identified and removed. Lastly, 'focused' CBNRM projects that are achieving, or have good potential to achieve enhancement of local governance and political confidence, should be sought out regardless of their impacts on biodiversity or revenues. Sustainable management of resources cannot proceed without a basis of competent local governance.

Prepared by Megan Glore

For planners and scholars of community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) in southern Africa, Robert Hitchcock's article provides a useful overview of the indigenous San people's social activism for land rights, human rights, and natural resources rights. He offers an objective account of the forces that have shaped their political will and action in Botswana. The focus is on the case of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, where a conflict over land between its traditional inhabitants and the national government has smouldered since the mid 1980s. Hitchcock's vast experience in southern Africa with applied research in international development, settlement and resettlement, human rights of indigenous people, and CBNRM place him on solid ground to discuss this history.

Ethnic stigmatization is central to the geographic displacement and resource dispossession that the San suffer in Botswana and the author sets the scene by comparing the national government's official policy of disregard for indigenous minority status among its population with the rights that international standards demand for all indigenous people. After orienting the reader to the drastic changes that have challenged the San's existence in recent decades and the desire amongst the people to regain control over their destiny through a political voice, he organizes the paper into the following sections: San social movements, a brief history of San human rights issues, the Central Kalahari and the First Peoples, The First People of the Kalahari as a San organization, the resettlement of people from the Central Kalahari, and resource rights issues in the Central Kalahari.

Hitchcock provides details about the series of events that led up to the eviction of nearly all San and Bakgalagadi people from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in 2002 and their relocation to inadequate settlements, an act that was viewed as a violation of basic human rights by the international community. Their mistreatment throughout history is depicted through a description of scant allocation of rights, virtual slavery, dispossession of their ancestral homes, and denied representation in court. In addition to their low status nationwide, the relative socio-economic advancement of the region's Bakgalagadi people has subordinated the San and some see themselves as the self-described 'serfs' of the Bakgalagadi. The political awareness that has grown in the San prompted them to further specify sub-categories of basic human rights as security rights, subsistence rights, and cultural rights, -all of which they feel have been violated through the relocation process.

Distinct characteristics of the San social movement are described. They purposefully internationalized their movement through attendance at international conventions, meetings with officials from global institutions, and alliances created with other indigenous groups of the world. In turn, they have successfully garnered considerable support from entities outside Botswana. Another characteristic is the distinction that the San emphasize regarding their indigenous ethnicity in contrast to the other minority group involved in the land struggle, the Bakgalagadi. Furthermore, their movement has been non-violent, relying upon consultation, negotiation and information sharing.

Hitchcock draws on the experience of the San to point out lessons for all NGOs concerned with the rights of indigenous people: community discussions and meetings are not sufficient for inducing change and prompt legal steps must be taken to instigate official action; heavy reliance upon outside support can be seen to weaken the integrity of a movement and grassroots support is paramount to justifying indigenous claims; and NGOs must publicly clarify their goals for the benefit of all constituents served and not employ strategies that unfairly emphasize one ethnicity over the other.

In light of numerous case studies that portray apathy amongst the San, this summary of political self-empowerment and strong international support provides hope for the emergence of a new sense of San dignity and entitlement, despite the loss of their ancestral lands in the Game Reserve. CBNRM planners that acknowledge the San potential for collective mobilization could take advantage of the collaborative opportunities that it may offer for securing them the rights that are fundamental to forming effective people-centred conservation.

Prepared by Megan Glore

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

Fay describes two comparable situations in the late 1990s on the Eastern Cape of South Africa where people living next to the Cwebe Nature Reserve joined in solidarity to pursue the sustainable management of their natural resources. These cases demonstrate how a shared reliance on natural resources, a history of dispossession, and the wish to protect resources from outside groups are experiences that can bind people together to assert their right to control their natural resources. The two cases present significant objects of study because community action was not instigated by governmental or external powers, as is the case with most community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) in the literature. Whereas much scholarship treats the problem of the effective identification and formation of community structures in order to implement CBNRM, this article highlights just two of many existent cases where heterogeneous groups of people unite through grassroots efforts to sustainably manage the resources that they have in common. The problem that these cases highlight is a lack of external support for internally initiated CBNRM.

During a virtual vacuum of state resource management in South Africa in the 1990s, people looked for new ways to regulate resource exploitation in the absence of coercive governmental policies. In one of the case studies, independent, dispossessed villages outside the Dwesa-Cwebe Nature Reserve coalesced into a community called Dwesa Cwebe on the basis of their shared struggle for rights to the forest in the Reserve. However, following the success of their coordinated activism and the subsequent regularization of resource access, a new problem relating to livestock grazing rights arose. Two of the villages were not awarded much-needed land access for grazing their livestock, and therefore continued illegally utilizing the Reserve to this end. The larger community called upon the government to help enforce the regulations, but their plea for assistance went unanswered and villagers without alternatives continued illegally grazing their livestock, presenting a situation that has undermined the legitimacy of the community conservation institution.

Shortcomings of the state are also highlighted in the second case study concerning the re-establishment of access rights to a eucalyptus woodlot outside the Dwesa-Cwebe Nature Reserve. The woodlots originated as a compensatory natural resource from the state to locals who suffered eviction from and restricted access to the Nature Reserve. In the subsequent void of government management, the woodlot was succumbing to unsustainable harvest techniques and over-exploitation by outsiders. The four villages that were closest to the woodlot united through their resistance to outsiders and common experience of dispossession in order to protect the trees and promote healthy harvesting practices. Though they formed a community with vested interest in conservation and took many steps to institute management, their efforts eventually failed as the state did not furnish support for financial or enforcement needs.

The author notes that while these newly federated groups of people succeed in their formation of community structures to govern resources, the relevant problem becomes one of financing and enforcing the new regulations and spatial boundaries they stipulated for resource management. Fay suggests that in order to provide critical support for emergent grassroots resource management efforts, research must be expanded to adopt a sharper focus on such cases where communities initiate CBNRM of their own accord.

Prepared by Megan Glore