Empowering communities to manage natural resources: where does the new power lie? A case study of Duru – Haitemba, Babati, Tanzania
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Date
2000
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Publisher
SUA
Abstract
Recent approaches to community – based natural resource management appear diverse as
their varied implementing agencies and natural resource settings; yet they rest on a set of
common assumptions about community, natural resources and the relationship between them.
This paper focuses on power relations between actors and how these set the framework for
resource management in Duru – Haitemba. As one of the few remain ing tracts of miombo
woodlands, Duru – Haitemba woodlands had been targeted for gazettement. However the
exercise faced “local discontent”. The discontent has its origin in the “generalised
narrative”. Before the coming of colonial powers the community lived in balanced harmony
with nature. But when this harmony was disrupted, it led to disequilibria and hence
degradation. A range of factors may be called to account, including: technological change;
the breakdown of traditional authority; social change; urban aspirations and the intrusion of
inappropriate state policies. What is required is to bring community and environment back
into harmony. This requires either the discovery and rebuilding of traditional collective
resource management institutions or their replacement by new ones. At the local level there
are two factions competing for power: the elites and the traditionalists. The primary concern
of traditionalists is “ritual”. Elites tend to hijack community based processes and forcefully
occupying the political space opened by decentralization. Besides of the power struggles at
the micro level another challenge is on the part of the government leadership at the macro
level. Government officials usually have very mixed feelings about community actions.
Increasingly though, these officials have come to realize that community action can substitute
for the expensive need to put government officials into the field. The paper points out the fact
that, community-based natural resource management seems plausible way to cut down public
costs of managing resources. However, it remains an arena of power struggle between three
actors: Local Communities, Field Agents and Supervisors. This “triangle” of relationships
constitute the social arena marking out the actual “locale” of community based natural
resource management in Duru – Haitemba.
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Keywords
Community, Tanzania, Natural resources, Empower