Abstract:
There is a move in East Africa from centralized and state-driven forest management
regimes towards decentralized and mainly community-based regimes. The paper points
out some of the opportunities and challenges. Structural changes in forest policies are
seen as a contributing reason that decentralization is more in tune with the prevailing
ethos of governance. Similarly, economic and political crises have now discredited
service delivery systems based on central bureaucracy, forcing theorists of development
administration to shift their focus from hierarchy and control to participation and
empowerment. Moreover, the accelerating retrenchment during the 1990s, often to
comply with structural adjustment policies, occurred together with the realization that
centrist management strategies need reformulation. Erosion of the legitimacy of local
institutions has been cited in the paper as one of the challenges. Local institutions have no
real authority to decide on the management of forest resources. Another challenge is with
regard to the stratified communities. In all stratified communities, interests of some actors
are represented only inadequately. Lack of political will at the centre to give powers to
communities and grassroots organizations is also a challenge to community based forest
management initiatives in the region. It is also important that benefits must be significant
if the community is to go to the trouble of establishing and enforcing the rules about
resource use. This begs the question on whether community based forest management
programmes/projects in East Africa have sufficient value to stimulate community
participation. This remains a puzzle. The paper concludes by pointing out that “Rural
communities in the region are undergoing rapid social, economic, and political change, as
the development and modernization process spreads and deepens”. Even if effective and
viable user groups exist or can be put in place today, will they survive and persist in the
face of modernization pressures? Much more need to be known about the institutional
context in which users now find themselves and the type of support that will increase the
probability of sustainable management of our forest resources.
