مدیریت جنگل مبتنی بر جامعه در چارچوب تمرکز زدایی سازمانی در هندوراس

Many developing countries are increasingly shifting responsibility for natural resource management from central to local government authorities. This essay analyzes a case study toward decentralized forest governance and community-based forest management in the municipality of Lepaterique, Honduras, with a special focus on the multiplicity of actors and goals, and the complexity of institutions involved in natural resource management. The study emphasizes that institutional democratization and political accountability of forest authorities and community representatives to local populations are essential if decentralized forest governance is to succeed in integrating the potentially conflicting resource interests and in achieving a more equitable distribution of powers and benefits.

There is a popular trend in many developing countries toward increasing decentralization of natural resource management from central to local government authorities. In theory, decentralization can increase democratization of natural resource management by allowing local populations to make decisions on the control and use of local resources. Development of natural resource management to local governments may also provide local communities with new revenues and contribute to the more equitable distribution of benefits. With decentralized natural resource management, local people may feel a greater sense of ownership of rules for resource use and be more engaged in their implementation, monitoring, and enforcement. Decentralized resource management is also considered to make it easier for marginalized groups to influence environmental policies. On the other hand, local governments may be more subject to bribery and political pressure from local resource users, or they may be captured by political elites who promote hierarchical relations instead of democratic participation and political accountability (Kaimowitz et al., 1998, Larson and Ribot, 2004, Pacheco, 2004, Ribot, 1999 and Smoke, 2003).

This essay has analyzed the institutional context of decentralized forest management and the role played by different actors in shaping the rights, rules, and responsibilities of community forestry. When assessing the success of decentralization and community-based resource management, considerable attention needs to be focused not only on the entire spectrum of actors with divergent interests, but also on the social and political processes through which these actors interrelate, along with the institutional mechanisms that shape their interactions (Agrawal and Gibson, 1999 and Robbins, 1998). Although there are no simple recipes for democratic decentralization and the creation of viable forms of integrative development, the following recommendations are worth considering.22 First, efforts to achieve inclusive and participatory resource management at the local level should be tailored to deal effectively with the local sociopolitical power structures that would frustrate them. Populist agendas for grassroot participation and community action should be replaced by realistic strategies that recognize the needs and goals of multiple actors with differentiated resource interests (Nygren, 2000 and Paulson et al., 2003). As opportunities to manage and control natural resources are undoubtedly influenced by the existing distribution of power, it is important to ensure that the institutions regulating local resource use include legitimate representation of the less powerful segments of the local population as well.