VTechWorks staff will be away for the Thanksgiving holiday beginning at noon on Wednesday, November 27, through Friday, November 29. We will resume normal operations on Monday, December 2. Thank you for your patience.

Browsing by Author "Mearns, R."

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
  • Challenges to community-based sustainable development: Dynamics, entitlements, institutions
    Leach, M.; Mearns, R.; Scoones, I. (UK: Institute of Development Studies, 1997)
    For all the emphasis given to community-based approaches within recent environment and development policy debates, results in practice have often been disappointing both from the perspectives of implementing agencies, and of certain sections of the 'communities' concerned. This article suggests that among many possible reasons, key problems relate to shortcomings in the underlying assumptions about 'community', 'environment', and the relationships between them which inform current approaches. An alternative perspective, forwarded here, starts from the politics of resource access and control among diverse social actors, and sees patterns of environmental change as the outcomes of negotiation, or contestation, between social actors who may have very different priorities. As the authors go on to show, the notion of 'environmental entitlements' encapsulates this shift in perspective. Specifying people's entitlements and the ways they are shaped by diverse institutions offers a useful approach to the analysis of situations with which community-based sustainable development attempts to engage.
  • Environmental entitlements: Dynamics and institutions in community-based natural resource management
    Leach, M.; Mearns, R.; Scoones, I. (Great Britain: Pergamon Press, 1999)
    While community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) now attracts widespread international attention, its practical implementation frequently falls short of expectations. This paper contributes to emerging critiques by focusing on the implications of intracommunity dynamics and ecological heterogeneity. It builds a conceptual framework highlighting the central role of institutions - regularized patterns of behavior between individuals and groups in society - in mediating environment-society relationships. Grounded in an extended form of entitlements analysis, the framework explores how differently positioned social actors command environmental goods and services that are instrumental to their well-being. Further insights are drawn from analyses of social difference; "new"; dynamic ecology; new institutional economics; structuration theory; and landscape history. The theoretical argument is illustrated with case material from India, South Africa, and Ghana. --Elsevier Science Ltd.
  • Institutions, consensus and conflict: Implications for policy and practice
    Leach, M.; Mearns, R.; Scoones, I. (UK: Institute of Development Studies, 1997)
    This article is a summation of the sustainable development special issue of the IDS Bulletin (Vol. 28, no. 4). Sustainable development is being heralded by institutions and organizations at varied levels. Sustainable resource management cannot be achieved without recognizing that: 1) multiple institutions are involved in resource management (e.g. village elders and kinship networks both confer access to land), 2) different people rely on different institutions to support their claims to environmental goods and services, 3) the nature of many institutions is informal and are characterized by a regular instead of fixed set of norms and 4) institutions and organizations are not independent of community power and authority relations. To address these issues, it is suggested that a "learning process approach" be followed to guide and empower subordinate groups. Through the process of empowerment, conflict will arise and negotiation is suggested as a path to resolution. Negotiations will have to take into consideration differential power relations and modes of operation. In practice and policy arenas, actors need be assured of uncertainty in relation to outcomes. Policy cannot be directed at a specific outcome given the different actors, their definitions of sustainability and their access to other agents of change. It is suggested that, in certain contexts, idealization of past community relations to environment should be utilized to further the goals of the community (e.g., decentralized control of resources).
  • Natural resource management and land policy in developing countries: Lessons learned and new challenges for the World Bank
    Bruce, J. W.; Mearns, R. (London, UK: International Institute for Environment and Development,, 2004)
    The World Bank's concept of its development mission has deepened in recent years, with greater weight being given to poverty eradication and environmental stewardship. Natural resource management has taken its place alongside agriculture as a major rural development concern. A more integrated picture of rural livelihoods has emerged, along with a growing appreciation of the viability of production systems that make extensive but sustainable use of fragile resources, such as those of pastoralists. This paper looks at the World Bank's involvement in land policy issues in forests and protected areas and in pastoral and rangeland development, and summarises the lessons learned.