Browsing by Author "Ribot, J. C."

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    Building local democracy through natural resource interventions: An environmentalist's responsibility
    Ribot, J. C. (Washington, D.C.: World Resources Institute, 2008)
  • Decentralisation, participation and accountability in Sahelian Forestry: Legal instruments of political-administrative control
    Ribot, J. C. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999)
    Colonial relations of political administration are being reproduced in the current era of participation and decentralisation. In natural resource management, participation and decentralisation are promoted on the basis that they can increase equity, yield greater efficiency, benefit the environment and contribute to rural development. Reaping these benefits is predicated on (1) the devolution of some real powers over natural resources to local populations, and (2) the existence of locally accountable authorities to whom those powers can be devolved. However, a limited set of highly circumscribed powers are being devolved to locally accountable authorities, and most local authorities to whom powers are being devolved are systematically structured to be upwardly accountable to the central state, rather than downwardly accountable to local populations. Many of the new laws being passed in the name of participation and decentralisation administer rather than enfranchise. The article examines the historical legal underpinnings of the powers and accountability of state-backed rural authorities (chiefs and rural councils), the authorities through which current natural resource management projects in Burkina Faso and in Mali represent local populations, and the decisions being devolved to local bodies in new natural resource management efforts. Without reform local interventions risk reproducing the inequities of their centralised political--administrative context. Rather than pitting the state against society by depicting the state as a negative force and society and non-state institutions as positive--as is done in many decentralisation and participatory efforts--this article suggests that representation through local government can be the basis of general and enduring participation by society in public affairs.
  • Local actors, powers and accountability in African decentralization: A review of issues
    Ribot, J. C. (2001)
    Decentralization across Africa are re-organizing the roles and powers of local actors in the name of increasing participation of local populations in governance. How these reforms affect popular participation depends on the local institutional arrangements they create: which actors receive powers, what powers they receive, and the relations of accountability these actors are located in. This review covers a portion of the literature and characterizes decentralizations and attempts to explain their outcomes in Africa.
  • Local forest control in Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Senegel and the Gambia: A review and critique of new participatory policies
    Ribot, J. C. (1995)
    This report gives the general characteristics of each country, profiles the traditional energy sector, gives an outlook to 2020, reviews the past interventions, and ends with priorities for action.
  • Market-state relations and environmental policy: Limits of state capacity in Senegal
    Ribot, J. C. (2001)
    This chapter explores the role of factors beyond the physical and financial means of the state as they affect the state's capacity to management the use and conservation of natural resources. The social and political-economic dynamics that occurs between official environmental management policies and actual management practice are examined.
  • Theorizing access: Forest profits along Senegal's charcoal commodity chain
    Ribot, J. C. (Oxford, UK: Institute of Social Studies, 1998)
    Who profits from commercial forestry, and how? Through access mapping with commodity chain analysis this article examines the distribution of benefits from Senegal's charcoal trade and the multiple market mechanisms underpinning that distribution. Benefits from charcoal are derived from direct control over forest access, as well as through access to markets, labour opportunities, capital, and state agents and officials. Access to these arenas is based on a number of inter-related mechanisms including legal property, social identity, social relations, coercion and information control.
  • Waiting for democracy: The politics of choice in natural resource decentralization
    Ribot, J. C. (Washington, D.C.: World Resources Institute, 2004)
    This report has two main recommendations: (1) to work with democratic local government to institutionalize downwardly accountable representation and (2) transfer environmental powers to create local discretion.