Local government institutions and community based natural resource management in Botswana

The devolution of natural resource management to local institutions has become a dominant theme in contemporary discussion of common property natural resource management. Though governments in Africa and other parts of the developing world embrace the idea of CBNRM, the challenges are what levels of local government ought to receive devolutionary powers. The definition of what is local government is also problematic. Local government institutions as epitomized by district councils that emerge from decentralization policies do not represent and are not accountable to local communities and are more like local administrative institutions (Uphoff, 1986). This paper recognizes the need for a true devolution process that creates truly local government institutions with a mandate over district natural resources of which CBNRM activity is a part.