Environmental Entitlements: Dynamics and Institutions in Community-Based Natural Resource Management

Published Date
February 1999, Vol.27(2):225–247, doi:10.1016/S0305-750X(98)00141-7

Author 

Melissa Leach

Robin Mearns

Ian Scoones 

Institute of Development Studies, Brighton, UK

Accepted 14 September 1998. Available online 24 August 1999.

Abstract

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.

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  The authors would like to thank Richard Black, Stephen Devereux, Jean Drèze, Des Gasper, Martin Greeley, Ann Hudock, Karim Hussein, Hamish Jenkins, Simon Maxwell, Susanna Moorehead, Mark Robinson, Jeremy Swift, and two anonymous referees for their valuable comments on an earlier draft. The paper has also benefited from comments by participants in an international workshop at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex (March 1997).

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