Community Rights, Conservation and Contested Land

Natural resource governance is central to the outcomes of biodiversity conservation efforts and to patterns of economic development, particularly in resource-dependent rural communities. The institutional arrangements that define natural resource governance are outcomes of political processes, whereby numerous groups with often-divergent interests negotiate for access to and control over resources. These political processes determine the outcomes of resource governance reform efforts, such as widespread attempts to decentralize or devolve greater tenure over land and resources to local communities. This volume examines the dynamics of natural resource governance processes through a range of comparative case studies across east and southern Africa, in an effort to better understand the factors that account for the different outcomes of reform efforts in different contexts. These cases examine issues such as land tenure, of tourism development, and wildlife conservation, and participatory forest management, and are drawn from the work of both academics and field practitioners from across the region. .

Fred Nelson has worked as a scholar and practitioner on natural resource governance in east Africa for over ten years. He has worked in the field with local communities in northern Tanzania to establish more equitable and beneficial resource governance arrangements and has researched the political economy of natural resource management across east and southern Africa. His work has been published in journals such as Conservation Biology, Development Change and Biodiversity Conservation.