Shaping Institutions Shaping Institutions for Natural Resource for Natural Resource

Adaptive management is considered the most appropriate method for dealing with the uncertainties and risks of resource management. It is conceived as a tool to be used in complex biophysical and socio-political settings, and gives combining different types of knowledge and learning from experience a central role. Based on an extensive review of literature, the report analyses the concept of adaptive management and presents the current state of discussions about it and the various steps in its implementation. The overexploitation of natural resources is often due to governance failures and wrong incentives. And, even if the experiences in this domain come from various sectors and settings, the underlying problems are often alike. This manual offers concrete help in identifying governance problems at the root of natural resource management in development cooperation. It presents a conceptual framework that is applicable to most different contexts, defining the right use of incentives as a vital element in better governance. There is a growing trend to extend the community-based natural resource management approach beyond the local level and to apply it in regional or national settings. But how can this be done successfully? The author provides a theoretical basis by placing the terms “nesting,” “subsidiarity,” and “community-based governance” in the relevant context. He summarizes the main challenges and difficulties occurring during implementation and proposes ways to overcome them, illustrating these with case studies from Australia. Particular emphasis is given to the capacities required for each stakeholder group and to the time needed for developing these capacities. A to avoid the continuation of the into policy, management and services, and by linking the local level the national through the creation of User nested The paper the effectiveness of this new policy in the case of the Ewaso Along with the political and socioeconomic changes that took place in Viet Nam in the 1990s, the new land law and the forest protection and development law made it possible to increase local community involvement in forest management. The association of local level institutions with national policy was further enhanced by subsequent laws and arrangements. The article describes the contribution of development cooperation to this process: a project led by the Swiss NGO Helvetas introduces key stakeholders from different villages to the concept and the implementation of community forest management and extension. The experience gained in the course of action contributes to the generation of appropriate long-term policies which, in their turn, support local initiatives. Scale and Understanding of the complex interactions between and within scales and levels is an essential element in success-fully facing the challenges posed to humanity by environmental change. After defining the terms “level” and “scale,” the synthesis paper introduces the reader to these complex dynamics. It identifies three main challenges, namely ignoring the dynamics, connecting inappropriate scales and/or levels, and assuming that one single set of solutions is enough to address the problems. It then presents and comments on social and institutional responses already identified: institutional interplay, co-management through power- and responsibility-sharing between governments and local communities, and organizations intended to facilitate the co-production of knowledge between different levels and scales.