Borders, Rules & Governance:

Current Lines of NGO Policy

Advocacy Supporting Community-Based Resource Management for Ecological Sustainability

Janis B. Alcorn, Biodiversity Support Program, WWF, 1250 24th St.NW, Washington DC 20037.

My talk focuses on supporting management and governance at local scales in order to contribute to ecological sustainability at regional and global scales. I discuss policy reforms being supported by NGOs. They lie on the frontier of democratization; they represent the nexus where interests in improved global resource management interset with interests in good governance. After reviewing the general attributes and distribution of local common property management institutions (CPMIs), I assess the major problems facing CPMIs. The external problems include: invasion by settlers; oil, mining, logging, etc extractive enterprises; plantations; government corruption; administrative division; competing governance; and political divisions. The internal problems include: crisis-driven change; lack of participation; conflicting interests; loss of values; loss of social cohesion; and rapid commercialization. In response NGOs are supporting five broad policy reforms: decentralization, tenure reform, protected area policy reform, nontimber forest product policy reform; and institutional strengthening of CPMIs,including policy reform at the community level. After exploring these five reforms, I reflect on why these policy reforms are so important to biodiversity conservation. In short, biodiversity depends on the institutional diversity that creates and maintains habitats in diverse situations. I close by urging researchers to analyze existing experiences to suggest structures and policies that create the best cross-scale articulation between local self governance and national government. I urge those doing research at regional scales to "think down" to local governance and its links to government at higher scales, and I urge those doing local level research to "think up and out". We need guiding principles about good cross-scale linkages that allow local governance adapted to local conditions while also functioning to maintain ecosystems at larger scales.

A short version of this talk is being published in the Political Economy of the Good Society (PEGS) Newsletter in the summer of 1999.

The opinions expressed in this paper do not necessarily reflect the opinions of World Wildlife Fund, The Nature Conservancy, World Resources Institute, or the United States Agency for International Development.