The Role Of Community In Resource Use And Conservation

Reading Response: The Role of Community in Resource use and Conservation Student’s Name: Instructor: Course: Date: The role of human activities on the environment is well-documented. Over the years, there has been a clear observation, that human beings are the greatest threat to their own surrounding. This has brought about a review of how best to enhance environmental conservation, with an eye on entirely separating the forests and human beings. Such an approach yielded little success over the past five decades, prompting a paradigm shift in how environmental conservation should be done. This shift focused on community forestry. The new paradigm clearly identified the local community as the most important cog in the safeguard and sustenance of indigenous forests. As a decentralizing program, community forestry can be effective in both forest conservation and empowerment of the marginalized people if done in the proper way, especially in the rural areas of the global south. Scheba and Mustalati , in their work titled Rethinking ‘expert’ knowledge in community forest management in Tanzania, note that there is a clear disparity between forest conservation and economic empowerment. Through a systematic and detailed analysis of people’s experiences in rural Tanzania, the scholars are able to place a finger on what exactly ails the efforts for successful community based forestry. Simplicity is always a good thing, especially when dealing with matters related to the environment. Conserving forests is not rocket science. It entails following up on the basics of environmental conservation, rather than complicating things through the employment of various intricacies. While not entirely out of the equation, the use of the so-called ‘experts’ in forest conservation generally creates some form of hierarchy. This hierarchy gradually locks out the local community, thereby increasing marginalization of some groups such as women, while also going against the initial noble goal of economic empowerment of the community. Although community forest management has enhanced the conditions of the forests, the other goals of poverty reduction and local empowerment have not been fully realized.[Scheba, A., & Mustalahti, I. (2015). Rethinking ‘expert’ knowledge in community forest management in Tanzania. Forest Policy and Economics, 60, 7-18.] [Giri, K., & Darnhofer, I. (2010). Nepali women using community forestry as a platform for social change. Society and Natural Resources, 23(12), ...