Conflict, Environmental Change, and Social Institutions in Dryland Africa: Limitations of the Community Resource Management Approach

In dryland Africa, development attention has shifted toward community resource management projects. The concurrence of environmental degradation, resource conflict, and "weak" resource management institutions is seen by project managers as evidence for the failure of local institutions to govern resource use. This article demonstrates that such diagnoses are error prone and are often logically reducible to the simple advocation of the formalization of resource access. "Community based" projects, such as those following the Gestion de Terroirs approach in Sudano - Sahelian West Africa, often attempt to improve resource management by spatially delimiting appropriate land uses, strengthening the community's exclusionary powers, and clarifying specific claims to village resources. Based on research within agropastoral areas in Mali and Niger, this article argues that rigid adherence to such development templates runs the risk of increasing local ecological and economic vulnerabilities. Multiscaled, comanagement approaches that better utilize informal networks and political institutions to mediate resource access are proposed as alternatives.