What are the positive features of resources of development
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hello!
This pro-environmental and NRM (Natural Resource Management) extension actions are old within govt extension services since the 80's, due in majority (for my pt of view) to the fact that it was the time forestry and environmentt officers came to "power", i.e. in charge.
Usually, there is a strong disbelief towards the knowledge of rural people: this is not a question of political populism I belong (I d not stick to the "people first" from Chambers, 1994) but mostly a competition between environment extension officers' knowledge and people constraints (see Lavigne-Delville: "Cognitive blockages& expertises in social sciences"): clearly, this is a way to take power!! for instance in Ecuador (where I also work), several communal territories were suddenly appropriated by govt officers to create reserves (until the level that, because such state reserves are subjected to oil drilling, if you want to protect the forest, do not create a reserve!).
Under the world "sensitization", all the old methods of vulgarisation & extension from the 60's (where they were used for promoting "progress" towards obviously "archaic" farmers) were used for promoting NRM.
The first pb with such sensitization is clearly that related scholars "did not have done their homework": one should first understand the situation before promoting changes:
in economics at the level of the farm (meaning the private property), this is usually a question of amortization: if one do not see clearly what the future can be, no promotion can push people for, for instance, protecting his field from erosion if indebtedness combined with hyper-inflation endangered the farm property because of debts (see basics of micro-economics)... We all experience this when we had our first pluri-annual job contract : suddenly we were able to plan things beyond the year to come!!
Again in economics, this a game theory pb: One cannot ask someone who struggle for achieving the cropping calendar to plan for further NRM actions if other villagers/citizen do not do it. individual interests prime over collective interests, de facto. and it is normal at the level of a family
Still in economics at the level of the commons: I support to focus on the debate between the point raised by Hardin (1965) and his famous tragedy of the commons (that he actually combated) and the Ostrom pt of view (convention vs. institution, importance of trust, etc.): Nobel prize... the global point here is : if there are too many distortions in power between actors, support towards NRM is useless: one should first analyse the local balance of powers
in sociology, this is an other avatar of the balance of power between development project actors and "beneficiaries. Again, this is not an ideological posture but a well-studied situation where, beyond the "participation" mantra, the gap between one group (cumulating literacy, financial, cultural and political powers) and the other group, that the project and its objectives become not an arena of debate but a forest where to hide : nobody in the village will ever talk against NRM in front of extension officers. Everyone will try to swing between admonestations, self-interest and collective opinion. A whole literature exists on that: several authors : Olivier de Sardan, Biershenk.
Even with "participatory tools" (I have played quite all from ECRIS to focus groups, from PRAs to PBRMs), it usually do not work firstly because extension officers do not want to involve in local politics (see Barnaud). I mean with "politics" real struggles between groups for local issues, struggles that are usually hidden. As a paraigm, I do believe that conflicts are sociologically normal: there is no such a village whatever the place in the world where conflicts are absent
Therefore, encouraging for NRM in words only is useless for me, except this is a way for strategic self-promoting campaigns for the officer within the extension organization.
There are some promoting methods but to be clear, where you spend a lot of money for creating the conditions that will be at the end incentives for NRM. Ex: in Niger, building poor but permanent roads (called locally laterites) between the Tarka valley or Mayahi connecting these places to already existing roads towards big markets of Nigeria (Sokoto, Kano, Katsina) help opening markets for Mayahi products but were not creating interesting enough opportunities for urban traders to come in Mayahi and overcome local traders. It then allow the latter to slowly structure a network of vegetable trades
As a conclusion, of course, NRM is nice. But the major point here is: If it did not exist before you came, there are very good reasons. if you did not see them, you did not work enough. The rest is ideology.