Browsing by Author "Soeftestad, Lars T."

Now showing 1 - 6 of 6

Institutions, Organizations and the Poverty/Environment Nexus: Challenges to a Rights-Based Approach to Management of Coastal Resources in Colombia and Ghana
(2008) Soeftestad, Lars T.; Alayon, Laura M.
"Coastal zones globally are hotspots when it comes to the challenges of sustainable resource management and poverty reduction. They used to be relatively underpopulated and placid. This is changing due to growing population movements towards the coastal zones. Migrants as a rule do not find what they hoped for, but instead increasingly overpopulated, under-serviced, polluted, conflict ridden, resource-depleted, and poverty-stricken areas. Developing countries are modernizing, and the population, together with cultures and associated social organization are caught in between tradition and modernity. "The paper focuses on this dichotomous management through addressing coastal institutions, organizations, and NGOs in Colombia and Ghana. Relevant stakeholders, specifically the Corporation for the Sustainable Development of the Archipelago of San Andres, Old Providence, and Santa Catalina Islands in Colombia (CORALINA), and relevant NGOs in Ghana are considered. The Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework is employed. "On Providence Island in Colombia there are few traditional institutions, while in Ghana the traditional sector is identical with the pervasive chieftaincy system. CORALINA faces the challenges of engaging people that do not really care, and create an organization from scratch. In Ghana coastal people certainly care, while the organizational obstacles remain much he same. Another important difference is that in Ghana a number of NGOs begin to play important roles, while the situation in the Colombian Archipelago is, in this respect, incipient. "The analysis addresses aspects of how to bridge traditional and modernizing sectors and target the intricate poverty-environment nexus and, more specifically, implement a rights-based approach to the management of coastal resources. The essence of how to achieve this would seem to be closely connected with two major tasks: (1) create new organizations (or reform existing ones), from the bottom up and founded upon relevant institutions, and (2) establish co-management arrangements that are transparent, inclusive, and address conflicts."
Protecting Traditional Property Rights under Conditions of Change: Production of Plant Oils as a Community-based Enterprise in the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco
(2008) Montanari, Bernadette; Soeftestad, Lars T.
"In the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco natural resources are declining due to over-harvesting and population pressure. The situation is exacerbated through lack of secure land tenure, political representation, and empowerment on the part of local people. They have since a long time been involved in harvesting local aromatic plants and sold the herbs in a small-scale and informal economy. The overutilization of natural resources affects a number of these aromatic plants, particularly sage and thyme. "Macro-level policies aimed at decentralizing development are currently being implemented. They aim to address natural resource degradation, poverty and outmigration. In this connection a project to distil essential plant oils and process herbal products was established in the El Maghzen village, and an alembic (used for distilling essential oils) was installed by the Department of Water and Forestry. This decentralized distillation project is the only one in the region and represents a major economic opportunity for local people. However, the villagers have never taken part in any major commercial venture before. Furthermore, lack of secure tenure to the areas where the plants are gathered, together with lack of political representation and empowerment are key obstacles to sustaining this economic opportunity. "Under the traditional Jamaa institution, customary law gave local people access to land in order to harvest medicinal plants and collect wood for purposes of cooking and building. Over time the Department of Water and Forestry has assumed ownership over most of the land, while under a new agreement in connection with the project local people will hire land from the Department of Water and Forestry for purposes of harvesting plants. An ongoing research project is investigating and evaluating this development project. In applied terms, it aims to look at the implementation of the enterprise, with a special focus on gender issues."
Regulating the Commons in Mauritania: Local Agreements as a Tool for Sustainable Natural Resource Management
(2006) Kirsch-Jung, Karl P.; Soeftestad, Lars T.
"The present situation in Mauritania with regard to management of natural resources is complex. There is tribal law, colonial French law (Code Napoleon) and modern state law, layered on top of each other as it were. These legal codes, in and off themselves, are not necessarily suited to tackle the situation of local natural resource management (NRM) today. In connection with local-level management of the commons, specifically land, relating to and using these different and often contradictory legal codes represents a somewhat bewildering picture. As a result, conflicts between specific rules in these codes at times arise. "In this situation, efforts to achieve sustainable land management have to work within and negotiate the delicate balance between these codes. At the same time, these efforts have to relate to and work with relevant stakeholders, specifically local resource users and public sector and political structures at the national level. One such approach is to establish 'local agreements' (LAs), here understood as constituting a set of regulations drawn up in a participatory manner by as many stakeholders as possible, in order to promote equitable and sustainable NRM. The LA aims to bring together divergent interests and overcome the danger of one stakeholder's interest dominating to the exclusion of others, in particular, vulnerable groups such as transhumant pastoralists. "The paper presents ongoing work on establishing LAs in the south and southeast of Mauritania by GTZ and World Bank. Following an overview of the legal situation and its evolution, the ongoing work is presented, including experiences and outcomes. The analysis discusses related approaches and efforts elsewhere in Sahel, raises some problematic questions on how to increase the effectiveness of LAs, and concludes with lessons for future applications of this approach for regulating commons and achieving sustainable land management."
Riparian Right and Colonial Might in the Haors Area in Northeast Bangladesh
(2000) Soeftestad, Lars T.
"Bengal, comprising Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal, is one of the worlds largest delta's, fed by two major rivers and countless smaller ones. It is thus a natural laboratory for studying riparian commons. The paper addresses aspects of local aquatic resource management, traditional and modern, and draws some tentative conclusions for current development efforts. "On the physical level, the processes that have formed and are continuing to form the delta, are described. On the human level, the settlement history of the delta, including the process of transforming the physical landscape in order to increase agricultural productivity, is addressed. The importance of the British colonizing power in terms of enclosure of the riparian commons is discussed. "A case study from the haors (large perennial waterbodies) area, based on anthropological field work in the mid-1980s and complemented by archival research, addresses the evolution and present situation in terms of local access to haors and other waterbodies. Riparian commons, as they evolved, were overtaken by the expanding nation-state that established state property regimes, so-called khas land, throughout the area. Khas land, which includes haors, was open to everybody through a leasing system. In many places such khas land became, in effect, controlled by elites, thus barring access to the large majority of local people most of the year, and then only through costly sub-leases. The paper aims to understand the characteristics of present-day riparian commons in the study area through analyzing the settlement history, as well as the evolving relationship between local culture and natural endowments. "The accumulating knowledge of riparian commons in Bangladesh have potential practical implications. It can: (i) serve as models for efforts to establish viable and equitable fisheries management regimes; (ii) be a source of motivation and empowerment; and, (iii) function as a foundation and point of departure for participatory approaches. Towards this, selected large-scale water management schemes are discussed. Likewise, efforts to increase the productivity and sustainability of fisheries through involving local people and giving them use rights to local water bodies are addressed. The long-term goal of much of this work is to support or create local riparian commons."
Voices from Below and from Within: Institutions and Resource Management in Coastal Ghana
(1997) Soeftestad, Lars T.
"With reference to resource management, the two interrelated issues of tenurial arrangements and the social organization of production are of overriding importance. It is crucial to understand these issues in detail in connection with implementing work along the lines of both poverty alleviation and sustainable development. The call for sustainability is useful specifically in that it emphasizes close scrutiny of the factors that make development and poverty alleviation interventions more likely to succeed. An 'enabling environment' refers, in part, to a situation where people are motivated to participate because they identify individually and collectively with an enterprise, whether it be part of traditional culture or planned development activities. Therefore, creating an enabling environment requires increased emphasis on 'localizing' development to the extent that it makes possible meaningful local participation and communal development. The impact of national policies and policies at the local level depends largely on the effectiveness, efficiency and outreach of the national government. Given the variability of governments' presence at the local level, centrally initiated government interventions on CPR management institutions are likely to have different effects and interact differently with institutions, NGOs and community groups. Based upon field work in Ghana, the paper examines the interaction between government and local-level planning on the one hand, and the modern and traditional spheres on the other hand, in the context of coastal resources management. The emphasis will be on constraints and incentives operating on the macro and micro levels, as well as the interaction between them, resulting in the mode in which local systems adapt to various macro-level interventions. Topics discussed include: NGOs, traditional knowledge, local institutions, conflict resolution and design of property rights systems."
Water Resources as a Common Good in Brazil: Legal Reform Between Theory and Practice
(2004) Diz, Daniela; Soeftestad, Lars T.
"Water resources management in Brazil has been based upon its legal characteristics of a common good. After the 1988 Federal Constitution established that the environment is a common good, a legal reform took place in order to better adjust the Brazilian environmental policy to this new regime. The first attempt of doing so was the 1997 Water Resources Policy Act that had its basis in the water's economic value, and the polluter and user pays principles. This paper aims to show the legal status of water resources management in Brazil, focusing on the economic instruments, such as water changes, as well as the political structure created to guarantee an envisaged quality of these resources. Taking as a case study the Paraiba do Sul river basin, located in the Southeast region, the paper presents some trends and constraints experimented by the first River Basin Committee that implement the legal provisions on water charges in Brazil."