Institutions, Organizations and the Poverty/Environment Nexus: Challenges to a Rights-Based Approach to Management of Coastal Resources in Colombia and Ghana

Abstract

"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."