Critics of participation often examine the undesirable consequences of state-led systems without much analysis of institutional knowledge at the local level. In this paper, we investigate whether smaller institutions could offer useful knowledge for meeting the development needs of local people. Using participation theory and related literature on development and power, we investigate a co-management system in communities around Mount Cameroon National Park (MCNP), in sub-Saharan West Africa. Our study adopts a multimethod approach to survey officials in 16 agencies and locals in 17 village groups. The findings indicate factors that hinder the effectiveness of local participation and avenues by which institutional knowledge can be customized to meet local development priorities. This system of participation, we conclude, could work better through open dialogue that is explicitly accountable and transparent.

Studies have shown how centralized institutions in resource management lead to adverse impacts on communities. However, important questions remain about the mechanisms through which people thrive under unfavorable policy environments. This paper examines how locals around the Mount Cameroon National Park (MCNP) carve space for articulating their agency despite unsympathetic management initiatives. Using focus group discussions and thematic analysis of data from 17 villages, the results identified arrangements that do not entirely solicit local consent in natural resource management. In this context, locals express their agency holding onto cultural traditions through religious engagement and the use of economic incentives to enhance livelihoods. They do so with the aid of traditional institutions, awareness of system challenges, acting more wisely, and initiating constructive needs in remote areas.

Anthropologists sometimes ask what flexible practices mean when used in instances of land use and access among protected area regimes which control the land and the indigenous or local people who claim rights to the land. In the Mount Cameroon National Park (MCNP), West Africa, this question comes with urgency because of the historical disputes associated with defining access and user-rights to land within this park. In this case, we present an ethnographic study using a transect walk with a native Bakweri hunter to map and analyze his opinions about land use and access into the park. The findings show that, despite State prohibitions for this park, customary practices still occur for mutual reasons, whereas, in situations of disputes, other practices continue on the land unnoticed. We conclude that this flexibility is indicative of reciprocal negotiations and cultural resilience that preserve not only the biodiversity of the park but also the culturally relevant needs of people.

Over the last few decades, resilience and its related practices have been at the core of responding challenges in the Global South and North. We should, however, be conscious of its gaps for many reasons. First, environmental plans not attuned to local traditions can create cultural conflicts. Second, the politicised nature of international agreements poses unintended consequences as societies find it hard to engage in such agreements. Third, uncertainties about changes in socio-ecological systems reduce people’s adaptive capacity. Without an awareness of these inconsistencies, policymakers risk impeding societies’ adaptation to environmental change. By doing a systematic review of articles from academic and policy publications, this paper explores repercussions for environmental governance, illuminating key concerns in protected areas, climate change policy, and hydropower systems.

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