Community-Based Governance and Sustainability in the Paraguayan Pantanal

Abstract

The megadiverse biome of the Paraguayan Pantanal is in danger due to the expansion of cattle ranching and agricultural frontiers that threaten not only the fragile equilibrium of natural resources, but also that of local governance and cultural identities. As a consequence, weak governance stresses the relations between natural resource-dependent communities, generating socio-environmental conflicts. This perception study seeks to find community-based governance models for sustainability in the context of Paraguayan wetlands. According to the organizational principles of community-based natural resource management (CBNRM), we applied qualitative approaches with the use of the Governance Analytical Framework (GAF) to identify problems and social norms. Our findings suggest that the Yshiro indigenous self-organized group (Unión de las Comunidades Indígenas de la Nación Yshiro (UCINY)) can be considered as a model for community-based governance. Besides, we discovered that this specific governance model is highly threatened by the impact of the national neo-extractive economy.

Assessing the Effectiveness and Justice of Protected Areas Governance: Issues and Situated Pathways to Environmental Policies in Río Negro National Park, Paraguay

“…The population's livelihoods and economic models in the Bahía Negra district vary widely, from agricultural subsistence practices to activities in the export-oriented livestock sector (Salas-Dueñas et al 2004;Swarts 2000). The cultural diversity found in Bahía Negra shapes its governance patterns, including the nearby RNNP (Eufemia et al 2019;Zanardini and Walter 2001).…”

Resilience of Community Food Systems (CFS): Co-Design as a Long-Term Viable Pathway to Face Crises in Neglected Territories?

“…The most important benefits from selling/buying directly through a variety of direct sales mechanisms are related to social relationships such as proximity, conviviality, and trust [ 13 ]. Additionally, Eufemia et al [ 14 ] state that strengthening associative and cooperative models (associativism) can improve the role of economic models at the community level.…”

“…Our framework considers the Community-Based Governance (CBG) approach, which is a bottom-up organizational model [ 14 ]. The CBG approach aims to increase the participation of local groups in the planning, research, development, management, and formulation of policies and strategies for a wider community.…”

“…The CBG approach aims to increase the participation of local groups in the planning, research, development, management, and formulation of policies and strategies for a wider community. The attention and inclusion of local perspectives allow for a synthesis of collective problems and the development of joint solutions to solve them [ 14 ]. Successful experiences demonstrate that once producers, processors, and consumers are highly involved in the governance process, it is easy to promote the community leverage [ 18 ].…”

Typical Challenges of Governance for Sustainable Regional Development in Globalized Latin America: A Multidimensional Literature Review

“…The rationale is that of posing an overarching, yet simple heuristic that allows for an interpretive and complementary reach to describe typical situations in sustainable regional development. This approach diverges from a more common stance on local and regional governance discussions in Latin America, set in the search or expectation of multi-actor arrangements in a certain regional setting to be seen both in scholarly work, for example [46][47][48][49][50][51], which are also seen in development practice in hand with programs such as local development agencies [52], local action programs [53], local economic development [54], and more recently, the smart specialization model [55]. Figure 1 depicts an aggregated view of typical challenges of sustainable regional development based on environmental, economic, socio-spatial, and political dimensions.…”