Prospects for Forest-Based Rural Development

Constitutionality and the Co-Management of Protected Areas: Reflections from Cameroon and Myanmar

“…Calls for meaningful bottom-up processes have been made by conservation scientists and practitioners for some decades now (Ribot 2002;Pretzsch et al 2014). The constitutionality construct, a product of empirical cases, demonstrates potentials in engaging such meaningful processes (Haller et al 2016;.…”

“…Rooted in the New Institutionalism in social anthropology (Ensminger 1992;Haller 2010), the concept further examines strategic dimensions of how participation at grassroots level in the institution-building process have been accomplished, negotiated, legitimized (by reference to ideologies), and established, to involve compromises that consider power issues (Ensminger 1992;Haller 2010). It goes beyond Ostrom's design principles and builds on the institutional analysis and development (IAD) framework (Ostrom 1990(Ostrom , 2005, to understand the power-specific processes and contexts within which novel co-management institutions are developed (see Chabwela and Haller 2010;Pretzsch et al 2014;Haller et al 2016;. While Ostrom's work highlights the way successful institutions work and the important elements for their success (Ostrom 1990(Ostrom , 2005, it does not address issues of power relation, which the works of Ensminger does.…”

“…These outcomes are partly attributed to the "misconceptions about local power processes and the inability of those involved to use traditionally developed institutional settings or to transform them in a participatory way to create local ownership of the process and its outcomes" (Chabwela and Haller 2010 p.623). This has necessitated the reconstruction of more encompassing and accommodating institutions (Pretzsch 2005;Pretzsch 2014;Pretzsch et al 2014;Haller et al 2015;Faye 2016;Faye et al 2017;.…”

“…By laying much emphasis on the formal aspect of power-sharing arrangements, stakeholders run the risk of overlooking its functionality components which should be understood as a continuous problem-solving process (Carlsson and Berkes 2005). Scholars equally contend that most co-management endeavors were not informed by an understanding of cross-scale effects, emergent outcomes and self-organization (Campbell et al 2001;Connick and Innes 2003;Plummer and Armitage 2007a;Pretzsch et al 2014). Most governments have been largely unwilling to effectively engage in meaningful co-management processes (Sekhar 2000;Yami et al 2009).…”

Pandemic-induced shocks and shifts in forest-based livelihood strategies: learning from COVID-19 in the Bia West District of Ghana

“…It has therefore become imperative to pay more attention to the links between forestry and human health (Tollefson 2020, Saxena et al 2021. Furthermore, the literature on forests and rural development has established the fact that the livelihoods of resource-dependent communities are reshaped during shocks (Shackleton et al 2011;Pretzsch et al 2014). In this regard, the sustainable livelihoods framework is a useful analytical lens to examine livelihood dynamics across marginalized natural resource-dependent communities that are vulnerable to shocks (Ellis 2000, Scoones 2009).…”