From Subsistence Agriculture to Commercial Enterprise: Community management of green technologies for resilient food production

The aim of this paper is to emphasize the capacity and resilience of rural communities in regard to sustainable food security by adopting innovative approaches to irrigation. The shift from subsistence to commercial agriculture is promoted as a means to sustainable development. An analysis of the efficacy of irrigation schemes in Zimbabwe suggests that, in terms of providing sustainable agricultural production, they have neither been cost-effective nor have they provided long-term food security to their beneficiaries. This is certainly true of Shashe Scheme and most others in Beitbridge District. The Shashe Irrigation Scheme project represents a bold attempt at developing a fresh approach to the management of communal land irrigation schemes through a Private Public Community Partnership. The model illustrated represents a paradigm shift from subsistence agriculture to a system based on new technologies, market linkages and community ownership that build resilience and lead to sustainable food security and economic prosperity.

Continuation and discontinuation of local institution in community based natural resource management

Currently the push toward frontier areas, which until twenty years ago were still largely untouched by commercial agriculture, is taking place on a massive scale. This push is being driven not the least by global economic developments, such as the price increase of agriculture commodities like coffee and cocoa. In most cases the indigenous communities become trapped between the state monopoly in natural resource management and the competition for resources by external actors. In this processes the indigenous communities start to lose their access to resources. Another victim in this process is the environment where the natural resources are imbedded. International and national organizations working to conserve environment have became conscious of the important role that indigenous people could fulfill as partners in this endeavour. This partnership in struggle has produced a new discourse on the relationship between indigenous people and their environment. As a further consequence, programs were set up to develop what became known as Community Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) with its numerous variations. Based on a case study in a village on the eastern border of the Lore Lindu National Park in Central Sulawesi, this study questioned the basic assumption behind the concept of Community Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM). Namely the assumption that communities living at the margin of forest are socially and culturally homogenous, still more or less egalitarian, and basically living in harmony with their natural environment. This study was inspired by the persistent critique – although still a minority – on the basic assumption the CBNRM from academicians and practitioners working through the Entitlement perspective. Another inspiration was the mounting critique toward the participatory approach. In its effort the study explore further the usefulness of certain approaches. One of the approach much relied on in this study was the local history of the community studied, through exerting oral and local written documents on local history, legends and local stories. These sources proofed quite capable in bringing the local history into the light. Another was the actor oriented approach, which later came to be supported by the concept of Social Pool Resources. The latter concept proofed to be useful as analytical instrument to integrate social institutions and the common pool resources, as a field of action for the different actors as human agencies.

An Inquiry of Changes in Environmental Governance by Community-driven Process

Urban environmental depletion has been a critical problem among industrialized-transformed societies, especially at the local level where administrative authorities’ capacity lags behind changes. Derived from governance concept, the idea of civil society inclusion is highlighted. Focusing on an agglomerated case study, Bang Plee Community in Thailand, this research investigates on a non-state sector, 201-Community organization, as an agent for changes to improve urban environments on solid waste collection. Two roles are contested: as an agent for neighborhood internal change and as an intermediary toward governance changes in state-civil society interaction. By employing longitudinal analysis via a project intervention as research experiment, the outcomes of both roles are detected portrayed in three spheres: state, state-civil society interaction, and civil society sphere. It discovers in the research regarding agglomerated context that as an internal changes for environmental betterment, 201-Community organization operation brings on waste reduction at the minimal level. Community-based organization as an agent for changes – despite capacity input it still limited in efficiency and effectiveness – can mobilize fruitfully only at the individual and network level of civil society sectors, while fails managing at the organizational level. The positive outcomes result by economic waste incentive associated with a limited-bonded group rather than the rise of awareness at large. As an intermediary agent for shared governance, the community-based organization cannot bring on mutual dialogue with state as much as cannot change the state’s operation arena of solid waste management. The findings confine the shared governance concept that it does not applicable in agglomerated locality as an effective outcome, both in terms of being instrumental toward civil society inclusion and being provocative of internal change. Shared environmental governance as summarized in this research can last merely a community development action. It distances significantly from civil society inclusion and empowerment. However, the research proposes that community-based environmental management and shared governance toward civil society inclusion in urban environmental improvement are still an expectable option and reachable if their factors and conditions of key success and failure are intersected with a particular context. Further studies demand more precise on scale, scope, and theses factors of environmental management operation operated by civil society sectors.