Community-based natural resource management - International ...

Natural resource management
Targeting learning
Natural resources are the foundation from which rural poor people
can overcome poverty. However, planners and implementers of natural
resource development projects do not always profit from the lessons
learned – either information is lost or it is not easily accessible or
changing circumstances may limit its value. Whatever the reason,
learning from the past still makes sense. Knowledge does not wear
out – although it is sometimes difficult to find, synthesize and use.
It is against this challenging background that IFAD has targeted
learning as one of its key products.
Poverty is still very much a rural problem. One in five of the world’s inhabitants – some
1.2 billion people – live in extreme poverty, and 75 per cent of these live in rural areas.
Their livelihoods depend on natural resources, their capacity to use and manage them
effectively, and the institutional environment in which natural resource management
strategies are designed and implemented.
Rural poor people are not just ‘the poor’; they have faces and names. They are real
people: poor farmers, poor fishers, poor nomads and poor women producers. Overcoming
poverty means individual and collective empowerment, strengthening productive and incomegenerating
capacities and increasing opportunities. This requires a clear understanding of the
activities of poor people and of the natural, social, economic and political environment in
which they live. It also requires supportive policies, institutions, services and investment.
IFAD’s mission is to reduce rural poverty: “enabling the rural poor to overcome poverty”
pervades its strategic framework for 2002-2006. Its experience has demonstrated that
secure access to natural resources and to the technologies to exploit them productively
and sustainably are important steps in the process of poverty reduction. Indeed, one of the
three core objectives of IFAD’s strategic framework is “improving equitable access to
productive natural resources and technologies”.
Community-based natural resource management was the focus of over 80 per cent of
the IFAD-approved programmes and projects for 2000-2004. These programmes and
projects addressed a wide range of natural resource development issues – land, water,
forests, rangeland, fisheries and rural institutions. Gender, governance, culture and
partnership also assumed greater roles.
Central to this process of development are the concepts of learning to learn and sharing
knowledge. In this publication, IFAD shares its learning on community-based natural
resource development. Twelve case studies from recent lending programmes and grants
demonstrate how knowledge is managed, disseminated and effectively used by others.
They show that people can learn to learn and that learning is crucial to reducing poverty
and to meeting the development challenges ahead.
Central to the process of development
are the concepts of learning to learn
and sharing knowledge.