Community involvement in the conservation of natural resources: Interest and limits within a local development perspective for Central Africa (Chad)

摘要

Natural resources have an interest for local communities as sources for satisfying their basic needs and of additional activity. However, socio-economic and environmental changes have produced a destabilization of traditional systems, accompanied by a change in power relations between actors and dynamics of often increased resource degradation. Therefore, the concerted management of resources in the framework of development and local governance is becoming increasingly more necessary, under political and legal aspects, to ensure long-term preservation, restoration and integrated management. More widely, citizen participation and successful decentralization, therefore, are necessary conditions for endogenous and sustainable development, conditions that could be catalysed by well-targeted assistance programs. It is essential to understand the interests and limitations of participatory management for the conservation of resources. On the one hand, this type of management presents a conceptual, methodological and operational interest, facilitating institutional emergence and openness to broader development and democratization processes. On the other hand, we must not overlook serious limitations resulting from the disintegration of social organizations, delays of decentralization policies, inadequate intervention strategies, intrinsic deficits of projects, lack of consideration of the temporal and spatial framework, inadequate legal framework, inadequacy of accompanying measures, etc. These limitations can be partially corrected using procedures such as “Project Cycle Management”, procedures which allow prospective management of programs and projects and the highlighting of relevant doubts, useful for improving the likelihood of successful experiences in development.