Abstract:
In most developing countries, community based natural resource management
(CBNRM) initiatives have been adopted in an attempt to address the issue of
environmental sustainability. This has largely come about due to an increasing
recognition of the ineffectiveness of the state to achieve such sustainability. Within the
South African context, recent policies have been drafted that aim to achieve these
outcomes, which strongly articulate the need for the participation of local people in the
management of natural resources both within communal areas and on state-owned land.
The objectives of new policies, however, are not being met in the Eastern Cape of South
Africa for the following key reasons: the insufficient recognition of the impact of past
historical and political upheavals experienced within the former homelands’ situation;
the government’s inability to process land applications; the government’s lack of ability
and capacity to implement these policies; and frustratingly high levels of hierarchy at
both the local and national level. The Masakane community, a group of former farm
workers from the former Ciskei homeland in South Africa, are attempting to implement
CBNRM initiatives. The Masakane case study reveals the urgent need to develop,
implement and enforce new institutional and managerial arrangements, because without
such arrangements state policies are unlikely to be implemented at the grassroots level.
