Borrowed from the Future: Challenges and Guidelines for Community-Based Natural Resource Management

Based on 30 years of experience, Dr. Clay identifies in this report some of the many obstacles that thwart community-based enterprises success; and he provides a set of ten guidelines for shaping community-based natural resource management in the future. The document addresses some of the critical issues in community-based natural resource management: Does community-based natural resource management provide a feasible solution for the combined problems of environmentaldegradation and increasing human poverty and inequality? Does the emergence of Internet-based communications, "green markets," and the recognition of the vast array of environmental services provided by nature – but seldom valued in the market prices of products – make obsolete the whole notion of grassroots development? Or do the principal characteristics of contemporary economic globalization make obsolete the very hope for locally based, environmentally sensitive small-scale enterprises in a world of global "branding," distributed global production, and increasing concentration in so many industries?