This issue of Policy Matters is dedicated to sustainable livelihoods and co-management of natural resources and contains the contributions of CEESP members belonging to the two working groups related to the above themes.
The first section of Policy Matters 10 discusses the intimate linkages between government policies and livelihood outcomes. It spans cutting edge reflections, such as critical views on initiatives like NEPAD, the Plan Puebla Panamá or Vision 2020 in Andra Pradesh, as well as considerations on how a history of dis-empowering local communities and impeding indigenous natural resource management systems has sown the seeds of "unsustainable livelihoods" and undermined conservation. Ethiopia and the Senegal River Basin are cases in point.
Section two of Policy Matters 10 is imbued with hope. Seven articles span cases from India to Congo Brazzaville, from Ecuador to Mongolia to South Africa - all telling about local communities that organized to manage their local environments. Alone or in partnership with the government and other actors, motivated by a natural disaster or by an externally-supported project, evolved into a co-management institution or empowered as local management bodies, these communities truly lead the way and show how local values and identities can thrive in governing natural resources in a sound manner.
The third section is dedicated to co-management cases. Those, again, extend over a variety of environments and types of natural resources, from a Sahelian forest to an entire Mediterranean island, from a gorilla sanctuary to a desert environment, from a wildlife management zone to a forest environment still subject to swidden (shifting) agriculture, from an extensive grassland ecosystem to a marine park...
Section four describes a variety of initiatives where learning is being sought or has been achieved on matters relating conservation and sustainable livelihoods. Several of these articles deal with marine and coastal environments, one of the ecosystems where co-management approaches have flourished the most in the last decades. Mountain peoples recommend an equally participatory approach. Pluralist institutions are advocated in trans-national environments in Western Europe as well as at a regional level in Madagascar, for protected areas in Central Europe as well as for tropical forests in Central America.
The last section of Policy Matters 10 is dedicated to short presentations and reviews of recent books, magazines andinteractive CDs.
