What is CBNRM?

The foundational principle of community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) is that all members of a community are joint and equal owners and beneficiaries of collective resources like wildlife, grazing, forests, fisheries, and water. This also means that all community members share responsibilities to manage these resources and the benefits that arise from them, collectively.

Four components of successful CBNRM

The purpose of CBNRM is to maximize the value of wild resources to landholders and communities. By decentralizing management to communities and endowing them with property rights to their resources, CBNRM addresses poverty reduction and incentivizes conservation. Successful implementation relies on the following components:

  1. Generating benefits by using resources wisely and maximizing their value in global markets.

  2. Devolving rights to manage, use, control access to, and benefit from wild resources from the center to communities.

  3. Micro-governance: the establishment of democratic, transparent, accountable, equitable, and effective community organizations.

  4. Building management capacity for natural resources and community activities.

Graph depicting the essential four components of CBNRM program implementation.
A group of students sit in chairs under a tree while Professor Brian Child teaches at a flipboard in front of the group.

Our courses, field training, and management manuals focus on micro-governance of CBNRM. Effective micro-governance increases levels of participation and equitable benefit sharing and greatly reduces the risks of elite capture and financial mismanagement.