Non-governmental organisations today, as part of civil society, have come to play a prominent role in South Asia in the context of community-based natural resource management (CBNRM). This book examines the theory and practice of NGO-driven CBNRM within the framework of emerging critiques of dominant discourses of development, the micro-politics of decentralisation and the projection of community development. The book breaks new ground by contextualising these critiques using six detailed cases of CBNRM initiatives.



The authors delve into the extent to which CBNRM offers a vision for the future and question what role, if any, could NGOs paly in this. They seek to understand the insights into CBNRM that intervening agencies generate through their work, by examining the outcomes of the interventions and the strategies used to achieve them.



The book concludes that though these CBNRM efforts have made significant contributions to livelihood enhancement, the results gained are limited in the equitable access to benefits, sustainability of resource use, and in terms of democratic decentralisation.