Community-based natural resources management in eritrea and ethiopia: Toward a comparative institutional analysis

Community-based natural resources management (CNRM), which emphasizes community empowerment, participation and enhanced use of indigenous knowledge in resources and environmental management, is an increasingly popular discourse for sustainable development in sub-Saharan Africa. Despite its popularity, CNRM faces various discursive and institutional challenges in countries with a recent history of top-down development. This paper provides a comparative examination of the specific historical, ideological and political contexts behind discourses, policies and institutions for and against community-based resources and environmental management in Ethiopia and Eritrea. There is a need for greater emphasis on communal rights to pastoral, agricultural and forest resources, in contrast to the continued support for a neo-Malthusian dispensation of environmental rehabilitation or reclamation which still reigns supreme in both Eritrea and Ethiopia.