Natural Resource Management

Pact leads efforts to help communities manage natural resources to improve their livelihoods and ensure sustainability and conservation. To achieve this we utilize people-centered, holistic approaches that link livelihoods, institutional strengthening, democracy and governance, knowledge management, conflict resolution, equity, and planning with natural resources management and conservation.

We emphasize three primary strategic interventions:

Environmental governance
Environmental governance addresses issues around the power over and control of natural resources. It is a broad category of activities that touches on all levels of NRM implementation. Within this intervention Pact applies a multi-level approach to promote informed and participatory decision-making, appropriate legal policy and regulatory frameworks, empowered communities, and accountable, transparent and effective institutions to sustainably conserve and equitably utilize natural resources.

Components include but are not limited to the following:

• Support for community-driven processes to mitigate resource-based conflict
• Promotion of space within government for transparent debate among multiple stakeholders
• Facilitation of the development of a common vision (communities, NGOs, government and private sector) around environmental governance and roles and responsibilities
• Development of civil society capacity to advocate for and influence decision-making for equitable and sustainable NRM and conservation
• Development of government capacity at multiple levels to define and implement responsive and effective NRM policies
• Support for structural and institutional linkages to promote accountability
• Support for networks and partnerships among multiple NRM and conservation stakeholders for knowledge management and learning.

Knowledge sharing and learning networks
Pact has extensive experience in promoting information sharing, networking and knowledge management among NRM stakeholders. The creation of practical and functional networks linking key players at the local, regional, national and international levels help to ensure sustainability while increasing the power of members of the networks. Pact uses a blend of techniques that focus on creating and enhancing personal, human relationships first. Technologies for information management and sharing are not the center of our approaches; rather technologies are selected and adapted based on their usefulness to the networks (human relationships) being created.

Community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) leading to alternative, improved livelihoods
Pact attaches high importance to community involvement in the planning, conservation efforts, and sustainable use of natural resources. We require a local presence to empower community groups, mentor them through natural resource planning and visioning processes, promote and facilitate their involvement in informed decision making, , and help them voice their concerns through advocacy efforts. We also support communities in gaining a better understanding of the range of resources available to them, provide practical skills as needed at the local level to manage natural resources, and encourage communities to improve the way in which they utilize those resources for their livelihoods.

Cross cutting approaches
Certain cross-cutting approaches are critical to Pact's NRM approach. These include:

• Enabling formal and informal institutional frameworks for improved NRM. In order for real change to take hold in the management of natural resources we must begin to impact the ways in which decisions for land use are made from the local to the national and even International level. Understanding and helping people to modify the formal and informal institutional frameworks surrounding the management of resources is critical to long-term sustainability of NRM actions.
• Ensuring equity across gender and vulnerable groups in the management of and benefit from natural resources. The dynamics of NRM often involve very complicated cultural and social traditions and relationships. Ignoring these factors generally leads to failed NRM activities. Pact has tools for better understanding the roles of various social groups in NRM systems and helping actors to use that information to ensure the fair and equitable distribution of benefits from improved NRM.
• Prevention and mitigation of climate change effects. Pact works to ensure that its development activities in general and NRM activities in particular take into account the importance of reducing green house gas emissions and helping actors to adapt to likely changes from climate change.

Projects

Bolivia Landscape Conservation Program (Bolivia)
Kenya Civil Society Strengthening Program (KCSSP)
Environmental/Rural Development Transition Program (Madagascar)
Managing Information and Strengthening Organizations for Networked Governance Approaches (MISONGA) (Madagascar)
MIRAY Program for Ecoregion-Based Conservation and Development (Madagascar)
Sustainable Approaches to Viable Environmental Management (SAVEM) (Madagascar)
U.S. Fire Service Project (Madagascar)
Landscape Development Interventions (Madagascar)
Linking Actors for Regional Opportunities (LARO)
Conservation of Resources through Enterprises (CORE)
CAIMAN (Ecuador)