Involve people in managing their resources

Small scale miners mining gold in Mubende District. Photo/Courtesy of Trek Africa Expeditions
What you need to know:
- Integrating social accountability with participatory planning and inclusive advocacy approaches can also be useful for building more transparent and accountable governance systems.
Uganda is endowed with a wide range of natural resources, such as wildlife, forests, and minerals. These resources generate enormous benefits including; sustaining livelihoods, contributing to wealth creation (poverty reduction), and economic development.
These natural resources have long been regarded as free public goods that are not diminished (non-exhaustible) when consumed, and non-excludable that can be enjoyed by one person without limiting what is available to another.
This view is erroneous as indeed current trends indicate. Natural resources are not free goods. Besides, they are scarce and have economic value.
With the emergence of several global concerns such as climate change and biodiversity loss, which are imposing increasing pressure on these natural resources, there is already evidence that demand for ecosystem services from natural resources has outpaced the ability to supply these life-sustaining services.
Besides, emerging evidence, especially from resource-rich developing countries demonstrates a negative relationship between natural resource abundance, development, and conflict.
Consequently, there is an urgent need to devise ways of effectively and efficiently governing natural resources in a way that ensures that their use is sustainable, and equitable and contributes to livelihood security .
Currently, there is a growing consensus that governance has a strong effect on environmental actions and outcomes.
The weak and inappropriate natural resource governance systems in Uganda have spurred a wide range of problems including declining resource productivity and resilience, resource scarcities, and inequitable access that breeds conflicts, displacements and worsening of human vulnerability. The mandated institutions have negated the key principles of governance.
For long, resource-rich countries including Uganda have messed up resource governance by concentrating largely on one aspect of governance, which is law enforcement.
Government institutions have concentrated on using sanctions, penalisation, and confrontation. We have seen this in the might of lead Ugandan conservation agencies. However, research and experience continue to show that, these approaches have often been less successful, associated with backlashes or having little effect, particularly in rural and fragile urban environments.
There is a myriad of examples to illustrate how Uganda continues to lose natural resources despite the existence of government agencies, for conservation and protection.
The continuous increase in human wildlife conflict, poaching, illegal fishing, mineral smuggling, forest encroachment, wetland encroachment, poor waste management practices, and increasing conflicts, do not signify a lack of appreciation of the importance of these resources by the citizens, but rather, declining trust in government institutions.
It’s therefore time to rethink the governance approach. Other than increasing the budget for law enforcement, it’s time to involve the people in managing their own resources.
More participatory, collaborative approaches to social development, and accountability including dialoguing, action co-planning, joint monitoring, and inclusive advocacy, can increase trust and discourage corruption and defiance. Although still limited, we already have pilot examples to learn from, such as the Collaborative Forest Management and Collaborative Resource Management.
It is this citizen trust that can deliver practical and sustainable solutions for improving local natural resource governance. Social accountability relies heavily on civic engagement.
This can be achieved by strengthening citizens’ mobilisation and voice, supporting citizen-led generation of information, and providing spaces for organised citizen groups to engage with power-holders to influence decision-making and hold them accountable.
Integrating social accountability with participatory planning and inclusive advocacy approaches can also be useful for building more transparent and accountable governance systems that can reduce the likelihood of corruption, which is known to undermine conservation and natural resource management goals.
It is this logic of the inclusive governance programming framework that can yield sustainable natural resource management in Uganda.
Paul Twebaze, Research Fellow, Environment and Natural Resources Governance Program, Advocates Coalition on Development and Environment.