This study uses a review and case study approach to critically examine the contradictions and ambiguities of "peasant empowerment" in a co-management venture between Zimbabwean foresters and peasant communities. The institutional infrastructure for comanagement was derived from and superimposed upon a complex web of local power bases, further fragmenting existing networks of interest, affection and association, and thus limiting the scope for co-management. The legislative environment, at least during the pre-2000 period, supported the expropriation and control of the land and resources of peasant communities, thus contradicting the underlying principle of co-management, which is that of equal partnership. Powers over natural resources have remained centralized in the national state; the little power that has been decentralized has been transferred to levels that are not close enough to the citizens. Furthermore, there is no legislation that gives a legal mandate and fiscal autonomy to units closer to the citizens than the district level. The co-management venture is "supply-led" rather than "demand driven", originating in international development assistance circles, and implemented on the terms and conditions of their allies in the state bureaucracies responsible for natural resource management.

In spite of their marginalization, peasant communities have a wide repertoire of tools, which enable them to significantly penetrate local and national political processes. The study identifies the need for fundamental changes in the co-management system, including the creation of downwardly accountable institutions and experimentation with new co-management relations. It argues that such changes require related reversals in the ways that researchers, policy-makers, civil society organizations and other facilitators have traditionally conducted their business.