How Can Decentralization Help Environmental Governance?

Decentralization—the transfer of powers or responsibilities from a central government to local institutions—goes directly to the question of who gets to make decisions about natural resources. Decentralization can make environmental decision-making more accessible to communities and their representatives, in turn increasing the relevance of those decisions and the likelihood they will be implemented. But decentralization can also occur in ways that leave the status quo—central government dominance of decision-making—largely unchanged, with little benefit to the environment or local empowerment.

One key to smarter environmental management at the community level is to tap the ideas and energies of the community itself. In theory, the people who live closest to a natural resource stand to be most affected by its loss or alteration. They have a material interest in managing their environment sustainably. That’s why decentralization—the steps that many central governments are taking to give regional, municipal, and local institutions responsibility for some public sector functions, from forest management to the provision of waste disposal services—is an important development in environmental governance.

For most of the world’s citizens, having a significant voice in public decision-making would be a new experience (Ribot 2002c:5). Many African, Asian, and Latin American countries inherited centralized government systems from the nations that colonized them and maintained this emphasis on central government decision-making after they achieved independence. As a consequence, local governments—who have the means to bring decision-making closer to people—have often lacked the autonomy and resources to develop into competent, efficient, responsive institutions (Smoke 2000:3).

Recently, several waves of decentralization in developing and developed regions have provided opportunities for local governments to better respond to citizen concerns within frameworks of national environmental and natural resource policy (see Box 5.1 Tracing decentralization in developing countries). Central governments have often found it hard to enforce some policies—such as grazing allocations, fishing quotas, and restrictions on forest use—because of resistance at the community level to centrally imposed mandates. Under the right conditions, decentralization can bridge this gap by creating ways for local people to negotiate mutually acceptable environmental goals with state authorities.

But decentralization doesn’t eliminate the central government’s role in resource management decisions. Total control over natural resources at the local level is rarely a recipe for environmental success. Communities themselves can decimate resources out of desperation or ignorance, or through corruption or short-term profit-seeking.

Also, while natural resources such as forests and minerals are located in specific communities, their management has wider effects. These include downstream impacts on water supply, regional air pollution, global climate change, and biodiversity loss. Local communities may overlook these concerns or be incapable of addressing them adequately. For this reason, natural resources require the active oversight of many levels of government across many spatial scales (Larson 2003a:6).

Accordingly, the goal of decentralization should be to achieve an appropriate level of local input within a solid framework of national environmental policy. Effective local institutions are needed to negotiate community concerns with national authorities who represent the interests of society at large. Regional and national regulations and democratic processes should also help ensure that all those with a legitimate voice or concern about resource use get to participate in decision-making. The challenge lies in finding the right mix of local and national powers and responsibilities to achieve sustainability.

What is decentralization?

Decentralization is the process where a central government relinquishes some of its management responsibilities or powers to a local government, local leader, or community institution.

About 60 developing countries are currently undertaking some form of decentralized natural resource management (Agrawal 2001:208; Ribot 2002b:1). At least in developing countries, the status quo prior to decentralization reforms is usually a central government with the power to make most major decisions about natural resources or land use. Commonly, central governments set the framework for environmental governance at the provincial, district, and local levels. For example, a conservation agenda for a park or reserve will frequently be made by a national parks service or a state wildlife conservation department—agencies operating at some distance from the actual resource and the people who rely on it for employment or subsistence. National forest ministries often assert legal authority over forest ownership and use policies. These determine who has access to forests, what timber resources are harvested, how revenues are used, and how well rules are enforced.

In most cases, all that is left to local governments or communities is the management of natural resources that are of little commercial value. For instance, a community may get to decide how to harvest non-timber forest products such as latex, mushrooms, rattan, or bamboo for household consumption, or how to allocate local fishing resources. In contrast, central government ministries tend to reserve the right to allocate timber, mining, or fishing concessions, provide hunting licenses, or manage tourist parks—all sources of significant revenue (Kaimowitz and Ribot 2002:5). Local authorities and citizens also may have little say when it comes to the siting of polluting industries and heavy infrastructure such as mines, airports, or roads, even though the pollution, noise, and traffic they create are felt locally.

Decentralization reforms can begin to break down such centralized—and sometimes highly exclusionary—decision-making systems in various ways. Reforms can range from grants of only small additional responsibilities to a sub-national government, to significant empowerment of local leaders and previously underrepresented groups in major policy decisions or management. The powers that are typically decentralized to municipal or local institutions vary widely, ranging from regulatory and fiscal powers, to enforcement, and even some judiciary powers (see Box 5.2 Defining decentralization).

The local institutions that are granted these new decision-making powers also vary, and can include (Dupar and Badenoch 2002:3; Ribot 2002b:4–5):

• elected local authorities, such as a mayor, a town or village council, or a planning commission

• agents from government ministries of the environment, forest, wildlife, or other natural resources

• elected or appointed user groups, such as agricultural cooperatives or wildlife management groups

• local members of a political party apparatus

• local, national, or international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and

• traditional leaders, such as local chiefs, defined by local custom.

In short, decentralization can describe a variety of changes in who makes decisions about natural resources and how those decisions are made: A central government may grant some control over fisheries or tracts of state land to a local government, along with responsibility for infrastructure, such as water supply, sanitation, and irrigation. An agricultural agent, employed by the national government but based in a field office, may be allowed to issue rules on resource access for a tract of land, such as grazing permits. A central government may grant locally appointed bodies responsibility for surveying and leasing forest land to households. Or it may empower a nongovernmental organization (NGO) and a community group to jointly set hunting quotas for elephants in a wildlife preserve.

Sometimes governments transfer responsibility over resource use to a private owner or enterprise—the process known as privatization. In Uganda, traditional forest users are being given outright ownership rights to many forests that were previously in the public domain—effectively privatizing them—in the name of decentralization (Ribot 2002c:7). However, privatization is not a form of decentralization (Dupar and Badenoch 2002:32; Ribot 2002a:v). Privatization removes decisions about nature from the public arena and transfers them to actors who may have less of a stake in environmental protection and equitable access to natural resources than public representatives do (see Box 5.3 Privatization: Can the private sector deliver public goods?).

Effective democratic decentralization

Ideally, decentralization reforms help balance central government oversight and regulation with local input and empowerment. Done well, this effort should bring government closer to the people and increase opportunities for citizens to take an interest in public affairs because it devolves power to the local and municipal level. Particularly in developing countries, opportunities to have meaningful input in resource use and decision-making are likely to decrease mutual suspicion and enable all major groups to participate in managing the shared environment on an equal footing (UNEP 2002:409). Decentralization should also benefit the environment and improve equity in natural resource management because it can tap local knowledge of the environment and bring a better appreciation of local people’s needs. In addition, local groups are more likely to respect resource decisions made with local input (see Box 5.4 Why does a local voice matter?).

But achieving decentralization’s potential depends largely on how the reforms are designed and implemented (World Bank 1999:109). To best benefit the environment and improve equity in resource management, four minimum criteria must be met:

• Decentralization must result in a transfer of meaningful powers—including fiscal powers—to a local institution.

• The institution to which power is transferred must be representative of the local populace in its diversity—not just elite interests—and have a broad knowledge of local natural resources and people’s dependence on them.

• The local public must be able to hold the institution accountable through elections, hearings, or other democratic means.

• Fiscal and regulatory incentives must be in place to promote sustainable management of natural resources over the long term.

Meeting all four criteria is not easy.

Perhaps the biggest hurdle is assuring the accountability of those to whom authority is transferred. Accountability implies taking responsibility for the decisions one makes. The key question is whether the local government body or organization to which a central government devolves power is accountable to the local community. In other words, will they have to answer to the people immediately affected by their decisions?

In many cases of apparent decentralization, the answer is no. Ministry staff in a local branch office may answer only to their bosses in the capital city and have little local accountability. The same may be true of a local forestry cooperative, women’s association, or NGO that needs answer only to its members, who are only a subset of the community (Agrawal and Ribot 1999:494; Ribot 1999:6).

In fact, a transfer of power to a local ministry, unelected committee, NGO, or similar institution may not bring real empowerment to the local level and thus may not necessarily be a beneficial form of decentralization. On the other hand, devolving power to a democratically elected body—an institution that citizens can hold responsible for its decisions through public hearings or by voting them out of office—can effectively broaden public participation and bring about more equitable natural resource management (Agrawal and Ribot 1999:478–479).

The role of the central government and its relationship to local governments and communities is another critical issue that can determine whether decentralization merely improves government efficiency or actually empowers citizens and engenders real participation. When the central government safeguards its right to make all major decisions or vests only branch offices of the government with authority, the chances of increased local participation in natural resource management are reduced. Lack of secure rights to manage and benefit from natural resource management further diminishes the incentive for people to invest in natural resource conservation and sustainable use.

On the other hand, decentralization that is democratic and empowering does not necessarily come about when central governments simply hand management responsibilities over to local institutions and then step out of the picture. Effective decentralization usually occurs when central governments actively implement the necessary reforms, provide appropriate training for local actors so that they can use their new powers effectively, and defend the rights of marginalized citizens—women, the poor, ethnic minorities—to participate (Larson 2003a:19).