Abstract
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";" lang="EN-GB">A number of governments, particularly in Latin America, have begun to recognise the rights of indigenous peoples and traditional communities to the lands on which they live. Recognition has often taken the form of constitutional provisions or laws that grant use rights in perpetuity or provide land titles. These provisions usually establish rights for multiple communities over a large territory, at a scale that may be ideal for promoting broader, ecosystem management approaches. At the same time, however, indigenous communities often do not have existing territorial governance structures at these scales. Nicaragua’s North Atlantic Autonomous Region provides a rich setting in which to study issues of multilevel natural resource governance. In addition to the devolution policies that have created official indigenous territories, the central government has decentralised important powers over natural resources to the regional autonomous authority, while municipal authorities still exist but have been marginalised. At the same time, however, the community scale is the one at which local people have traditionally managed resources. This paper examines these issues in light of efforts to establish democratic governance institutions at the territory level and argues that communities continue to lose out under multilevel governance regimes without concerted efforts to level the playing field. The findings are based on several years of research in the region, emerging research on newly titled territories and a six month training and dialogue with territory leaders, organised by a consortium of international and local NGOs.</span>
Highlights
Though what it means in practice varies greatly, the collaborative governance of natural resources across institutional levels and scales has been broadly recognised as desirable or even necessary for resource sustainability (Mayers and Vermeulen 2002; Agrawal and Chhatre 2007; Hayes and Persha 2010)
The community scale is the one at which local people have traditionally managed resources. This paper examines these issues in light of efforts to establish democratic governance institutions at the territory level and argues that communities continue to lose out under multilevel governance regimes without concerted efforts to level the playing field
One opinion survey found that almost 70% of the people interviewed agreed with the statement that “the principle problem with autonomy is that the coast authorities that have been elected have not functioned well to date” (CASC/Ipade 2005, cited in UNDP 2005). (Notably, 66% agreed that “the principle problem is that the central government ‘from Managua’ has not wanted to support autonomy.”)
Summary
Though what it means in practice varies greatly, the collaborative governance of natural resources across institutional levels and scales has been broadly recognised as desirable or even necessary for resource sustainability (Mayers and Vermeulen 2002; Agrawal and Chhatre 2007; Hayes and Persha 2010) It may be even more important for local democracy (Ribot 2004, 2008) and for human rights (Anaya and Williams 2001; Colchester 2004), the rights of indigenous and traditional peoples. This is followed by the discussion and conclusions
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