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A respected central government and other obstacles to community-based management of the matsutake mushroom in Bhutan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2010

JEREMY S. BROOKS  and
DOLEY TSHERING
JEREMY S. BROOKS*
Affiliation:
Graduate Group in Ecology, Department of Anthropology, University of California, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616, USA
DOLEY TSHERING
Affiliation:
Ecosystems and Natural Resources, UNDP-GEF Regional Coordination Unit, Bangkok, Thailand
*
*Correspondence: Dr Jeremy Brooks, Beckman Institute, University of Illinois, 405 N Matthews Avenue, Urbana, IL 6180, USA e-mail: jsbrooks26@gmail.com
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Summary

Despite sound logic supporting decentralized resource management, the results of community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) efforts have been mixed. Many conditions are thought to contribute to the sustainable use of common pool resources, but as practitioners evaluate the likelihood of CBNRM success, it is necessary to understand which particular conditions have the greatest impact and how these differ across contexts. This paper describes the harvest of the matsutake mushroom and its decline in two rural communities in Bhutan that possess many of the conditions thought to facilitate resource management. Data from surveys, informal interviews and focus group meetings suggest the decline in the matsutake harvest can be attributed to the absence of a small number of enabling characteristics and an additional factor that is often overlooked in the CBNRM literature. Factors contributing to the decline include environmental dynamics, lack of leadership, and the difficulty of monitoring and enforcing harvesting guidelines. However, communities are reluctant to absorb the costs of developing institutions owing to the lack of perceived scarcity and salience of matsutake and, perhaps most importantly, to a historical dependence on a paternalistic government. This reliance on the government may preclude communities from assuming the responsibilities of matsutake management and enforcing rules to assure a sustainable harvest, a trend seen elsewhere in Bhutan. CBNRM may succeed if governments can simultaneously build capacity in communities while empowering them to take ownership over resource management. Though a relatively small number of factors have impeded CBNRM in this case, many of the obstacles can be overcome and these efforts should be considered a work in progress in Bhutan.

Keywords

BhutanCBNRMcommunity-based natural resource managementcommon pool resourcesdecentralizationinstitutionsmatsutake mushroom
Type
THEMATIC SECTION: Community-based natural resource management (CBNRM): designing the next generation (Part 2)
Information
Environmental Conservation , Volume 37 , Issue 3: Thematic section. Community-based natural resource management (CBNRM): Designing the next generation (Part 2) , September 2010 , pp. 336 - 346
Copyright
Copyright © Foundation for Environmental Conservation 2010

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