This report consists of a series of individual country papers prepared for a study on devolution, community empowerment and power relations in community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) in the SADC region. Case studies were undertaken during 1999 in eight southeastern/eastern African countries; Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia, Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Africa (two separate studies) and Tanzania. These studies drew mainly on existing literature and the direct experiences of authors in CBNRM initiatives in their own countries.

Tamale is the capital city of Ghana’s Northern Region. As the regional capital, Tamale is growing rapidly – the population has almost tripled to over 370,000 in the past 30 years, and the areal extent has increased up to sevenfold in the same period. Urban agriculture is an integral part of the food system, linked to resource management and spatial planning. In general one can say that backyard farming flourishes, but more formally organised production is threatened by urbanisation.

This article examines the historical evolution of participatory water management in coastal Bangladesh. Three major shifts are identified: first, from indigenous local systems managed by landlords to centralized government agencies in the 1960s; second, from top-down engineering solutions to small-scale projects and people’s participation in the 1970s and 1980s; and third, towards depoliticized community-based water management since the 1990s.

Bulungan regency is the northern part of the province of East Kalimantan, Indonesia. In the course of the last decade, Kalimantan's or Borneo's hinterland has been the target of unprecedented non-timber forest products (NTFP) collecting activity. More intensive NTFP use has contributed to unsustainable extractive practices and environmental damage and to deep social and political disruption. This book examines northern East Kalimantan's trade networks. The historical scope extends from about 1880 to present and primarily focus on Long Pujungan and Malinau districts.

Remote sensing and GIS tools have broadly helped hydrogeologists to delineate the groundwater prospective zones for watershed development and management. The origin, movement and existence of groundwater depends on several factors such as slope, drainage density, land use, geology, lineament density and geomorphology. Based on these, the mapping and identification of groundwater potential zones were carried out in a part of Nalgonda district, Telangana, India.

The implementation and success of REDD+ strategies, plans and projects will depend on whether REDD+ influences governance or is shaped by existing governance failures.

The overall aim of this study was to explore what the development community can do, or facilitate, to significantly improve livelihoods in semi-arid systems.The authors based their analysis on two case-study sites in the communal lands of southern Zimbabwe. The main tool was a detailed livelihood questionnaire, supplemented by participatory appraisal and observation, action research, biophysical analysis and systems modelling.