Cultural Diversity and Community-Based Resource Management. Assessing the awareness of cultural diversity and dynamics in joint forest management, Rajasthan, India.

Since the 1980s, the Asian region has seen a groundswell of support for community-based natural resource management (CBNRM), as an answer to claimed overall diversity loss, critiques on ‘fortress conservation’, and advocacy for indigenous rights. CBNRM evolved rapidly from an alternative view toward a widely endorsed concept. Yet, at the same moment as CBNRM gained momentum, it turned into a highly critiqued panacea itself. Empirical research shows that the global ‘win-win rhetoric’ of CBNRM does not necessarily match its results in local realities. Generalization of particular successes - without scrutiny - ignores the complexity of local contexts and trade-offs. Authors speak of a widening gap between rhetoric and reality and claim that what really happens to local people is still poorly addressed in conservation literature.
Critics highlight: a) continuing primordialist and essentialist notions of community and environment, b) potential counterproductive results of participatory strategies, and c) the flattening of local complexity and diversity.
Further analysis of the extent to which CD and its dynamics are currently integrated in CBNRM is urgently needed. How effective is CBNRM in coming-up with its promises as an emancipatory tool? How are CD and dynamics integrated in CBNRM? To what extent are community voices shaping the design of CBNRM? What are the effects of ‘CBNRM coercion’ on local communities?
This paper sheds light on these questions from a community-perspective on CD. The argumentation will be applied in a particular case study on joint forest management in Rajasthan, India and its impacts on the Saharia community.