Empty laws and empty forests: Reconsidering rights and governance for sustainable wildlife management in the Republic of the Congo
2022
Mavah, Germain | Child, B. (Brian) | Swisher, Marilyn E.
Like their ancestors, forest dwellers in the Republic of the Congo depend heavily on bushmeat for their livelihoods. National regulations and enforcement are ineffective, yet undermine indigenous institutions. In common with many forest communities globally, this is creating an open‐access resource at the same time that demand for bushmeat is increased by roads, towns, markets and new harvesting technology (guns, wire). We argue that the intractability and contradictions of the bushmeat problem globally reflect outdated institutions of exclusionary conservation and that the disempowerment of local people can be framed as an ‘empty laws’ open‐access syndrome in which neither national nor local controls are working. We propose that this is an institutional predicament that needs to be resolved by re‐establishing local tenure and rights, and drawing on the commons literature, New Institutional Economics and the long experience with private and community wildlife in southern Africa to design alternative governance regimes. In proposing measures to re‐build local commons (private‐community ownership), this review highlights community rights, the controversial issue of commercial use and markets, and the substantial advantages of participatory face‐to‐face community governance relative to the representational committee‐based governance associated with development projects.
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