Carnage in Paradise
2009
Kisekka-Ntale, Fredrick
Different perceptions and claims lead to conflicts over environmental outcomes. By elucidating the role of the state and its relationship to local institutions, one can better understand contemporary institutional conflict and the need to create mechanisms for inter-institutional cooperation in environmental decision making, particularly in the realm of protected area management. The article is based on findings from one of the remaining few Afro-tropical rainforests. Located in western Kenya, Kakamega forest is under immense threat of survival. The forest is located in a densely populated area and inhabited by poor farming communities, largely of Luhya descent. The study analyses varied notions related to local people’s perception of institutional regimes. The aim of the article is to shed more light on what is meant by institutions, institutionalism and point to some common misleading notions associated with the terms; explain the institutional dimensions of environmental decision making in the context of shifting discourses in protected area management; explain the most common basis of institutional conflict over the environment and summarize by drawing emphasis on how comanagement in protected reserves requires the recognition of local institutional rights and how this can both reduce institutional conflict to achieve a sustainable relationship between societies and the environment.
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