ASSESSING THE PRINCIPLES OF COMMUNITY-BASED NATURAL RESOURCES MANAGEMENT IN LOCAL ENVIRONMENTAL CONSERVATION PLANS

Community-based natural resources management (CBNRM) is increasingly perceived as a bottom-up alternative approach to the traditional top-down rational model of local environmental conservation planning. Although many studies have discussed the effectiveness of these two models in environmental planning, little research has been done to empirically determine the influence of these two principles on local environmental conservation planning. This study analyses 54 cities' local environmental conservation plans to quantitatively measure the conceptual plan components, then uses regression models to detect the factors influencing local environmental conservation plan quality. Descriptive results indicate that local plans have a relatively low awareness of strategic-level conservation items, a medium level of analysis for regional conservation items, and a high level of community-based conservation efforts. Regression results further highlight that the governance capacity has significant influence on local environmental conservation plan quality; however, the community-based participation capacity was not statistically significant.