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The creative interaction of individuals and small units often provides
efficient solutions to managing complicated and variable situations. Local
responsiveness and adaptability are important. This approach can be applied
at a variety of scales and has important implications for environmental
management, suggesting the need to distribute roles and responsibilities
in new ways.
The transfer of certain responsibilities through subsidiarity and decentralization
is emerging as an effective way to ensure more timely policy development
and implementation. Responsibility for many aspects of environmental and
social health and safety lies at the local or municipal level, where action
is crucial for poverty reduction, improving local environments and providing
early warning on issues with current or potential national and international
prominence. The effectiveness of devolving power to this level depends
on the nature of participatory management systems of environmental governance,
identifying all stakeholders and ensuring that they are at the policy
table'. Particularly in developing countries, providing for more meaningful
participation in environment and resource use decision-making, and giving
all stakeholders the confidence that they can make a difference, will
decrease mutual suspicion and enable major groups to participate in managing
the shared environment on an equal footing.
| Suggestions for Action |
| Participatory management |
- Develop strategic partnerships between governments, communities,
the private sector and NGOs, particularly for advisory, implementation
and funding activities, with clearly defined responsibilities
assigned to the members
- Provide encouragement and opportunities to industry and the
private sector to contribute further to developing and implementing
sustainable development programmes
- Give civil society a more central role in environmental management
by removing systemic barriers to participation, especially by
women, indigenous peoples and youth, and give due attention to
indigenous knowledge and coping strategies
- Improve institutional mechanisms for participation for stakeholders
from civil society and the private sector
- Provide institutional legitimacy to community-based resource
management practices by making communities part of the national
legal and regulatory framework
- Give people a clear stake in the environment through legal and
regulatory measures that define and recognize individual or community
property and tenure rights
- Assign common but differentiated responsibilities to all involved
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