From Needs to Rights: Lessons learned from the application of rights based approaches to natural resource governance in Ghana, Uganda and Nepal

As one of the world’s largest non-profit agencies working in international development, CARE International has over 50 years’ experience with poverty reduction across over 60 countries in the South. Following a fundamental review of their overall programme approach CARE made a commitment in 2002 to apply a Rights based Approach (RBA) across the organisation, and in particular with regard to its field based activities. This corresponded with a fundamental rethink of CARE’s overall vision and mission that aims to address the underlying causes of poverty and social injustice.

CARE Danmark, as one of the members of the wider CARE International family, has since its inception developed a strong programme focus around a single sector: Agriculture and Natural Resources (ANR). This contrasts with other CARE International members who have tended to engage in a range of sectors across the development-relief continuum.

This paper provides a retrospective review of how this new RBA-centred approach has been applied in practice, particularly in three countries: namely Uganda, Ghana and Nepal. In contrast to many international

NGOs working with RBA, CARE has chosen to focus on the application of procedural rights—rather than a more confrontational approach to the adoption of substantive rights. An approach that promotes procedural rights is seen as a useful entry point to issues of power, governance and equity, within the broader framework of sustainable natural resources management.

In Ghana, CARE has adopted a rights based approach by addressing issues relating to illegal logging and unsustainable natural resource use as well as inequalities in the sharing of forest harvesting benefits. Working with local civil society partners, and in particular Forest Watch Ghana (FWG), CARE supports platforms at community, district, regional and national levels through which effective claims over land and natural resource tenure can be made to local and national government duty bearers. Together with FWG, CARE is working increasingly closely with duty bearers at the national level (such as the Forestry Commission) as well as international levels (the European Union) with a view to addressing some of the structural issues relating to forest governance.

In Uganda, CARE has worked particularly in supporting the rights of rural people living around protected areas in south-western Uganda who have been negatively impacted by national and international conservation efforts and have been unable to capture the benefits of tourism at the local level. One of the key target groups of the programme is ethnic minorities, such as the Batwa, Basongora and Banyabatumbi, all of whom hold traditional claims to land now enclosed within national parks located in the south-western part of the country.

In Nepal, CARE has been supporting improved governance in participatory (community) forest management in a range of poor and remote rural areas. This study focuses on 3 districts in the mid-west of Nepal, which are in the Terai area (plains immediately at the base of foothills): Banke, Bardia and Kailali. The forest in this area has high value hardwood species like Shorea robosta (Sal) and thus more economic value than most forest in hills and mountain regions. Since 1996, CARE has focused on measures designed to make the forest management process more internally accountable and pro-poor to avoid the widespread tendency towards elite capture. At a national level, CARE works with the Federation of Community Forestry Users, Nepal (FECOFUN) with a view to holding government line agencies increasingly accountable to their own stated policy goals and with the objective of reducing the risk of policy “backsliding”.

The case studies presented in this paper illustrate how the application and pursuit of procedural rights can provide an important entry point for addressing substantive human rights, such as property rights, as well as rights to a clean and healthy environment. Drawing heavily on previous studies and policy research undertaken elsewhere, and focusing heavily on the application of the three procedural rights1, a framework is presented in this paper to characterise and analyse progress made in Ghana, Uganda and Nepal with regard to the adoption of a RBA.