Integral Local Development: ‘Accommodating Multiple Interests’ through Entrustment and Accountable Representation

Many participatory natural resource management and development approaches accommodate multiple interests. But do they do so in a democratic and institutionally sustainable manner? There are numerous local actors who claim to represent or speak for local people: chiefs, headmen, notables, religious leaders, local administrators, forestry extension workers, ‘stakeholders’, NGOs, and interest groups. Natural resource management policies and programs often empower and rely on these actors as community spokespersons or they create committees that ostensibly represent local stakeholders. In rare instances, they work through a sustainable form of local democracy: elected local government. In lieu of supporting more democratic government, in the current anti-government international climate, participatory projects and policies often empower alternative institutions. The current anti-government choices of local institutions can undermine the emergence of good and representative government and may not be sustainable in the long run. Many of the actors being empowered in natural resource management are non-representative: few are systematically downwardly accountable to the population as a whole. Non-representative participatory processes, including many stakeholder and joint management approaches, may supplement or complement a democratic system of local governance, but they are not democratic i