Politicians Versus Professionals (or Grab the Money!)

By Prof Brian Child

State agencies have played a central and often remarkable role in the conservation of wild resources in many countries (including forests, wildlife, drylands, and fisheries).  However, conservation requirements, the role of the state, and the capacity of state agencies are changing rapidly.

The fulcrum of governance is also shifting away from a singular reliance on state agency leadership towards polyvalent approaches (or chaos in the absence of some form of coordinated leadership). 

In an insightful chapter, Grindle and Thomas (1991) explain how political appointees are replacing professional administrators in many state agencies, leading to the loss of independent technical skills and a divergence of agency capacity from the public good. 

Compounded by declining funding and professional independence, the technical capacities of once highly regarded state agencies for forests, fisheries, national parks, and wildlife are declining. Senior bureaucrats in wildlife agencies, including international agencies, increasingly lack the field experience and technical judgement of their predecessors. 

Moreover, in the absence of strong mechanisms of social accountability, natural resource agencies and the nationalized resources they manage are vulnerable to state capture and predatory and/or extractive behaviors. 

The design of many wildlife or forestry agencies has also entrenched conflicts of interest. They fulfil contradictory roles as the primary regulating agency for the conservation estate and sector but are also major economic players in them.

This is a high-risk situation where public agencies are able to use their legislative powers to protect their monopoly position (Drucker, 1973).

Thus, struggling park agencies often act against the public interest by blocking the emergence of competition from the private sector or communities.  Strong and accountable state agencies play a critical role in crafting effective rules.

Confident bureaucrats are much more likely to trade influence over a booming sector for power over a declining one and to obtain the new skills required for decentralized governance. We see examples of this, where wildlife administrators ‘gave up power’ but greatly expanded their credibility and influence as they rode the success of the wildlife economy and community-based resource management (CBNRM). 

Weak state agencies are often major impediments to CBNRM because, paradoxically, weak agencies resist innovation. In fighting to retain authority over wild resources, even when they patently have limited capacity to fulfil their responsibilities, they become impediments to change, blocking the devolution of rights to communities and landholders.

Practicing short-sighted economics, they instinctively grab the money produced by parks and communities, undermining an expanding wildlife economy that would pay back this money many times over in the form of taxes, jobs, and a growing economy.

(Prof Brian Child is an associate professor in the Department of Geography and Center for African Studies at the University of Florida and the Life Through Wildlife Project director. His book, “Sustainable Governance of Wildlife and Community-Based Natural Resource Management”, is available on Amazon.)