Institutions, organizations and the poverty/environment nexus: challenges to a rights-based approach to management of coastal resources in Colombia and Ghana

Coastal zones globally are hot spots when it comes to the challenges of sustainable resource management and poverty reduction. They used to be relatively under populated and placid. This is now changing due to growing population movements towards coastal zones. This paper, presented at the IASC Conference 2008, focuses on the divided management of addressing coastal institutions, organisations and NGO’s in Colombia and Ghana. The authors find that on Providence Island in Colombia there are few traditional institutions, while in Ghana the traditional sector is identical with the pervasive chieftaincy system.

The analysis addresses aspects of how to bridge traditional and modernising sectors and target the intricate poverty and environment nexus. More specifically the paper considers how to implement a rights based approach to the management of coastal resources. The authors argue that the essence of how to achieve this is closely connected with two major tasks:

• create new organisations or reform existing ones, from bottom up and founded on relevant institutions
• establish co-management arrangements that are transparent, inclusive and address conflicts.