Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Indigenous People’S Environmental Concerns: The Missing Piece In Ongoing Administrative And Political Decentralization In Africa, George Atisa, Aziza Zemrani, Matthew Weiss

Public Affairs and Security Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Decentralization is assumed to make national governments more accountable and enables local people to get involved in governance decisions. This study examines the relationships and whether decentralization activities, policies and regulations support indigenous concerns for the environment. Much of the pristine and local lands globally have already been degraded through overexploitation of natural resources leading to significant loss of environmental benefits to people, especially the marginalized and indigenous communities. Using citizen-over-state and state-over-citizen theory, the influence of national level policies on local policies and vice versa is examined. Two sets of data are analyzed: reports from conservation organizations and peer …