During the past 20 years, community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) has become a central element of efforts to support rural livelihoods and sustain natural resources worldwide, including in Sub-Saharan Africa. The widespread interest in CBNRM is rooted in the empirical failures of strictly centralized natural resource management policies and practices, broader trends in favour of decentralization in rural development and economic policy, and the desire to create stronger synergies between local economic interests and global conservation objectives. The main challenge facing CBNRM efforts, however, is that centralized resource management systems are often historically rooted, and develop their own sets of institutionalized interests.