Toward a Community of Innovation in Community-Based Natural Resource Management: Insights from Open Source Software

Community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) is an environmental governance approach that deals with complex and interwoven ecological problems through a participatory environmental management framework. Practitioner, donor, and academic interest in this strategy is on the rise, and successful CBNRM organizations are experiencing internal and external pressures to help "transfer" their knowledge and experiences to other contexts and scales. If organized through the traditional top-down diffusion of innovation approach, many barriers to CBNRM transfer exist, beginning with organizational costs that may outweigh potential benefits. However, reframed as a more "open" and emergent process, the burdens of transfer may be reduced and benefits increased. We draw on an analogy from the Open Source Software (OSS) movement to suggest an organizational rationale for exchange and principles such as "porting," the "kernel," "copyleft," and "forking" that can guide CBNRM and for community-based organizations challenged to share their approach to conservation.