NRM- Strengths and Weaknesses of Bottom Up Natural Resource Management.

The main weakness of bottom up natural resource management is the lack of governmental support and resources. With smaller, bottom up management, the funding and resources that could possibly have been allocated to natural resource management initiatives are harder to come by. The support that governments can give is useful because it gives the group legitimacy and makes it harder to stop initiatives. If the Tarcoles river initiative had more governmental support, perhaps it would not have been shut down. Without governmental leadership, bottom up resource management can also become decentralized to the point of disorganization.
A strength in bottom up natural resource management is that it gives power to the people who will really be affected by the issues. Instead of waiting around for a government official to make a decision on something that has no pertinence to his/her life, bottom up makes use of the people who feel the consequences of resource exploitation. It also is much more efficient in that it directly works with the ones responsible for resource use instead of being removed from the problem, like top down management is.