Chapter 2

Overview of the Participatory Process for Supporting Collaborative Management

A SHORT PREVIEW

This chapter describes the nature and scope of the participatory process for supporting the collaborative management of natural resources. In real life, the sequence of events and their purpose depend on the participants and the context of the process. Consequently, there is tremendous diversity. It is possible to describe only a generalized process that is no more than a strategic and illustrative coverage.

Throughout this chapter we use the term ‘support programme’ to refer to any programme, project, organization or group that is established to provide some form of support to collaborative management. ‘Supporters’ is used to refer to the staff of such support programmes.

We appreciate that there are many readers who may be engaged in a support programme that has started already and where participation of a wide range of stake-holders has not occurred in each of the stages as described below. However, it is possible to redirect a support programme and make adjustments towards the participatory process without starting again. Some of the practical aspects associated with adopting the participatory process are discussed in following chapters.

Components of the process

Any ‘process’ includes:

• actions;
• the sequence in which they are carried out;
• a direction or purpose; and
• an environment in which it all occurs.

The first three are components of the process, and the fourth provides the context for it. This chapter describes the direction, actions and sequence of the participatory process, and Chapter 3 deals with its environment.

Direction

The direction, or purpose, of the participatory process for supporting collaborative management was described in the previous chapter. It is worth repeating here briefly that the purpose of the participatory process is:

Parts and stages

In its most simple form, the participatory process can be summarized as consisting of three sequential parts: building a support programme; providing support at selected sites; and withdrawing support. These three parts are presented in Figure 2.1.

The process involves the participation of multiple stakeholders in each of the three parts. Who actually participates depends on many factors, which can vary in the different parts.

The simple summary of the process provided above can be broken down further into eight stages. These are presented in Figure 2.2, which also shows how these stages relate to the simplified three-part version of the process presented above. The stages are previewed here and are explained in more detail in following sections.

Figure 2.2 provides what we find are the common sets of actions for supporting collaborative management.¹ A pilot project can follow these stages also, but the depth and number of cycles could differ. In a pilot project, lessons in Part 2 can lead to expansion and further rounds of support at specific sites before Part 3 is considered.

There are numerous factors, both foreseen and unforeseen, that influence the selection and sequencing of activities. The participatory process follows a course that is highly dependent on the participants and the context, so it is not possible to break these stages down further into detailed steps that can be followed in every situation. The following discussion will provide only general remarks and objectives for each stage.

We will see from the discussion that a variety of participatory approaches are used throughout the process. There is no single participatory approach that is applied in each stage. Rather, persuasive, informing, consultative, sharing decisions, and catalytic approaches can all be of use within the overall process of supporting collaborative management. For each stage, there can be differences in who manages or drives the process, who gets to be involved (how participatory is it?), and why. These issues are examined further in the sections below.

INTRODUCTION

Building a support programme commences from an initial position of ignorance (Griffin, 1988). It is common to encounter many unknowns and uncertainties about natural resources, stakeholders, support needs and preferences, opportunities, con-straints and the feasibility of apparent solutions. Unfortunately, it is a common and significant trap for builders of support programmes to assume that they understand the problems well and have workable solutions (Byron, 1997). The first challenge is how to recognize and deal with this initial position of ignorance.

A stakeholder analysis identifies key actors and information holders (see Box 2.1). By starting with a stakeholder analysis, programme builders can undertake participatory assessments of existing conditions with representatives of key stakeholder groups, and get to understand better the needs and preferences of stakeholders for support. Participatory assessments can help generate ideas for support, set goals and objectives, and improve the design 2 of support programmes. As a general rule, the sooner stakeholders are identified and consulted the better.

Often, stakeholder analyses and participatory assessments are conducted after a support programme starts. It follows that the less done before the programme is designed, the greater the ignorance and need for information and interaction with stakeholders in following stages. Sometimes the need to gain funds or approvals to work will dictate that less is done in the first two stages and more is done after approvals and funds have been secured to move forward. The timing of stakeholder analysis and participatory assessments involving stakeholders will depend on who is constructing the support programme and whether they are in a position to immediately invest in these activities or not. The variations in the timing of initial stakeholder analysis and participatory assessments are illustrated in Figure 2.3.

The following sections describe the process for building a support programme ³ (i.e. the first three stages of the participatory process).

Ideas for support: whose initiative?

It is common for stakeholders who are relatively powerful or rich to initiate support programmes. Development agents and governments often develop ideas for support and turn them into ‘projects’. There is a tendency for these stakeholders to dominate and maintain control over the whole development process in order to pursue their own interests, which can account for many of the perceived social and economic failures of development projects (Byron, 1997).

The reason for the imbalance in initiating support programmes is understandable. Relatively few resource users have the time, resources or willingness to support, in a substantial way, the management of natural resources owned by others. Rural people who do organize support may do so rarely, or may act only in organized groups. More substantial forms of support are possible when local ideas are connected to other stakeholders who can provide new knowledge, skills or resources. Unfortunately, such opportunities are limited, especially if local users lack the skills, time or motivation to locate and engage other stakeholder groups in their initiatives. If local management skills are weak, it is unlikely that major initiatives that provide substantial support to collaborative management will arise from local stakeholders independently. This feature generates the following concerns for the participatory process.

• If powerful stakeholders start the participatory process with their own ideas, substantial momentum could develop for them to dominate following stages.
• Powerful and distant stakeholders tend to be ignorant of site-specific issues that are relevant to developing appropriate ideas for support.
• The power of local stakeholders to generate and act on their own ideas and to develop the capacity for self-help needs to be increased (Daniel Shallon, pers.comm., 1997).

As mentioned above, a stakeholder analysis and participatory assessment of needs and preferences are recommended in this stage. However, it is more common for such activities to be undertaken in the design stage (see below).

In simple terms, the main objectives of this first stage are to:

• identify and analyze stakeholders;
• develop some sensible ideas for support based on a participatory assessment of existing circumstances and needs for support;
• consider who might be affected by the implementation of the ideas;
• recognize that there are stakeholders who have not yet contributed; and
• build an awareness that the ideas are based on imperfect knowledge and assumptions.

The ideas should be sensible in that they should broadly match the aspirations, needs and circumstances of a country or locality, and they should provide a basis to move forward into a planning stage that can involve more intensively a wide cross-section of stakeholders.

Design and approval of a support programme

Often, a small team of technical experts is assembled to design a support programme in a relatively short period and the terms of reference lock them into an orbit around powerful stakeholders. Various organizations or individuals assume various separate or combined roles of designer, supervisor, sponsor and approver, and consequently become dominant actors in the design process. Enhancing the participation of other stakeholders in this stage represents a major challenge for adopting the participatory process.

One response to the challenge has been for technical experts to undertake RRA to better inform themselves about the prevailing conditions and interests in the field. These appraisals are a learning experience for design teams, but they are not a substitute for stakeholder analysis and participatory needs assessments, and they rarely increase the participation of stakeholders in decisions about the goals and objectives of support programmes.

When considering the participation of multiple stakeholders in this stage, it is useful to see the design as consisting of three distinct parts:

The parts are related but they have different characteristics of accountability and participation. The first part is of interest to a wide cross-section of stakeholders because it has a major influence on the types of support that will be provided to beneficiaries. As a result, it is the part that has the greatest relevance to the participatory process.

In contrast, the second and third parts are of direct interest to a smaller set of stake-holders, i.e. the dominant actors that take on future roles of managing, sponsoring and supervising the overall support programme. Unfortunately, this distinction between the parts of the framework is commonly overlooked. The three different parts and their relevance to participatory approaches are presented in Figure 2.4.

In general, the following tasks are central to encouraging the participation of multiple stakeholders in setting the goals and objectives of the support programme in the design stage:

• identification and analysis of stakeholders and a participatory assessment of existing circumstances and needs for support (if not undertaken in the first stage);
• consultation and dialogue with representatives of stakeholder groups, with special attention to disadvantaged groups. (The aim is to define clear goals and objectives that offer initial direction without unnecessarily constraining future activities. If the support is focused on a specific location and beneficiaries can be identified exactly at this early stage, decisions about programme design can be taken jointly [see Box 2.2]. In cases where there is a wide geographic area involved and a relatively open agenda for development support, decisions will be taken by the dominant actors after taking advice from stakeholder representatives.⁴ );
• negotiation between the dominant actors to define management and supervisory roles;
• presentation of the draft design to stakeholder representatives to allow for feed-back, further input and opportunities for amendment; and
• promotion and negotiation to secure the necessary funding and approvals to start.

Obtaining feedback from stakeholders about the draft design is important because designs are based on certain assumptions, which could be wrong. If they are presented explicitly to stakeholders, there is a chance that invalid assumptions and other design biases can be revealed and accounted for early in the programme.

A number of important choices about the nature and scope of support are finalized by the design team after their dialogue with selected stakeholder group members. The organization(s) that fund or otherwise approve the support programme also control its fate and thus have a great influence over decisions about the final design. This has important implications for the participatory process. They include the following.

• The people who have been consulted may not agree with the final design or not cooperate further with the programme if they disagree with design decisions made by the dominant actors. A one-off consultation with representatives of stakeholder groups may be insufficient to secure continued participation of key stakeholders. Repeated rounds of discussion and negotiation with stakeholders may be needed to obtain a widely accepted set of goals and objectives.
• There is no guarantee that the final design will match the interests and preferences of all stakeholders because usually only a relatively small number of representatives will have been involved with the design team. Therefore, the dominant actors may have to manage conflict and be prepared to modify the design at some future point.
• Some of the dominant actors may not have been exposed to the views of other stakeholders and therefore may not understand certain aspects of the design, or know whose preferences have been favoured by the team. If this is the case, the content and results of stakeholder participation need to be summarized and presented to them.
• The risks associated with consultation rather than sharing decision-making in building a support programme can be minimized by keeping initial designs flexible.
• The design can refer to a number of issues related to the adoption of the participatory approaches itself, such as:
• building a capacity for the programme to engage in participatory action and learning;
• describing future stages of the participatory approach; and
• providing guidance about what to do if things go wrong.

This discussion of tasks is not exhaustive. There are many situations and needs that may demand that other tasks be undertaken in this stage.

In the discussion above, we have assumed that the design stage is driven by one or more powerful idea-holders who are not local users. Despite this assumption, many of the remarks and objectives presented above will apply also to other stakeholder. groups that get involved in designing a support programme. If a local organization drives the process, there will be a shift in emphasis from collecting information from the bottom to collecting it from above. This might include learning about the enabling environment, consulting powerful stakeholders, and learning about sources of funds and resources for support and how to access them.

At the end of this stage, the various ideas for a support programme have been developed into a complete, funded and approved framework ready for implementation. The more formal version of such a design is the ‘Project Document’, but it can take other less formal forms. The next stage takes the programme from an approved design up to the point where it can start collaborative work at specific sites.

Designers rarely implement support programmes, because designing has become a rather special job. Implementers might be left to interpret the written design themselves, and they can create their own understanding about what the support programme is about. Clear goals in a design are useful, but often there will still be room for flexibility. Flexibility is both an asset and a liability. It provides opportunities to collaborate with others in new and effective ways but also allows distraction and diversion away from initial intentions.

The risks arising from flexibility can be minimized if:

• there is some continuity of personnel from the design to start-up stages; and
• staff have an opportunity to gain and share a clear understanding of the guidance provided in the design and what this might mean in practical terms.

The start-up sets the tone for following stages but unfortunately it is the stage that is often rushed under pressure from dominant actors, who want to see quick results and activities in the field. Start-up should not be rushed because there are several fundamental questions that always arise at this stage, and the way these are treated has a substantial impact on the participatory process. The questions are the following.

1. Who is going to deliver the support and how well are they equipped to undertake participatory action and learning with multiple stakeholders?
2. Are the sites under consideration really suitable for achieving the intended goals and objectives of the support programme?
3. What methods should be used to run the programme and to engage local people and other stakeholders in the first round of support?

A design may be given to an existing organization to implement, or it may require the establishment of a new one. Either way, the organization needs to get or develop good staff to manage the programme and work in the field. Often, there is a short-age of skilled staff who can start work immediately, so the start-up stage usually takes some time to prepare staff prior to starting collaborative work in the field. The right attitudes, behaviour and skills appropriate to working in a participatory way are required in addition to the technical skills that are required to support natural resource management. This is particularly important for the first round of support, in which trust is built with other stakeholders. Staff need to be able to use specific participatory methods and tools, and need to have the skills to steer a course through uncertainty based on action-learning, as described in Chapter I. Achieving this state of readiness may involve the following tasks:

• recruitment of new staff, transfers, or the allocation of duties to existing staff to ensure that the aptitude and gender mix of senior management and field teams is appropriate for participatory work;
• assessment of training needs and the delivery of training programmes and follow-up support in the field to equip staff with the skills required; and
• promotion of participatory approaches and teamwork within the work practices of the organization. (This is based on a principle of demonstration that suggests that the organization itself must train, plan, work and reflect in a participatory way if it expects staff to work in a participatory way with users and other stakeholders.)

Site selection is always a major issue at start-up. The design may include:

• no pre-selected sites, but the criteria for selecting sites;
• no pre-selected sites, but a generally defined area or district to work in;
• pre-selected sites, but without prescribed activities; or
• pre-selected sites and prescribed activities.

If sites have been pre-selected in the design stage, implementers should have the right to review these selections. This is justified because the circumstances at a particular location determine whether collaborative management can be promoted easily or not (see Chapter 3), and these need to be known before supporters commit themselves to working at any site. An important condition for collaboration is whether there is interest and willingness of local people to get involved with supporters. It is better to check things out at a potential site, using an extractive RRA, and confirm the suitability of the location before collaboration begins. A hasty commitment to a site by supporters might be regretted later (see Box 2.3).

There are a number of other benefits obtained by undertaking an initial appraisal of sites before the real collaborative work commences. Such appraisals allow supporters to:

• refine previous stakeholder analyses and establish relationships with local people;
• tailor participatory tools to fit the local conditions by using the initial appraisals as a testing ground; and
• use improved knowledge about labour schedules, gender roles, politics, organizations and other local circumstances to improve the way supporters plan to go about their work in the next stage.

The supporters may choose to feed back the information collected in initial appraisals to stakeholders at each site and inform or consult them about the selection process. It is useful also to inform and consult the programme’s sponsors about site selections so that implementers retain a secure mandate to move into the next stage.

Goals and action plans for the first cycle of support

In this stage, supporters get down to the business of developing specific collaborative initiatives at each selected site. Supporters adopt more active approaches to participation and take on roles of specialist or catalytic agent (see Chapter 1). Participatory assessment and planning exercises involving representative members of a wide cross-section of stakeholder groups are initiated to:

• re-introduce supporters to participants, build relation-ships and reduce suspicion;
• engage representatives in assessing needs, setting goals for collaboration at each site, and identifying potential initiatives;
• work out who wants to be involved in what;
• study the feasibility of initiatives; and
• negotiate arrangements for implementation.

At the heart of participatory assessment and planning for sustainable management lie negotiations about what can be done by whom, what is feasible, and how the costs and benefits should be distributed (Theirry Facon, pers. comm., 1997).

Facilitating such negotiations may sound relatively straightforward, but it is not. There is no single sequence of activities for each case. Each of the activities listed above may be repeated several times if new information is revealed, if participants enter or drop out of the process, or if preferences change. Challenges arise in working out who is and who is not participating in planning exercises and whether or not various groups have the opportunity and power to participate in decision-making (FAO Département du Développement Durable, 1997).

In addition, it is sometimes difficult to know at what level decision-making is happening. Decisions can be made on individual, household, subgroup, group and community levels, and positions are constantly being reviewed as planning proceeds. Often the problem has to be broken into manageable parts for decisions and negotiations to become meaningful to particular stakeholders (Theirry Facon, pers.comm., 1997).

Negotiations about collaborative initiatives can reveal differences between the needs and values of locals and the needs and values of external, technically competent specialists who are working as supporters. In developing countries, rural people are not always exposed to the same economic, political and technical knowledge that is held in other parts of the country. The common outcome when these differences are encountered is a form of incentive aid, in which locals get some of the support they need in exchange for doing other things that the supporters think are necessary. Usually, local people do not ask for better systems for managing natural resources, and if they do, their request is ranked lower than other needs. This raises important questions about what the perceived incentives for collaboration are, how the different value systems are interacting, and whether the methods being used for negotiation are appropriate (see Chapters 3 and 4).

At many points, participants declare their interests, constraints and conditions for further participation. They decide what they can and cannot do when potential activities are being identified and examined. Supporters are participants also, and they will decide what they will and will not do for each of the collaborative initiatives being discussed. For supporters, such decisions are critical and will be grounded on an interpretation of the goals and objectives of the support programme, the role they have adopted, and a knowledge of the conditions and opportunities at each site. This is where the previous effort on programme design and start-up preparations pays off. If the support programme has not been built according to the description provided above, supporters may need to revisit some of the basic design questions at this stage prior to making decisions about future participation in various collaborative initiatives arising from planning and assessment exercises in this stage.

The interests and intentions of participants depend on the feasibility of successfully implementing activities and confidence about obtaining the benefits as predicted. Commonly, supporters spend substantial amounts of time and effort in assisting with feasibility studies so that initiatives can be selected or discarded by participants. Feasibility studies mainly explore various alternatives that have different technical requirements, costs, benefits and organizational arrangements. The aim of supporters is to help participants find the best alternative. In general, the best alternative is the one in which technical details and costs match the participants’ technical requirements and their willingness to pay or otherwise obtain them (Theirry Facon, pers. comm., 1997).

Negotiations can lead to nothing or they can lead to an agreement between supporters and participants for each feasible solution of mutual interest. Recorded agreements provide clarity about promises and intentions to do things. In some cases, agreements are drawn up as legally binding contracts, but in others they are merely informal records of intent.

Throughout these exercises, supporters need to be concerned about what is really going on because some interest groups might not be participating at all or they may be powerless to influence group decisions. The outputs of participatory exercises cannot be taken at face value and special efforts may be needed to engage all stake-holder groups fairly. For example, in many rural societies women are subject to social norms and workloads that can prevent them from participating fully and expressing their views openly in meetings and other exercises. Various disadvantaged groups may be excluded from planning and decision-making, or their participation may be manipulated by more powerful forces. Supporters can take account of such power and equity issues.

• They can conduct informal and low-key investigations:
• to improve the understanding of interests, concerns and preferences of stake-holders; and
• to monitor representation and other equity issues related to the participation of stakeholders in assessment and planning exercises.
• They can seek alternative exercises or modify tools to improve the access of disadvantaged groups to decision-making.
• They can undertake training and awareness-raising exercises to equip participants with the skills required to work effectively through assessments and planning activities.
• They can use the additional information obtained to question the reliability and hence the utility of outputs from planning exercises.

These efforts can provide a counterbalance to inequity in planning, but inequities may remain a feature of the social setting. Based on information from investigations about what is happening at each site, supporters can make their own decisions about how they will respond to the power and equity disparities that are revealed (see Chapter 3).

The discussion provided above focuses on things that are done with stakeholders located at a specific site. Other investigation and negotiation tasks may need to be undertaken at other locations and at higher levels of government in order to create or maintain favourable conditions for collaborative management and engage stake-holder groups that may be absent from the local area (see Chapter 3 for an overview of stakeholders).

Pre-existing or new conflicts may arise during negotiations and investigations, which can alter the sequence and nature of tasks described above. Indeed, supporters have choices about whether to get involved with conflict management, to delay certain tasks until circumstances improve, or to abandon the site altogether. Conflict management tasks and responses can arise at any stage and can vary or stop the generalized participatory process described here.

Activities and outcomes: implementing and monitoring

From the supporter’s perspective this stage involves:

• assisting with managing implementation;
• building local capacity to manage;
• providing the inputs that were promised; and
• monitoring implementation according to the requirements

of the support programme’s design.

The overriding interests of supporters and participants alike are in securing the intended benefits from each activity and ensuring they are distributed to beneficiaries according to previous agreements. This is because the future of collaboration will depend largely on whether collaboration pays off in the first round.

Unfortunately, plans are based on imperfect knowledge, and reality rarely allows things to go according to plan. Some participants may not even know about plans if they have been negotiated by representatives. Implementation does not happen automatically, and it is problematic, especially when collaboration is voluntary. One way to deal with this is for someone to manage implementation so that things are facilitated, followed up and monitored, and so that emerging problems are addressed to ensure that progress is made towards achieving the agreed objectives for each initiative.

Initially, responsibilities for managing implementation may be either held by the support programme, shared with others, or allocated solely to another group. In the long term, supporters will be interested in making collaboration work without frequent outside assistance. Therefore, supporters may:

• provide only temporary assistance to the management of collaborative initiatives; and
• build the capacity of local participants to manage collaborative initiatives with minimal assistance.

Supporters can find themselves torn between the short-term need for success and the long-term interest in capacity building. Capacity cannot be built easily if there is always someone around to help. On the other hand, supporters find it hard to sit back and watch things go wrong when they have their own goals to achieve through collaborative work. This is an aspect of support that requires constant attention in first and subsequent cycles and becomes even more prominent in the withdrawal stage.

Managing implementation includes the following tasks:

• securing the skills, knowledge and other inputs required for implementation;
• collecting and recording information on progress and performance according to the plans for each initiative;
• distributing benefits;
• reporting progress to the wider group of stakeholders;
• addressing conflict; and
• deciding when to evaluate and review the original plan.

The actual role of the supporter and the length of time the supporter spends undertaking or assisting any of these activities will depend on agreements and plans made in previous stages. Since supporters wish to reduce their input over time, it is likely that the following tasks are undertaken in order to build capacity for local management:

• training needs are assessed and training opportunities are secured to equip nominated participants with the skills required for managing implementation;
• experience is shared and participants are engaged in hand-over phases for each management task held by the supporter; and
• problem-solving and back-up support is provided following hand-over of management responsibilities.

In addition to assisting management, supporters may have promised to provide certain inputs. This remains an obligation so long as everyone else adheres to the relevant agreement. It is good practice for the supporter to honour commitments by providing promised inputs and services in a timely and responsible manner. The supporter obtains credibility with other participants and sets an example for others to follow.

Both supporters and participants have interests in monitoring activities and outcomes that depend on the existence of a reasonable degree of transparency in implementation. Supporters have several monitoring issues to address.

• Is there open access to reliable information about activities and results?
• What issues are of interest to different stakeholder groups?
• Is the monitoring system able to reveal deviations from plans in a timely manner?

These questions arise from a general concern for power and equity and for the need to collect information for later evaluation. It is likely that supporters will need to assist participants with developing and managing a monitoring system that satisfies such requirements.

Supporters often have additional and separate monitoring requirements that arise from the design of the support programme rather than from any agreements for collaborative initiatives at specific sites. For example, it is common for donors and supervisors to require the support programme to provide progress reports that deal with many things that have little or no relevance to the other participants. In some cases, participants may agree to assist supporters with external monitoring requirements. Otherwise, supporters will simply undertake the additional monitoring separately from those of the collaborative initiative.

Lessons and evaluation: reflecting and making
judgements about the process and outcomes

The participatory development process moves forward in cycles of action-learning (see Chapter 1).The previous stage includes some monitoring and corrective action undertaken during implementation, but in this stage supporters complete the first cycle of support by deliberately engaging participants in evaluation.⁵ Experience is reflected on and lessons are extracted to feed into the next cycle. Evaluation contributes information and judgements towards the planning and assessment part of the next cycle, so there is some blurring of this stage with the next. However, it is important to recognize an evaluation stage separate from re-planning to ensure that it receives the attention it deserves prior to starting a new cycle of action-learning.

Unfortunately, there is a tendency for supporters to postpone or avoid evaluation, or to spend minimum effort on it unless there is some formal requirement to do otherwise. The reasons for avoiding evaluation include the fact that such exercises reveal bad things as well as good, and few people like to dwell on mistakes or poor performance. There is also pressure from programme sponsors to get tangible results quickly. This is unfortunate, because the lessons drawn from site-specific experience represent the single greatest asset for future planning, especially for pilot or research projects. On the positive side, there is increasing awareness of the need to make evaluations regularly at various levels, in addition to the more formal and conventional evaluations required by sponsors.

In this stage, the participatory process requires that supporters:

• raise awareness about the need for reflection on experience and evaluation of process and outcomes;
• facilitate reflection and evaluation sessions;
• build local capacity to reflect and evaluate; and
• conduct additional evaluations according to the requirements of the support programme’s design.

There are two separate sets of reflection and learning required: one concerning the support programme itself and the other concerning the site-specific initiatives being supported. This means there is:

• evaluation by participants of process and results at specific sites (compared to plans and agreements for collaborative initiatives); and
• evaluation by supporters of approaches and results of the support programme (compared to the programme design).

Evaluation can reveal or initiate conflict because judgements have to be made about what is good and bad about the experience being reflected upon. Decisions need to be made about what criteria are used and how the experience compares to these criteria. Different stakeholders can have different perceptions about what worked well and what did not, just as there can be differences when initial plans are made. Records of initial agreements and preliminary discussions of criteria can help reduce the scope for disagreement over evaluation findings, but disagreement is still likely. Supporters may need to use their conflict management skills again to facilitate negotiation towards an agreement among the group about which findings should be taken into the next round of planning.

In summary, evaluations in this stage can include the following steps.

• Workshops or other types of exercises with participants to compare experience with expectations so as to determine:
• what worked well and what did not work well;
• what should be done differently and what should be repeated next time;
• what are the main lessons; and
• who should hear about them.
• Negotiations leading to final agreements among different interest groups about the main lessons to be fed back into the next stage of re-planning.
• Investigations to:
• monitor representation and other equity issues related to the participation of stakeholders in evaluation exercises; and
• improve the understanding of the impact of collaboration on various stake-holder groups.
• Complete or partial assessments of the impact of the support programme on human and ecosystem well-being using PRA techniques.
• Presentation of information from evaluations to representatives of a wider cross-section of stakeholders.
• Assessments of training needs and the securing of training opportunities to equip nominated local participants with the skills required for facilitating evaluation.

Evaluations of the management of the support programme are made informally by the support organization and its beneficiaries, and formally by its sponsors. In this way each of the two sets of reflection and evaluation described earlier is done in a participatory way involving multiple stakeholders.

The support programme and its sponsors may have additional and separate interests in learning and disseminating results from collaboration at multiple sites. This is not always the case, but it is common for a design to include objectives for evaluation that are separate from those for a single initiative.

More cycles of support: More planning, acting and learning

In the above discussion, there has been no attempt to define the scope and length of action-learning cycles, or the transition from one stage to the next. This depends on the nature of the collaborative action and the prevailing circumstances. Whatever the timing, there is a point at which plans and agreements are reviewed and the arrangements on which the collaborative initiative is based are refreshed. This assumes that the support is not limited to one cycle only and that the participants have not decided to stop or postpone the initiative based on the first evaluation. This is possible, of course, but for the purposes of our general description of the participatory process we will assume that there is agreement to continue with supported collaboration.

In this stage, the participatory process enters a new cycle, with the same major stages that have been described above, i.e. participatory assessment and planning, implementation and monitoring, and evaluation. The objectives and tasks for each stage, referred to above, also apply in new cycles. However, there is the difference that substantial support at a particular site usually comes to an end at some time, and each new cycle brings this point closer and closer. Most supporters want to get better at what they do and want to see local capacity grow so that collaborative management systems continue to improve and be effective after direct support has been withdrawn. These two interests of improvement and sustainability give rise to some additional objectives that supporters carry forward into subsequent cycles. These are:

• to become more effective in delivering support; and
• to reduce the costs of support at each site by becoming more efficient and encouraging greater cost-sharing.

Although these objectives are those of the support agent, they also have advantages for beneficiaries, in that support services are improved and self-reliance is encouraged.

Several general tasks are associated with trying to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of support in successive action-learning cycles. They are:

• ongoing training programmes and follow-up support in the field to equip staff with the skills required for refining methods and improving productivity;
• participatory planning workshops to engage support staff and other participants in thinking about how to reduce costs and encourage greater cost-sharing;
• assessments of training needs and the securing of opportunities for field staff to further improve their management and negotiation skills related to the new cycles of support; and;
• evaluation of the approaches and methods used by supporters against criteria of effectiveness and efficiency.

Again, there may be numerous other tasks undertaken in new cycles of support depending on the nature of activities. The ones described above are limited to those that are adopted by the support agent to prepare for withdrawal at one site and possible expansion over other sites. This reflects the focus of this entire overview on the support to collaborative management rather than on the collaborative management itself.

Having assisted a group of stakeholders for a number of cycles, as either a facilitator or an active participant in collaborative initiatives, it would be good to make an orderly departure of some kind. Unfortunately, support is withdrawn often in a disorderly way because of conflicts, poor performance or shifts in politics or policy, or simply because the support was never planned to be withdrawn in an orderly fashion. A disruptive exit does not contribute much to the maintenance of the gains made at a site. Indeed, the main test of the benefit of support comes when the support is taken away (John Rouse, pers. comm., 1997). The participatory process calls for a deliberate plan for withdrawal that requires the participation of multiple stakeholders.

In this stage, supporters:

• negotiate the circumstances and conditions for withdrawal; and
• engage in a phased dissolution or transfer of roles and responsibilities from supporters to other stakeholders.

The first objective seeks to plan the redundancy of the supporter in a participatory way, and the second objective puts this plan into effect.

There are several options for withdrawing and the choice depends on who the supporter is. The options are to withdraw:

• completely and forever;
• to a minimum but constant level; or
• until some special conditions or problems arise that require the provision of additional support.

Some of the withdrawal tasks mentioned below may have been tackled in earlier stages. Indeed, it is preferable to make preparations for withdrawal over a long period. Supporters and beneficiaries could start planning for redundancy from the start of their relationship, but this is not realistic in many settings. If nothing has been done before, the following activities may be undertaken in this last stage.

• A programme of negotiation between relevant stakeholders to define:
• new allocations of roles and responsibilities in the absence of the supporter;
• arrangements for phasing out support; and
• the conditions under which future support will be sought and provided.
• Additional training programmes, periods of transitional support, trials of new arrangements and other preparatory activities prescribed by the agreement reached above.
• If agreed, follow-up support according to the negotiated conditions.

It is likely that an agreement for follow-up support may include some form of conflict management and authoritative support for enforcing the major rules of collaboration and resource use. If this cannot be provided by the support agent itself, there may be additional tasks involved in arranging for some other organization, such as a local government body, to commit and prepare itself for this service. However, it is likely that such an organization would have been engaged already in the collaborative initiative, even if it was not the main support agent. In such a situation, these tasks will form part of the agreement referred to above.

Although this stage represents the end of the generalized participatory process for supporting collaborative management, it is of course possible for supporters to return for other purposes. For example, supporters may wish to undertake a post-withdrawal evaluation to find out how participants are doing several years later. They may wish to engage stakeholders in other research, training or dissemination activities that relate to the supporter’s own work plans. The withdrawal stage may be the endpoint of a particular process, but it does not necessarily end relationships and interactions between the beneficiaries and their supporters.

CHAPTER 2 - ENDNOTES