Understanding stakeholders and the enabling environment is a great advantage for implementing the participatory process. However, the success of a support programme also depends on how the programme is managed and what sort of relationships are established with the groups who actually manage natural resources. In addition to the many conventional management and relationship issues, there are a number of aspects that are specific to managing a participatory process and servicing the needs of collaborative management. These aspects are discussed below.
For the following discussion, we will assume that a group of local users is responsible for managing a specific resource, through collaboration:
In this case, the support programme does not aim to take over the core activities of collaborative management, which are represented at the centre of the diagram provided in Figure 4.1. Rather, supporters concentrate on servicing the fundamental needs of users for undertaking collaborative management. These include:
These sets of issues are represented in the diagram presented as Figure 4.1.
These needs for support, combined with the unpredictable nature of the participatory process, place significant demands on a support programme. The chapter opens with an overview of some of the common management problems and pitfalls experienced by support programmes. It then discusses some suggestions for programme management and the needs of stakeholders.
The chapter draws largely on the experience of the authors and other colleagues involved in collaborative management. It is not meant to be an exhaustive list of all the issues. Rather, it is indicative of the scope of practical aspects that can emerge during implementation of the participatory process.
It seems that support programmes can suffer from a number of internal problems that become impediments to undertaking action-learning and adopting appropriate participatory approaches. Some of these impediments, and possible reasons for them, are described below.
Sponsor’s preferences for starting big and setting physical targets A donor or government policy-maker may be interested in disbursing funds at a specific rate and may be eager to have a support programme do as much as possible, as quickly as possible. This interest can be accommodated if there has been a history of experience and learning, and if the programme is ready to expand. However, if it is working in a new area, or on a new issue, the sponsor’s preferences can be incompatible with action-learning. The danger exists that the programme will take short-cuts to please the sponsor, resulting in inappropriate behaviour, top-down planning and potential programme failure.
Lack of real commitment to support programmes
Naturally, the development and implementation of support programmes will stand or fall on the resources allocated to them.The sponsor may not provide adequate funds, staff and continuity for particular programmes. Within government, the perceived high costs of participation, the lack of information about its effectiveness and moves towards economic rationalism all act to limit the resources made available for people’s participation (Gericke et al., 1992).
Assumption that participatory approaches are too costly and time-consuming
The adoption of active participatory approaches may increase the costs and time of programme implementation, and this is sometimes used as an excuse for not adopting them, or adopting them in a minor way only. The choice may be to use more conventional approaches to programme planning and risk failure, or to invest in a process that has a good chance of securing collaboration among stakeholders.
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BOX 4.1 |
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PRA TOO COSTLY? |
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In a comparative study undertaken in Uganda, it was found that using PRA tools increased the planning costs of an integrated conservation and development project by 9 percent. This amount was deemed to be insignificant, given that the previous approach of the project was failing to deliver reliable or useful information for guiding the project’s activities. |
Short lifespans of programmes
Sponsors tend to underestimate the time needed to establish an organization that can operate effectively and the time required for this organization to build local capacity for collaboration at field sites. They also have their own preferences for committing funds for specific periods, such as three to five years. Successful programmes may be built upon many cycles of acting and learning, occurring over a long period. For some natural resources, such as forests, periods of 10 to 20 years may be more realistic for building the knowledge and capacity for successful support in a particular setting.
Programmes with short lifespans and uncertain approval procedures for extensions can contribute to a high mobility of skilled staff (Patrizio Warren, pers. comm., 1997). This can regularly deplete the organization’s capacity to apply participatory approaches and action-learning, leading to a loss of momentum in its activities.
Beliefs that the knowledge of outside experts has greater relevance
and validity than that of local people
Highly trained ‘technical experts’ can often assume that outside knowledge has greater relevance and validity for resource management than does local knowledge. If such beliefs are present in support programmes, indigenous knowledge may be ignored or devalued, and the necessary efforts to learn about the resource and its management from local people may be diluted (Fisher, 1993). Especially in developing countries the knowledge of local users about resources is great, and is often better than that of government officials (Vanda Alterelli, pers. comm., 1997).
Tendency for staff to lack confidence in the ability of
untrained local people to manage resources
The culture of the expert, referred to above, also creates a situation in which relevant officials lack confidence in the ability of untrained local people to manage resources (Fisher, 1995). Such a situation can sabotage the opportunity to achieve acceptable arrangements for collaborative management, especially where the state is the owner of the resources and is involved in the support programme. In addition, experts can hold technical definitions of sustainable management that may not be understood or shared by local users who do the actual managing. The expert may get stuck with these definitions rather than learning and reaching a shared notion of sustainability with users (Jon Anderson, pers. comm., 1997).
Individuals and organizations have difficulty seeing
and accepting error as a learning resource
It is often difficult for individuals and organizations working in a competitive environment to examine error and failure, especially where there is a cultural preference for avoiding confrontation and conflict, as in many Southeast Asian societies. Ignoring mistakes, or dealing with them in a negative way, will of course limit the capacity of a support programme to learn from relevant experience and improve performance.
Tendency to overlook perceptions of local people
In some situations, there will be significant differences between the socially shared perceptions of local users and those of supporters. If these differences are over-looked, it is possible that supporters will not fully understand the preferences or behaviour of the users and will make flawed analyses of observations.
Tendency to ignore local institutions and local decision-making mechanisms
Initially, outsiders new to an area have little relevant understanding of the local situation, regarding norms of behaviour, local decision-making and informal organizations (Fisher, 1993).This results in a tendency for supporters to form new committees or establish new systems for decision-making that frequently do not work.
Overemphasis on questionnaires and large, formal meetings
The use of conventional questionnaire surveys commonly generates vast quantities of data with narrow scope, dubious reliability and low utility for participatory planning (Fisher, 1987). Despite the significant problems and costs, questionnaire surveys remain a popular tool in rural development. There is a role for short, simple questionnaires, but only after a significant amount of learning has been undertaken already, using other tools.
Meetings can be useful for information-gathering and decision-making if they are managed well and complemented by other less formal activities. However, in general, large group meetings provide limited opportunities for exploring issues in a participatory manner and they often fail to gain the active participation of the less powerful, poorer and less confident sections of the community. Key stakeholders rarely get to influence important decisions such as where meetings will be held, who should come, what will be discussed and how they are run. Despite these significant problems, there is a tendency for support programmes to overemphasize this technique in the attempt to engage local people in planning. If a support programme relies solely on meetings and questionnaire surveys for bottom-up planning, it is likely that its good intentions and effort will be largely wasted.
An incorrect assumption that local people have a
low capacity to draw, plan, organize and act
It may be assumed by supporters that because of low literacy levels and a lack of formal education local people have a low capacity to draw, plan, organize and act. Such untested, erroneous assumptions may prevent support programmes from using many powerful participatory tools. When people are given the appropriate opportunity, they are found to be quite able to diagram, map, rank, plan and analyze (Chambers, 1992).
Low capacity of field staff in difficult circumstances
In developing countries, it is common to find that field staff have a low capacity to facilitate participatory development. Most formal education systems did not provide the current generation of field staff with the skills and knowledge necessary for taking on the new roles expected of them (Michelle Gauthier, pers. comm., 1997). The necessary skills are not readily obtained in short training sessions, and require long periods of training and follow-up to achieve (Patrizio Warren, pers. comm., 1997).To make matters worse, staff that do receive additional training and become highly skilled are likely to be promoted or recruited out of the field (Ron Maine, pers comm., 1997).
Even if field staff increase their skills and knowledge and get to stay in the field, their supervisors may have much less exposure and understanding of collaboration and what it means in the field. High demands and numerous constraints are put on field staff, which makes it difficult for them to do their job or apply the skills that they may have. They can also be subject to conflicting demands from above and below that intensify any capacity problems that they might have.
The capacity of a field team to undertake participatory action and learning with rural people can be enhanced if there is an appropriate gender balance in the team. This can help the team communicate with women where there are cultural constraints for outsiders to talk to women. In many developing countries, there is either a short-age of women candidates for field positions or an absence of equal employment opportunities. These represent challenges for assembling a field team that can work effectively with both men and women.
Anybody can claim to be an expert in the use of participatory approaches
It is not easy to judge the quality of practitioners either before or after participatory exercises are conducted by them. The recent interest in PRA has generated a high demand for expert advice, which may be supplied partly by people with limited or poor understanding and skills. Poor work may not only impact badly on individual support programmes but may also impede the adoption or sponsorship of these methods by others if such programmes continue to fail.
Participatory approaches can be improperly used
The problems associated with poor practitioners are compounded because participatory tools such as RRA and PRA can be badly used because of time constraints or a simple lack of understanding (Chambers, 1992).The approaches can be:
There is a danger for people who have been trained in PRA to become mechanistic and rigid in the application of the tools and to do poor analysis (Alice Carloni, pers. comm., 1997). Indeed, a major challenge for supporters is to achieve quality and rigour in using participatory approaches (John Dixon, pers. comm., 1997).
Recognition of such constraints and pitfalls provides a good starting point for improving the performance of support programmes. Lasting responses and solutions can be sought through programme management. Some examples of relevant management issues are provided below.
It has been stated many times in this document that there is no standard or unified formula for providing support to collaborative management. As a result, there are two special challenges for a support programme in managing the participatory process. These are to create and maintain:
The first challenge involves creating space to undertake action-learning. Unfortunately, the need for flexibility can conflict with the bureaucratic preference for set designs, work-plans and timetables.There is a tendency for sponsors and programme managers to follow plans rigidly to achieve targets as initially set. Flexibility, and thus better support, can be sacrificed for the sake of getting the project completed as prescribed.
Flexibility can be won from sponsors and other programme partners by sharing more of the uncertainties, assumptions, approaches and lessons from the field with them. This can be done through meetings, awareness-raising workshops, documents and videos. Unfortunately, writing and sharing lessons is something that practitioners do not like to do very often, but it is worth the effort if it buys confidence and flexibility from programme sponsors.
Flexibility is useful only if it is tied to the use of action-learning approaches. As discussed in previous chapters, action-learning allows the programme to take account of changing circumstances and new information. There are some key institutional practices that are fundamental to engaging in successful action-learning. They include:
A support programme needs to have staff who are capable of leading and participating in such practices. However, most of the responsibility for this will fall on programme managers. In addition to recruiting and training the right staff in the right way (see Chapter 2, Start-up), it is worthwhile for programme managers to develop internal policies, practices and incentive schemes to push the adoption and use of participatory approaches and methods. Such policies, practices and schemes could include:
These are just a few of the specific actions that can be adopted by programme managers to improve the capacity of the organization for action-learning. The main thing is for programme managers to recognize that such a capacity is necessary for implementation and that it must be nurtured as a priority action in addition to the specific activities of the programme design.
Of course, the behaviour of supporters in specific cultural settings is important to establishing relationships with stakeholders involved in managing natural resources.
After behaviour, the next relationship issue is about how, and with whom, the programme should start working. What is the best entry-point for the programme?
A basic principle is to try to understand the perspective of stakeholders, and in particular to start by discussing the goals and problems of local users. If users have food concerns, these will prevail over other concerns. In such a situation, it is sensible to start with food and, together with users, analyze the links that go back to the management of natural resources (Florence Egal, pers. comm., 1997). In general, nutrition, health, income and other high-priority issues of users can all provide entry-points for assessing needs and identifying activities that are related to natural resource management.
If the sponsor of a support programme lies outside of government, several dilemmas may emerge as to how to start. Two of these are whether to:
In some countries, local non-profit private organizations are banned, and there is no option but to work with the government. In other countries, the alternative NGOs may have weaknesses similar to those of the government. The answer also depends on ideas about the role of the state (ideology), and the capacity of government bodies (Korten and Siy, 1989).
This decision is related only to making a start in a specific site. Once a programme is under way, the participatory process can lead to all sorts of partnerships after arrangements for sharing decisions are made.
Regardless of the decision about where to start, everyone must work through government to some degree. A support programme benefits from having a license to experiment, a highly placed ‘champion’, and a relationship with politicians, to alleviate fear (John Rouse, pers. comm., 1997).
Another good idea is to treat the first round of collaboration as a special case, with an emphasis on demonstrating the potential gains of collaboration. This may involve working on activities in which there is consensus and interest, rather than on those with the highest priority. Once there is some proof that collaboration pays off, other activities can be addressed (Jan Johnson, pers. comm., 1997).
The next set of management issues arises from the fundamental needs of users for undertaking collaborative management (see Figure 4.1 on page 62).These needs provide a major focus for managing relations with stakeholders.
Much of the discussion in the section on the enabling environment dealt with circumstances that increase or reduce confidence. However, many of the supporter’s actions also have an impact on the confidence of users to manage natural resources. The following sections mention aspects, such as building skills and knowledge, gaining information and resources, and having clear goals, that have obvious links to the confidence of collaborators.
One additional aspect that is worth emphasizing here is that there is little point in handing over the responsibility for management unless the corresponding authority necessary to discharge these responsibilities is also given. Authority to manage is a prerequisite for confidence. Usually it will be a major challenge for the supporters to help local users obtain it and decide how to wield it.
Negotiation lies at the heart of the participatory process because it is aimed at facilitating collaboration between multiple stakeholders. Arrangements for collaboration, and their subsequent implementation, are best secured when participants share clear goals and objectives.
There may be circumstances that constrain stakeholders to reveal their preferences or that make people agree to do something that they really do not like and have no intention of doing. Conflict can arise or remain hidden. In addition, people go about making decisions and negotiating positions in many ways, some of which are invisible to supporters. Negotiation is not something that just happens in meetings facilitated by a supporter. On the contrary, a meeting may be the last place where meaningful negotiations occur. A meeting may merely approve or overturn a previously agreed position. A useful idea is to give participants some influence over establishing the rules and process of negotiations (Ostrom, 1992). There may also need to be separate events and processes for various stakeholder groups if there are significant differences in their capacity for participation.
Individuals may be representing families or other groups, and they will need time to communicate information and positions to the people they represent. As a result, decisions from representatives should not be demanded immediately after a new issue or option is raised. Rather, opportunities and support need to be provided for representatives so they can do their job for the issue and social setting concerned.
When a support programme strengthens or establishes new forums for negotiations, its relations with all stakeholders will hinge on how the forums and process is perceived by participants. Supporters need to operate fairly and be aware of equity, content and conflict issues (see Box 4.2).
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BOX 4.2 |
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SOME ISSUES FOR ESTABLISHING FORUMS AND PROCESS FOR NEGOTIATING OVERALL GOALS AND OBJECTIVES OF COLLABORATION |
Equity 1
Content:
Conflict
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The role of a support programme in facilitating negotiations is a difficult one, but it can be made easier by:
There are a number of conditions that influence how the opportunities provided by the participatory process are used by the participants. A key set of conditions relates to the skills and knowledge of the local users who will assume or share the responsibility for resource management under certain conditions. The outcome of the process also depends greatly on the skills of supporters. Some of the difficulties encountered in adopting the participatory process arise because in many countries neither supporters nor users have had the education and experience to prepare them well for collaboration in complex situations. Supporters face this reality and can choose to do something about it. A checklist of desirable skills for each group is provided below. Some may be held already, whereas others may need to be obtained through other forms of collaboration.
Users would benefit from having the skills to:
It would be helpful if users:
In addition to skills and knowledge, collaboration works best if there is appropriate information available, people are aware of it, and it can be easily accessed and used. In many cases, this situation will not exist, and supporters will need to identify what information systems and flows need to be encouraged.
For example, there is information about policy, rights and sources of help, markets, and natural resource management. There is information from assessments that is useful for re-planning, and there is information to send to policy-makers about local situations and the results of collaboration.
Where there are gaps in knowledge some forms of collaborative research may be undertaken in order to understand better the condition of the resource and the impacts of management, to solve production problems, and develop criteria and indicators for monitoring.
The act of management requires that certain information is collected and stored and then used at the appropriate place in the management cycle. These practical aspects of information management will almost always arise in supporting collaborative management.
Finally, there are a number of issues related to mobilizing and distributing the costs and benefits of collaboration.
Stakeholders may become interested in:
A common problem is that the resources available for support are limited, whereas the demands from users can be almost unlimited. This means that users will need to have a realistic idea about the capacity of the supporter and a set of priorities for using resources.
In addition, equity problems are common in the allocation of costs and benefits, creating more room for conflict. The main question for the supporter to consider is how the distribution of costs and benefits is perceived by other stakeholders.
In this overview, we have dealt only with the participatory process for supporting collaborative management, rather than the entire subject of natural resource management. Often, supporters will become involved with the technical aspects of natural resource management, increasing the scope and complexity of work beyond that described here. We have described the participatory process, listed numerous management issues associated with it, explained how important and varied are the circumstances of the environment and the stakeholders involved, and provided examples of how support programmes can fail to manage participation effectively.
It is clear from all of this that the promotion and support of collaborative management is a complex and risky business. Development programmes and their specialist practitioners may have increasing willingness to promote people’s participation in natural resource management, but they probably face a difficult period of transition to gain the skills, experience and confidence to understand the circumstances in various situations and implement the participatory process effectively. The challenge of reorientation represents the investment required to secure the substantial benefits for development and conservation promised by collaborative management systems.
1
Equity can be defined as that which is fair and just. Equity is not the same as equality, because equity represents value judgements about what is fair, whereas equality represents being exactly the same in quantity, degree or value.