Annex 2
Contribution by Melissa Leach
UNCDF's Participatory Eco-Development Approach:
A desk review
Melissa Leach
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The participatory eco-development approach of UNCDF is intended to address the dual goals of improving ecological conditions and the sustainability of natural resource management, and improving local socio-economic conditions. It aims to do so by catalysing participatory processes of resource management within local communities and building partnerships with governmental and non-governmental structures in a wider 'petite region', thereby according with UNCDF's broader policy remit to support processes of local governance.
Conceptually, with eco-development UNCDF has the potential to take a lead in establishing a generation of approaches to community-based sustainable development which emphasises negotiation and critical dialogue between diverse actors and institutions located at local and regional levels. These are critical issues which have been neglected to date by many other donor approaches. However eco-development is currently hamstrung by a number of conceptual shortcomings, in particular:
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An overly homogeneous and static notion of 'the community', insufficiently attentive to socially-differentiated perspectives and priorities, power relations and conflict;
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An overly static conception of 'environment', insufficiently attentive to the dynamics of local ecology and tending to reproduce orthodox views of environmental problems;
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A conception of people-environment linkages in terms of 'equilibrium', its rupture and restoration, instead of in terms of constant, multiple processes of change shaped by diverse social actors in particular institutional contexts;
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The central concept of 'eco-swap' which is highly problematic with respect to internal programme coherence, conceptual basis and operationally.
At the local level, eco-development could be improved by rejecting eco-swap entirely and developing a more dynamic and disaggregated view of people-environment relations, with a view to identifying those institutional arrangements which support positive processes of ecological/livelihood change from the perspective of particular social groups.
While the simultaneous emphasis on the wider 'petite region' level is important, the latter is currently ambiguously defined and tends to be marginalised in programme operations. A clarified definition as the administrative level immediately above the village, and greater efforts to disaggregate the local state into diverse actors and institutions, could assist eco-development in the crucial process of supporting specific institutional partnerships, and encouraging critical dialogue, negotiation and conflict resolution among different stakeholders within communities and between intra-community and local government level.
Programme design and implementation currently suffers from a weakly-developed approach to participation; a neglect of the petite region level; an unwieldy data collection phase, and an overly fixed and static approach to natural resource management planning. Phases could usefully be streamlined in such a way as to help overcome the approach's conceptual shortcomings, including by:
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Integrating research at the community and petite region levels;
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Integrating research with the early stages of practical activity;
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Using analytical tools which can capture differentiation and diversity with respect to ecology, livelihoods and institutions,
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Focusing on support to negotiation (including conflict-resolution) processes and on encouraging reflection among local government services, rather than on direct practical interventions
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Revising current monitoring and evaluation procedures within a more participatory mode.
Introduction
Since 1994 the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) has developed an approach termed 'participatory eco-development'. This is a recent emphasis in the organisation's work, joining its longer established programmatic focus on infrastructure development, local development funds and microfinance. Since the mid-1990s, UNCDF has adopted a general orientation towards support to local governance processes, community development and the reinforcement of local institutions, all within a broad participatory framework (FENU 1995). This follows the recognition that the nature of interactions between governmental organisations and local institutions are key factors in development and poverty reduction. The eco-development approach is intended to correspond with and contribute to these broader goals.
To assess whether UNCDF has indeed been moving effectively in these new policy directions where eco-development is concerned, an internal review was commissioned and the present report forms a component of this review. Following the terms of reference it aims to assess the concept and design of UNCDF's eco-development approach by means of a desk-based review of documents. It is intended to complement both the field-based reviews being carried out concurrently in a number of the Sahelian project zones, and a desk study carried out by a consultant with more immediate familiarity with the approach, procedures and their evolution. The present report, in contrast, presents the perspective of an 'outsider' familiar with the underlying conceptual issues and regional contexts that participatory eco-development attempts to address, but coming to the particular approach afresh.
In this context, the documents referred to for this report are of three main types. First, prime attention is paid to those UNCDF documents which describe the concept and procedures of participatory eco-development in theory. Second, some - though less - attention is paid to UNCDF reports of internal discussions and project evaluations which give some indication of the approach as applied in practice. Third, the report refers to selected key documents from the wider literature on community-based sustainable development, environmental and social issues which provides a critical and comparative perspective from which to view participatory eco-development.
The general argument presented here is that in emphasising the links between 'community' institutions and local governance processes, the approach has the opportunity to be at the cutting-edge, leading by example in timely and necessary directions for community-based sustainable development programmes more broadly. But at the same time, the conceptual approach is currently weakened by misleading underlying assumptions concerning the nature of 'communities', 'environment' and the links between them, including the problematic notion of an 'eco-swap'. A stronger appreciation of ecological and social difference and dynamics, and of institutional diversity and change, could help UNCDF respond to this challenge, as could greater integration of the eco-development approach with UNCDF's broader programmes on local governance. Both conceptual strengths and weaknesses are reflected in the design of, and tools intended for, eco-development programmes, their implementation and monitoring and evaluation. Conceptual re-orientations at the same time suggest some potentially fruitful re-orientations to programme methodology.
This report is organised in two sections. Section 1 critically analyses the concept and underlying assumptions of the eco-development approach and suggests some possible re-orientations. Section 2 examines current project design issues and analytical tools in this light, including those used for monitoring and evaluation, and sets out some options which UNCDF might wish to consider for streamlining tools, design and overall programme strategy, in order to respond to the criticisms raised in section 1.
Section I
Participatory Eco-Development: Conceptual Issues
UNCDF's participatory eco-development approach represents part of a growing international consensus, following Agenda 21 of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio, that effective sustainable development should be based on local-level solutions. In this context it aims to address the development constraints faced by people in ecologically fragile areas, where environmental degradation is seen to be linked to over-population and impoverishment. In brief, by catalysing a participatory process, eco-development projects aim simultaneously to restore ecological balance by reversing damage to natural resources, and to improve food security and the coverage of basic needs (Michel and Lazarev 1997, FENU 1995). In these respects, the eco-development approach shares many of the underlying assumptions that have characterised other approaches to community-based sustainable development, and these are examined in the first part of this section. A central and distinctive feature of the approach is the 'eco-swap', by which investments catering to the immediate needs of the community are provided as incentives to secure participation in the conservation and regeneration of natural resources over the long term.
On one hand, eco-development aims to intervene at the level of the village community and its land (terroir). But it simultaneously addresses the 'petite region' - generally defined as the smallest territorial unit with a government administrative apparatus (FENU 1994b). This places emphasis on the wider ecological and economic setting of village resource management systems, and on the development of arenas for 'concertation' and on community-administration partnerships as a mode of operation. This emphasis on the wider setting and the potentials it offers for addressing institutional dynamics are important and innovative aspect of the eco-development approach, discussed in the second part of this section.
1. Community-environment linkages
UNCDF's eco-development policy documents show the approach to share a number of assumptions with many other approaches to community-based natural resource management, whether undertaken by donors, governments or NGOs. A distinct local 'community' is assumed to exist, manifested in the village and its 'terroir'. The welfare of the community as a whole is seen as inextricably linked with the status of the local natural resource base. Equilibrium, or harmony, in local ecology and between people and environment is seen as important for the local community to be able to sustain livelihoods. But a number of factors threaten to rupture this equilibrium, or may already have done so, including population growth and commercial change (Michel and Lazarev 1997). The role of community-based natural resource management programmes is to support local attempts to bring livelihoods and ecology back into balance; as the operational guide states, for instance, 'la recherche d'un equilibre entre les ressources disponibles et la population' (FENU 1997a:74).
Yet as the growing critical literature on community-based sustainable development points out, assumptions concerning the existence of homogeneous, consensual 'communities'; the existence of stable, universally-valued 'environments', and of a potentially harmonious relationship between these can be misleading, and underlie disappointing results in practice. There is a growing recognition among researchers and practitioners that far greater attention needs to be paid to ecological and social difference, and as discussed below, these insights are important for UNCDF's work.
2. 'Communities': consensus or conflict?
Descriptions of UNCDF's eco-development approach generally use the term 'community' uncritically, generally to describe the people who inhabit a village terroir. The impression is of a population relatively homogeneous and united in its concerns and able to act collectively both in formulating long-term environmental development plans and in prioritising short-term economic and social needs. Michel and Lazarev (1997), for instance, describe 'the community' as the principle unit which makes decisions concerning local ecology and the use of natural capital. This tendency to treat 'the community' as a distinct unit is also reinforced by the notion that institutional partnerships should be between this 'unit' and higher administrative levels.
However, the local populations with which UNCDF works are clearly highly differentiated: by gender, age, occupation (pastoralist and agriculture-focussed groups, for instance), wealth, lineage origins and claims within settlement history, and so on. Social difference divides and cross-cut so-called 'community' boundaries, and rather than shared beliefs and interests, diverse and often conflicting values and resource priorities pervade social life and may be struggled and 'bargained' over (Leach, Mearns and Scoones 1997). Now commonplace in social science literature, and long integral to the critique of 'community development' approaches in development studies more generally, serious attention to social difference and its implications has been remarkably absent from the recent wave of 'community' concern in environmental policy debates. Critical literature is now showing how apparent community consensus can mask the marginalisation of certain concerns: in Joint Forest Management schemes in India, for example, village plans have turned wasteland into pole production sites, meeting men's interests but excluding women from vital fuel and food-gathering grounds (Sarin 1995).
This is not to suggest that UNCDF's eco-development approach is blind to intra-community difference. On the contrary, while some documents treat the community as if it were homogeneous, others - notably the operational guide (FENU 1997a) - places significant emphasis on the need to include the diversity of village members within diagnostic, planning and implementation activities - mainly through ensuring representation on village-level committees and in meetings. Yet the conceptualisation of social difference and its implications in these approaches remains weak in several respects:
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It emphasises distinct social groups (e.g. 'women', pastoralists'), underplaying the relational character of social and economic life
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It underplays power as a pervasive feature of social relations, which can operate to ensure that certain perspectives continually dominate while others are excluded. 'Community' institutions frequently reproduce prevailing power relations, as, for example, in Niger where Jenny et al (1997) found that village planning activities and 'comites de gestion' were consistently dominated by members of the chief's family and certain notables.
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It assumes that community consensus is acheivable, even if some negotiation and incentives to accommodate the interests of diverse groups is necessary along the way. Yet this overlooks the possibility that different people's short-term social or economic goals, or long-term visions of the ecological future, may be incommensurable or conflicting.
These points suggest the need to refine the conceptual approach towards:
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Disaggregating the 'community' into a diverse set of social actors, linked through sets of social relations;
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Incorporating explicit attention to socially-differentiated economic and ecological priorities (implying the need for methods that can elicit these, and for support to a wider diversity of institutional arrangements - see section II).
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assume conflict to be as likely as consensus (implying the need for institutional mechanisms to address this - see section II).
3. Environment: equilibrium attainable?
The assumptions about environment contained within policy documents for the eco-development approach are also problematic in a number of important respects.
3.1 There is a tendency to subscribe uncritically to generally-held views of environmental problems, their causes and consequences. Both general and project-specific documents are replete with references to, for instance, desertification, deforestation and environmental degradation caused by over-population. The eco-development approach is, indeed, partly (although not wholly) justified by the fact that it intervenes in 'ecologically fragile' regions where these processes are likely (Michel and Lazarev 1997). The project in Mauritania has as one of its objectives 'the fight against desertification' (FENU 1997b).
Yet over and over again, detailed, place-specific research employing longitudinal methods and paying serious attention to local people's own knowledge and perspectives is showing such global orthodoxies about environmental problems to fail to match local realities. In some cases orthodox views have been overturned or falsified; in others, they have been shown to obscure a range of other perspectives on, and ways of conceptualising, 'the problem'. Desertification, for instance, seems to be more a political concept than a process underlain by scientific evidence (e.g. Swift 1996), while there is now much case study evidence of population growth being associated with environmental improvement (e.g. Tiffen et al 1993; Carswell et al 1995; Fairhead and Leach 1996). As the two boxes below exemplify, critical research has combined to mount alternative 'framings' of environmental problems and solutions of great relevance to the Sahelian regions in which UNCDF's eco-development work is concentrated.
Work on forests in West Africa (e.g. Fairhead and Leach 1996, forthcoming) has challenged the analyses of linear forest loss and savannisation which have long framed forestry and conservation policies. Historical research has shown dominant deforestation estimates to be vastly exaggerated. Many of the vegetation forms which ecologists and policy-makers have been taking to indicate
forest loss, such as forest patches in savanna, are better interpreted as indicating landscape
enrichment by people. Furthermore, many assumed 'pristine' forest areas prove, in fact, to be 'new forests' on land once densely settled and farmed, having grown following depoulation. Such a reframing of forest dynamics questions exclusionary approaches to forest protection. It demands far greater appreciation of local farming and land use knowledge and practices which enhance forest cover, and of the historical legacies on which present land use practices and tenurial claims are built.
Work on rangelands in dryland Africa (e.g. Scoones 1995, Behnke et al 1993) has demonstrated how rangeland systems are subject to high degrees of uncertainty, with high levels of spatial and emporal variability, and ecological dynamics characterised by sudden transitions, rather than slow and predictable change. Research has shown how such systems are resilient and not necessarily so prone to degradation and desertification as once thought. Such findings suggest fundamentally
new directions for environment and development policy and planning in dryland and pastoral areas.
An approach which takes uncertainty, spatial variability and complex ecological dynamics seriously emphasises flexible repsonses, mobility and the management of key resources - a very different approach to the conventional style of range and livestock development.
Is the eco-development approach therefore conceived to address orthodox environmental problems which may, in reality, not exist? It could be argued that this is an irrelevant critique, on several grounds: first, since a key feature of the approach is its intensive place-by-place diagnosis: evidence running counter to a programme's starting assumptions could be expected to come to light during the diagnostic phase. Second, as a participatory approach, the environmental component of eco-development claims to follow local populations' 'own vision' of their ecological future; programmes are, it could be claimed, led by local realities.
However such arguments overlook both the imbalanced power relations between project researchers and local people, and the extent to which 'received wisdoms' about environmental problems are entrenched within government institutions, donor-government relations, formal education, and national-international media. In these circumstances, it is not straightforward for local people to communicate their ecological experiences and for projects to re-orientate accordingly.
These conceptual problems are by no means unique to UNCDF; indeed it is partly because so many donor agencies have reproduced uncritical views in their work that they have acquired the status of orthodoxies. However, there is an opportunity for UNCDF now to take a lead in building into its conceptual approach explicit attention to identifying alternative perspectives on environmental change in the regions in which it operates, and to investigating counter-hypotheses generated from local knowledge.
3.2 A related point - which also relates to the critique of 'community' above - concerns the possibility of differentiated, and conflicting, notions of ecological value and of environmental degradation or improvement. If different social groups have different livelihood priorities, they will be expected to value different resources. What is improvement for some may be degradation for others: an obvious example being the different values which farmers and pastoralists place on woody lands (good fallows, poor grazing) versus fire-maintained savannas. Possible conflicts around ecological priority need to be explicitly recognised within support to participatory planning processes, rather than assume that the community can reach consensus about the nature and implications of 'the disequilibrium or ruptures that one is trying to reduce' (Michel and Lazarev 1997: 41). In short, eco- development needs continually to keep in mind the question 'sustainability of what for whom?'
3.3 More broadly, the notion of ecological equilibrium is intrinsic to the concept of eco-development. This is evident in statements that ecological equilibrium needs to be preserved; or that it has been ruptured and needs to be restored. For example, 'restoring the ecological equilibrium of the zone' is a key objective in Mauritania (FENU 1997b). There is an assumption that local populations' visions of their future will be framed in equilibrial terms (Michel and Lazarev 1997: 41).
But recent work in the natural sciences has challenged many of the static, linear and equilibrium perspectives on ecological systems which underlie so much community-based sustainable development, altering the assumptions that can be made about patterns and determinants of environmental change. Whether we are talking of the theories of vegetation succession, ecosystem functioning or species-area relationships, each have equilibrium assumptions at the core of their models and, not surprisingly, their findings and applied management recommendations. Thus, for example, succession theory has emphasised linear vegetation change and the idea of a stable and natural climax. Yet in what has been termed the 'new ecology' three themes stand out (Leach, Mearns and Scoones 1997):
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an understanding of variability in space and time, including an interest in the relationships between disturbance regimes and spatial patterning from patches to landscapes.
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an exploration of the implications of scaling on dynamic processes, leading to work on hierarchies and scale relationships in ecosystems analysis .
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a recognition of the importance of history on current dynamics, leading to work on environmental change at a variety of time-scales.
From this perspective, environments come to be seen as landscapes under constant change, emerging as the outcome of dynamic and variable ecological processes and disturbance events, in interaction with human use. Local management practices frequently prove to be highly attuned to ever-changing ecological realities, and to be oriented towards directing processes to advantage, rather than at acheiving states.
This has several practical implications for participatory eco-development:
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Interventions aimed at 'restoring equilibrium' are likely to be aimed at an illusory target. Local people may find it impossible to define desired future environmental equilibria, and if they do specify such visions, questions must be raised about whose agendas they are responding to
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Attempts to define and respond to environmental 'states' may end up restricting the very practices which have been effectively dealing effectively with processes and uncertainty (e.g. the mobile strategies of pastoralists, or particular cropping strategies geared to 'hitching on' to dynamic ecological processes to upgrade vegetation forms)
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Management plans and external support should therefore be geared to supporting positive processes of ecological change rather than to acheiving pre-defined ecological states.
3.4 With people viewed as differentiated social actors, and with the environment viewed as disaggregated and dynamic, a very different set of questions about people-envirornment relations arises from those which normally frame community-based sustainable development policies. These include:
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which social actors see what components of variable and dynamic ecologies as resources at different times?
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how do different people gain access to and control over such resources, so as to use them in sustaining their livelihoods.
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how do different people transform different components of the environment through their resource management or use?
In section II, suggestions are made as to how project design and implementation could be streamlined to take account of such questions.
4. Eco-swap
The conceptual issues raised above are also of relevance when considering a central concept of the eco-development approach, the 'eco-swap' (eco-troc). Also referred to as 'incitations croisees' (cross-incentives) in certain UNCDF documents, the notion refers to project support to the immediate needs of local populations in return for their commitment to engage in activities to restore or conserve the environment - what Michel and Lazarev (1997) term 'un contrat social pour un developpement concerte a long terme'.
In contrast with the central concepts and assumptions discussed above which are shared by many approaches to community-based sustainable development, the eco-swap - at least stated in such an explicit form - appears unique to UNCDF. It is, however, extremely problematic from at least three points of view: internal programme coherence, conceptually and operationally.
4.1 A key claimed objective of eco-development is to stimulate participatory planning processes for natural resource management, conservation and environmental protection. Yet the concept of an eco-swap runs directly counter to this spirit. Participatory planning presumes knowledge and responsibility on the part of concerned populations. The notion that people need to be 'bribed' to undertake long-term environmental protection with short-term cross-incentives denies them this responsibility.
In this light, ecoswap represents a major intellectual incoherence within the eco-development approach. Alternatively, it suggests that what is being promoted under the label of participatory environmental planning is, in fact, the promotion of environmental agendas pre-defined by outsiders; villagers need socio-economic incentives to encourage their 'participation', the latter amounting to the contribution of labour to tend trees etc. This possibility would unfortunately accord rather well with the criticism raised above: that eco-development is working with rather orthodox, fixed and outside-defined environmental agendas.
Eco-swap can, in this context, militate againts attempts to uncover alternative perspectives on environmental change. In a number of cases in West Africa, gestion de terroir villageois (GT) projects have presumed that they knew the nature of the environmental problem; the use of clinics, water supplies and other development components to get villagers interested in the project deflected attention from examining why they were not interested in participating in environmental protection for its own sake. At least in Guinea, this was partly because villagers had a quite different view of environmental change within their area, considering forest cover to be increasing rather than declining.
4.2 The eco-swap concept also assumes that there is a single definition of long-term environmental aims: a single long-term conservation goal which the project is in a superior position to know. However as suggested above there may be many equally valid definitions of what constitutes ecological value, and what resources it is valuable to conserve.
4.3 Fundamentally, the concept of eco-swap furthermore assumes that socio-economic goals and poverty reduction are necessarily in contradiction with long-term conservation; that economy and environment represent trade-offs between the short and the long-term. This echoes the assumption in much literature on poverty-enviornment linkages that resource-poor people have short time horizons and cannot afford to invest in the future (e.g. Durning 1989). These assumptions are, however, contradicted by evidence of several kinds:
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that local people frequently do make long-term investments - in tree planting or soil conservation, for instance - when they deem it in their interests to do so and when tenure arrangements are such that they can be sure of controlling the benefits;
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that certain 'short term' land use practices geared to meeting immediate food needs, for example, may have positive enduring consequences for local ecology. Much depends on the precise nature of local ecological conditions and practices;
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many examples of successful local resource conservation have been based on sequential build-up of practices that were in themselves orientated towards immediate socio-economic goals
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that there can be 'win-win' opportunities where (certain) socio-economic goals and (certain) desired ecological outcomes are complementary; again, such synergies usually rest on secure tenurial control by land users.
Learning from such evidence, many donor and government agencies now pursue approaches based on a degree of benefit-sharing as the incentive for local conservation activities. Whether in Joint Forest Management, community wildlife conservation or watershed development, a key principle is that it is stakes in natural resources themselves which give people the incentive to conserve them. The notion of an ecoswap not only fails to acknowledge this basic point but seems actively to deny it. The very idea of an exchange could encourage local people to dissociate themselves from the ecological aspects of eco-development, and to feel that trees planted, water sources protected etc. are 'the project's' - even if villagers are contractually obliged to tend them - rather than subject to local ownership and responsibility.
4.4 This touches on a general area of significant ambiguity in the eco-development approach: the tenurial status of the 'natural capital' created and conserved under project activities. While this would appear to be a fundamental issue, UNCDF documents are remarkably silent on it. Description of contracts (e.g. in FENU 1997a) focuses on obligations relating to labour and capital. Little attention is given to who has access to and control over the fruits of environmental protection (planted trees, conserved soils etc.). It may be assumed that natural capital created through project activities accrues to the communities concerned, to members according to prevailing land divisions and tenurial arrangements. But this needs to be made more explicit in contracts. While the approach gives great weight to tenure issues in general as a route to promoting 'local valorisation of natural resources' (FENU 1997a), the emphasis is on understanding local use rights and establishing 'tenurial compromises' in cases of conflict and ambiguity between the rights of different social groups. This is, in itself, a valuable approach. But via eco-swap, it is related to project environmental activities in a somewhat back-to-front manner: support in establishing tenurial compromises is seen as an immediate cross-incentive to be exchanged against (labour) participation in environmental protection. UNCDF could do well to give much greater consideration to supporting direct links between tenure and incentives for natural resource conservation.
4.5 Exchanges are also problematic when the parties to it are as unequal in power and resources as they are in the case of communities and powerful project administrations. In this context, while community representatives might publicly accede to their side of a contract, it cannot be assumed that they understand it on the same terms as project administrations, nor that they do so without suspicion or worry. In a gestion de terroir project in Guinea which used an implicit eco-swap approach, villagers privately expressed extreme anxiety that a powerful foreign project was supporting such a wealth of village development; 'all this just for giving up a little land to a few trees?' Many villagers suspected that the project wished to appease them in order to take over, at some point, the entire village territory. While this example may seem extreme, there is a real risk that project activities build up worry if community members perceive the nature of a swap to be unequal.
4.6 At worst, the concept of eco-swap allows 'participatory eco-development' to become a means to promote pre-defined global environmental agendas over and above diverse local concerns. Alternatively, and perhaps more likely, is that short-term economic and social activities come to predominate, and the 'eco' aspect of eco-development ceases to be worthy of the name. In any case, through eco-swap environment and socio-economic development are in fact de-linked, not linked as the approach claims.
4.7 A more fruitful conceptual approach would focus on supporting processes by which positive gains for local livelihoods, and positive transformations in ecological conditions, proceed together. These processes towards sustainable livelihoods would need to be identified on a disaggregated basis, according to specific social groups. And attention would need to be given to the tenurial conditions which enable specific social groups to direct change processes in such positive directions.
5. Level of intervention
This discussion of conceptual issues has so far focussed on the 'community' level as if this were the sole level of intervention for participatory eco-development. However this is not the case. In common with a number of other approaches to community-based sustainable development, notably the 'second generation' of GT projects in West Africa, UNCDF's eco-development approach recognises the limits of such a focus and therefore claims to have expanded its horizons to address simultaneously the level of the 'petite region'.
5.1 There is considerable ambiguity as to the precise definition of the latter, with different documents adopting different definitions: for example as 'une unite socio-politique dotee d'un gouvernement local et d'une administration, et situee a l'echelle territoriale immediatement superieure a celle de la commune' (FENU 1997a: 15), but in other instances as the level of the commune itself. This ambiguity was raised as a problem during discussions at the FENU seminar in Senegal (FENU 1997b). In the context of the decentralisation processes operating in most of the countries where UNCDF works, and given the specific, and important, objectives of this wider focus (see below), it would seem sensible to adopt a simpler basic definition of the petite region as the administrative level situated immediately above the level of the village. However, at the same time particular issues may arise which justify tracing through linkages between the village and higher levels of economy and administration, as indicated below.
5.2 A number of emphases in the eco-development approach flow from the dual emphasis on community and petite region. These are all important, and serve to distinguish the approach very positively from development approaches, all too common, which attempt to treat 'communities' and 'environments' as if they could be isolated from their wider contexts. In particular, the approach:
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allows recognition of spatial mobility as a key feature of local livelihoods, especially in the Sahel. Mobile herding strategies, migration, security through well-spread kin networks and diversification into differently-located income generating activities are critical, yet would gain inadequate recognition in diagnosis and planning if this were confined to the village alone.
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potentially acknowldges the significance of urban-rural linkages in livelihood strategies (e.g. seasonal or longer-term rural-urban migration) and in shaping resource use and management (e.g. via urban-based demand for woodfuel or timber, marketing pportunities). As Michel and Lazarev (1997) importantly point out, it may be in dynamising economic networks between urban and rural areas that key strategies for supporting local livelihoods and responding to demographic pressure may lie. However there may be cases in which the petite region does not encompass an area's focal market town; in such circumstances the latter might need to be introduced as a supplementary layer of analysis and programming.
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Emphasises the establishment of an 'espace de concertation', (loosely translated as an arena for discussion) with local government structures. Implicating local government could both assist the sustainability of processes catalysed by eco-development, by gaining administrative support for local participation and initiatives, and enable conflicts which may arise between village concerns and those of the local administration to be addressed directly. However issues may also arise over which there needs to be a lobbying or communication role to provincial or national government (e.g. land tenure law, timber prices...) and promotion of this type of negotiation should not be ruled out.
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Emphasises the key concept of partnerships between local administrative structures, the 'community' and networks within civil society - including associational life - which may operate above and beyond the village.
5.3 This latter emphasis is extremely important, representing a pioneering aspect of UNCDF's approach within the wider field of community-based sustainable development. However, just as the concept of 'community' is insufficiently disaggregated at present, so too is the local state. Research and practice in the wider field of governance emphasises how local government, far from being a homogeneous entity, is comprised of sets of actors and networks with possibly very different interests and incentives for supporting - or opposing - certain types of activity. Actors in the local state are already linked via partnerships and patronage networks with certain groups in the community. For example, agricultural, forestry and livestock services may have very different conceptions of what constitutes positive landscape change, or the value of fire; in Guinea, there are cases where herders have been able to create and maintain local political contacts such as to swing policy implementation in their favour. As a second example, work on the apparently revolutionary shift from repressive to 'joint' management within the Indian forest service has shown that the particular pressures on extension staff to conserve forest, yet avoid conflict with villagers was a key stimulus in invoking higher level support for co-management approaches. It is into such an existing, dynamic field of interaction that eco-development steps, and it is important not to lose sight of this.
Disaggregating both 'community' and 'local state' into diverse sets of actors and institutions, and making explicit their different ecological and development concerns, could conceptually re-orientate the eco-development approach to (a) build more specific institutional partnerships towards supporting particular trajectories of environmental change, and (b) take the lead in pioneering an approach to participatory natural resource management which genuinely builds in room for critical dialogue, negotiation and conflict resolution among different stakeholders within communities and between intra-community and local government level.
5.4 At the same time, any attempt to support the development of partnerships between local populations and the state where natural resources management is concerned must take account of the problematic ex-colonial legacy which the environmental services carry in many West African countries. Once implementing policies of repression, sometimes in military style and supported by scientific theories which saw local populations as destroyers of 'natural' ecology, state forestry services are now be undergoing reform towards more people-focused approaches. Yet the historical memory of past interactions remains strong, and programmes should not underestimate the difficulties of overcoming these and establishing partnerships with local people which are based on confidence rather than unequal power and fear.
5.5 The conceptualisation of levels of intervention is one thing; implementation is another. It is clear from project evaluation documents (e.g Jenny et al 1997) and from discussions at the seminar held in Senegal in early 1997 (FENU 1997b) that project activities still focus primarily - in some cases almost exclusively - on the village terroir level. A slight exception seems to be in Guinea's Fouta Djallon, where UNCDF is engaged in interesting capacity-building initiatives with local government at the CRD level (Diakite et al 1996). While this 'conventional' focus to date represents a failing when compared with the aims of participatory eco-development, it also means there is now scope for UNCDF to move forward into this important area of work in a way which (a) embraces the more disaggregated conceptualisation raised above, and (b) builds stronger links with other programme areas within UNCDF, which have focussed more directly - and thus gained valuable experience - on local government, finance and capacity-building.
SECTION II
Programme design and methodologies
This section considers practical approaches, design issues and tools which have been used within the UNCDF eco-development approach to date. It draws principally on the operational guide (FENU 1997a) which describes programme phasing and tools in great (perhaps excessive) detail, and on reports relating to particular country projects. It suggests ways in which programme design and tools could be streamlined in a way which could also help respond to some of the conceptual critiques raised in section 1.
1. General design issues
1.1 FENU (1997a) gives a clear idea of the phases envisaged in the application of the eco-development approach:
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Establishment phase (incorporating setting up of project personel and logistics, and research at the petite region level)
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Knowledge-creation phase (incorporating the application of tools to gather information at the community level)
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Planning phase (incorporating participatory diagnosis of development opprtunities and constraints, choice of strategies around the eco-swap concept, and creation of long-term and annual village territory development plans - PDT and PADT)
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Implementation and monitoring phase (incorporating the signing and execution of conventions, and monitoring of their progress)
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Impact evaluation phase
A number of general comments can be made about the relative length, sequencing and style of these phases:
1.2 Programme design is heavily weighted towards extensive information-gathering and diagnosis at both regional and community levels, with these phases very distinctly separated from the implementation and monitoring of actions. While knowledge of social and ecological relations is crucial in the context of projects of this type, and to avoid eco-development pursuing 'false environmental problems' as discussed in section I, it is also the case that many projects - for instance in GT - have floundered through an excess of data collection before participants could see the practical relevance of the project. There are therefore strong grounds for significantly shortening and streamlining the data collection phase (in ways discussed below), and for integrating it with the start of practical activities; in particular with the opening up of negotiating arenas with local government.
1.3 Participation, while a titular concept in UNCDF's eco-development approach, is very weakly developed throughout all phases of programme design and methodologies. This manifests itself in several ways:
·
quality of participation: programme design and tools frequently equate 'participation' with representation in meetings (e.g. numbers of community representatives in the seminaire de demarrage; presence of women on a comite de gestion) or with the contribution of labour to project activities. Yet these physical forms of presence do not (necessarily, or usually) translate into influence within decision-making and power to shape agendas, which the now very extensive literature on participation would treat as a minimum definition of the term.
·
the breadth of participation is highly limited: on one hand, project procedures are inadequate to ensure that diverse members of local communities (e.g. women, pastoralists, younger people) are able to voice their perspectives and press their concerns, and on the other, little if any attention is given to including actors within local government structures within participatory processes. This lacuna is a serious shortcoming of the programme design and methods, which risks compromising the key aim of building institutional partnerships between community and local government institutions.
·
the timing of participation by local communities is very late; many of a programme's key lines, and the understanding of ecological and social dynamics underlying them, seem already to have been set by the time of the 'seminaire de demarrage' (FENU 1997: 29).
2. Knowledge-creation: approach and tools
As stated above, the eco-development approach places great emphasis on the development of a deep and thorough knowledge base before practical project activities commence. This begins at the petite region level, where during the establishment phase the project team together with an array of specialised consultants carry out a review of documents relating to the region, and a set of studies on: communication resources available; agro-pastoral systems; the micro-region, and the repertoire of available partners. This information is partly intended to aid in the selection of village sites for the project (FENU 1997). A phase of 1-2 months is then devoted to developing knowledge of the chosen local communities and their environment, through a range of tools applied, it is claimed, in a participatory mode with local populations catalysed by the project animators. These basic data are seen both as information to support planning activities, and as a baseline for Monitoring and Evaluation (M and E) activities. The latter is addressed below, where the implications of the suggestions made are that such a bulk of data is not necessary - and the following discussion should be read in this light.
A number of general points need to be made concerning the range of tools and actors implicated in their use.
2.1 The number of tools recommended is extremely large, suggesting a number of obvious overlaps between the kinds of information that different tools will elicit. The division between those to be applied at the petite region level and those at the community level also seems rather abitrary. There is scope for simplifying and streamlining between these levels. The dynamics of agro-pastoral systems, for instance, could be examined in broader regional terms with inquiries within the village focused much more specifically on the particular variant of crop-livestock relations found there.
2.2 The suggested division between actors responsible for different types of information-gathering is currently far from optimal in terms of the aims of eco-development, and could usefully be rethought. Handing the studies at the petite region level to external consultants risks expending many financial resources for reports that may bear little relation to, and are hard to integrate with, studies subsequently conducted at the community level. It also misses a crucial opportunity to involve actors within local government and technical services within the research: this could serve the dual purpose of promoting their earlier participation in eco-development programmes, and, importantly, expanding their knowledge horizons, encouraging reflection on the historical and social context in which they are working, questioning of orthodox interpretations of environmental change. Equally, these actors could very fruitfully become involved in participatory research within local communities. Experience in other programmes has shown that if technical government staff, especially, can be enabled to listen to local resource users and their knowledge, they frequently find the experience fascinating, enlightening, and conducive to establishing more productive partnerships in practical activities. This is especially important in view of the problematic ex-colonial legacy which technical environmental services have to overcome in communicating with local populations.
2.3 Despite these critiques, the range of tools do demonstrate some important advantages:
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A strong emphasis on history; on comprehending the dynamics of social and environmental change. Historical, longitudinal, time series studies are invaluable in getting beyond generally-held orthodoxies to understand the realities of local landscape change;
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A strong emphasis on tenure issues, especially at the village level, via the useful concept of socio-tenurial mapping/inquiry. Once adjusted and streamlined in certain ways (discussed below), this can be an important route to identifying institutional arrangements around resource use as a basis for partnership-building.2.4 Critical comments and suggestions regarding particular methodological tools and sequences follow.
2.4.1 Collection and synthesis of existing documentation: More could be made of this important tool: a thorough search for and examination of prior studies could help avoid wasting resources in repeating studies already done, and depending on the locality, might obviate the need for some of the suggested 'complementary studies' - a point admittedly made in FENU 1997: 17. More emphasis and systematic attention should be given to building up a time-series of environmental change, by combining systematic comparison of air photographs and satellite images as far back as is available (air photographs dating from the late colonila period are available for most of the countries where UNCDF operates from the Institut Geographique Nationale in France) with a consultation of administrative archives; a more rewarding and much less time-consuming task than development projects tend to assume.
2.4.2 Lecture socio-fonciere: This tool takes the form of a discussion of a range of aspects of local social, economic and ecological dynamics, in the forum of a large village meeting (FENU 1997: 36). But despite the recommendation that all social groups within the community be represented, it seems unlikely that this tool will elicit diverse viewpoints effectively. First, as emphasised above, representation does not equal participation; village fora tend to reproduce the hierarchies of wider society and established practices allow some (e.g. senior elders) to speak while excluding others (e.g. young women), or relegating their contributions to token comments only. Second, 'community' meetings can frequently produce an image of consensus which glosses over real conflicts of interest within the community which might be expressed in more private fora. This distinction between 'frontstage' and 'backstage' discourse (Murphy 1991) is now being recognised as highly significant in the West African context. Breusers et al (forthcoming), for example, describe how the frontstage 'united front' which Mossi farmers in Burkina Faso present publicly against Fulbe herders obscures conflicts of interest among farmers over who has cattle-keeping alliances with Fulbe and who does not, linked to rivalries over the cattle as wealth, which emerge 'backstage'. Tools that are attentive to backstage as well as frontstage discourse are essential in gaining an accurate impression of local dynamics.
The lecture socio-fonciere is also seen as the key tool for eliciting local ecological concepts and knowledge. However a village meeting seems a less appropriate forum for this than would be discussions 'in the field' and on transect walks in the terroir; the details of local concepts, especially those with complex, non-western metaphorical referents, are more easily explained in situ in the presence of practical examples
2.4.3 The problematic nature of 'research' through large community meetings also applies with respect to two other tools: the analysis of ecological dynamics and analysis of systems of production. Both of these tools, as currentl;y suggested, seem likely to generate standardised, consensual responses. Especially with regard to ecological change, they can also be expected to elicit the type of response that villagers expect outsiders to want. Villagers know very well what orthodox conceptions of environmental change are. Experience with GT in Guinea, for example, suggests the strong possibility of outsider's views merely being reiterated in such public settings, whether through politesse or as a perceived route to securing immediate development benefits. Other tools - such as focussed ecological site histories - are better geared towards picking up the nuances of local environmental change.
2.4.4 The creation of a carte socio-fonciere is presented (in FENU 1997) as a laborious exercise. One is forced to question the genuine necessity of such accurate, detailed mapping for the eco-development approach. Furthermore if carried out as a one-off exercise it risks giving a static impression of what are highly dynamic arrangements, incorporating not only inter-annual variation but also compex sets of seasonal, in-nested and overlapping use rights over particular pieces of land. The map is apparently to be updated each year, and through the use of GIS technologies, for example, could be rendered more dynamic. However, there is no evidence that any projects have yet incorporated full use of GIS in practice. Complex computer technology carries the risk, furthermore, of alienating analysis from local ownership and control. In the light of these concerns, simpler, participatory mapping techniques which can be repeated easily with different social groups would seem to be more appropriate.
2.4.5 The enquete socio-fonciere consists of a questionnaire administered to each household (FENU 1997). It appears problematic in several respects. The time it takes, coupled with the non-participatory, survey-based nature of the method seems likely to frustrate local populations. The use of 'the household' as a unit of analysis will obscure important differences of gender and generation; even though the questionnaire asks separately about the activities and assets of different household members, it cannot be assumed that a 'household head' will know, or share the same opinion on, these matters as the members in question. Finally, the questionnaire seems geared to collecting basic quantitative information which might be useful as basic data for M and E purposes (although see discussion of M and E below), but fails to raise key questions about the dynamics of livelihood strategies and how these relate to instiututional arrangements for natural resource use.
2.5 In short, it therefore seems necessary to refine the methodologies both towards acheiving greater participation, integration with practical activities and streamlining; and to ensure that they address the issues of ecological, social and institutional dynamics which are basic to the eco-development approach.
2.5.1 To address the first set of issues, it is worth considering:
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Integrating - as far as possible following the choice of village sites - the petite region and community stages,
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Involving local government staff in both;
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Drawing more explicitly and systematically on the wealth of experience already obtained in MARP and participatory development, especially by linking up with existing networks and practitioners in-country2.5.2 To address the second set of issues, taking account of both the conceptual issues raised in section 1 and the critique of particular tools above, above, streamlining could usefully take the form of a sharper focus on (a) socially-differentiated livelihoods and natural resource priorities; (b) trajectories of ecological change and the management processes that have assisted them, and (c) institutional arrangements which support certain livelihood and enviornmental concerns, and which might be the basis of effective partnerships.
In effect, this is a suggestion to disaggregate, and to embrace greater complexity. This might seem to run counter to a suggestion to streamline. But it is not necessarily the case that such an approach takes longer; it certainly radically reduces the time spent in lengthy village meetings, and is thus less time consuming from villagers' perspective. A methodology geared towards the above issues has been developed by IDS in the context of a research project on environmental entitlements (Environmental Entitlements Research Team 1997; Leach, Mearns and Scoones 1997); in essence, it has drawn existing tools in MARP and ethnographic analysis into a set of sequences which can be applied flexibly to suit different circumstances. Table 1 summarises some of these tools. More information about particular tools can be gleaned from the wide literature on MARP in which they are already commonplace, although as the principles of MARP emphasises, there are no hard and fast rules about how each tool should be used, or about their combination. Flexibility, adaptation and innovation are key.
Table 1: A methods tool box for analysing people-environment relations and institutions from a differentiated perspective
Livelihood analysis
Social mapping, well-being ranking (with groups)
Livelihood diagrams; biographies and life histories; resource matrix ranking; discussions of resource access and control (with diverse individuals)
Environmental analysis
Ecological transect walks; site histories; archival information and travellers' records; time-series air photos and satellite imagery; seasonal calendars; state-transition modelling
Institutional analysis
Network diagrams; venn diagrams; decision-trees and flow charts; actor-network analysis; organisational analysis; biographies of institutions or organisations.
Source: adapted from Environmental Entitlements Research Team 1997: 16
2.5.3 Importantly, table 1 suggests a number of tools for institutional analysis. This is a whole area of knowledge missing from FENU's operational guide, yet one which is crucial given the aims of eco-development. Focused questions on the institutions - understood as 'the rules of the game', or as 'regularised patterns of behaviour' - affecting particular activities would examine both intra-village formal and informal institutions (e.g. labour groups, tenure arrangements, use practices, kin exchange networks, gender relations) and wider institutions affecting local practices (e.g marketing networks, formal tenure laws).
Tools for institutional analysis, in particular need to be applied at the petite region level as well as within local communities. This could help overcome the current serious weakness in the ecodevelopment approach; its lack of diagnostic attention to institutional dynamics in local governance - a necessary basis for identifying potential partnerships.
3. Planning and implementation
In brief, FENU (1997) outlines a suggested process by which following the research phase of an eco-development project, focus group discussions and village level meetings take place in order to carry out a 'participatory' diagnosis of development opportunities and constraints, leading to a choice of strategic activities and the creation of Plans de Developpement du Terroir (PDT) and Plans Annuels de Developpement du Terroir (PADT).
3.1 This approach is a variant of that conventionally adopted in many community-based sustainable development projects. However it appears problematic in several respects, which echo some of the concerns raised above about research tools.
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It misleadingly assumes that consensus can be generated; however even if an appearance of consensus is generated in a PDT, this may obscure conflicts or the marginalisation of certain groups
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It suggests no links with the petite region level, or consideration of opportunities and constraints in relation to the possibilities presnted by the dynamics of local governance.
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It presents difficulties in scaling-up, giving the impression that every village has always to produce a detailed plan before development activities can commence.
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It may fix plans on paper, but if - as rpoejct experience suggests - there are then not adhered to, disilllusionment can result.3.2 An alternative approach would be to integrate the planning and implementation phase more closely with the research phase. Out of the latter, streamlined as suggested above, could be expected to emerge development opportunities and constraints differentiated according to specific sets of social actors and their economic and ecological concerns.
At this point the important emphasis in the ecodevelopment approach on discussion and negotiation would come into play, but with the 'espace de concertation' widened to include critical dialogue within the community as well as between local and state actors. In brief, the aim here would be to decide on desired ends through a negotiated process, whether between an encompassing range of social actors at local and State level, or between smaller groups of resource users, depending on the issue in question.
3.3 Where conflicts between perspectives and priorities are evident, UNCDF would be faced with several possible choices:
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To attempts to support processes of conflict resolution, which would imply linking up with other organisations more experienced in this field, or
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Opting for a more explicitly partisan approach, supporting institutions and interests linked to particular groups of social actors (e.g. poor people, farmer's groups...); strategically supporting subordinate groups to enhance their access to and control over resources.3.4 However, in line with a rejection of the eco-swap concept (and hence of immediate, directly-implemented development activities as incentives for long term environmental conservation), and to facilitate scaling-up, it may be appropriate for UNCDF not to respond by direct provision of development support. Instead, the emphasis would shift to (a) supporting the development of productive partnerships and coalitions between groups of actors, and to (b) feeding the results of negotiations into reflection and planning within administrations at the petite region level.
3.5 The question of uncertainty and unpredictability in ecological systems, raised in section I, also has implications for planning procedures. Recent thinking and non-equilibrium perspectives in ecology question the notion that future environmental states can be planned for in the kind of way suggested by PDT. Historical conjunctures of change processes, and cointingent ecological events can bring about quite rapid, and unpredictable, shifts in landscape ecology. In the context of this inherent unknowability, environmental management policies and programmes cannot be fixed, expecting to achieve a pre-defined sustainable form of reosurce management or to create (recreate) a given ecological state: they must be responsive, adaptive and open to the unexpected.
4. Monitoring and Evaluation
Monitoring and evaluation in UNCDF's eco-development approach follows two distinct phases: monitoring of conventions and their execution (a continuous process), and evaluation of project impact (carried out at the end of a given project or prooject phase).
4.1 Both stages share important similarities in their methodology. Notably:
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Use of the project databank established during the research phase as a source of baseline data against which progress can be assessed.
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Heavy reliance on external consultants to design and implement the systems for each project, with little involvement from the project staff and even less from local populations
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Emphasis on objective, quantifiable indicators
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Emphasis on the product (of a convention or project) rather than on the process4.2 The focus of M and E on the physical products of eco-development - on measurable improvements to livelihoods or ecological systems - corresponds to the principle aims of the programmes: viz. to preserve and/or improve the productivity of the resource base and ecological conditions, and to improve the revenues and life conditions of local people (Michel and Lazarev 1997: 94). However, it neglects other key aspects of the approach: notably, its claimed emphasis on participation and on partnership-building. If the latter are viewed merely as means to more material ends, then leaving them out of M and E might be justified. However UNCDF's documents suggest that enhanced participation and local decision-making capacity are also, to a certain extent, viewed as ends. As such, quality and progress in participation and partnership-building also need to be made the subject of monitroing and evaluation.
4.3 In Michel and Lazarev (1997: 102), a purported indicator of participation is described: the degree of material benefit according to different groups within the population is treated as a central indicator of the degree to which they participated in the programme's formulation. Such improvements in life conditions are generally to be gauged by reference to the baseline for each 'household' established in the enquete socio-fonciere. However, it cannot be assumed that benefits and participation can be equated in a straightforward way. People can benefit from decisions made by others, while if a certain group's interests are entirely marginalised in a planning process, this - their non-participation - will not necessarily show up in measurable aspects of their livelihoods. Therefore more direct indicators of participation - in conventions, and projects as a whole - are needed, as are indicators of institution-building. This is a complex and rapidly-developing area of work, which cannot be summarised in the present report. However some experience already exists within UNCDF, albeit applied to infrastructure work (Davies 1996); it would be highly worthwhile to draw this thinking and reflection into the field of participatory eco-development.
4.4 A separate, although related, issue concerns the extent to which M and E methods are themselves participatory. Who 'owns' the processes and their results? Currently, M and E is carried out externally, with local populations acting as informants to other's enquiries, with findings 'fed back' to them at the end. In relation to recent attempts to rank levels of end-user participation in evaluation procedures (e.g. UNDP 1997: 14), this would count as 'low - medium'. Again, work on participatory methods for M and E is rapidly growing (see for example Estrella and Gaventa 1997) and is a subject of wider debate within the field of community-based sustainable development. These debates have been reflected to a certain extent in discussions among staff involved with particular eco-development projects, and at least in Burkina Faso, attempts have been made to establish a monitoring system controlled and managed by the villagers themselves (FENU 1997b).
4.5 Some key distinctions between conventional and participatory modes of evaluation have been identified in the wider literature. These include:
Conventional
Participatory
Who
External experts
Community members, project staff, facilitator
What
Predetermined indicators of success, principally cost and production ouputs
People identify their own indicators of success, which may be quantitative or qualitative
How
Focus on 'scientific objectivity'; distancing of evaluators from other participants; uniform, complex procedures; delayed, limited access to results
Self-evaluation; simple methods adapted to local culture; open, immediate sharing of results through local involvement in evaluation processes
When
Usually upon completion of project/programme; sometimes also mid-term
More frequent, small-scale evaluations
Why
Accountability, usually summative, to determine if funding continues
To empower local people to initiate, control and take corrective action
Source: Narayan 1993: 12 (in Estrella and Gaventa 1997)
It would be in keeping with UNCDF's broader policy directions, as well as with the participatory aims of eco-development, to attempt to shift the emphasis of M and E from the left to the right hand column. This would have several specific implications for current programme design:
·
a blurring of the distinction between monitoring and evaluation, perhaps even the collapse of the distinction and thus the merging of the final two phases of project activities;
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the inadvisability of attempting to establish a set of generic M and E indicators which can be applied across all eco-development projects. Indicators need to be defined (a) on a project-by-project basis; and (b) preferably by participants themselves (this is why the present report does not attempt to provide a list of key indicators, even though this was requested in the TOR for the evaluation):
·
the large bank of data currently generated during the research phases for M and E purposes ceases to be of such utility. Thus these suggestions regarding M and E complement those made concerning the streamlining of the research phase in eco-development programmes.CONCLUSION
UNCDF's approach to participatory eco-development is not only an example of the 'second-generation' of approaches to community-based sustainable development which attempts to look beyond 'the community' to wider levels of ecology and administration; it also has the potential to pioneer a generation of approaches which emphasise negotiation and critical dialogue between diverse groups of community members and a diversity of actors and institutions within the local state. With its experience in issues of local governance, UNCDF is perhaps in a particularly strong position to meet this challenge. What is needed now is for the approach to shed some of its conceptual straitjackets - notably its fixed conceptions of environmental 'good', its overly-static notion of 'community' and the problematic concept of ecoswap; to streamline project methodology in accordance with a more dynamic and disaggregated view, and to forge stronger links with other areas of UNCDF work in order to move forward into a genuine emphasis on participation, institutional development, partnerships and dialogue.
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