Internal Evaluation of the UNCDF Participatory Eco-Development Programme
4. Concepts

In conceptual terms, the complexity of eco-development projects relates above all to the initial orientation. Are we talking about projects to combat environmental degradation (in the known sense of village land-use management) or poverty alleviation projects, relying mainly on community organization? This question needs to be posed, inasmuch as the various projects have had to get their message across and be acknowledged in the field. The importance of the message is not inconsiderable for people who have experienced projects of an environmental nature (e.g. village wood lots in the Sahel). Quite often, there is speculation about the existence of continuity between environmental projects and rural poverty, bearing in mind their de facto impact on poverty, but without recognizing that institutional memory of environmental action does not always encourage community participation and stakeholding. Local people suspect that they are being press-ganged to advance a national cause, which jars with the local reality of land insecurity.

Ambiguity within PED projects makes it impossible to translate concepts into situation-specific strategies and directions.

We shall now attempt to clarify some general notions which are often mentioned with no thought as to what they really mean.

4.1 "Homogeneous" village communities Although knowledge-acquisition tools do refer to lineage groups, one sometimes gets the feeling, both from reading documents and in the field, that communities are considered as a relatively homogeneous whole, within which there is general consensus about land use. This can be seen, for example, in the use of certain tools, such as village assemblies, to analyze production systems. However, it is increasingly obvious that village assemblies do not allow all social groups to express themselves, especially in places where there is a strong social hierarchy (such as Mauritania and Mali), even if they are present (women, young people, herders, etc.) (Leach, 1997 – Annexe 2). This is also noticeable when village development committees are set up which are exclusively (as in Guinea) or mainly made up of members of the village elite. There is a risk, if existing social divisions and established power structures are not taken into account, of strengthening existing privileges and further marginalizing the weaker social groups.

One way of avoiding this consists of working not with a village as a whole, but with very specific interest groups.

4.2 Ecological equilibrium (12)

Both general and project-specific documents refer to a series of very orthodox notions concerning the environment, such as desertification and deforestation caused by demographic growth. Yet there is increasing evidence that such generalizations are hasty and often far removed from local reality. Desertification, for instance, seems to have more to do with political concepts that scientific evidence (Swift, 1996, quoted in Leach, 1997 – Annexe 2). Furthermore, there are many cases where high population density is associated with an improvement in ecological conditions. Such ambiguities are in fact related to the idea of ecological equilibrium and the need to achieve or restore it. This notion is increasingly disputed, especially in the fragile environments where PED projects operate, by the supporters of a "new ecology", based on three main themes (Leach, 1997 – Annexe 2).

The notion of equilibrium, like recipes for restoring it, might therefore be idle fancy. In this case, it may be wiser to begin rather by studying the livelihood strategies developed locally to deal with ecological variability.

 Even if one is convinced that the environment is becoming degraded, it must be recognized that ecological improvement may be achieved as a by-product of poverty alleviation and not always the reverse. For people living in extremely harsh environmental conditions, or who have few family assets in the form of good land, it is difficult to imagine that land could be improved so as to create new opportunities on its own. Very often, it is necessary to look for solutions outside land-based activities, through an iterative process of action research, a learning curve which explores new frontiers by developing community or individual capacity. The approach must be people-centred in order to promote real social, economic, cultural and organizational changes, rather than environment-centred, the latter approach depending on a specific institutional context which has still not been fully grasped.

It seems essential, therefore, to take a critical view of many preconceived ideas regarding environmental degradation, taking the time to examine the environment in its local context and in relation to community livelihood strategies. PED projects do seem to reflect this concern in using knowledge-acquisition tools. However, the weight of orthodoxy and the weaknesses observed at this level – discussed below – have led us to suggest a complementary approach in section 5.3.1 of this report.

4.3 The "eco-swap"

Eco-swap, as a concept defined in Section 2.1 of this report, is one of the spearheads of the eco-development programme, but also a prime target for criticism on both ethical and operational grounds.

* From the ethical point of view, eco-swap seems to imply that village communities are not aware of the need to manage natural resources sustainably and that they must be compelled to move in this direction in return for project attention to their immediate needs. This generalization appears hasty, to say the least. While it is true that farmers are not always free of blame for environmental degradation, it is just as possible to find places where farmers have guaranteed and continue to guarantee natural resource conservation. This latter aspect has, moreover, recently been backed up by studies conducted in savannah/forest area of the Sahel (Fairhead & Leach, 1996). This study shows that, contrary to the commonly accepted view that villagers are responsible for deforestation, areas around villages are in fact patches of woodland replanted over time by the villagers themselves and not at the instigation of outside agents. The often beneficial role of village communities as "stakeholders in ecological culture", is in any case recognized by the designers of the eco-development programme themselves (Michel & Lazarev, 1997, pp. 25-26).

Another target of ethical criticism is the fact that the eco-swap idea implies a single definition of environmental conservation, which does not, as stressed in section 4.2, seem to accord with the idea of a dynamic environment and therefore of a wide range of ecologically acceptable options (Leach, 1997 – Annexe 2).

The eco-swap concept implicitly supposes that it is difficult, if not impossible, to come up with successful solutions from both the ecological and socio-economic points of view, without a certain number of "trade-offs". Examples from the field do, however, show that such a combination is possible, especially if the land tenure situation provides a degree of security for users (Leach, 1997 – Annexe 2).

Finally, in swapping improved living conditions/economics against the environment, the protagonists do not have the same power, considering that it is the project which has the funds. Negotiation is thus unbalanced from the start.

* The eco-swap concept also seems to involve some operational difficulties, in several respects:

Who defines the terms of the swap? Here again, we come up against the notion of unequal power in the negotiating process, which affects the chances of carrying out activities successfully. There is one very explicit example, presented in a report about the Mayahi experience (Luche, 1997b, p. 4), where a village community agreed to plant 2,000 trees in exchange for having a cereal bank constructed, although they knew that their capacity, especially in regard to the maintenance of seedlings, did not exceed 100-200 trees. The net result was that only 200 seedlings survived. In short, neither the villagers nor the project came out of the operation with any credit.

The foregoing also shows that the use of eco-swap involves a very great risk of harming relationships between the project and villagers. This certainly does not augur well for a programme promoting "active community participation", "partnerships" and the creation of "forums for dialogue". (see section 2.1). For the reasons given above, projects are often a long way from equitable negotiation and therefore from "healthy" community participation in development activities.

Furthermore, according to the designers of the eco-development programme, the idea of the eco-swap could backfire on the project, with short term interest taking over from ecological objectives as the motor for development (Michel & Lazarev, 1997, p. 25).

Finally, this short-term focus is not conducive to approaching activities from the standpoint of management capacity or replicating experience.

In short, the eco-swap concept is intellectually questionable, ethically dubious and, finally, tricky to apply, if it is seen as a crucial factor in the strategic choice of activities to be undertaken. Indeed, the issue of cross-incentives has been a methodological given for more than 10 years, within the framework of the contractual approach. The difference between these approaches and eco-swap relates to the fact that the stakes are lower, since they relate to the setting up rather than to the strategic choice of activities. The key moment when the respective contributions of each party and, in particular, of the project and beneficiary groups are defined and measured is bound to be tense, legitimate "bids" revealing the real issues and the latent dynamism of local stakeholders. It would therefore seem advisable to replace the eco-swap concept with an approach in which the choice of activities is, in the final analysis, made following equitable negotiations and not in some way "imposed" by the project by virtue of its superior power.

In this regard, approaches need to be developed which can overcome two of the habitual and crucial difficulties in this type of negotiation: on the one hand, the difference in perception between partners regarding the status of environmental degradation and, on the other, the lack of clarity about the roles of each party with regard to natural resource management. Suggestions in this respect are given in sections 5.5 (i) and 5.5 (ii).

4.4 Levels of intervention – the "local area"

Following the failure of integrated rural development projects, partly due to their overly interventionist and technically-oriented attitude towards village populations, an approach based rather on the development of village communities and their participation in managing their land began to gain ground in the mid 1980s. In francophone West Africa, this approach is known as "Gestion de Terroir (GT)"(13). The empowerment of local people and their control over local development processes were seen as preconditions for the sustainability and replicability of rural development activities. At the beginning of the 1990s, appraisal of GT type projects (UNSO, 1994; Dubois, 1997) has indicated some shortcomings, in particular:

This last weakness led to a change in direction for GT projects, which are now known as local development projects. The idea is to go beyond the terroir, creating forums for dialogue, planning and decision-making at local level. Such forums are supposed to bring together representatives of "project bearers" (promoters), village communities and technical services (15). These changes come close to the eco-development programme's concern to work at various levels, in particular the "local area". In this regard, it may be seen that:

In view of the vagueness of the concept, the absence of methodological tools to give it concrete expression in the field and the practical difficulties which are hard to resolve within the short time span of PED projects, eco-development project teams have in fact usually neglected the "local area" level and concentrated on the terroir(17), thus replicating one of the major inadequacies of the first generation of GT projects. The local authorities and technical services, by and large, play the role of mere service providers when they do make their presence felt and, therefore, have practically no involvement in decisions relating to strategic development options. Support to local governance is thus usually weak or even non-existent, thus reducing the chances of sustainability of the activities undertaken. These features were mentioned at the seminar in Senegal (UNCDF, 1997b) and can also be seen at several other levels:




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