Communities, Livelihoods, and Natural Resources

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Communities, Livelihoods, and Natural Resources

Action Research and Policy Change in Asia

Edited by
Stephen Tyler

Published by Intermediate Technology Publications Ltd
Schumacher Centre for Technology and Development
Bourton on Dunsmore, Rugby,
Warwickshire CV23 9QZ, UK
www.itpus.org.uk
ISBN 1-85339-638-9
ISBN 978-1-85339-638-0

and the International Development Research Centre
P.O. Box 8500, Ottawa, ON, Canada K1G 3H9
www.idrc.ca/pub@idrc.ca
ISBN 1-55250-230-9 (e-book)

© International Development Research Centre, 2006

First published in 2006

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the written permission of the publishers.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

The contributors have asserted their rights under the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as authors of their respective contributions.

Intermediate Technology Publications Ltd is the wholly-owned publishing company of Intermediate Technology Development Group Ltd (working name Practical Action). Our mission is to build the skills and capacity of people in developing countries through the dissemination of information in all forms, enabling them to improve the quality of their lives and that of future generations.

Cover photograph by kind permission of
Renewable Natural Resources Research Centre, Bajo, Bhutan

Index preparation: Indexing Specialists (UK) Ltd
Typeset in Trade Gothic and Stone Serif
by S.J.I. Services
Printed by Replika Press

Contents

Foreword

Despite what you see on MTV, there is more to Asia than shopping malls, cell phones and Kentucky Fried Chicken. If you are willing to scratch the surface and follow dirt roads into the hills and forests, it is quickly apparent that many people still cannot enjoy the region's famous prosperity.

These are women who wake up in the morning to fetch water and fuelwood; children who help their parents in the fields and forests; grandparents who wait for their relatives to send money from town. These are people who fish and farm, hunt and harvest, sell a bit, sew a bit, get sick too often and talk to make the day go by. You can list all their belongings on a single page. Often the only real productive assets they have are their knowledge, creativity and willingness to work, a small parcel of borrowed or rented land, and access to places where they can fish and collect wild products – and even much of that is being lost, exhausted or eroded.

No high-yielding crop variety, mosquito net or new well is going to solve all these people's problems. The situations in the various remote and inhospitable places they live in are so diverse that no shoe fits all. The families typically need to do small amounts of many different things to get by; so just improving one of them usually won't help them that much. Although some people may be able to earn more money by moving to town or growing vegetables, for many others those are not real options.

A more promising approach is to provide these people with skills and information, and help them get organized. That can build their self-confidence and give them tools to solve their various problems. Much of this needs to centre on their natural resources, since that is one of the few things they have. Government agencies and NGOs also have to change their policies and the way they do business to support villagers' efforts, instead of making life harder for them. That is particularly true when it comes to policies and practices that affect peoples' access to land, forests, grasslands and fish.

Research can play a very important role in making those things happen, but it cannot be just any old research. It has to be research that is deliberately designed to help local people, government officials, NGOs and other groups think through issues, reflect on their own experiences, support positions that favour poorer and less powerful people, and provide relevant information about markets and technologies. The researchers themselves must be committed to achieving real change and seeing things through. They must also be savvy enough to understand all the different interests that exist in local communities and avoid being hijacked by the agendas of the rich and the powerful. Otherwise, their work may end up leaving out women, tribal peoples and others that usually get forgotten.

For some time now Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC) has been working to support precisely that type of research. This book was designed to share some of the more interesting lessons coming out of their research projects on community-based natural resource management in Asia. In particular, it focuses on 11 research projects carried out by national researchers from Bhutan, Cambodia, China, Laos, Mongolia, the Philippines and Vietnam between 1997 and 2004, and shares some of the more general insights coming from all that work.

The stories here are just that: real stories about real lives. By reading them you can get a sense of what the researchers did and why, how they interacted with the different groups, what worked, what didn't and what they took away from it all. You will also get a sense of how the researchers tried to spread the messages about one group's successes and failures to other groups, so that the work could have a larger impact.

There is a lot of wisdom in these pages, as well as common sense. You will find some answers, but no road maps or magic bullets. Each new country or new group of researchers will have to work through their specific situation and find measures that fit for them. This book can inform and inspire the process for doing exactly that. It certainly inspired me.

David Kaimowitz
Director General
Center for International Forestry Research

Acknowledgements

Any editorial effort of this magnitude necessarily involves a lot of support. But this volume is noteworthy for the number of people involved. My task would have been inconceivable without the efforts they contributed. First among these are the men and women, farmers and fishers from all across Asia, whose stories of creativity and persistence are represented here. These are the people who took the biggest risks, were the most generous in sharing their time and wisdom and usually provided the most insightful criticism of the research we report. They may never read these stories, but they have already incorporated their most important lessons. Our shared debt to these people is reiterated by many of the authors in this volume, but I would like to emphasize it at the outset.

The research teams whose work is reported by the case study authors also deserve my heartfelt appreciation. They laboured long and hard with new ideas and challenging methods, struggling to translate these between languages and between very different cultures. Their commitment to learning and to action, in spite of adversities that would have overcome most researchers in developed countries, has earned my deepest admiration and respect.

The authors charged with reporting the teams' work faced the burden of writing in an unfamiliar language, on top of their many other responsibilities. For their patience and persistence in a task made more difficult by long rounds of editorial comments, questions and revisions, I am very grateful.

Special thanks are due to Silke Reichrath, whose organizational skills, attention to detail and sharp editing made a huge difference in tracking and revising early versions of the case manuscripts. I would have been lost (as would much of the text) without her.

This book owes a huge debt to my programme colleagues at IDRC. The research framework and programme cases reported here took shape through their commitment, enthusiasm, criticism and practical field experience. I only hope that I have done justice to the integrity of their vision in assembling the resulting manuscript. My warmest appreciation to John Graham, Ronnie Vernooy, Liz Fajber, Brian Davy, Guy Bessette, Hein Mallee and Wendy Manchur. Thanks also to Stephen McGurk for his encouragement and support. May each of you recognize in these pages a testament to your professionalism and collaboration.

Eric and Katherine Fletcher provided excellent editorial support, giving a consistent format and style to all the myriad details of manuscripts from two dozen different authors.

I also wish to express my appreciation to my wife Barbara, whose tolerance and encouragement enabled me to devote extra time to this project when I was not able to squeeze everything into the confines of a regular working day.

List of figures

List of tables

List of boxes

Acronyms and abbreviations

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Biographies of authors

Chapter 3

Ashish Joshia Ingty John is the research coordinator of the Natural Resource Management Research Project in Ratanakiri, Cambodia, which focuses on Community Based Natural Resource Management for indigenous people. The project is part of the decentralized governance programme of the Royal Government of Cambodia. It deals with farmer-based experimentation, participatory land use planning (PLUP), community forestry, community-based ecotourism, indigenous land rights, communal land titling, conflict resolution, and the planning and management of rural development – all the different aspects of CBNRM. Ashish's mother is a Mikir/Karbi from northeast India and he has a Master's in Veterinary Surgery. Email: carat@camintel.com or ashishingty@yahoo.com

Chea Phalla is the CBNRM research adviser to the project mentioned above. He is a Cambodian and has a lot of experience working with indigenous people, assisting them to map their traditional land use and advocate for their rights. Phalla has a degree in Statistics and Economics from the College of Statistics and Planning, Phnom Penh. He also has a diploma in rural leadership from the Asian Rural Institute in Japan. Email: carererat@camintel.com

Chapter 4

Truong Van Tuyen's background is in rural development. He got his Master's degree from Khon Kaen University, Thailand, and his PhD from the University of the Philippines at Los Baños. He has been a faculty member of Hue University of Agriculture and Forestry since 1986. Dr Tuyen has engaged in participatory research on community-based coastal resource management since 1995. He has also been involved in other social science and rural development research, including research on farming systems and development, on-farm conservation of agro-biodiversity, and integrated assessments of trade and agricultural policies. Email: tvtuyen@dng.vnn.vn

Chapter 5

Le Van An has been the head of the Department of Sciences and International Relations at Hue University of Agriculture and Forestry since 2000. He completed a BSc in Animal Production at the Agricultural University No. 2 in Ha Bac, Vietnam in 1983, an MSc in Livestock Production Systems (1999) and a PhD in Animal Sciences (2004) at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala, Sweden. He has been lecturing on animal production and rural development methodologies at Hue University of Agriculture and Forestry since 1983. He has also been working with the Rural Development Programme in Vietnam since 1993. Since 1995, he has been the research team leader for a research project on CBNRM at Hue University of Agriculture and Forestry, which has been funded by IDRC and the Ford Foundation. He is also involved in research and development activities related to natural resources management, the environment and the livelihoods of the upland poor in Vietnam. Email: Levanan-huaf@dng.vnn.vn

Chapter 6

Hijaba Ykhanbai graduated from the Forest Engineering Academy in the former Soviet Union in 1978, and obtained a PhD from the Academy in 1992. He attended courses at Harvard University on Environmental Economics and Policy Analysis, and Macroeconomic Policy and Management. Dr Ykhanbai has spent about 18 years in the Ministry for Nature and the Environment (MNE), serving as a specialist, vice-director, director and policy adviser to the minister. Currently he is the project leader of the Sustainable Management of Common Natural Resources in Mongolia project and the director of the Forest Policy and Coordination Department. Email: ykhanbai@magicnet.mn

Enkhbat Bulgan has a background in language studies. She holds a Master's degree in linguistics from the University of Humanities in Mongolia. She has been working as the secretary and research assistant for the MNE-IDRC research project on Sustainable Management of Common Natural Resources in Mongolia since 2001. Her research interests include community-based pasture and natural resource management, participatory research, and social and gender research in natural resource management. Email: bugi_n@yahoo.com

Chapter 7

Nattaya Tubtim is based in Chiang Mai, Thailand as Regional Research Programme Officer for the Australian Mekong Resource Centre, Sydney University. She is also Coordinator of the Mekong Learning Initiative, a collaborative learning project involving nine Mekong universities, which links community-based natural resource management to wider regional issues. Since completing her Bachelor's degree in Social Sciences for Development at Silpakorn University in 1989, she has been engaged in applied research in Thailand and Laos, mainly in the field of community-based natural resource management. In 2001, she completed her Master's in Sustainable Development at Chiang Mai University. She has wide experience of community-level processes throughout the Mekong Region. Email: tubtim@loxinfo.co.th

Chapter 8

Kim Nong is the deputy director of the Environmental Education Department in Cambodia's Ministry of the Environment. He is the team leader of the Participatory Management of Coastal Resources project, a project that began in 1997 and emphasizes local decision-making processes for resource management. His research interests include CBNRM, co-management and decentralization. Email: pmmr@online.com.kh

Melissa Marschke recently completed her PhD at the Natural Resources Institute, University of Manitoba. She has worked as a consultant in Southeast Asia since 1999, collaborating with several project teams on issues surrounding community-based management (with an emphasis on writing and analysis). Her research interests include livelihoods, resilience and decision-making. Email: mjmarschkeca@yahoo.com

Chapter 9

Yuan Juanwen is a senior researcher at the Integrated Rural Development Centre, Guizhou Academy of Agricultural Sciences. She is the coordinator for Guizhou of the Women's Capacity Building and Rural Development in China project, which is implemented by the Winrock International Institute for Agricultural Development. She received her Master's degree in Forestry at the University of the Philippines at Los Baños in January 2002. Now she is involved in several projects related to rural development in China. Her interests are community-based natural resource management, gender, and participatory rural development. Email: juanwenyuan@hotmail.com

Sun Qiu has a Master's in Social Development from Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines. She is doing her PhD in rural development sociology at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. She is a senior researcher and the director of the Integrated Rural Development Centre at the Guizhou Academy of Agricultural Sciences. She was a core team member of the IDRC-funded Community-based Natural Resource Management in Mountainous Areas of Guizhou Province (1995–2001) project, and she is the project leader of the IDRC and Ford Foundation joint funded Promotion of Sustainable Rural Development by Scaling up CBNRM in Guizhou Province, China project. Sun Qiu has extensive experience in community-based natural resource management and in rural development research. Email: qiu_sun@yahoo.com

Chapter 10

Sangay Duba has been the programme director for the RNR Research Centre at Bajo since 2000. He completed a BSc in Agriculture (1988) and an MSc in Agronomy (1994) at the University of the Philippines in Los Baños (UPLB). He started at the RNR Research Centre, then called the Centre for Agricultural Research, in 1989 as assistant research officer, working on mid-altitude rice-based farming systems research. He was actively involved in regional surveys and field studies and acted as a resource person for various agricultural training programmes. He was promoted to be research officer in 1996 as farming systems agronomist. He is the project manager for the Enhancing Productivity Through Integrated Natural Resources Management (EPINARM) Project, which is a four-year project funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and IDRC. He was one of the task force members who developed the 2002 CBNRM Framework for Bhutan. Email: sduba@druknet.bt

Mahesh Ghimiray is currently a programme officer for field crops at RNRRC Bajo. He holds a BSc in Agriculture from GB Pant University, Uttar Pradesh, India, and an MPhil in Plant Biodiversity from the University of Reading and Birmingham University, U.K. In 1985, he was appointed as assistant research officer in the then Department of Agriculture and posted at the Agri Research Station, Bhur, Gelephu, as officer-in-charge. In 1990, he transferred to the Centre for Agricultural Research and Development (CARD), now RNRRC Bajo, as national rice coordinator. He was promoted to research officer and then senior research officer and has acted as a resource person/trainer in various agricultural training programmes. He has planned, coordinated and conducted research on rice and other field crops, as well as being involved in the management of the EPINARM Project. Email: mghimire@druknet.bt

Chapter 11

Sy Ramony is the project team leader of the Community Forestry Research Project, funded by IDRC. In addition, Ramony is deputy chief of the Community Protected Area Development Office at the Department of Nature Conservation and Protection at the Ministry of the Environment of Cambodia. He received an Engineering degree in Agronomy from the Royal University of Agriculture, Phnom Penh, Cambodia, in 1992 and an MSc in Natural Resource Management from the Asian Institute of Technology, Bangkok, Thailand, in 1999. Email: Ramony@online.com.kh

Phan Kamnap is the deputy project leader for the Community Forestry Research Project (CFRP) and Deputy Director of the Forestry and Wildlife Training Centre of the Forestry Administration. Kamnap received a Bachelor's degree in Forestry Science from the Royal University of Agriculture in Phnom Penh and a Master's degree in Natural Resources Management from the Asian Institute of Technology in Thailand. Kamnap has been working with the Community Forestry Research Project, Non-Timber Forest Project (NTFP) and Asian Development Bank's Sustainable Forest Management Project since 1996. Moreover, he works closely with the Forestry Administration, Ministry of the Environment, NGOs, international organizations and local communities. He has been involved with the community forestry network in Cambodia since 1999. Email: phankamnap@online.com.kh or phankamnap@hotmail.com

Chapter 12

The IDRC-funded project on Ancestral Domain and Natural Resource Management in Sagada, Mountain Province, Northern Luzon (1998–2002) was headed by Lorelei C. Mendoza (Economics). This research project was undertaken through the Cordillera Studies Centre, the research arm of the University of the Philippines Baguio. The social science team of the project included three research fellows and three project leaders for the community studies. The research fellows were June Prill-Brett (Anthropology) for ancestral domain, Bienvenido P. Tapang (Economics) for institutional analysis and Arellano A. Colongon, Jr (Political Science) for policy issues. The project leaders for the community studies were Gladys A. Cruz (Economics) for Demang, Victoria Lourdes C. Diaz (Anthropology) and Ma. Cecilia R. San Luis (Sociology) for Fidelisan. The team was ably assisted by Alicia G. Follosco (university researcher). Email: lcmendoza@upb.edu.ph

Chapter 13

Peter O'Hara, an Irish national, has an undergraduate degree in forestry and a graduate degree in development studies. He is currently undertaking a CBNRM-related PhD at the University of East Anglia, UK. At the International Institute of Rural Reconstruction, he coordinates the community forestry research activities. He also facilitates international professional training courses, including a course on Participatory Action Research for CBNRM. Before joining IIRR in 2001, his work experience included positions as a participatory extension adviser on a community forestry project in Gambia, a co-editor of the Forest, Trees, and People Newsletter, and a lecturer in extension at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. His professional interests include action learning and transformative communication processes. Email: Peter.Ohara@iirr.org

Chapter 14

Julian Gonsalves has 30 years of experience in international rural and agricultural development and natural resources management. Currently he is a senior adviser to CIP-UPWARD (the International Potato Center's Users Perspectives With Agricultural Research and Development programme) in Los Baños, Philippines, and a short-term consultant. Prior to this he had senior level responsibility for programme development and management at the International Institute of Rural Reconstruction (IIRR), eight years as the director of the Appropriate Technology Unit (ATU) and seven years as the Vice-President-Program. At IIRR he proposed, field-tested and developed the participatory workshop process for documenting best practices and initiated a sustainable agriculture programme with a smallholder focus. He has a PhD in Extension Education and International Agricultural and Rural Development from Cornell University and a Master's degree in Communication (knowledge utilization) from Michigan State University. Email: juliangonsalves@yahoo.com

Lorelei C. Mendoza has been a member of the faculty of the University of the Philippines (UP) Baguio since 1976, when she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Social Sciences from UP Baguio. She obtained a Masters of Arts in Economics from the UP School of Economics in 1981 and a Doctorate in Economics from the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium in 1997. She has conducted research on the livelihoods of farming households in the Cordillera communities, gender and household economics, local governance and local resource management practices. She led the IDRC-funded project on Ancestral Domain and Natural Resource Management in Sagada, Mountain province, Northern Philippines (1998–2002). She served as director of the Cordillera Studies Centre, UP Baguio, in 1990–91 and in 1998–2003. She is currently the dean of the College of Social Sciences, UP Baguio. Email: lcmendoza@upb.edu.ph

Chapter 15

Tony Beck has worked on livelihoods and resilience in India and Bangladesh for a long time – too long some would say! In the last little while he has also worked on results-based management with the UN Secretariat, on poverty and gender equality with a number of agencies, on recovery from major natural disasters and on the evaluation of humanitarian action. Email: tonybeck@shaw.ca

Liz Fajber is a senior program officer at the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) South Asia Regional Office (SARO) in New Delhi. She is active in programming primarily relating to rural development and natural resource management. Her interests focus on social/gender equity; access and tenure issues; local/indigenous knowledge and technologies; multistakeholder approaches; and enhancing community participation in, and benefits from, applied research activities. She has a Master's in Anthropology from McGill University. Email: efajber@idrc.org.in

Chapter 16

Peter Vandergeest is the Director of the York Centre for Asian Research and Associate Professor of Sociology at York University in Toronto. He received his PhD from Cornell University in 1990, and has been researching and writing on socio-ecological transformations in Southeast Asia for the past 20 years. Email: pvander@yorku.ca

Chapter 17

Stephen Tyler worked with IDRC's East and Southeast Asia regional office from 1991 to 2005, establishing new interdisciplinary programmes for the region in urban environment, environmental policy, biodiversity and natural resources management. He holds a BSc in physical geography and biology from Trent University, and a PhD in city and regional planning from the University of California, Berkeley. He has undertaken consulting assignments for the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and other international organizations, and has published on energy policy and urbanization issues as well as natural resource management. He is president of Adaptive Resource Management Ltd in Victoria, BC and works on resource governance and adaptive management in Canada and Asia. Email: adaptive@telus.ca

Hein Mallee's interest and previous work experience in China led him to a PhD at Leyden University, which focused on circulatory rural–urban labour migration as a rural livelihood strategy in China. He subsequently led a large, Dutch-funded rural poverty alleviation project in Anhui province, and then became a programme officer for the Ford Foundation in Beijing, where he was particularly interested in exploring linkages between micro-level fieldwork and wider processes of institutional change and policy formulation. He joined IDRC in January 2004 as a senior programme specialist with the CBNRM programme and is now working with the Rural Poverty and Environment programme. He is based in IDRC's Singapore office. Email: hmallee@idrc.org.sg

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Part I
Introduction

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CHAPTER 1
Introduction: poverty and environment in practice

Stephen Tyler

Global agendas and local change

At the beginning of the 21st century, it is evident that that the destinies of our planet's diverse peoples are closely intertwined. This realization has driven an unprecedented set of international commitments during the past decade. Nations of all political hues have committed to reforms on a broad range of global issues: trade policy, biodiversity conservation, land mines, greenhouse gas emissions, peacekeeping, security and others. However, if these issues are increasingly recognized, defined and framed as being global, the actions to address and implement them mostly fall to local decisions made by governments, individuals, businesses and other organizations. It is precisely when it comes to local action that so many well-intended global efforts fail. This volume offers examples of how to build successful local innovation and action on difficult global issues of poverty and environment.

The actions described in this book respond specifically to the question of how poor rural people can improve their living conditions and the productivity of their resource base through local interventions in natural resource management. As a compendium of research and learning results, the book describes and analyses processes and outcomes from a set of action research projects in Asia. The research cases reported here have all grappled with the difficult issues of how to implement practical and effective development in marginalized, rural areas of poor countries. They were designed to respond directly to the global issues of poverty reduction, environmental and resource degradation, and governance reform.

Because they define quantitative targets across a limited set of indicators, the UN's Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) focus attention and effort on global poverty reduction outcomes. National Poverty Reduction Strategy Plans (PRSPs), which are required by international financial institutions as prerequisites for concessionary loans, are also aimed at poverty outcomes and used by bilateral donors to guide aid priorities. But these large-scale targets and national policy commitments have little to say about what needs to happen at the level of the village – or between village and state levels – in order to reduce poverty. Nor do they offer advice in practice about how to create and gain from opportunities to increase income, spread benefits, reduce risk and secure rights for the poorest of the poor.

Environmental and resource degradation has been widely recognized as a crucial constraint to reducing poverty among the most disadvantaged and marginalized populations in the world, who remain largely rural (UN Millennium Project, 2005). International commitments to rural development and to addressing environmental and resource degradation increasingly identify the need for innovative approaches. Such approaches must focus holistically on diverse ecological and social contexts, and emphasize the meaningful participation of local people in their planning and implementation (Sayer and Campbell, 2004). However, practitioners find this a challenging task, not least because it inevitably involves the engagement of many actors with divergent interests in a process of learning and adaptation. Particularly when faced with the management of common property resources such as water, forests, pasture or fisheries, market-based incentives generate perverse outcomes. Moreover, special forms of collective action are required (Ostrom, 1990; Knox, Meinzen-Dick and Hazell, 1998; Agrawal, 2001).

Recent global studies have also emphasized the need for governance reforms to improve decision-making in rural development. These focus on decentralization of authority for managing resources and delivering services in rural areas (World Bank, 2003). However, experience with decentralization has been at best mixed: administrative deconcentration has often not been accompanied by devolution of authority; local mechanisms are not responsive to policy objectives; and there are risks of replacing ineffective central administration with inequitable local control (Edmunds and Wollenberg, 2003; Ribot, 2003). Practitioners are caught between the exhortations of well-intentioned policies and the complexity of local change in a dynamic political and institutional environment.

Poverty, environmental degradation and governance issues tend to converge in the so-called least favoured areas: zones of marginal agricultural production which have the weakest natural resource endowments, the least political power, and are the most remote from markets. These are areas at risk of getting stuck in a poverty trap which prevents them taking advantage of emerging opportunities (UN Millennium Project, 2005). Conventional approaches argue for more funding to address these interlocking constraints, yet they provide few practical examples of what kinds of investments will address all these concerns.

Cases of local research and action

This volume of case studies showcases research projects in the poorest parts of Asia. The cases represent areas where researchers and their organizations are rarely found and if present, are under-resourced. Research organizations in these areas have had limited formal connections to the networks or incentives of international academic publishing. These case stories are presented by the local researchers who undertook the work. Some of them may have had little formal training in research. Some lack advanced academic degrees. Yet these cases provide insights on a range of new lessons and show positive impacts on poverty, resource sustainability and governance, from the community up to the national policy level.

The emphasis in these cases is not on the analysis of research results. All of the case authors have written research reports (some published) that cover specific data and results in greater detail. The importance of these cases is that they describe what happened and what changed as a result of research interventions. These lessons are primarily lessons of development practice, instead of theory. They speak to rural development practitioners who seek to strengthen rural livelihoods, improve resource management and reduce poverty. The main reason for presenting them in this narrative format is to help practitioners to use the lessons of these innovative projects to undertake effective local action themselves.

These are case stories about research and about action. What is unusual is that the process of research was deliberately structured to encourage collaborative learning with other social actors. This is research in which many people learn often different lessons. Another unusual feature is that the research or learning directly led to local development actions which were facilitated by innovation and evidence. This was not research for academic purposes, but for changing peoples' lives. Finally, this was research which transformed policy from the experience of local innovation and learning.

Just as with the communities we studied, it is a challenge to describe simply what this modest volume is about. Both the story and its message depend on where you stand. Research, local action, policy change: these are the core elements of the cases in this volume. But they pay particular attention to the messy dynamics around how these different processes intersect in practice. These narratives are about building the confidence of social actors who are far removed from power, introducing evidence from scientific analysis and from shared experience, identifying inequities, and engaging practical and positive measures to address complex problems.

Therefore, the narratives are particularly instructive to rural development practitioners who rely on evidence and experience to analyse problems and take actions which will lead to sustainable local change.

Origins of the cases

The 11 cases in this volume are selected from among over 75 research projects supported by Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC) programme on Community-based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) during the period 1997–2004. In most cases, the work described here is the result of several years of site-based fieldwork by multidisciplinary local research teams whose members frequently came from several different organizations. The research work may have covered several successive phases of multiyear project funding, each phase evolving in focus and emphasis from the previous work.

To a large degree, the characteristics of these research cases reflect the particular nature of IDRC's mandate. The centre was created by the government of Canada to build research capacity and to improve development outcomes through support to applied research in developing countries. The centre responds to the priorities of its developing-country partners and directs its financial support and the advisory capacities of its specialist technical staff towards local researchers, with a strategic emphasis on building local expertise. Therefore, these products reflect research not merely located in the South, but research that is led by Southern researchers and their organizations.

Because it is principally a development organization which adopts knowledge generation as a mechanism for achieving development outcomes (rather than a research donor whose objective is mainly academic excellence), the chief measure of success for the centre's work is the adoption of research lessons in practice. Therefore, the links between learning and application attract significant attention as a key element of the centre's task.1

IDRC's CBNRM research programme developed a conceptual framework, criteria for evaluating research proposals and a programming strategy for its work in Asia. But the research work in the field was conducted by local partners, and they were responsible for interpreting, adapting, and making sense of the range of methods and tools available. With time and experience, the research teams took the initiative in elaborating and refining the conceptual framework for their work (see Chapter 2). The key starting point was always that their research should address problems of natural resource degradation and local livelihoods through meaningful participation of local men and women in the research process. The centre's strategy for programming in Asia emphasized support to those countries with the weakest research infrastructure, or the least access to external academic networks. These were typically the poorest countries (or the poorest regions of large countries) and those transitional economies that were only just emerging from decades of ideological and political isolation. Not coincidentally, these were also the ones with the most limited international language skills and least access to Western academic literature.

Therefore, early research efforts focused on building capacity through learning by doing, with limited introduction to the integrated, multidisciplinary and participatory research concepts and tools needed for this work. Long-term site-based research was seen as important not only for gaining insight through practice but also for building and monitoring impacts in complex biological and socio-economic systems, and for building relationships between people and organizations not accustomed to working together. Many researchers were field-oriented natural scientists in applied disciplines such as agronomy or forestry, reflecting the prevailing strengths of local research establishments. Particular emphasis was placed on building practical social science research skills to integrate with these backgrounds.2

CBNRM researchers worked under difficult field conditions. The programme targeted the poorest and most marginal areas of Asia, usually remote and sometimes seasonally inaccessible. Even for locally based research teams, the working conditions in the field were challenging. And the nature of the research demanded extended periods of fieldwork. The work was not only physically but intellectually challenging: the research teams were pushing the envelope of conventional research practices. In most cases, they were undertaking work which was so different from what their peers and their institute recognized that at the outset they had difficulty even finding the terminology and language to share it. So the cases in this volume represent more than just one-off academic ventures. They are efforts by their authors to distil and communicate the outcomes of many years of challenges, in the field and in their own institutes, and they are products of determination, commitment and integrity as much as of documentation and analysis.

Why this book?

In recent years, a number of concerted efforts by research groups have drawn attention to CBNRM. Some of this literature is addressed in the next chapter in order to situate the work of the cases which follow. Yet, as successful as this work has been in defining a theoretical framework and providing a much richer understanding of participatory research approaches and of collective action in rural development, much of it reports on analytical conclusions and theoretical implications, rather than guides to practice. In particular, it remains challenging to find good first-hand reports on innovative, participatory local research and resource management interventions which would provide procedural insights to practitioners in the field.

We also found that much of the academic literature is relatively inaccessible to practitioners, particularly in rural Asia. This situation is changing as foreign-language capabilities improve among rural research organizations, and as new electronic media provide low-cost access to resource materials. However, there is still a significant digital divide in terms of internet access in these countries, and even when high-quality web access is technically available, internal policies at many local organizations restrict access to the necessary equipment. There is a strong need for local-language content and supporting materials in both electronic and print formats.

So while our local research partners have undertaken a variety of efforts to promote and publish their research results in national languages, they also felt it would be beneficial to present them regionally in an international language, so that they would be more accessible to a broader range of practitioners and peers. The exercise of synthesizing work they had undertaken over a lengthy period also proved valuable for the researchers, who were developing a deeper and more critical appreciation of its strengths and weaknesses. In many cases, the products forming the cases in this volume are also being reproduced by their authors in a variety of local formats and languages for other applications.

As the international scientific community has been forced to direct its efforts more and more to complex problems of resource degradation and poverty reduction, it has also had to focus increasingly on participatory approaches to research (Pound et al., 2003; Sayer and Campbell, 2004). Yet the consensus on what constitutes effective field practice in participatory research is still evolving (Vernooy and McDougall, 2003). Such consensus breaks down even further when it comes to development programme implementation. Despite the commitments of almost all international agencies and rural development programmes to the participation of those most affected in programme implementation, there is a wide range of interpretation of what this actually means in practice (Blackburn et al., 1998). Examples of good practice which emphasize field processes, learning, and outcomes in participatory research and action are, therefore, both timely and provocative.

With good reason, those governments faced with the challenges of decentralizing and implementing participatory natural resource management often claim to need additional resources – both in expertise and funding. Donors may be led to believe that solutions to these complex local poverty and environment issues can be achieved by throwing sufficient money and expertise at them. In fact, in many cases, the solutions are known, they require support for local capacity-building, leadership, initiative and learning. Donors, development agencies and national governments are not adept at facilitating local initiative. It is difficult to balance the patience required for local learning and experience so as to build confidence and initiative, with the real possibilities for sharing lessons and principles. It is challenging to recognize and respect local knowledge while still engaging the benefits of scientific enquiry and accumulated technical expertise.

In these areas, the cases presented in this book showcase helpful experiences in extremely challenging contexts. They suggest ways in which CBNRM processes can respond to these development challenges, providing a coherent approach to rural development practice that is especially well-suited to poor, unproductive and marginalized areas. They illustrate how local learning can have a broader influence on framing and implementing policies to better enable the expansion of local livelihoods and the sustainability of natural resource use. Moreover, they demonstrate the importance of local actors – particularly collective actors such as user groups, committees and local government – in generating change through networks of information and influence that extend far beyond a community's territorial boundaries.

At a time when global agendas require concerted local action, we expect that the experiences in this book will find a wide audience.

Producing this book

There are many reasons why local researchers in this field have not been published much – reasons that extend far beyond difficulties of language. Researchers may have little incentive to publish internationally in an environment where such publications play a limited role in their personal career paths. They may be too busy engaging in challenging fieldwork and practice. In addition, their organizations may have such limited funding that writing has been largely unaffordable and devoted to essential reporting and donor interactions. Despite these very real barriers, there is a slowly growing body of literature written by local scholars. The cases published here represent a special effort to bring these voices to a wider international audience.

The book has come together through both individual and collaborative effort at several levels. At the outset, the task was conceived as a series of syntheses of a large body of research activity. Most of the authors of these case studies synthesized the work of their research teams, often involving several other colleagues in their drafting and revision. This process commenced in early 2004, with invitations to the research teams to explore themes for their own work. Participants agreed on a general approach to their cases which would direct attention to the practice of participatory action research, and their reflections on what happened as a result. The drafts of these cases took shape iteratively, through interaction in the teams and with external reviewers, including IDRC professional staff.

All of the cases were presented by their authors at a regional writeshop, held in Tagaytay City, Philippines, 17–26 May 2004. External reviewers (researchers and practitioners) from the Philippines and from Canada, along with IDRC staff, provided comments and feedback to the authors. The writeshop facilities offered editorial and research support to the authors, who then revised their work, and each case underwent extensive discussion and editorial revision through one-on-one coaching, group presentations and feedback sessions, and technical editing. The final editorial content was the responsibility of chapter authors, but they were expected to respond to a wide range of review comments, and were provided with support to facilitate their work. At the end of the writeshop, a weary group of researchers had learned that writing case stories was very different from writing technical research reports for project donors.

In addition to the external reviewers, the authors of the four thematic chapters in this volume also participated in the writeshop. Their task was to synthesize across the various cases around more general themes relevant to the field of CBNRM. The topics of their synthesis chapters only took shape during the course of the writeshop, and were introduced in outline form at its conclusion.

The concentrated and focused time of the writeshop was essential to getting these products completed. Without a committed period of time away from their regular responsibilities, most authors would have been unable to complete the intense writing required. Likewise, editorial review and feedback were concentrated in a short period of time to greatly increase the quality of the raw materials. After the writeshop, authors were able to devote efforts to further revisions and refinement of their essential arguments, and to respond as the manuscript editor pursued editorial questions and revisions. All of the revised cases were circulated, and the thematic chapter authors used these to craft their own chapters, which were further circulated for comment among all the participants and substantively revised before final editing.

Organization of the cases

The cases in this volume are presented in two groups. The first group of five cases from Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos and Mongolia demonstrate how the application of participatory action research in specific sites led to changes in resource management planning and practices. In some cases, the principal effects were on resource tenure, while in others the main interventions involved new applications for increasing the productivity of common and private resources through community organization. But both productivity enhancement and tenure were important elements in all these cases. Especially in terms of tenure, this led many of the cases to address policy issues from the field. The first group of cases (Chapters 3–7) are all based on long-term, site-based fieldwork which provided a grounding for interventions combining local and scientific knowledge.

The second group of cases are similarly grounded in fieldwork, often stretching over many years in several linked sites. However, these cases particularly reflect on the external linkages of the projects and of community organizations. Specifically, they address the ways that field experience and community organizations have been scaled up to new sites, transferred to government agencies or linked to ongoing processes of formal policy change. In the Bhutan case, the authors are explicit about how the research experience has led to significant changes in the natural resource research system there. Therefore, these cases elaborate a bit more on the external and policy implications of the CBNRM action research experience.

All of the cases are oriented to improving the access of marginalized groups to the resource base and helping them to introduce strategies for increasing productivity while conserving ecological integrity. All of them pay attention to the political and social context of this work. All of them are sensitive to the local dynamics introduced by the research project, and attempt to reflect on how those dynamics have played out for different actors involved. One of the important elements which many of the cases address is how the roles of various actors – farmers, local leaders, government officials, researchers – have changed through the process of shared learning by doing.

Synthesizing project results and exploring gaps

The four thematic chapters which follow the cases synthesize the various case experiences and draw conclusions about key CBNRM issues. These chapters distance themselves from the specific projects and cases, and reflect on the development context and the outcomes reported in light of some important debates in the literature related to CBNRM.

In their chapter on pro-poor research, Gonsalves and Mendoza argue that the cases present a number of important characteristics which will be increasingly essential to ensure that international or national research systems continue to generate public goods for development priorities. In response to criticism of research systems for the lack of impact their work has had on poverty reduction, many of these organizations are adopting pro-poor research strategies.

But what does pro-poor research really mean? What would a pro-poor research agenda look like? And how might one assess its effectiveness? Gonsalves and Mendoza argue that these cases model many of the features of pro-poor research. They say it should be pragmatic, participatory and transformative. An important enabling element is the research's ability to utilize local knowledge while addressing complex interactions with physical landscapes. However, they also point to areas which need strengthening. They draw on good practices as described in these cases, which sustain livelihoods while introducing better conflict management measures and which strengthen social science analysis on multidisciplinary teams. This is especially relevant to gender issues associated with resource management, and in reforming research organizations to better enable and foster these practices.

CBNRM interventions are most commonly defined in relation to external issues: resource appropriation, conflict, and tenure rights of local vis-à-vis external agents. In their chapter Beck and Fajber turn the spotlight on to difficult and persistent issues of intra-community inequity. They point to the challenges of addressing the subtle and complex social, gender, and power relations in any community. They remind us of the experience of well-intentioned rural development interventions, both top-down and bottom-up, which have exacerbated local inequities through interventions which are captured by local elites. They point to illustrations of the problems in these cases, and some examples of how researchers have attempted to deal with them. They note some significant successes in addressing these persistent challenges, but also argue for strengthening the analysis and interventions of action research projects. Rather than attempt to be neutral in their orientation, Beck and Fajber argue that CBNRM interventions should be explicitly structured to favour the most marginalized members of the community.

In his synthesis chapter, Vandergeest argues that these cases demonstrate ways in which external CBNRM interventions build communities or modify the nature of pre-existing ones. The resulting 'CBNRM communities' in these cases are typically translocal, because they are connected to other communities and to policy-makers in networks of influence and information exchange. These cases also describe collective local actors, who possess characteristics that are quite different from other collectivities or individual actors, who are capable of intervening in a variety of ways, all of which build from natural resource management into other realms of development. In contrast to the somewhat stylized depictions of the critical literature, Vandergeest sees the CBNRM communities in these cases as seeking strategic opportunities with, rather than opposing, both the state and market forces. While he emphasizes that the communities constructed through the actions described in these cases are contingent results requiring continued effort by many actors, Vandergeest also sees them as promising examples of new approaches to collective action for development.

One of the more consistent – and perhaps more surprising – conclusions from a comparison of these cases is that most have specifically addressed policy issues. In their synthesis chapter, Tyler and Mallee dissect the ways in which the policy influence of these cases has been aided by the context of ongoing – and contested – decentralization processes in most of these countries. This context provided a window of policy flux and an opportunity for local evidence from field experience to affect policy content and implementation. Researchers have proved strategically adept at reaching for these opportunities, using a variety of methods and approaches, sometimes in partnership with local communities themselves or with external advocates. The effectiveness of the policy and policy implementation interventions appears to be related to the transformative effects of engaging key actors in the participatory action research process. As a result, there are significant implications for both policy and research in CBNRM.

Ultimately, this volume demonstrates that the CBNRM research reported in these case studies has had some significant successes in marginal areas of Asia. The work has been transformative in several important senses: the perceptions of problems, recognition of processes and causal links, exposure of power relations, social roles of key actors and utilization of productive resources have all been fundamentally changed through the learning processes described here. These transformations create new social meaning and enable creative responses to difficult problems. CBNRM requires collective local action, but also enables policy action, facilitative support of government agencies and positive individual responses. Transformative learning helps actors align these different kinds of effective action.

Above all, these cases demonstrate how researchers, men and women who rely on resources for their livelihoods, local governments and policy-makers have expanded the possibilities and practices of resource planning and management through processes of shared learning.

CHAPTER 2
Community-based natural resource management: a research approach to rural poverty and environmental degradation

Stephen Tyler

In Asia, hundreds of millions of rural men and women in uplands, semi-arid lands and infertile coastal areas are threatened by poverty and the degradation of the natural resource base on which they depend for their immediate livelihoods. These people are mostly far from urban market centres, far from capital cities and far from the minds and lives of the powerful. The ecological systems on which they depend are being depleted of nutrients, stripped of their biological diversity, and control of the valuable resources that remain is sometimes violently contested.

Yet in order to achieve global development agendas for poverty reduction, it is these people who must be reached. Current practices have failed to either significantly reduce poverty in these marginal areas, or to broadly stem the pace of environmental degradation. The problems are intensified as governments around the region decentralize the management of natural resources (Dupar and Badenoch, 2002). Innovations are needed, but what kind of innovations?

This was the challenge which IDRC faced in 1996, as we prepared a new approach for addressing research on poverty reduction and natural resource sustainability in marginal areas of rural Asia. In consultation with partners from national and international research centres throughout the region, the new research programme, CBNRM, was framed (IDRC, 2000). All the cases in this book arose from work sponsored under this programme.

This chapter reviews the rationale for the research approach adopted in the programme and the conceptual framework which has emerged from our partners applying this approach over the years. While each research project supported through the programme was unique, and there were few explicit links between them, the foundations of the CBNRM programme led to the adoption of a consistent set of tools and approaches. This starting point arose from the experiences of IDRC's professional staff and research partners in Asia, and from reviews of research approaches for rural poverty and environment issues in the mid-1990s. Some of the key intellectual threads of the CBNRM research framework will be introduced here (others are addressed in more depth in the synthesis chapters in Part IV of this volume). But the programme, as conceived by the research donor (IDRC), also evolved through its application by partners in the field into a richer and more complete conceptual framework. This framework for action research in CBNRM underlies most of the case narratives presented. This chapter provides the conceptual background to the cases and helps explain the methodological consistency among them.

Why has research failed to reach the poor?

There are close linkages between problems of rural poverty and natural resource degradation. However, each phenomenon is complex, and linkages are not simple in any causal sense. The ecological and geographic constraints of location are major contributors to the spatial concentration of rural poverty. Indeed, most of the rural poor worldwide are found in those least favoured areas where natural and human factors combine to constrain agricultural production and market access (Pender, Hazell and Garrett, 2001).

Classic approaches to rural development research invested in improved technologies to increase production in various sectors: forestry, agriculture, fisheries, livestock or irrigation. IDRC research support helped to build national scientific capacity in Asia in these fields throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Such research had the advantage of being able to connect readily to professionals, academics and government staff who were organized sectorally and trained in different applied science disciplines. This kind of work remains essential to broaden the range of responses available for farmers and to increase yields of staple grains. But it has not been successful in helping poor, marginal farmers to improve their conditions; nor has it been effective in addressing the fundamental causes of resource degradation (Chambers, 1997; Sayer and Campbell, 2004).

The green revolution packages of improved crop varieties and inputs that led to large increases in grain production in Asia did not reach such marginal areas. High-yielding varieties (HYVs) are designed to respond predictably to commercial inputs which standardize the production environment through irrigation, fertilizer and pesticide application. If managed carefully, these can be very effective in productive agro-ecosystems where conditions are broadly consistent and where access to input and product markets is assured.

However, in less favoured areas ecological conditions are heterogeneous. Soils, slopes, altitude and other microclimatic factors such as water availability, quality and accessibility are subject to wide variation over small areas. Farmers' practices are diverse and spread risk across a wide variety of livelihood strategies that are reliant on multiple resources. Standardized technical solutions do not work (Chambers, Pacey and Thrupp, 1989). Researchers and research donors alike could see that while scientific advances could be made in test plots, these were not benefiting the poorest farmers whose fields were much more diverse – if they had fields at all.

Innovations in integrated agriculture and forestry research and in watershed management provided models for joint investigation and management of agro­ecological systems, which spanned the boundaries of conventional, reductionist science in each of these related fields. Farming systems research, which extended the conventional commodity production approach of agricultural research, was one of these. This research approach recognized that poor smallholder farmers could afford neither the inputs nor the risks of HYV monocropping, and instead explored the productivity potential of linking intensive management of trees, staple crops, cover and conditioning crops, livestock and sometimes aquaculture. These joint systems benefited from careful agro-ecological studies to take advantage of nutrient chains, ecological complementarity and soil-replenishing features to strengthen resource productivity under diverse conditions. Low-input agriculture research helped to improve understanding of pest and soil management to enable farmers to improve resource quality and sustainability by reducing chemical use. Agroforestry research helped to validate and expand the range of livelihood options for farmers in forests and uplands by developing more productive tree crops, as well as fodder and tree-crop intercropping. Integrated watershed management demonstrated the links between land use practices and hydrology in conditioning both surface and groundwater supply and quality. The progress of these research efforts extended the ways that agricultural scientists and foresters viewed their roles in resource management. They required greater interaction between researchers and farmers to understand and test existing or novel management systems. The experiences from such work not only expanded the repertoire of applied science research methods, but provided a range of promising options for improving smallholders' livelihoods. These were helpful precedents for CBNRM researchers.

An even more integrated research focus on production systems, or on biophysical and ecological constraints to production, failed to address the problems of access by the poor to key natural resource assets. This is most obvious in the case of arable land, which has led to numerous efforts at land reform and land reallocation throughout Asia. However, it is also true in the case of access to pasture, forests, fisheries or water. These resources, essential to the livelihoods of poor farmers in less favoured areas, cannot easily be allocated to and managed by private households. Utilization decisions by one set of users affect the quantity or quality of resource available for other users of the same resource. Therefore, collective institutions are needed to manage these resources (Knox, Meinzen-Dick and Hazell, 1998). But this posed problems for resource management research. Little was known about such institutions and how to investigate them. Frequently they did not exist, or if they did exist, they were not recognized by governments as capable of management action and hence were not seen as targets for innovation.

The issue of resource tenure also arose in relation to the commercialization of resources. As private commercial interest in rural resources grew, for instance due to industrial plantation crops, large-scale logging, hydroelectric power development and agricultural colonization, the poor found that they could no longer control their local resource base. Both management by central government and private enclosure, which is mainly concerned with maximizing returns from the resource, neglected the role of common property resources on which the poor frequently depend. Commercialization of these common property resources led to changes in the de facto rights of poor local resource users. This excluded and further impoverished them (Dove, 1993; de Koninck, 1997; Beck and Nesmith, 2001).

More generally, natural scientists focusing on biophysical resources neglected institutional linkages to processes of impoverishment. Yet it is precisely the institutions of resource management which must be addressed if targeted poverty reduction measures are to succeed in resource-dependent communities (Béné, 2003). In the face of these persistent difficulties in how to apply research and innovation to the problems of poverty and environmental degradation, the role of scientific specialists in proposing solutions became increasingly discredited. They were proved to be frequently wrong, or had limited impact on actual practice (Chambers 1997; Sayer and Campbell, 2004).

Another part of the problem is that the sectoral organization of science, extension and policy does not match the perspective of the poor farmers themselves. They are obliged to adopt multiple livelihood and subsistence strategies, relying on agriculture, livestock, fish, forest collection, wage labour and a range of other resource utilization strategies, as well as increasingly off-farm labour and remittances. Therefore, technical improvements in one particular production technology may or may not fit within the diverse practices and adaptation strategies of farmers in marginal areas. An example of this relationship would be the seasonal migration of male members of the household, where the ensuing labour scarcity may constrain potential new farming strategies.

For some time, critical scholars of rural development and agricultural research have pointed to the need for a much greater emphasis on the perspectives of poor local farmers. They need to be considered as development actors themselves, with very different perceptions and motivations from external interveners, but who nonetheless have significant, albeit unrecognized, capacities (Chambers, 1983; Scott, 1985; Biggs and Farrington, 1991; Beck, 1994). There was also increasing recognition of the value of indigenous (or traditional) knowledge for informing scientific understanding of agriculture and natural resources and for guiding effective local interventions in environmental management (Berkes, 1993). There is now plenty of evidence in Asia of indigenous practices adapting to constrained environments to improve their productivity (Cairns, 2005).

These emerging lessons from research in applied sciences and rural development pointed towards the need for a new research approach for poverty reduction and natural resource management (see Figure 2.1). They also coincided with other factors that shaped the programming of many international development agencies in the 1990s. The UN Conference on Environment and Development in 1992 adopted the Agenda 21 action programme, responding to the call for sustainable development contained in the report of the World Commission on Environment and Development (Brundtland, 1987; UN Dept of Economic and Social Development, 1992). This high-profile international

Figure 2.1 Paths to CBNRM research

commitment strongly linked poverty and environment issues, placing them firmly on the development agenda. At the same time, the dominance of the 'Washington consensus' drove development policymaking to reduce the role of the state and emphasize the potential of smallholder farmers to generate economic growth by responding to liberalized markets. Rural development practice came to be strongly influenced by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), rather than government or international organizations. The rhetoric of participatory development was widely adopted by most organizations engaged in rural development (Ellis and Biggs, 2001), yet rarely tested critically. All of these factors pointed to the need for a programme of applied research which could explore integrated approaches to natural resource management from the perspective of resource users.

Defining CBNRM research

While it is important to have some clarity of basic concepts, the intention from the outset of this programme was that research partners should explore the meaning of CBNRM in practice for themselves. The programme resisted trying to define too specifically what ought to constitute community-based natural resource management. Throughout the 1990s this term came to be popularized in the rhetoric of donors, NGOs and development agencies, and was critically addressed by academics. It was applied to a very broad range of approaches and practices. IDRC's CBNRM research programme started from a set of principles which distinguished its work from that of other researchers and practitioners, and which responded to the particular concerns identified above.

The foundation of the research programme was its focus on poor people and on strengthening their livelihoods. Enquiry was oriented to natural resources, but from the outset the goal of the work was aimed at improving the conditions of poor men and women, where the quality of the resource base was a prime element in their well-being. In this respect, the approach of CBNRM departed from one of the antecedents to this research programme, that of community-based conservation.

In the late 1980s, large international conservation organizations began to work closely with local organizations and communities to support the creation of protected areas and strengthen the conservation of endangered ecosystems. These efforts led to many community-based integrated conservation and development programmes, which attempted to provide local benefits through wildlife and ecosystem protection programmes (Wells and Hannah, 1992). But recent critiques have emphasized the fundamentally co-optive nature of conservation initiatives with indigenous and local communities when goals are defined primarily by governments or external agents (Chapin, 2004). CBNRM took a different starting point, emphasizing that in principle, resource management objectives ought to be locally grounded.

A premise of CBNRM research was that the traditional and local knowledge of resource users deserved to be valued and treated with respect. The conventional professional training of natural and social scientists has led them to dismiss traditional knowledge, especially when it is not formally codified or documented. Yet traditional or local knowledge, in the context of its specific applications and relevant scientific validation, can make important contributions to agriculture and natural resource management (Chambers, Pacey and Thrupp, 1989; DeWalt, 1994). As a point of departure for research, the crucial considerations here were about the meaning of knowledge and the attitudes of researchers more than narrow methodological concerns. We recognized that knowledge has value both for its intrinsic meaning in a particular social context and also for what people can do with it. These different values and meanings of knowledge come from the social context in which knowledge is created and used. Therefore, meanings can be different in local and scientific contexts where knowledge is created and used under different criteria (Berger and Luckman, 1966; Kuhn, 1962). For problem-oriented researchers, it becomes important not just to catalogue and categorize different types of knowledge, but to build understanding and interaction between them. To begin with, this meant that researchers had to find ways to identify and assess knowledge in different forms and from various sources (Grenier, 1998).

In addition to local knowledge, the CBNRM research programme presumed that resource users also had rights to access resources essential to their livelihoods. These rights are typically complex, and can include overlapping customary and legal tenure rights, rights to different kinds of resources at different seasons, and rights which are recognized by different agents under different circumstances. These rights can be held by individuals, family groups or communities defined in various ways. They can be exclusive or shared, sometimes depending on context. Formal or informal rights might only be translated into practical resource access and use under certain conditions. As natural resources in marginal areas come under more pressure from competing users and from degradation, overlapping rights and tenures are increasingly contested (Vandergeest, 1997; Leach, Mearns and Scoones, 1999). Lack of formal rights, conflict over rights, or loss of longstanding resource rights all reduce the incentive for users to invest in managing the resource base and lead to degradation. Understanding these rights and the institutions through which they are contested was taken to be an important prerequisite for effective intervention and change.

The notion of introducing change was fundamental to CBNRM research. The research was intended to yield practical short-term benefits for resource users through improved natural resource management. This was not to be merely an exercise in analysis and theory- or model-building. The learning was to produce concrete, implementable and sustainable innovations to benefit local farmers and fishers. Depending on the problems and context, these were often linked to technical efforts to improve resource productivity, such as through introducing new agricultural, agroforestry, aquaculture, livestock or integrated techniques. But they could also include designing and introducing new institutions which might be required to resolve crucial conflicts or secure collective tenure. The research was premised on the notion that in these marginal agricultural contexts, where common property resources were essential to the livelihoods of the poor, both technological and institutional innovations would ultimately be needed. Hence, the question of where to start was largely a pragmatic one. In order for innovations to be adopted and adapted by resource users themselves, they had to be practical, sensible and understandable. They had to be tested and validated by the users, who were male and female farmers and fishers. In addition, they had to be endorsed by the best available knowledge of the researchers themselves.

CBNRM research was also intended to recognize from the outset that communities are ill-defined and heterogeneous. Interests diverge, wealth and power separate, social relations are complex and dynamic, and history matters. Differences of culture, ethnicity and language can make these characteristics opaque to outsiders, whether from the other side of the river or the other side of the planet. Researchers were encouraged not to romanticize the community and its potential for natural resource management, and to start from where local people were, rather than from any idealized notion of appropriate practices. Local situations are idiosyncratic and easily misinterpreted by outsiders, especially those with a predetermined agenda.

Applying innovations in the field meant recognizing that local change and development requires the agency of local men and women, who are capable of responsible and creative choices to improve their own circumstances. It was also crucial to obtain the support of local government, which can – and often must – endorse innovative resource management practices. For example, many of the research activities dealt with institutional innovations such as tenure and resource access, as well as individual and collective management interventions for resources which were not privately owned. Therefore, any research effort that expected to generate usable innovations had to address the concerns of local people and governments. The best way to do that was to ensure that these actors were fully engaged in the research at its outset, and that their voices were influential in directing the enquiry.

The research approach described above has several important implications, which are significant enough to be considered as underlying design principles for the research programme. First, and most important, the CBNRM research programme was premised on meaningful participation by local men and women in the research effort. The participatory nature of the research was intrinsically linked to recognition of poor farmers and fishers as crucial agents of change and development, and not merely targets of technological advice. Strengthening and empowering their actions required participatory approaches. The emphasis on indigenous knowledge, on understanding institutions and on practical and sustainable interventions all made it imperative for the researchers and the local people to be jointly engaged in learning. Lessons would have to be convincing and evidence credible for poor farmers or fishers to risk investing in innovations. The best evidence would come from the users themselves.

Second, an interdisciplinary approach to the research was fundamental. The intent was to develop practical and sustainable innovations to address the agro-ecological constraints within the dynamic social and institutional context of resource users' behaviour. Therefore, diagnosis and analysis had to cross disciplinary boundaries. From the outset, it was expected that a wide range of expertise would be called on in each research site. But more than that, it was apparent that the necessity of integrating different disciplinary approaches would require methods which used qualitative and quantitative data, analysis and interpretation. These stretched the conventional practices of any single discipline and required the development of new interdisciplinary tools and methods.

The nature of the research task meant that while a range of comparative and methodological research would be supportive, the fundamental test of this CBNRM approach would necessarily involve long-term, site-based fieldwork. The research programme was premised on shared learning from experience on the part of researchers and farmers. This was time-consuming: it involved joint diagnosis, analysis, exploration, intervention and evaluation. In addition, it necessarily focused on outcomes, not on analysis. Without specific reference to outcomes in a series of different contexts, little could be concluded about the framework as an innovative approach to the problem of rural poverty and environmental degradation.

These characteristics of the approach to CBNRM were well represented in the international academic discourse of the mid-1990s. At that time, they were beginning to appear in the work of leading rural development practitioners and on the curricula of graduate programmes in the industrialized world. They were spreading rapidly in international-language journals and international organizations. However, in many parts of Asia, these represented a huge departure from the conceptual frameworks, academic preparation and practices of local scientists and development specialists. In the poorest countries and subnational regions where the CBNRM programme chose to focus its research efforts, most of these concepts were completely new. And there were very few examples anywhere of how to integrate and then implement these concepts coherently in practice. Research teams had to build methods, tools and practical intervention strategies while they were digesting and evaluating the relevance of the concepts.

This would be a challenging research agenda anywhere. How reasonable was it to expect to implement this research approach under the difficult conditions of desperately under-resourced local research organizations in remote parts of the region?

It is important to keep in mind the fundamental capacity-building objectives of the programme. First, it was important to characterize the complex and dynamic problems of poor people's livelihoods and their relationship to local ecological degradation. The point of the programme was to build local expertise in addressing this complexity, among researchers as well other actors who were involved. The programme commenced by incorporating emerging perspectives in the literature related to agricultural research, environmental management and international development. IDRC sought to facilitate access to that literature for researchers in isolated and impoverished regions of Asia,1 but our approach to CBNRM mainly sought to encourage learning by doing.

Therefore, the CBNRM research programme was based less on a preconceived model or formula for intervention than it was on a collaborative learning agenda. The concepts recognized and embraced the complexity of agro-ecological and social systems, while responding to the imperative of action on immediate problems. The emphasis was on building partial understandings and confidence for intervention, but then on iterative learning from those interventions and moving to longer-term issues. Having absorbed some of the lessons from critiques in the literature, the emphasis of the research programme was on practice more than theory. But given the natural science background of many of our partners, the programme particularly made an effort to draw on social science contributions to natural resource management so as to prepare research partners for this kind of work.

Building blocks of CBNRM research

Natural resource management at the local level involves interventions in the resource base. But there are other factors to consider. These include the embedded rights which different people and groups have to use or to manipulate the resource base, the social relations between them which condition the scope of actions which are possible, and recognition of who holds power and how it can be exercised. Therefore, research into this complex system must draw on a broad range of concepts and models from both social and natural sciences as they are applied to agriculture and natural resource management (Ashby, 2003; Sayer and Campbell, 2004). There is an enormous body of literature on which to draw, and we cannot make any systematic attempt to summarize it here. But most of the researchers who became involved in the CBNRM fieldwork approached it from a prior background in natural sciences, and so conceptual and analytical tools from the social sciences were those most frequently needing both introduction and support.

Participatory approaches are essential starting points for CBNRM research. While public participation is novel for some natural resource researchers in Asia, it has long been recognized as a term applied to diverse practices, ranging from the extraction of data to the full engagement of participants in decision-making (Arnstein, 1969). As a starting point when working with researchers who had little previous experience with participatory methods or tools, the programme emphasized collaborative learning and problem diagnosis with farmers through participatory rural appraisal (PRA) methods (Chambers, Pacey and Thrupp, 1989; IIRR, 1998). Participatory research methods take some getting used to on both sides. Practitioners and local people need to become familiar with these practices and to build expectations when they have little experience of this type. But the intention was that over time, using Arnstein's (1969) analogy of a ladder of participation, which sees token consultation at the bottom and full engagement in decision-making at the top, the role of farmers and local people in the research enterprise would ascend to more meaningful and profound levels of engagement. Research proposals were designed so that problem definition would be responsive to local priorities and knowledge, along with technical analysis. A key role of participatory research was to enhance the capacities of farmers themselves so that they became capable of assessing and articulating their own situations (Nelson and Wright, 1995). This meant that participation was not an exercise in merely generating data for researchers to analyse, but was an ongoing and iterative process of engagement, learning and empowerment.

For researchers, this meant learning that participatory approaches are not merely about technique. Indeed, the techniques themselves are easily learned. What participatory approaches are fundamentally about is agency, that is, a perspective on development which emphasizes the role of individuals and groups in applying knowledge, capacity and action to expand their choices in a particular cultural setting. This is a different perspective from one which sees development as being about structure. That type of development concerns itself with systems, organizations, capital or technology transfers, and the ways these interact to generate aggregate outcomes (Long and van der Ploeg, 1994).

Undertaking participatory research is therefore as much about the adoption of attitudes of humility, respect and shared learning in interaction as it is about specific concepts, methods and tools (Chambers 1995; Pretty and Scoones, 1995). These attitudes are best learned through experience, reflection and practice. In particular, participatory researchers require skills in communications, especially listening skills. Unfortunately, these skills are seldom taught in formal academic or professional programmes. When the objective of development research is social and organizational change, research needs to be structured so that all participants gain from the learning process. This demands recognition of inherent uncertainties in the process and commitment to empowering others, reflecting critically on the process and evaluating outcomes. These were all elements which were encouraged through CBNRM research (Vernooy, Sun Qiu and Xu Jianchu, 2003).

In recent years, there has been considerable critical assessment of participatory research in natural resource management (Leeuwis and Pyburn, 2002; Pound et al., 2003; Sayer and Campbell, 2004). Based on a comparative assessment of over 20 case studies, Vernooy and McDougall (2003) suggest five principles of best practice in participatory research. They must:

• reflect a clear and coherent common agenda among stakeholders and contribute to partnership building;

• address and integrate the complexities and dynamics of change in human and natural resource systems;

• apply the triangulation principle of using multiple sources and methods, and link together multiple knowledge worlds;

• contribute to concerted planning for the future and to social change; and

• be based on iterative learning and feedback loops where there is two-way sharing of information.

These principles capture well the ideals of engagement, joint learning, collective decision-making and scientific rigour, along with practical action and change, all of which are at the heart of the CBNRM participatory research framework. It is fair to suggest that none of the research projects started with best practices on any of these dimensions. Nonetheless, these principles came to guide the progress which all the projects have followed while conceptualizing and strengthening the participatory dimensions of their research.

In addition to meaningful participatory methods, another foundational building block for CBNRM was the study of resource tenure. The central issues of resource use, control and rights – and, therefore, power – are all encapsulated in the institutions associated with resource tenure. Their importance with respect to the reduction of poverty and natural resource degradation has been discussed above. The central tenet of common property resource theory is that it is not only possible, but empirically frequent, that collective institutions in rural societies are designed to manage resources which would otherwise be degraded by the pursuit of individual utility (Berkes, 1989; Ostrom, 1990).

However, while forests, irrigation systems, fisheries and pastures all appear to be amenable to community management, the devil is in the details. Rights to access and use resources are always linked to power relations. They are inherently bound to shared concepts which give meaning to resource use, as well as the social relations within which these are constituted. Hence, common property research inherently involves not only the study of resource rights and institutions, but also the ways in which they are moderated by culture, social organization, political power and resource values. All of these factors are dynamic and respond to both internal and external change. In the context of natural resource management diagnosis and intervention, it is possible to adopt a prescriptive approach, where you first analyse and then recommend conditions for successful community management of common property resources. Or you can take a historical approach, analysing the ways in which resource tenure, social relations and power have evolved in any given community to generate the contextual pattern in evidence (Johnson, 2004). For the purposes of CBNRM understanding and intervention, each of these research approaches offers value. Choices could depend on context and on strategic objectives.

Resource tenure studies quickly get to the issue of control, which is inherent in the whole notion of CBNRM. Practical measures to redress environmental degradation and strengthen livelihoods require secure common property tenures to respond to the decentralization of authority for resource management or the failure of state management systems. Although they were once typical of traditional rural societies, such tenure systems have been eroded by the state or by commercialization, or are no longer able to deal effectively with the new burdens of conflict and multiple demands on the resource base. The challenges of introducing new forms of collective tenure, or of managing the private enclosure of common property in an equitable fashion, were important issues on the research agenda of CBNRM projects.

These foundational elements of participatory methods and institutional analysis pointed to an area of particular challenge for research partners: the nature of social differentiation and exclusion. Both traditional and modern institutions for resource tenure and management are rooted in social and power relations, and hence in the nature of social and political difference. Such differentiation is structured and expressed differently from one society to another, and may involve a wide range of social characteristics, including wealth, ethnicity, religion and caste. However, a crucial consideration is the role of gender. It was impossible for researchers to structure their enquiry collaboratively with resource users, or to pursue questions of the social construction of rights and power, without confronting gender as a differentiating factor in participation and power with respect to resource management (Agarwal, 2001). In many cases, this was an issue which research partners had not previously considered. This was not only a matter of gender blindness, but often of avoidance. Researchers who had plenty of field experience or extension training usually were sensitive to the general issues of power, social relations and participation in learning among rural communities. But they found gender issues difficult to address. They often lacked tools for formulating concepts, collecting or analysing data, or even communicating sensitively with both men and women about gender differentiation in natural resource decision-making and utilization. This was an area which, although flagged early on for attention in the research programme, remains challenging (see Beck and Fajber, chapter 15).

None of these building block elements were new. But there were several novel features in a research programme based on such foundations. First was the emphasis on introducing and building meaningful participation of local men and women in all components of research, from problem definition to interpretation and assessment of outcomes. This was not a matter of sacrificing rigour in the research approach, but of ensuring it. The rigour demanded of this research programme was that of effective practice. Results had to stand the test of farmers' fields and practical village life. There is great value in research that expands the frontiers of conceptual knowledge, builds theories for wider exploration and challenges conventional disciplinary wisdom through critical analysis. However, none of these goals were primary objectives of this research programme, which focused on practical outcomes and local change.

By adopting an action-oriented approach, the research programme intended to cross the divide between applied research and practice. Its emphasis on learning by doing as a way to build research capacity using challenging new concepts allowed researchers as practitioners to test theory against local outcomes. By also engaging local resource users as learners, the research was meant to develop models of practice for researchers and professionals, practice which would simultaneously build capacities for local organization, action and continued learning among poor farmers and fishers.

This was also an explicit attempt to combine perspectives on social and natural science problems through an integrated mode of enquiry. It was not merely a matter of building research teams of diverse specializations, but of structuring the programme of research to address issues which lie between and across the disciplinary specializations (see Figure 2.2).

Finally, the research programme was meant to engage governments as well as local resource users. Research projects were structured to involve local government officials in diagnosis of problems as well as in interpreting results. From the outset, policy innovations were identified as valuable targets for the research effort. Taken together, these were the characteristics which set the stage for the cases which are presented in subsequent chapters. But these programming ideals also evolved as research projects were implemented by teams in a dozen different countries in Asia.

Figure 2.2 Building blocks of CBNRM

A practical framework for action research

A research framework arose not only from these objectives, from the adoption of concepts and models in several disciplines, and from guidelines for implementation which emphasized the characteristics described above. It also matured through the fieldwork undertaken by research partners, including those not represented in this book. Their struggles with practical and conceptual issues helped to refine the initial model, sometimes by simplification and sometimes by elaboration.

One of the first lessons from employing participatory methods in the field was that, not unreasonably, it generated expectations of assistance among local people. Any approach to poor communities by outside expertise is structured in a context of differential power and wealth which itself creates initial expectations, most of which are unhelpful to communication and shared understanding. From their extensive experience, poor communities are generally suspicious of the motives of external interventions. They may have little time, patience or shared vocabulary for explaining to outsiders complex resource, agricultural and social systems which to them are self-evident. Therefore, building positive relationships with local men and women in poor communities meant the research teams had to develop better communications skills. They learned that to build trust they had to set aside preconceived research agendas and start with practical responses to locally perceived problems.

Sometimes this led in directions where the researchers could do little of value. For example, in several of the field sites profiled in this book, villagers were concerned about inadequate local facilities for primary education. The CBNRM research teams were not equipped to address this problem, but could mediate between local communities and NGOs, or government agencies with resources that could be leveraged for this purpose. The research team identified local needs to external agencies, helped local leaders to apply or to meet external criteria, and helped communities to mobilize their own resources. The researchers adopted facilitation roles for local development inputs, which also built trust and shared commitment to their CBNRM research efforts.

This process worked both ways. As the community and its leaders gained confidence in the researchers and their potential to contribute to local goals, the researchers themselves gained greater respect for the strategic capabilities of local people and their leaders. Nonetheless, these processes take time. Expectations on both sides have to be moderate. Building trust and participatory skills is not easily accomplished to a predetermined deadline or a fixed work plan. Project planning had to be flexible and responsive. In the course of implementing the CBNRM research programme, IDRC learned it also had to accommodate reasonable adjustments to project timing and costs.

Another factor which became evident as the research gained momentum in the field was conflict over resource use. Natural resource conflicts are inherent to human valuation and exploitation of resources, and are found everywhere. But these conflicts have become more widespread and more intense as resource demands multiply (Buckles, 1999). Research teams almost always found unanticipated and sometimes complex conflict situations when they diagnosed resource access rights and use in the field. In many cases, they were not well-prepared to address questions of resource conflict. Having established the inequities and abuses of power which frequently lay beneath these conflicts through participatory social and historical research, researchers were no longer able to rely on narrowly legalistic or officially sanctioned solutions. They typically sought to introduce new processes for conflict management, or create new win-win options which would fulfil the mandates of state control yet increase benefits for poor local resource users. This was an important new area of research and practice for the researchers. It required training and the elaboration of new tools and methods. It also required special skills in communication and negotiation, or the ability to foster such skills in others. Developing tools to respond to resource conflicts became an important part of the CBNRM framework, as the research teams repeatedly recognized the frequency of such problems in the field, coupled with the inadequacy of existing institutional mechanisms to address them.

As the researchers gained confidence and experience, and as they were able to demonstrate local successes in addressing natural resource degradation, strengthening local resource rights and improving livelihoods, it became evident to them that these successes needed to be extended to other situations. In many cases, the researchers' first attempts to extend this learning were in response to requests from communities near their field sites, who had seen the improvement in their neighbours' practices and conditions, and wanted to adopt similar measures themselves. This was sometimes a difficult request to address. Researchers are often wary of early positive results and (in good scientific fashion) prefer to wait for validation and repetition before systematic extension. Usually, the teams had limited resources to respond to these requests. But as they became more confident with the methods, and as results were seen to be robust, the researchers recognized that they had to develop better ways to share and extend their lessons. This led to expanding the scale of their innovations.

The research teams approached scaling in two ways: they scaled out especially using farmer-to-farmer and community-to-community extension approaches to reach neighbouring user groups and local government units adjacent to their field sites. In addition, they scaled up by engaging senior government agencies in the elaboration of the methods, and in their replication and adaptation to new conditions. Both scaling out and scaling up research innovations became part of the CBNRM lexicon as the programme evolved, and the reader will find examples of these approaches in the cases.

After gaining experience in the field, and through interaction with local government units, research teams came into greater contact with the policy constraints to local CBNRM action. They learned that local resource degradation was an outcome of complex failures of rights, of conflicts, of power disparities and of inappropriate production systems. But when they tried to design interventions to address the problems they found, they commonly ran into constraints imposed by existing natural resource tenure or management policies. Perhaps there were no opportunities for collective local management of common pool resources. Sometimes there were official systems for community resource management, but these were not implementable due to onerous administrative and technical requirements. Occasionally, the government was one of the parties exacerbating resource conflicts through inept or inadequate implementation of well-intentioned resource policies.

These experiences led most of the CBNRM research teams to explore avenues for influencing natural resource management policies in order to ensure that field-level CBNRM innovations could be put in place. For many of the researchers, venturing into the realm of policy decision-making was another new experience. Policymaking in these countries is far from transparent, and in some cases the mechanisms of policy development were neither obvious nor accessible to the researchers. However, most of the research teams were able to find ways of influencing policy after devoting effort to networking and learning (see Tyler and Mallee, Chapter 17).

CBNRM researchers have come to interpret this general conceptual framework as one of participatory action research (PAR). In this context, the action is not necessarily political action (in association with a particular social movement, for example), but action in the sense of local innovation and change. The main lessons from the research are those which local people can take away and apply themselves to improve their economic welfare, their political power, their social status and the quality of the resource base on which they depend. Learning in this conceptual framework becomes a social process, engaging multiple actors with different interests.

The researchers themselves are only one of the learning groups in CBNRM research. The research process is an iterative one, where scientific and local knowledge are both applied critically to diagnose problems and design interventions. The crucial element of a formalized PAR process is the assessment of interventions by the various actors involved. Were they effective in addressing the problems? Did they generate unexpected consequences? Who benefited? Has resource quality improved? In order to reach some conclusions about what has been learned, actors need to reflect critically on what was being attempted, on the data they have to assess it, and on the surprises which arose along the way. The context is always dynamic: resources, demographics, markets, power relations and policies change with time and require adjustments and adaptations

Table 2.1 Building a practical framework in the field

at the local level. Research teams have developed participatory monitoring and evaluation tools to strengthen this learning process and ensure that various actors formalize their learning (Vernooy, Sun Qiu and Xu Jianchu, 2003). Table 2.1 summarizes the main ways that the CBNRM research framework was adapted and elaborated by research practice.

Applying the framework: case studies from Asia

The CBNRM research framework applied in the cases in this book emerged from a concern with the failures of applied research to reach the rural poor in developing countries. It was based on principles which tried to keep poor men and women central to the framing of research problems, the implementation of projects and the learning which resulted. The framework evolved through application, and was flexible enough to look a bit different in the various site-based studies, in response to the political, agro-ecological, and social contexts, as well as the capacities of the various players.

The collection of cases which follows is representative of the long-term site-based research projects which were the core of the CBNRM research programme over the period 1997–2004. Their methodological commonalities can be attributed to the framework described above, with principles and concepts articulated jointly by the researchers and IDRC, and then elaborated by the researchers themselves during implementation.

The poverty and natural resource contexts in many of these locales were not well-documented in the mid-1990s, in terms of political, institutional, governance and ecological characteristics. Therefore, there was a very limited amount of international literature which might provide relevant background or precedents for any of the sites. In most cases, local studies and background data existed, but these were either of dubious accuracy, or were premised on more traditional agricultural research which was of limited value for CBNRM.

In this context, at the outset most of the projects evolved in unexpected ways. Everyone was in learning mode. Objectives shifted, sites changed, practical difficulties were either overcome or else derailed the efforts. Local researchers also had to deal with the normal challenges of working in any remote part of a developing country. An array of challenges presented themselves: flooding of project offices and computers, unreliable logistics, changing organizational structures and intervening opportunities, and generally low administrative predictability.

At every step, research teams created their own precedents in a field which was new to them, using concepts and methods which were not widely recognized by their peers. This required courage. There was no practical option to learning by doing, and the research teams tried to integrate new processes of collaboration, reflection and integration as well as analysis. The learning process was not smooth, and rough spots remain. But the experiences of implementing and working with this conceptual framework for CBNRM research have generated many insights into practice, as represented in the cases which follow.

Part II
Community-based natural resource management in action

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CHAPTER 3
Community-based natural resource management and decentralized governance in Ratanakiri, Cambodia

Ashish Joshia Ingty John and Chea Phalla

Abstract

This chapter describes the experience of introducing CBNRM in Ratanakiri province, Cambodia, through a programme of action research. The research was undertaken in close collaboration with the provincial authorities and linked to the Seila Programme of the Royal Government of Cambodia; a policy experiment on decentralized planning, management and financing of local development. The project helped the province develop procedures for participatory land-use planning, which strengthened the negotiating position of community members in land conflicts with outsiders. At the same time, it helped build the capacity of the government at the provincial and local levels for decentralized natural resource management. This led to agreements on resource management between communities and the provincial government, and to recognition of indigenous people's resource tenure and rights. This was made possible through a combination of field-level participatory action research, along with extensive cooperation with different levels of the government and networking with NGOs and other stakeholders. The strong involvement of indigenous communities in Ratanakiri province also helped the government to begin to understand issues faced by indigenous people and to respond more effectively to their development needs.

Introduction

In 1995, the provincial authorities and the indigenous communities of Oyadao district in Ratanakiri province were informed that a 20,000-ha palm oil concession had been granted by the national government in Oyadao district, which covered parts of several communes, including Somthom commune. The palm oil company started clearing the forest in Somthom and they came prepared to quell any challenge to their claim. Sara Colm recorded the experience of the villagers:

The company had no relation with people in the village and commune,' said a Som Koul resident. 'They just came here to look for workers to clear the land. Some of the supervisors were good but some were fierce and carried guns. They use guns to intimidate the people.' Another villager from Beang said, 'In the beginning of 1995, twenty company staff came here. Everyone had guns and were dressed in military uniforms. They had AK-47s and rocket launchers. They were looking for workers to cut the forest. They asked the commune to sign and thumbprint a document stating our obligation to look after our cows from roaming or they [the cows] would be shot. (Colm, 1996)

The indigenous communities in Ratanakiri were strongly affected by the government's decisions to grant land or forest concessions without local consultation or consideration of indigenous livelihoods. In the process, the traditional lands and forests of these communities were taken away and control handed to powerful domestic and foreign companies. Somthom was only one example.

Clearing forests for plantation meant clearing sacred areas and land used by shifting cultivators. This made life difficult for Somthom farmers. It was even more difficult for women who gathered forest products. As Seu Chil, a female farmer from Somthom said, 'We are highlanders: our lives depend on the forests and land. Without forests and land, we cannot live. We need firewood, vegetables, fruits, mushroom, and bamboo shoots from the forests. We see the forests as our market.'

Ratanakiri is home to indigenous ethnic minority communities who speak nine different languages. They are animists and practise shifting cultivation. Their livelihoods and culture are traditionally entwined with natural resources, which they actively manage through complex community land-use patterns (Fox, 1996). In the mid-1990s, 70 per cent of the population in Ratanakiri was indigenous. But ethnic Khmer who are Buddhist and mainly paddy (wet rice) farmers are the dominant group in Cambodia, and 98 per cent of the government staff in Ratanakiri belong to this group. The Khmer culture regards shifting cultivation and the culture of indigenous communities with suspicion. Authorities were accustomed to telling indigenous communities what to do and not listening to local, indigenous voices. Corruption was widespread and it was common for companies to offer payments to government officials for their favour. But despite these disadvantages, after three years of effort, Somthom community members were able to negotiate an agreement with the government and the concessionaire to reduce the size of the forest concession by 75 per cent and not to log any more of their forest.

The story of this accomplishment demonstrates a tremendous shift in awareness, initiative and power relations. To understand what happened in Somthom commune, it is necessary to understand the series of events, development programmes and the different projects that helped build new

Figure 3.1 Map showing Ratanakiri in northeast Cambodia

relationships between government agencies and community members. This case study highlights an approach to building partnerships for CBNRM. The approach is a balancing act that empowers local communities to negotiate and reinforce traditional land and forest tenure, while also building government capacity for decentralization from national to provincial and local levels.

The context

In 1993, Cambodia held its first elections after more than 20 years of turmoil. As part of the reforms required by the international community, the government agreed to decentralize governance structures and provide more opportunities for local-level planning and decision-making. Known as the Seila Programme, the decentralization and local governance reform processes operated within the broad framework of the government of Cambodia's First Socio-economic Development Plan of 1996–2000. This started as a 'controlled policy experiment' on decentralized planning, management and funding of rural development in five provinces, including Ratanakiri. The projects were concrete investments in the rehabilitation of infrastructure, the establishment of basic services and support for economic livelihoods, but did not at the outset include natural resource management (NRM). To assist the government in implementing the Seila programme, a support project known as the Cambodian Area Regeneration and Rehabilitation project (CARERE) was formulated by UNDP. Donors have provided strong support to this approach and many donor programmes are now operating under the Seila umbrella. At the national level, the Seila Taskforce works with provincial and district governments and is the body which is primarily responsible for implementing the programme. Technical advisory teams (national and international) are employed by the UN and placed within government structures (see Figure 3.2).

In August 1995, when the Seila programme was preparing to start work in Ratanakiri, a public seminar sponsored by an international NGO opened the debate around development approaches and national policies for indigenous minorities for the first time. As a result of this seminar, the government formed a consultative committee to study issues of indigenous people and to assist in drafting appropriate policies. They emphasized the notion that indigenous people's customary rights should be respected. An international seminar on the same topic in Ratanakiri followed, allowing for strong provincial government participation. These seminars challenged the assumption that central authorities could legitimately make development decisions for indigenous areas without the consultation and participation of local communities. These notions gained public prominence and political support at the national and provincial levels, and later influenced the formulation of the land law and the forest law. In the meantime, a small provincially based research team initiated the Resource Management Policy Project in Ratanakiri with funding from the IDRC. This research activity soon merged with CARERE and became part of the Seila support project to the provincial government.

These events profoundly influenced the Seila/CARERE programme in Ratanakiri, allowing the provincial government to discuss indigenous issues more openly and take advantage of the research unit to experiment with ways to address NRM and governance for poverty alleviation. New field-based information on resource management and customary rights was produced. The provincial government was also looking for ways to gain more management control over natural resources under decentralization. However, at that time, national line ministries were granting large land and forest concessions and declaring national protected areas without consulting the provinces. Indeed, at one point the forest concessions and protected areas approved by the central government in Ratanakiri totalled 115 per cent of the province's territory (Bottomley, 2000).

Ratanakiri was considered by the national government to be rich in natural resources with a very low population, so it was viewed as a prime area for attracting investment. Because it was abundant in forest resources, logging concessions were granted readily. On its rich volcanic soils, industrial plantation concessions were approved. Whether the concessions were for logging or palm oil or rubber or other industrial crops, they fostered widespread clear-cutting of forest prior to any management plans or to plantation development. Other commercial concessions included gem mining, gold mining and fishing.

Figure 3.2 UNDP support project (CARERE) helping provincial heads and departments implement projects in response to commune development plans.
Source: Ironside and Nhem, 1998.

Communities were frequently surprised to find that their swidden fields, forests and paddy fields had fallen inside a new concession. In the case of Somthom village, drinking and irrigation water supplies were lost because of an irrigation dam built upstream. It was common for villagers to see logging trucks, guarded by armed soldiers who had been bribed by concessionaires, rolling into their villages and forests. Locals were unable to do much about this situation.

The provincial government did not receive any economic benefits from these concessions as all royalties and taxes go to the national treasury. Therefore, the Ratanakiri governor, Kham Kheun, complained, 'The provincial government must benefit from the logging concessions in order to be able to improve infrastructure in our province.' Perhaps the rampant and illegal destruction of natural resources may have influenced the government to open its doors to donor programmes that would help control such losses. At the time, CARERE project staff also felt that if the provincial government was more engaged in concession decision-making, it would be easier for communities to approach them with concerns about the consequences of large concessions.

In addition to the large-scale concessions, lowland farmers migrated to Ratanakiri in large numbers. Powerful government officials were also procuring land in Ratanakiri. The Ratanakiri CARERE programme manager, Tonie Nooyens, wrote in 1997, 'The situation in Ratanakiri is at the brink of fundamental and irreversible change in its natural and demographic environment. Commercial logging, and clearing of forests by a growing population is changing the ecological balance, triggering a process of degeneration and erosion and putting the predominantly small-holding subsistence farming systems at risk' (CARERE, 1997).

In the context of these events and policies, CBNRM action research was initiated by CARERE/Seila in 1998 to explore ways to provide communities with more secure resource tenure. These activities were initiated with the understanding that tenure security was fundamental to improved resource management, productivity and food security. In accordance with local custom, the research team focused on collective forest resource tenure. The research team attempted to:

• Formalize new collective, not individual, resource tenures (building on customary institutions);

• Build a shared understanding of how to manage and use the resources;

• Identify how to distribute benefits from the resources;

• Ensure secure long-term tenure; and

• Build provincial and local government support for community rights and the enforcement of rules and regulations.

Due to emerging governance reforms in Cambodia, the project became involved in a multilevel dialogue at the national, provincial and community levels. With the support of the project team, Somthom villagers negotiated with the provincial and national governments to reduce the concession area for the community. In this way, they were able to retain their lands and forests.

Empowering communities to negotiate land and forest tenure

The project worked at two different levels, community and provincial. At the community level, rights awareness and empowerment were considered vital starting points because initial contacts with villagers showed they felt helpless to control the destruction of their forest and other resources. They were used to accepting orders from the military and provincial authorities. 'Go and talk to the big people in the province, they are the ones cutting trees, we don't know what to do.' This was a common response in Somthom commune when project team members started discussing the situation with locals.

This prompted the Seila/CARERE prpogramme to undertake a concerted effort to increase people's awareness and understanding of their rights under existing laws, with an emphasis on the fact that it was up to local communities to take actions to address these problems. Members of Somthom commune visited nearby Poey commune, where community forestry boundaries had been mapped to enable the community to prevent commercial logging in their ancestral forests. This practical demonstration showed Somthom community members that even powerful outsiders could be thwarted by community organization and initiative.

After seeing the experience of Poey, Somthom community members expressed a keen interest in working on resource management issues and in particular on the oil palm concession agreement. Villages identified their customary boundaries and the natural resources in them. Then they discussed their problems over these resources. The project team helped build upon the traditional experiences and management systems of the community by formulating management plans and participatory mapping processes. Sol Yuch from Somthom commented, 'As part of our plan we produced a map of our community. This map contains information on the location of fallow forests, spirit forests, agricultural land, streams, and lakes.' Also included on such maps were watershed forests (forest areas protected for drinking water supply), burial forests, village forests maintained as protection from strong winds and forests for non-timber forest product (NTFP) collection. Traditional elders, who are the custodians of the traditional knowledge and who counselled the community in all matters, played an important role in decisions about map features.

Computer-generated maps were produced using information gathered from community discussions and consultations with neighbouring communities. At the insistence of the provincial governor, a global positioning system (GPS) device was used to mark boundaries. Then, using their traditional resource management practices, the men and women in the communities formalized and shared rules to manage the forests and other resources, within identified customary boundaries. These rules included, for example, agreement that swidden plots are not allowed in the spirit forests and that growing more than 2 ha of cashew nuts per family would not be permitted.

All maps and regulations made by the community had to pass through the different levels of government officials. The community presented them first at the commune level, where the neighbouring communities had opportunity to comment, and any disagreements were resolved. They were then presented at the district level, and finally at the provincial level where different line departments and other stakeholders commented and agreed on the set of documents from the community. Finally the governor would sign the maps, rules and regulations endorsing these agreements.

When Somthom presented these documents at the provincial level the government requested the Provincial Conflict Resolution Committee to investigate the situation. The government observed that Somthom's situation involved clearly overlapping and contradictory tenure claims between the community and the concessionaire. Once the committee had verified the maps and traditional boundaries, the province called the two parties together to discuss the situation and come to an agreement. The land-use maps helped the community members explain that they needed the resources for their livelihoods, that they had longstanding customary claims and use patterns in the area, and also that most of the forested areas were rocky and infertile for oil palm cultivation. With the intervention of the provincial government, the community convinced the company that it was not worth pursuing their claim to the resources in Somthom except for the 200 ha they had cleared in 1996. The voluntary agreement of the concessionaire in this precedent-setting case was essential to a successful outcome. It could have been very difficult (and career-threatening) for government staff to force the concessionaire to give up this land.

The maps drawn up by the community were vital to building a convincing case. They showed outsiders and government authorities the boundaries, user areas, and resource management practices of the community. They also demonstrated to the communities that natural resources were not limitless (as in traditional worldviews). The process of publicly reviewing and discussing the maps, complemented by discussions on natural resource trends, built strong consensus within communities – including those community members who were identified as loggers – to protect increasingly scarce forest resources.

After producing maps and formulating the management plans, villagers began to implement them. If problems arose in managing their resources, they were encouraged to solve the problems themselves with minimal support from outside groups. This helped them think through their management strategies and build ownership of project activities. The communities carried out discussions and dialogues with neighbouring villagers and only when the situation was beyond the control of communities did the project staff step in.

To further strengthen community-based activities, communities formed natural resource management committees (NRMCs). These groups reported to the elected commune council and many of their members were also commune or village council members. The NRMCs provided assistance in mapping the community's customary use areas, formulating rules and regulations, and negotiating with neighbouring communities, provincial authorities and outsiders. The NRMCs were composed of elected community members and worked with the traditional elders who advised them. The NRMCs also assisted village authorities, established by the government, to make management plans for natural resources in their commune and ensure that NRM issues were included in their village and commune development plans.

Illiteracy in Khmer reduced the confidence of many indigenous communities. Through non-formal education (NFE) classes aimed at Khmer literacy, sponsored by the action research project, indigenous communities became more articulate. Study tours, drama, role-playing, exchange visits and NFE classes raised awareness and improved the skills needed for participatory planning. The project assisted villagers to travel to provincial or district government offices to engage in discussions with government staff. This allowed them to present their problems and argue their case themselves, and it built relationships so that officials also consulted villagers more frequently.

A continuing influx of people (immigrants and government staff) has exposed indigenous communities to new sociocultural influences. Cultural changes affect a community's social cohesiveness and its pride in its own cultural heritage, especially among the younger generation. By emphasizing the positive aspects of traditional approaches to NRM, the project helped to strengthen recognition and support for indigenous culture.

The community-based plans and agreements with the provincial government were not at first recognized at the national level because there were no legal procedures or instruments to support such activities. However, these planning instruments became quite effective at the local level. As well, other communities went through similar processes to stop outsiders from taking land and forests within their customary boundaries without first consulting community members. For example, in Tinchak commune government officials came and told the community members, 'Whether you accept money or not we will take the land, so it is better you take some money.' After a locally organized mapping process, when the same officials returned to take more land the community showed them the maps and the officials reconsidered their approach. The community had learned the power of using a formal tool (land-use plan and maps) to achieve its political objectives (more secure tenure).

While these agreements were being developed in the field, the national government began reformulating the land law. The CARERE team and NGOs in Ratanakiri realized that to legalize the rights of communities to use their natural resources they would have to lobby for indigenous concerns during the reformulation of this law. The Seila programme requested UNDP to hire a lawyer who would coordinate with the project at the provincial level and assist in drafting the new land law, focusing specifically on issues affecting indigenous people. The communities were involved in an iterative consensus-building process that allowed them to provide inputs to the formulation of the chapter on indigenous communities in the land law. In cooperation with NGOs and other international organizations, the project also ensured communities' participation in important workshops at the provincial and national level.

Similarly, meetings with key policy-makers, donors and community representatives were organized, creating a direct link and open discussion between policy-makers and villagers. Local leaders became increasingly articulate and confident in presenting their case, even to the extent of arranging a personal audience with King Sihanouk (Figure 3.3). A frank discussion between an indigenous villager and the king about sensitive policy issues was unprecedented. The project also hosted study tours for policy-makers during which communities could explain their situation on-site. For example, a second (or deputy) prime minister, Hun Sen, visited the scenic Yeak Loam lake in 1997, the commune where the earliest CBNRM activities had started. After presentations about the CBNRM's work, he promised that, as the most powerful politician in Cambodia, he would protect the lake and surrounding environment for ever (Reibe, 1999).

Figure 3.3 Indigenous representative meeting the king
Source: Yeak Loam Lake Management Committee, 2000.

Direct meetings of the indigenous people with policy-makers were found to be more effective than contacts mediated by NGO representatives or through other official channels. Policy-makers at all levels seemed to appreciate this, probably because it was clear that the indigenous people were speaking for themselves rather than telling the government what they had been primed to say by development organizations. These direct discussions also resulted in breaking down negative stereotypes about minority peoples that were widely held by national authorities.

As a result of the diverse efforts of this project, many other organizations and the indigenous peoples themselves, provisions for collective tenure and customary land use emerged in draft legislation. Later, the government began formulating other related legislation on forestry, community forestry and protected areas. The project used its field experience in Ratanakiri province to provide advocacy groups with evidence to lobby for indigenous considerations in these laws as well.

Building the capacity to decentralize

For negotiations between indigenous communities and government authorities to take place on more equal terms, awareness-raising and community empowerment had to be complemented by building the capacity of provincial institutions to decentralize resource management decision-making. The Seila local government reforms and decentralization processes provided an opportunity with enormous potential to influence the government's attitudes and their approach to working with indigenous people.

The province had to be first introduced to CBNRM as a practical approach. An opportunity arose when the province was looking for solutions for two practical issues. The first was the petition from Somthom commune (see above), which requested the Provincial Department of the Environment to help stop logging in their sacred forests. The second occurred in Ochum commune, where a floating weed was covering the hydropower reservoir, threatening the electrical supply to the provincial town. The CARERE team engaged with provincial agencies presented CBNRM as an option to try to tackle these problems. CBNRM activities were started as an experiment in three communes: Somthom, Ochum and Yeak Loam.1

The Provincial Department of the Environment became the lead agency in implementing CBNRM activities, with a provincial core team formed by technical staff seconded from different line departments. This team was trained in skills to carry out participatory land use planning (PLUP) and participatory rural appraisal (PRA) with communities. To support the provincial core team in the field, a commune core team was established, consisting of members selected from local NRMCs. As well, the project set up a supporting geographic information system (GIS) unit to assist the province develop computerized maps. The provincial core team assisted the communities to develop maps, rules and regulations and then set up workshops and meetings at which NRMCs could present them along with their case. It was this provincial core team that helped Somthom commune map its traditional user areas and then present them to the province and other parties. The director of the Department of Environment initiated the discussions on Somthom at the provincial level and was present at the negotiations between the commune, the plantation concessionaire and the government. Pleased with the results in the case of Somthom, the provincial authorities decided to spread CBNRM activities to all the communes in Ratanakiri.

The CBNRM activities were supported by awareness-raising for staff from other line departments. Awareness-building at the provincial level focused on helping the government understand the complexity of indigenous management systems and the rights of indigenous people. Sharing research results from this project and from other researchers (such as from national universities) with provincial agencies helped foster the understanding and appreciation of traditional resource management systems and the agricultural practices of indigenous communities. Such findings were also presented to national government ministry staff. The information was initially received with scepticism by professional staff with deeply-held assumptions about indigenous practices (and a Khmer paddy rice-based cultural background), but similar evidence from multiple sources helped change perceptions. This shift in attitudes was reinforced by direct discussions or meetings with communities and the presentation of resource management maps in the field.

Provincial government officials from the different line departments were also given training on good governance and management through the Seila programme. This introduced new understandings of the relationship between government and civil society. The intention was to help public officials shift away from the viewpoint that laws were intended for government to control society, towards an understanding that laws are intended to help people live together in a mutually agreeable manner. As stated by Hor Hong, director of the Provincial Department of Environment, 'We tried to set up protected sites before, but since the initiative only came from our staff, we failed.' Hong now strongly supports CBNRM and the implementation of community land management and mapping in Ratanakiri. This has earned him national recognition of a gold medal for these efforts.

Provincial line-agency staff came to see their role as more facilitation than enforcement, which represents a radical transformation. Facilitators were encouraged to conduct activities in a participatory manner and were rewarded with increased responsibility. Trust and transparency were important to all parties. The government was kept informed of all activities. Such transparency led to a better understanding of the project's work and eventually smoothed the process of obtaining official approval of local resource management agreements. The Seila principles (dialogue, clarity, agreement and respect) were crucial to this process.

Study tours for provincial staff were not always successful because some participants, who had few opportunities for travel and recreation, tended to prioritize enjoyment over learning. But senior provincial officials and their staff were committed to these reforms. They were compelled to present, defend and explain the project many times during workshops in the province or Phnom Penh (the national capital), and to many visiting delegations. Their preparation for such presentations served to consolidate learning and policy rationales for the CBNRM innovations.

Provincial-level government agencies work under the Provincial Rural Development Committee (PRDC) as part of the decentralization experiment. This body, consisting of the heads of each provincial line department, oversees and coordinates all administrative matters in Ratanakiri. It also takes joint responsibility for any decisions made, which has helped to curb compartmentalized and sectoral thinking. The PRDC was strengthened as part of the government's decentralization efforts. One of the more important issues they dealt with was providing tenure security to indigenous communities. The PRDC also gained credibility and authority over the line departments after receiving external funding through the Seila system. Provincial line budgets were also reviewed to help departments plan their activities in accordance with PRDC priorities for Ratanakiri, rather than wait for instructions from their respective funding ministries in Phnom Penh.

The CARERE project worked with provincial line departments and with the PRDC to develop procedures and tools for implementing CBNRM. The process required a joint learning approach with communities so that they could map their traditional resource use areas and formulate rules and regulations for managing the resources. These procedures had to be accepted by the PRDC before they could be implemented. The procedures allowed all levels of government to comment on the rules and regulations, which were finally signed by the provincial governor. It was clear to all that the community had the right to accept or reject suggestions that were inappropriate or did not conform to their local practices. One study (Ironside and Nhem, 1998) points out that, although the groundwork for community participation had been laid, the work started in the middle of massive forest exploitation. Therefore, the political landscape was not conducive to rapid or definitive NRM reforms. Given the importance of natural resources in Ratanakiri and the vested interests around them, it took time to negotiate these changes.

In 1998, the Seila local planning process for decentralized rural development, which the PRDC followed, showed some serious deficiencies in Ratanakiri. Communities were not including NRM considerations while formulating their commune development plans. For example, in Somthom commune, while the forests were being logged and land taken by the company, the community's annual development planning and budgeting process addressed only schools and health centres. The CARERE project began to assist the PRDC to change the Seila planning process to include natural resource considerations as a priority in their planning efforts. As in many development projects, even under decentralized decision-making it is often easier to build physical infrastructure such as schools than to tackle issues that may imply changes in legislation or require complicated negotiations with the provincial government. The revised planning process allowed communities to raise natural resource issues as part of routine local planning, and required the provincial agencies to respond to such priorities through a government-sanctioned planning process. This allowed Somthom and other communes to include NRM activities in their commune plans in 1999, thus legitimizing resource management activities at the commune (local government) level.

The inclusion of local natural resource issues was a dramatic reform because it stepped into an area that was highly controversial. Up until that time there had been no legal recognition of the traditional rights of indigenous communities over land and forests. All land and forests belonged to the state, therefore, if the government so desired they had the right to give these resources to anyone and all Cambodian citizens had the right to procure land anywhere. Loss of traditional land or forests was not an issue. As part of the inclusion of NRM issues in the local planning process, communities began to focus on the loss of their traditional rights to forests and lands. Once the governor began to approve these local development plans, the government accepted the threat to these rights as an issue. And, once it was officially on the agenda, NGOs and departments could legally assist communities attempting to regain their traditional rights. This paved the way for mapping traditional user areas and developing management plans based on traditional management systems in any community that requested legitimization of their traditional rights. Once these maps and plans were endorsed by the province, they gave the community the right to deny outsiders access to their traditional resources.

The other area where the team helped the PRDC develop procedures was conflict resolution. It became clear early on that conflict resolution was an integral part of CBNRM, especially during boundary demarcation. Land grabbing and illegal or even legal encroachment were common and the resulting conflicts had to be addressed. An important example of this was Somthom, where the resolution of the conflict surrounding the concession paved the way for further community-based NRM activities. The team assisted the PRDC in setting up the Provincial Conflict Resolution Committee whose mandate was to investigate natural resource conflicts, including land grabbing by government officials. When one very senior provincial department director began to expand the boundary of his 50-ha plantation each year by 5–10 metres, complaints from the community led the committee to investigate the issue. The director ended up apologizing to the community, blaming his workers for this problem, and relocated the fence to its original boundary. The conflict resolution committee thus dealt with conflicts that traditional systems could not handle.

Through this action-learning cycle of observing, learning, planning and implementing, PRDC confidence in and support for CBNRM activities increased. As Phan Phirin, chief of the executive committee of the Ratanakiri PRDC, stated, 'Compared to the lowlands, Ratanakiri is still rich in natural resources. I think CBNRM can help protect these natural resources and prevent them from being destroyed further. It is especially important that community members are involved in the project. CBNRM is very important for Ratanakiri.' This new-found confidence allowed the provincial government to host workshops with NGOs at provincial and national levels where different ministries discussed and began to understand issues and clarified the interpretation of laws. This was a significant development at the time because new laws were being created such as the forest law, community forestry sub-decree and land law, which acknowledged indigenous rights and the rights of communities to manage their resources. However, the ministries each wanted to claim their share of resources, so there were frequent conflicts of interpretation between different laws.

It is important to have new laws and policies endorsing both indigenous peoples' and resources' rights. However, many ministries work in isolation and interpret the laws to suit their needs. This leads to considerable tension over how to actually implement new policies at the provincial level.

Thus, in one workshop a representative of the Forestry Administration said, 'According to the Forest Law, the Commune Council has no right to manage forests. This right can only be obtained through a Community Forestry Agreement.' The representative from the Ministry of Interior stood up and emphatically stated: 'I would like all of us to look at the newly formulated Commune Council Law which states: The Commune Council plays the main role to protect natural resources in the commune. They are the lowest government administrative unit, and therefore, all line departments must strengthen the commune councils to be able to do this.'

Both sides agreed to discuss this further with their respective department or ministry and then respond to provincial authorities. Sometimes the provincial government can do little until national agencies work out their differences. But the open discussion of issues and the creation of opportunities for CBNRM, both in policy and practice, would not have been possible at all just a few years earlier.

Networking

CBNRM is a holistic process requiring multisectoral and multilevel interaction. Therefore, the research team, together with local counterparts in the different line ministries and community groups, linked up with government officials, NGOs and international organizations working in different sectors and levels. Without such networking it would not have been possible to achieve positive results. These other organizations could raise sensitive issues which affect indigenous people's lives with different audiences from those that the researchers could approach. The CARERE team also realized that what had started as a single-action research cycle began to spread into different areas that initiated valuable research cycles in other communities.

These different approaches enabled the government to help deal with the problems it encountered in decentralized NRMs. For example, the national government granted a logging concession known as the Hero Forest Concession, which inadvertently included an important sacred forest area of one community. Together with a number of NGOs, the Seila project organized a provincial workshop where NGOs raised the issue of logging in the sacred forests of indigenous people. This led to a provincial study to identify and demarcate the sacred forests in the concession area and a prohibition of logging in such forests.

This networking required the research team to maintain good relations with both government and NGOs. But trying to balance between the divergent expectations of NGOs and the government was often very difficult. Our group sometimes felt like meat on a chopping block – but with each success, our confidence in the work grew.

The work of NGOs in empowering communities is often more effective because they have highly motivated staff who worked closely with a small number of the communities. NGOs also have the choice to select staff in accordance with their mandate and ability. Our job was to help the government work with a large number of communities testing CBNRM methods in collaboration with line agency staff. Government staff tend to mechanically apply processes and tools through existing administrative structures. In such a project context, project leaders are often unable to select the participating government staff. However, in the long run, because the processes and tools

Figure 3.4 CBNRM action research in Ratanakiri (shows action research is not linear but keeps on spreading).
Source: Adapted from Kolb, 1984.

developed by CARERE for implementing CBNRM were matched to the conditions and problems of the provincial agencies involved, they were easier to replicate within the government system. That this has worked is borne out by the fact that lessons and approaches learned in the Ratanakiri CBNRM project are now being scaled up in other provinces under a Seila NRM mainstreaming project.

Role of the research project in a changing institutional landscape

While there was a broad engagement of government and NGOs regarding indigenous rights in Ratanakiri, there was a marked difference in the experience of local planning and negotiations supported by NGOs and those supported by the Seila project team. Communities supported by NGOs were found to be more confrontational in their dealings with the provincial government and less willing to come to terms with it. The government was more willing to deal with communities assisted by Seila, because the negotiations were conducted in accordance with the Seila principles by both sides, and because government staff were themselves involved in project training and implementation.

The merging of the UNDP service delivery governance reform project (Seila) with an action-research project (the IDRC-supported research) brought about an unusual blend of approaches. The Ratanakiri project became a research project to develop innovative procedures to strengthen governance for indigenous people. The processes were designed to suit local needs, and to deal with NRM in a participatory manner. Many other donor activities supported this effort, but the research project played a leading role in several key elements:

• identifying indigenous resource management practices and tenure arrangements to be included in draft legislation dealing with resource tenure, and ensuring these issues were kept on the agenda of policy-makers;

• developing procedures to delineate resource tenure (e.g. the PLUP process for indigenous people), which respected customary rights; and

• delivering evidence and training for government officials to build recognition and respect for the traditional rights of indigenous communities;

The provincial government also actively supported indigenous civil organizations such as the Yeak Loam Lake Management Committee, the Natural Resource Management Network and the Highlanders' Association in Ratanakiri, which all worked to improve the conditions of indigenous people. On some occasions, the provincial government went so far as to provide financial support to these bodies for specific activities. The relationship was ruffled many times by disputes, but these situations helped build respect (e.g. the politically embarrassing issue of the governor's expanding fenceline, above). Overall, the provincial government became more responsive, open and accountable to indigenous communities in the province.

At the local level, communities now had legally recognized maps, rules and regulations that they could use to prevent land sale or the extraction of forest resources. The understanding of resource rights became so widespread that even some communities without CBNRM project activities intervened to prevent outsiders from using their forests. For example, in Chaung commune, local people confiscated chain saws from the military, returning them only after negotiating an agreement that the military would no longer enter their forest lands, even though they lacked the legal force of a recognized local land-use plan.

Challenges

The success of Somthom commune in gaining recognition of traditional resource use and management rights from provincial authorities was a historic moment for Ratanakiri. The provincial government has now replicated CBNRM processes in 20 other communes and is planning to apply them to the whole province. However, with this experience, further challenges have emerged. Simply granting the right to a community to manage its resources does not guarantee that traditional management systems will work in an environment experiencing enormous pressures. Not all communities and individuals can sustain an interest in traditional practices, especially in the face of a changing landscape with multiple and contested interests. For example, in recent years cashews have become a golden crop in Ratanakiri and many indigenous farmers are planting their shifting cultivation forest lands to cashew trees for the higher income these provide. This rapid conversion from shifting cultivation to cashew plantations leads to complicated tenure changes. Whereas shifting cultivation forests were once recognized as community property that could not be alienated, recent trends indicate that this may not be true in the case of cashew plantations. Some individual swidden plots are taking on more of the character of a private property and are sold to outsiders. There are concerns and conflicts within communities about such complicated issues, which pit the rights of individuals to claim private ownership against the rights of the community to protect forest-based livelihoods. Table 3.1 summarizes some of the challenges in implementing CBNRM more broadly in a larger number of communes.

Furthermore, even in communes where CBNRM processes were strong, there are continuing conflicts over the enforcement of local management rules and boundaries. More robust procedures and adaptation are needed to deal with diverging local interests. To assist communities in dealing with these problems internally, the project is working with NGOs and international organizations to establish a provincial Natural Resource Management Network consisting of different commune NRMCs. This network should bring greater mutual support and coordination of resource management activities while providing background support, such as communication materials in local dialects and legal extension information about rights and regulatory reforms A bigger challenge, however, is that some national agencies now question the validity of the provincially negotiated resource-management agreements. Recent regulatory changes put the responsibility for community forest planning, for example, within the Ministry for Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. But in Ratanakiri, it has been the Department of the Environment which has led the integrated PLUP and CBNRM activities, and facilitated approval of local resource management plans. Inter-agency disputes at the national level now require additional political effort to resolve.

The Ratanakiri project team, still engaged with local governance reforms and CBNRM research, has also had to reassess emerging policies and leadership at the national level in order to collaborate with agencies that are most likely to

Table 3.1 Challenging situations in various communes

be able to implement the innovations arising from the research work (e.g. PLUP for indigenous peoples, developed in 2004 for implementation by the Ministry of Land Management, Planning and Construction).

After decades of displacement and conflict, and with the widespread reform of all the mechanisms of governance and public administration, the national government is now attempting to classify and formalize public and private tenure for all land resources. To do this, they will use the PLUP process. But there are concerns that the identification of land-use categories locally will also identify the jurisdiction of line departments with respect to different land-based resources. The division of resource jurisdiction could have severe implications for implementing local land-use plans, which have already been approved in Ratanakiri and other provinces for lands that are managed locally as common property based on customary arrangements. Separate line agency jurisdiction over different resources (forests, water, fisheries, agriculture, etc.) inevitably overlaps in the decision-making of users on the ground, making planning and management interventions very difficult to coordinate.

One option is to secure communal (collective) title for land resources. According to Article 25 of the land law, 'indigenous communities can own land communally under a communal land title', but there is little guidance for how communal titling should work in practice, and what procedures should be used for the registration and enforcement of communal land rights. Seila staff are using the research team's CBNRM experiences to guide research, analysis and feedback to the formulation of the national regulations on communal land titling. This will require addressing many legal ambiguities in the current legislation.

With this in mind, the national level government requested the Seila programme in Ratanakiri to assist in working with indigenous people on piloting the communal land titling processes. Seila staff are using the research team's CBNRM experiences to guide activities which will provide analysis and feedback on the formulation of the national regulations' sub-decree on communal land titling.

The main problem for piloting remains precisely how to interpret the laws at the local and community level. For instance, the Forest Administration interprets the legislation to mean they have exclusive jurisdiction of all forest lands, whether they have trees on them or not (i.e. including fallow forest), while others disagree.

Gains

Although this chapter has pointed out some of the challenges in working on CBNRM, significant gains have also been made beyond Somthom.

At the grassroots level, communities were able to reduce land grabbing and illegal resource exploitation, such as logging, unmanaged collection of NTFP (fruits, medicinal plants, building materials and wildlife) and illegal fishing methods such as using explosives to catch fish in streams. Communities also include natural resource issues in the commune development plans, to which government departments are required to respond and which also provide a good starting point for support by NGOs. Because the government demonstrated it could play a constructive role in helping solve some of the communities' problems, the communities in turn began to put more trust in the government. At the same time, because communities have a better understanding of their rights, they question or complain to higher authorities when laws are broken or proper procedures are not followed.

At the provincial level, the government is more willing to tackle issues faced by indigenous communities, even when this involves politically sensitive issues such as limiting forest concessions. Provincial technical and line department staff have begun to appreciate the resource management systems of indigenous communities. They have the confidence to recognize and hand over management rights to communities, as demonstrated by the fact that to date the PRDC and provincial governor have officially recognized the land-use and management plans of 15 communes.

Provincial officials now listen with more respect to indigenous people when they raise issues. This is a huge shift from the experiences of just a few years ago, when indigenous spokespersons would be humiliated when they spoke publicly because of their limited command of the Khmer language. The provincial government is now more open to discussing laws and legal instruments and even invites the officials at the national level to clarify contradictions, rather than waiting for a national initiative. In addition, it has been active in promoting a uniform interpretation of legal reforms and supporting legal extension services to help indigenous communities know what their rights are. In several cases, the provincial conflict resolution committee has investigated land grabbing by high-level provincial officials and helped both sides come up with a negotiated agreement. Land grabbing and extortion continues in Ratanakiri, but the innovations piloted through action research and adopted by the provincial government have greatly reduced the number of such experiences.

Officials from other provinces who have visited Ratanakiri have appreciated the provincial government's achievements. In one example, after a visit to Ratanakiri, the provincial governor of the neighbouring province of Mondolkiri sided with an indigenous community in his own province when it complained that a community member had sold communal land to outsiders. The sale was ruled illegal, based on the precedent of indigenous collective tenures in Ratanakiri, and the land was returned to the community.

Another outcome of the work has been that provincial authorities are now more tolerant of NGOs and international organizations. Having seen in practice that their support is sometimes valuable, government officials have become more responsive to issues raised by such groups.

At the national level, the research team in Ratanakiri has established strong links to many agencies involved in local government, resource legislation and tenure reforms. The experiences of participatory land-use planning in Ratanakiri have become widely known in the country, and are serving as models for both the Ministry of Land Management and Urban Planning, as well as the national Seila programme. The issue of communal resource tenure and management remains controversial. Future developments will depend to some extent on the resolution of contradictory interpretations of recent legislation. Finally, the policy for indigenous people has been drafted and is being negotiated by different line ministries and departments.

Conclusions and lessons learned

The confidence to make decisions based on good evidence, without consulting national superiors, enabled the provincial government to challenge the concessionaire and support land and forest rights in Somthom commune. In 2000, the provincial governor endorsed the community maps and NRM plans for this commune. Since then, the villagers have used these plans to help them solve other conflicts, including preventing the military from entering their forests. The success of Somthom has been replicated in many other communes in Ratanakiri, and has led to a dramatic change in attitudes, procedures, roles, and policies for the provincial government in NRM.

The crucial foundation of this success has been the action research work undertaken by the project team at the grassroots level. Testing innovations on the ground is essential to understanding complex and dynamic local situations, and to providing credible evidence to policy makers. Learning from innovative local practice is crucial to building the commitment of local, provincial and national governments and the capacity and confidence of communities themselves. With greater understanding and confidence, indigenous communities can explain their own situation to government policy-makers directly. The experience of direct dialogue was very influential in shifting attitudes and assumptions of senior government officials and politicians.

The project devoted substantial effort to networking with government and nongovernmental organizations, international groups and development donors. In an environment of rapid change in policy and governance contexts, the lessons from PAR in Ratanakiri provided timely and relevant evidence for advocacy. In some situations, the project members found that large international donors were supportive in raising issues and pushing agendas which the project or government staff could not. This greatly helped to ensure that national agencies could not skirt awkward issues.

The project was proactive in its approach. The evidence from the field showed the need for changes in local governance. But instead of waiting for national legal authority and regulatory frameworks to be designed, the project used its on-the-ground experience with innovative practices that influenced the design of the emerging legislation.

But this is a challenging working environment. Legal systems are in a state of flux and powerful government agencies are in conflict. Therefore, effective intervention requires a sophisticated and astute understanding of the local culture and political relationships, and of how to navigate in such murky waters. In these circumstances, flexibility to adapt and take advantage of emerging opportunities is important.

Over the life of the research project, there has been a dramatic change in expectations of the role of public services in Cambodia. Widespread governance reforms and the introduction of new democratic institutions, combined with accessible training programmes, have greatly altered the way in which public officials and citizens view the nature of government. The project staff were able to take advantage of these broader trends by providing Ratanakiri provincial officials with new models of professional behaviour based on consultation, public participation and official facilitation. They were able to instil a sense of responsibility towards improved NRM and the issues faced by indigenous communities. This resulted in communities being better able to control exploitation of the resources they traditionally used.

Reforms in Cambodia to make local government more representative, transparent and accountable are mutually supportive of CBNRM activities. Participatory resource planning and management at the local level needs to include not only rights, but also responsibilities and accountability from the community and provincial authorities. Proper sanctions should be in place to ensure that agreements are enforced and procedures followed by community members as well as public authorities at different levels. Public accountability and coordination were greatly facilitated in the Ratanakiri case by the engagement and support of the PRDC, which coordinated implementation by the line agencies.

Our experiences show that CBNRM is not easy and that it takes time and resources. Community empowerment is crucial to successful CBNRM, but at the same time, building the capacity of the government to decentralize and adopt new roles is also very important. CBNRM needs a coordinated multisectoral approach with networking and negotiation at different levels of government. NGOs and international organizations, as part of civil society, are important to counterbalance the power exerted by the government and to provide independent criticism if legal procedures are not followed.

The success of Ratanakiri in influencing national policy and spreading innovations widely in the province has depended on a harmonized approach that carefully balances the many different aspects of the work.

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the contributions of other team members over the project's lifetime: Kim Srey, Kong Shronnoh, Hou Serey Vathana, Touch Tonet and Lun Kimhy. Others who played critical roles in this initiative but have left the project include Tonie Nooyens, Min Muny, Sang Polrith, Nhem Sovanna, Jeremy Ironside, Graeme Brown, Ken Reibe and Andrew McNaughton.

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CHAPTER 4
Participatory local planning for resource governance in the Tam Giang lagoon, Vietnam

Truong Van Tuyen, Ton That Chat, Chau Thi Tuyet Hanh, Duong Viet Tinh, Nguyen Thi Thanh, Nguyen Thi Tuyet Suong, Le Thi Nam Thuan and Ton That Phap

Abstract

Indications of overexploitation and degradation of the rich natural resource base in the Tam Giang lagoon in Vietnam led to a long-term participatory research project to jointly investigate problems and potential responses. Local farmers, fishers and government officials joined the research team in a series of collaborative learning and testing interventions over a period of several years. This initiative generated a new understanding of the conflicts and degradation in the lagoon as they relate to changes in tenure and production systems. The participatory research led to a pilot implementation of a new model for participatory planning and resource co-management in the lagoon. This not only helped resolve conflicts and ensure a more equitable access to the resources, but also improved the prospects for better governance of lagoon resources in the future. Key to this achievement was a common understanding of the community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) approach developed among the stakeholders through the research project. The essential elements included the full engagement of local stakeholders (with emphasis upon marginalized groups), the recognition of customary access rights, and changes to the processes of local planning and resource governance, and to the organization and roles of the key stakeholders. The research team also adopted a new role as facilitators of learning, capacity-building and, more importantly, negotiation and consensus-building among the stakeholders. New locally organized user groups along with leaders of local government played a central role in empowering the community, providing legal support and organizing the implementation of joint plans. The officers of provincial and district government departments adopted a new role, providing technical assistance instead of giving direct instructions. Fishers and farmers participated in lagoon planning based on their improved understanding of problems, benefits and responsibilities, which grew from their ongoing involvement in the research. This chapter describes how participatory research led to innovations in natural resource planning and local governance in the Tam Giang lagoon.

Introduction

Application of a participatory approach to NRM in Vietnam attracted the attention of the government and others primarily because of the failure of conventional top-down measures. Improvements to livelihoods and resource sustainability in a variety of cases in Vietnam and elsewhere in Asia provide an indication of the effectiveness and applicability of participatory approaches (Ferrer, La Cruz and Newkirk, 2001). The participatory approach also provided researchers with a new way of thinking about research. It evolved into far more than the mere analysis of scientific data and technology. Instead, participatory research emphasized people and not things (Brzeski and Newkirk, 2002).

Participatory research has been carried out in the Tam Giang lagoon, Thua Thien Hue province, Vietnam since 1995 by an interdisciplinary research team supported by the IDRC and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).1 The support provided by the project helped the research team carry out fieldwork with several different communities, to understand the lagoon context and how global and national changes affected people's livelihoods. The application of participatory research was a response to the ineffectiveness of the conventional 'top-down' approaches of technical intervention in resolving problems in complex systems like the Tam Giang lagoon.

As a result of this research, the team and local people identified the fundamental problem as a lack of management control over lagoon exploitation. However, the tools, processes and strategies to deal with such a situation were neither available nor clear. The general opinion of key stakeholders was that any management approach would be ineffective. But this view was based on the failure of the prevailing mechanisms for local planning. These mechanisms were mainly imposed from higher levels of government without the involvement of local stakeholders, and without an understanding of the context and problems. This case demonstrates how research led to new mechanisms for participatory local planning in the Tam Giang lagoon.

Everybody acknowledges how important the lagoon is. However, no one actually manages and takes responsibility for what happens there. All the different organizations (Communes, Districts, and Departments...) want to have rights, but that is all.

N.L. Hien, Director of Fisheries Department, Thua Thien Hue province

The lagoon context and recent changes

The Tam Giang lagoon is considered very important to the development of Thua Thien Hue province in general, and to alleviating poverty around the lagoon in particular. Of approximately 300,000 people living on and around the lagoon, many are poor and involved in fishing and aquaculture, or various agricultural activities along the shores. A living standards survey carried out in 1998 showed that the incidence of poverty in these communities varied between 55 and 70 per cent (Socialist Republic of Vietnam, 1999).2 Approximately 100,000 people depend for their primary livelihoods on fishing and aquaculture, and many others depend on these as a secondary source of income. There are also an estimated 1,500 households living on boats in the lagoon (Vietnam, Department of Fisheries of Thua Thien Hue Province, 2003). These households are extremely poor and heavily dependent on aquatic resources for food and income, and their livelihoods are threatened by various factors, including a declining fish catch and difficulties in gaining access to fishing grounds (discussed further below).

The human and ecological significance of the lagoon extends beyond those people immediately involved in fishing and aquaculture. The lagoon is an important nursery area for inshore and offshore fish species, and thus indirectly supports the livelihoods of people living along the coastal area in the central part of Vietnam. The lagoons of Thua Thien Hue province, their ecological condition, and their capacity to support human development, are threatened by various activities (fishing, aquaculture, agriculture, tourism, transport, and industry development). However, few people in charge of lagoon management properly understand the context of its exploitation.

The 'Doi Moi' reforms, which mandated Vietnam's transition to a market-oriented economy, wrought significant improvements in poverty alleviation and resource management during the 1990s (Socialist Republic of Vietnam, 2003). However, socio-economic disparities also increased (Vietnam Development Report, 2004). One such policy reform that started in 1989 was the allocation of land to individuals. The land laws (1993) recognized legal private rights to the use of land, which had previously belonged exclusively to state enterprises and formal collective organizations such as agricultural cooperatives.

Although the central government still maintains legal ownership, it has issued certificates of long-term land-use rights, which were formalized and presented in the Red Book, or title, to certain legally defined individuals. (The Red Book is the local term for a certificate of title which passes with the land in transactions.) The Red Book, which indicates the purpose(s) of land use, defines the types of land to be allocated (e.g. agricultural lands) and those to be kept under state control (e.g. lagoon and fishery resources). However, recent patterns of lagoon exploitation have rendered existing guidelines on resource use largely irrelevant.

In recent years aquaculture has expanded rapidly (Brzeski and Newkirk, 2002). Fishers who had traditional access rights to specific areas of the lagoon,

Figure 4.1 Map of Tam Giang lagoon

such as the fish-trap corral owners (see Box 4.1), have enclosed them with nets. In collusion with commune government representatives, they have been able to secure exclusive rights for aquaculture. Net enclosures and ponds have proliferated in the middle and south of the lagoon, while shrimp ponds and fish pens have rapidly expanded in the northern part. The number of households participating in aquaculture and the number of aquaculture facilities such as fish culture pens per household has also increased rapidly. This wave of lagoon privatization has reduced open-access lagoon areas and widened the disparity between those who have enclosed the lagoon and thus have easy access to lagoon resources, and those who have been excluded from their traditional fishing grounds. Small-scale, mobile fishers have become increasingly marginalized as resources have come under more direct control by the wealthier users or user groups in the community.

While small fishers have always had to compete with wealthier members of the village who own larger fishing gear, recent competition for lagoon resources has reached a scope and intensity never seen in the past. This is because of the sheer number of current users and the many ways in which they are now making claims on the lagoon resources.

The degradation of lagoon resources as a result of this indiscriminate and unplanned exploitation has resulted in declining average fish catches. The total annual fish catch from the river and the lagoon in the province decreased slightly from 3,099 tons in 2000 to 3,088 tons in 2003 (Statistics Office of Thua Thien Hue Province, 2003). However, information supplied by villagers showed that their individual fish catch for all major types of fishing in the north and

Figure 4.2 Illustration of dense net enclosures in the lagoon (drawn by Ariel Lucerna)

middle of the lagoon (except clam collection) decreased by 23–45 per cent from 2000 to 2003. Despite the evidence of increased fishing effort and pressure, small-scale private aquaculture continues to be encouraged by the government because of the high value of export products such as shrimp, crab and certain fish species.

The local government has expressed concern about these trends, but as with most problems, it has chosen to defer the solution to higher levels of government. Meanwhile, the latter has traditionally approached the management of coastal resources by promoting productivity-enhancing technology and capitalization of the fishing industry. Central authorities generally respond to local problems by implementing regulations at the district level without consultation or participation of the resource users, and without regard for the potential impact on the ecosystem. On rare occasions, external consultants and experts may be asked to propose solutions. There had never been an alternative approach to governance that involved the affected communities in a meaningful way.

Participatory research and outcomes

When the research project began in 1995, researchers were just starting to experiment with participatory methods. IDRC provided training on PRA, community-based coastal resource management (CBCRM) and gender sensitivity, among other tools and methods. PRA techniques were employed to get local people involved in assessing current use patterns in the lagoon, and in identifying problems and solutions. At this stage, the project focused mainly on the development of livelihood strategies.

The middle lagoon (Tan Duong village, Thuan An)

In the middle lagoon, the rapid and widespread expansion of net enclosures by fixed-gear fishers led to the marginalization of mobile-gear fishers, already the most disadvantaged group in the community. Hence, the participatory research exercise in this site was initiated to explore options for resolving this conflict. The researchers worked separately with the two groups of users, and then facilitated the establishment of a committee of local fishers, officials and researchers to oversee arrangements in the community. The committee organized the participatory mapping of current net enclosures, as well as the design of waterways on the basis of existing navigation lanes. The representatives also agreed upon the size (length/width) of the waterways after discussion and consultation with the local authority. However, new issues arose in the development of regulations governing the management of the widened waterways. Conflicts became even more heated when the net-enclosure owners refused mobile-gear fishers access to the waterways.

Without consulting the researchers, the commune government acted unilaterally, using police forces, to open the waterways using specific authority provided by a decision of the district government. This decision and enforcement borrowed selectively from the new community plan to open up the waterways at Xa Bac. For example, the community map of the waterway system was adopted. However, the commune government did not adopt any of the procedures for conflict resolution and livelihood provision, intended to increase the fishing area for mobile-gear fishers. After the waterways were opened, the commune formed the respective net-enclosure owners into groups and assigned them particular waterways to manage. There was no support given to mobile-gear fishers in accessing the opened waterways.

The old conflicts grew worse and violence erupted. The mobile-gear fishers had assumed that they would be given access in accordance with the participatory planning agreements, but the local government's unilateral directives meant they were kept out of the waterways by the net-enclosure owners. The latter argued that the opened waterway area was part of their own net enclosures and that the local government had made them responsible for managing the waterways. Therefore, they also had rights to the waterways as well as to the net-enclosure area. Finally, the two groups of users could not even meet to discuss or negotiate because of all the conflicts. The most urgent issue became how to strengthen the fishers' common values and restart negotiations.

Though the waterway conflicts in Tan Duong grew worse, the waterway plan emerged as one of the early examples of local co-management efforts, contributing to the reforms in the fishery law of 2003. The problems in Tan Duong highlighted the problems of the private allocation of the lagoon's surface area and these issues were publicized nationally. The lessons from this experience

were also helpful in the later Quang Thai efforts (see next section). It should be noted that the conditions in Tan Duong were more complex than elsewhere in the lagoon. Tan Duong was near the opening to the sea. It was more productive and, therefore, the intensity of exploitation was very high. As well, it was closer

Figure 4.3 Map of aquaculture system and waterway in the Phu Tan area
Source: Phap, 2002.

to the city and more sensitive to market pressures. PAR was much more challenging in this situation. Moreover, with completion of the research in 2000, the local government tried to intervene without sufficient support from researchers and only aggravated the conflict.

The northern lagoon (Trung Lang village, Quang Thai)

Trung Lang village in Quang Thai commune is a mixed farming and fishing community that is isolated from market and administrative centres. The commune includes traditional boat-dwelling households which have decided to settle on the land in the past 20 years. This particular village was among the poorest in the commune. The research team became involved with Trung Lang village through the early promotion of peanut crop production in the village. The success in farm diversification built trust in and credibility of the research team among community members and in local government. This helped address the more conflictual issues related to the management of the lagoon (Brzeski and Newkirk, 2000).

In the early stages of the research effort, the most critical issue in the northern part of the lagoon was the prevalence of electric fishing and failure to enforce

an existing ban of it. The fishers used high-voltage electricity to shock entire schools of fish so that they could be easily harvested, but at the same time, they destroyed other aquatic organisms. A self-management committee was established at the village level to organize the villagers to patrol the lagoon. A mechanism for collaboration with local government security forces was also developed. The community ban had been enforced effectively to begin with, but broke down under threats of violence. In one incident, electric fishers from outside the community destroyed fish corrals and threatened the villagers who tried to enforce the ban. This pilot effort brought out important lessons for the local stakeholders about the need for collective action to prevent destructive fishing, and the importance of formal collaboration with local government.

Participatory research in Trung Lang specifically targeted livelihood improvements for the poorest after 1998. The team introduced poor mobile-gear fishers to techniques of raising fish in cages in the lagoon (cage aquaculture), and initially subsidized the capital cost of cages as a strategy for improving their incomes. As a result, fish cages owned by mobile-gear fishers began to proliferate near the shore, and larger fish pens multiplied in the deeper lagoon area. However, as the number of pens increased, conflicts arose because they competed for choice locations.

In 2003, the research team re-engaged after a hiatus of two years in the field research, to update stakeholders on the current situation in the lagoon and problems which could only be resolved through local planning. However, the local government seemed blind to both the conflicts among resource users and

Figure 4.4 Trends of expansion of fish-pen culture in the northern lagoon

the negative environmental impact. This was probably because the prevailing national and local policy was to promote aquaculture with its high returns as being essential to the country's economic development. The growing harvest from fish pens persuaded the government of their efficacy as a pro-poor strategy, and there was little attention to the warning signs of lagoon over-exploitation. Officials assumed that the northern Tam Giang lagoon still had plenty of potential in terms of unutilized lagoon surface area, when compared with the more congested central portion.

An important finding related to aquaculture expansion was that a freshwater macrophyte (locally named rong), used as feed for fish-pen culture in the northern lagoon system, was being overharvested. The local people wanted to know the potential amount which could be harvested without damaging the lagoon ecosystem. Rong has a close connection with a key aquatic habitat for certain stages in the life cycle of valuable fish species. By providing evidence of this ecosystem link, the research team convinced the commune government that the expansion of fish-pen culture should be limited.

It was more difficult to build awareness of the decline of fishery resources in the lagoon, because summary statistics (which include commercial aquaculture) showed increases in aggregate production, so provincial government officials assumed there was no problem. The research team built its analysis on the villagers' local knowledge and adjusted data to reflect fishing effort, rather than aggregate landings, to illustrate how the fishery resources were deteriorating (see Table 4.1 above). Focus group discussions, however, suggested that the price of most species increased faster than the decline of the catch.

We don't have to go to market to sell fish or shrimp. The middlemen buy at the boat with prices that are higher today than yesterday.

Fisherwoman in Ha Cong village.

Fishers also explained that the decrease of fish catch was 'the reality of every household. It was due to electric fishing and motorized drag nets catching all kinds of fish of all sizes.' They acknowledged that they themselves used more effective fishing gear and spent more time fishing, too.

Government planning structure and fisheries policy reform

Vietnamese government structure is unified and hierarchical, including national, provincial, district and commune representatives and policy-making bodies. The district is the seat of formal public administration closest to the local level. District offices deliver public services and programming. They combine the responsibilities of several line agencies at the provincial and national levels. District offices are directly accountable to provincial departments, which receive technical and administrative guidance from central ministries and report back to the central government. So, for example, in Figure 4.5 we can see that the Ministry of Fisheries develops the overall national policy and provides regulatory guidelines to the provincial DoF.

Table 4.1 Changes in fish catch per fishing effort unit and income from fishing, 2000–3

Figure 4.5 Government planning system in Vietnam

It is at the national level that planning requirements for the fisheries sector are determined. The content of fisheries sector plans is prepared by the ministry based on data from provincial agencies. At the provincial level, detailed plans are prepared on the basis of the national policy framework and planning guidelines from the ministry. The plans are approved by the provincial government and then distributed to the district so as to guide implementation. The process is led from above and includes sectoral plans from a wide range of ministries (including Fisheries, Agriculture and Rural Development, Transport, Trade and Tourism, Resources and Environment, among others.) The plans are implemented by district government staff, with the involvement of commune (local) government officers acting under the technical guidance of one of these line agencies. While there are obvious interactions between the sectoral plans when they are implemented on the ground, there is no mechanism to integrate them.

As part of the process of learning for policy reform, the earlier research project experiences in Tan Duong had been widely published and discussed among other research teams and with the Ministry of Fisheries, along with other donor-funded pilot projects. Reforms introduced in the fisheries law (2003)3 were the government's way of acknowledging that the strategy of allocating resource tenure to households, which worked well in boosting the productivity of agricultural land, was not as effective in the fishery sector.

Instead, the government recognized the need for co-management approaches through which government authorities could work together with locally defined user groups to manage fishery resources. This policy change was implemented by the provincial government in Thua Thien Hue and was designed to develop user groups among local fishers (see next section).

Participatory planning for lagoon use in Quang Thai

Participatory planning for lagoon use was undertaken in Quang Thai two years after the pilot experience of opening the Xa Bac waterways in Tan Duong. The new planning process involved the steps as outlined in Figure 4.6.

In practice, these steps were not separate but integrated. Neither were they strictly sequential, but sometimes took place parallel to each other. Lagoon planning was initiated quite early and developed alongside the learning and awareness-building. Some implementation began while the planning was still in progress. At different levels (commune, village, and user groups), there were different emphases on learning, planning and action. The planning and action should be seen as an integrated process in which the learning was initiated first, followed by the planning. Initial actions were taken to provide a base for learning, further planning, and adaptation. The following sections describe more details of each step.

Participatory learning and awareness-building of lagoon context

Building awareness of the context of lagoon resources exploitation was combined with the application of PRA tools and participatory research processes. Semi-structured interviews were conducted for data collection and to develop a database to facilitate learning and awareness-building. As well, a series of focus group discussions was conducted. Local participants who were involved in the focus groups included core villagers,4 village leaders and officials from state-sponsored people's organizations, such as the Farmers' Union and Women's Union. Local government (commune) officials were also involved in focus groups. Meetings and discussions were organized for officials and for the core villagers, both separately and together. The outcomes of the learning activities were a common understanding of the context of lagoon exploitation and the need for planning.

The research team supported participatory environmental education. They analysed the community communication network through a training workshop, which addressed the necessity and importance of two-way communication, and the development of information channels and participatory messages. The workshop participants themselves developed a programme for environmental education on lagoon resource problem-solving. Afterwards, the commune officers who were in charge of culture and communication led its

Figure 4.6 Participatory planning process for Quang Thai lagoon

implementation. Activities included broadcasting, meetings and seminars. The outcomes were important in sensitizing the community members and preparing them for the next steps in the planning process.

Involving local governments and developing community partnerships

The biggest challenge to the research team in preparing for the participatory planning exercise was to involve local government officials, because they were accustomed only to following central instructions. Therefore, adopting a new and participatory process required considerable learning effort.

The problems with the involvement of local government in participatory planning were twofold: without knowledge and skills, it was much easier to proceed in a conventional way; and there were no formal requirements or incentives to apply participatory planning instead of familiar methods.

The team played a crucial role in overcoming these barriers, using several strategies to accomplish change. The researchers prepared scientific evidence and technical data about resource degradation in order to justify local, participatory planning. Officials from the district and provincial departments of fisheries were informally engaged in cooperation on field activities, analysis and community meetings with the research team to build their confidence and familiarity with the issues. Special workshops were organized and targeted at local government officials in different agencies, to promote a shared understanding of lagoon resource management. Finally, the researchers played an important role in negotiating and facilitating discussions among the various different government agencies involved in the planning process.

The outcomes of these efforts to engage local government were very important in terms of learning for change. They not only made it possible for fisheries departments in the districts and provinces to get involved in planning, but also encouraged government officials to adopt new roles. For example, the team succeeded in getting officials to support community arrangements for opening the navigation space in Quang Thai rather than using the police to enforce a different district regulation. Officials were also persuaded to consider customary and current use rights in reorganizing the allocation of the lagoon area to fish corrals instead of imposing a bidding mechanism provided for in district policy.5

The research team was able to overcome the scepticism and suspicion of local government, and encouraged officials to undertake a completely new planning process in part because of the evidence and expertise the team had acquired in several years of prior research on lagoon exploitation and resource conflicts. Another reason was the strong relationships of trust and collaboration they had developed with the involved communities through participatory research. This experience built facilitation and communication skills in the research team, which were essential to the successful introduction of this new participatory governance process.

The involvement of research and government organizations with local village fishers and other resource users proved important in developing new local organizations. For instance, in responding to the fisheries policy reforms, the provincial government was forced to rethink its traditional strategy of allocating areas in the lagoon to individual households. Instead, they had to consider how areas could be allocated to groups of fishers. The problem was that local co-management groups were required to be legally established entities.

There are already a number of mass organizations, which involve most local residents in any village, such as the Farmers' Union, the Women's Union and the National Fatherland Front. These are sanctioned by the national government; however, they do not have the appropriate legal standing to receive resource title under the land law (1993). In a pilot activity, which was approved by the provincial DoF and the district government, a local Fishing Coalition was formally established and constituted as a legal entity capable of holding resource rights. Its members were the villagers who exploit aquatic resources in the lagoon. This new user organization developed a formal constitution addressing membership and procedures, and subsequently played a major role in planning lagoon resource use. An open registration process included all the fishing and aquaculture households, both fixed-gear and mobile-gear, the very poor and the better-off. Membership was defined at the household level, with representation normally by the head of the household, so the organization as constituted by local people themselves is dominated by men.

Another challenge for the research team was ensuring the meaningful participation of women and very poor households in the planning process. In the lagoon communities, women and men are both active in fishing and aquaculture. However, women are more involved in processing and selling products, as well as domestic and farming work (livestock) for additional income. Women from better-off households typically practise both fishing and aquaculture. They also have more opportunities to join in community activities since they have more financial security and spare time.

In the planning discussions, women were not very active and decision-making was dominated by men. The women from very poor households, some of whom practise only mobile-gear fishing, were even more difficult to reach. Men are assumed to represent the different interests in their households, in accordance with traditional practice, power relations in the family and social norms. While the research team has been successful from the outset at engaging even very poor households in the planning process to secure their access to lagoon resources, they also recognize that additional education and awareness-building are still needed to strengthen the representation of women's interests in the process. These activities are being developed as the new local planning procedure evolves.

Consensus on planning criteria

Planning for the allocation of the lagoon surface and access rights started with a stakeholders' meeting and workshop, which involved the participation of core villagers, the Fishing Coalition, the village leadership, the commune government, and representatives of district and provincial departments in charge of lagoon management. With the facilitation of the research team, participants reached consensus on the main problems to be addressed, the purpose and overall strategy, and the criteria for planning. The agreed purpose of resource planning was to reorganize fish-pen culture and fish-corral practices to provide space necessary for waterflows and navigation, as well as a base for improved administration (including registration, licensing and taxation) and more effective enforcement of the ban on destructive fishing. Specifically, the participatory planning aimed to involve the villagers as resource users in the following planning activities:

• determining the fish-pen culture zones and locating them in the local lagoon;

• defining the intended (maximum) number of fish corrals and locating the whereabouts of the fish corrals;

• locating and defining the lagoon space for the navigation lanes and waterway systems;

• community organizing to form appropriate fish-pen culture and fish-corral groups to facilitate community-based management; and

• developing local regulations for resource management based on input from user groups, the village and commune, and in accordance with provincial and district regulations on resource protection.

Three main priority considerations and criteria for planning were also discussed and agreed upon among different stakeholders:

• maintaining access to the lagoon for all current resource users within the local territory;

• respecting customary rights regarding fishing places; and

• sharing any dislocations required for the re-arrangement of lagoon areas.

Participants also agreed to take into account requirements for navigation and resource protection as defined in district and provincial regulations. Feedback from the community led to the consensus that it was difficult (or impractical) to enforce all these regulations fully. However, certain planning measures could be taken to reinforce their intent so as to satisfy the responsible agencies while these regulations were gradually replaced or updated.

Participatory planning and actions at the village level

The research team facilitated development of the plan, using PRA tools such as mapping, Venn diagrams and focus groups to involve the community in learning, generating ideas, proposing strategies and designing plans for lagoon use. The plan was developed in several stages, starting with a preliminary design at the village level and then detailed plans for fish-pen and fish-corral activities. These designs were drawn up jointly by the fish-pen owners and fish-corral owners, the researchers, commune officers and Fishing Coalition representatives. The separate draft plans for fish-pen culture and fish-corral practice were integrated and presented to a meeting of the whole village for review and feedback.

After a consensus among villagers was obtained, actions were taken to strengthen the resource user organizations. Villagers were registered based on the current locations, zones developed for pen culture and rows defined for fish corrals. This led to the formation of resource user groups. Lagoon demarcation was organized by the Fishing Coalition together with representatives from local, district and provincial government agencies. The local government and provincial departments provided technical and legal support through officials who witnessed the field activities. User groups constructed sites and demarcation posts in the lagoon. Meanwhile, the project team contributed consulting services and construction materials for the demarcation posts.

Through participatory planning and action, villagers accomplished several useful results.

• They specified what the number of fish corrals, pens and future limits should be. The community reduced the number of rows of corrals and increased the number of pens and pen zones. The participants defined these in a way that would not increase conflict with the current fish corrals but which would, instead, maximize production, taking account of the lagoon environment, such as depth and currents.

• They defined both the types and number of resource user groups. This was aimed at promoting cooperation among the resource users. All current owners could join in the corral groups and each group would correspond to one row of corrals. However, no new fish corrals or users would be permitted. Meanwhile, all current owners of fish pens could join the pen groups, each corresponding to one pen zone. Newcomers were eligible to join the new zones to be designated.

• They located and designed navigation lanes and waterway systems.

• They defined pen-culture zones, fish-corral rows and waterway systems (using concrete markers in lagoon).

• They mapped all pen-culture zones, fish-corral rows and waterway systems for monitoring.

• They dismantled and removed pen zones and fish corrals in designated navigation areas.

Participatory planning and actions among the resource user groups

All households that practised fish-corral and fish-pen culture were registered with their respective user groups. This guaranteed them access to the lagoon, provided collective protection of their gear and resolution of pollution issues, and brought external and government support, such as extension services.

Figure 4.7 Map of planned lagoon use

Figure 4.8 Demarcating the pen zones, fish-corral rows and navigation space in Quang Thai lagoon

About 90 per cent of the total 150 households of the village participated in the user groups. The size of each fish-corral group varied from 7 to 15 households, while members of pen groups varied from 17 to 35. There was no specific user group for mobile-gear fishers. However, most of these households participated in the fish-pen culture groups because they practised both mobile-gear fishing and pen culture.

Actions at the resource user group level were led by group leaders who were elected by the respective user groups. They started by designating the location of gears in their allocated zone. For example, the proposed number of rows of pens, the direction of the rows and the space between them were all intended to optimize water current flows, protection and management practices. Places in the pen zone were allocated to group members randomly after the number of pens had been registered. Pens of group members in the allocated zones were then moved and rearranged, and the new locations mapped. In addition, other group regulations and agreements on gear establishment and management were developed. Additional measures for group management and cooperation were still being formulated as this chapter was being written.

Consolidation, monitoring and follow-up

The Fishing Coalition facilitated and reviewed group arrangements, the allocation of locations and places, and the development of regulations. It also coordinated among groups to schedule the moving of pens. Decision-making on user fees and mode of collection, budget management and capital development was remanded to the user groups. The Fishing Coalition has recently developed measures including charging higher fees for people who set up pens outside the designated zones. As long as pen culture is still allowed to expand, newcomers need to be organized in new zones yet to be designated.

Systems for local planning, enforcement, monitoring and reporting are being developed. A continuing role of the research team is to provide technical support and facilitation for a participatory monitoring mechanism with the people of Quang Thai. Its other important roles are identifying means and processes to strengthen local roles in planning processes both at the district level (scaling vertically 'up' in the government hierarchy) and in neighbouring communes (scaling horizontally 'out'). Some preliminary steps have already been taken.

The team is now preparing for planning in Quang Loi, the commune next to Quang Thai. It is also exploring with officers of Quang Dien district and the provincial DoF how to conduct the vertical scaling-up process.

The emerging model for participatory local planning

The new participatory planning process in Quang Thai was not predefined either by government officials or by the research team, but emerged from interaction among resource users and other concerned stakeholders. The process is still evolving as all stakeholders continue to learn from experience and make adaptations. As the research project continues, the research team will reinforce this process of iterative action, learning, planning and adaptation. Figure 4.9 presents the most important features of the emerging local planning process.

Innovative elements of participatory planning

Participatory planning in Quang Thai emphasized the importance and urgency of NRM at the local level. It also succeeded in resolving some of the problems and conflicts that it was supposed to address. This was a dramatic change from the previous planning mechanism. The process tested concurrent planning and implementation, built on local knowledge, organized resource users, assigned responsibility and management authority to user groups and created new roles for users and all levels of government. The planning sustained the livelihoods of resource users because it recognized access based on customary rights, and because community members themselves took action to regulate exploitation and reduce the pressure on lagoon resources.

In terms of problem-solving, conflicts among the fish-pen owners competing for a good location were resolved successfully, though those of newcomers still need to be addressed. All households moved their pen(s) to newly allocated places even without external financial support. It thus became unnecessary to compete with each other. Most users were able to participate in negotiations to come up with collective actions. For instance, when a few households were asked to relocate their fish corrals from the navigation zone, all the group

Figure 4.9 The emerging model for participatory local planning for NRM

members decided to move theirs in an expression of solidarity with the affected families.

The planning process also improved the capacity of community leaders to involve people in resource management and community actions. An example was the users' voluntary contribution of time, labour and materials to mark off the exploitation zones, public navigation routes and waterways.

Another positive impact was the support that the process lent to management and governance. It provided the basis for defining new roles and management functions of the stakeholders in further planning efforts. As (co-)managers, the user organizations identify problems, plan solutions and monitor results. Resource user groups carry out collective actions. Commune officials initiate and lead local resource planning. The provincial and district officials provide technical advisers and facilitators to help local people resolve their own conflicts. The researchers design the process, which in turn facilitates learning, planning and negotiations between other stakeholders.

Lessons learned

Key elements of participatory planning

Our experience with the successful introduction and establishment of a new participatory planning process for resource co-management in the lagoon incorporates five strategic elements.

1. The key point is a shared understanding among the stakeholders of the context, problems and planning approach. This came from learning and sharing together in the previous participatory research applications. This common understanding not only assured the participation of the stakeholders, but also facilitated their effective contribution to carrying out the whole planning process.

2. The active and meaningful participation of fishers and farmers is crucial, because they bring their knowledge and experience to the planning process, and because their opinions are respected and valued. They have the most important role in decision-making, but in return are expected to take responsibility for the implementation of the plan. This is not to be misunderstood as the token consultation of local people in a plan essentially developed by bureaucrats.

3. Strengthening a new community organization, the Fishing Coalition, was very important in order to build the capacity of community actors who would undertake the central roles in organizing and planning resource management. The support of commune government officials, who were able to take leadership of the overall process, was also very important in empowering the community and providing legitimacy to community actors.

4. Participation of the line agencies at various local levels (provincial and district departments of fisheries) was important in providing functional and technical support.

5. The overall facilitating role of the research team was essential to carrying out participatory planning as an innovative process. They were vital to the learning process, capacity building, technical analysis and, most importantly, negotiations among the community groups and stakeholders

The effectiveness of participatory research

The long-term participatory research project was a crucial prerequisite to the planning innovations for several reasons. First, it helped all the stakeholders to understand the context and livelihoods of people, instead of seeing problems in simplistic terms and making assumptions about their causes and solutions. This enabled all parties to recognize the source of the problems and to develop effective strategies for solving them. PAR approaches helped the research team to develop new skills, which proved invaluable in developing co-management solutions. Participatory research also respected the people's knowledge and practices; therefore, it invited local people into the learning process with the researchers. Together, researchers and local people were able to generate ideas to learn and change, and to convince governments at different levels that their recommendations would be practical.

PAR was also an effective tool for developing local partnerships, good relations and trust with the communities. Sometimes problems were not addressed successfully. However, the support formthe development of local livelihood strategies and the involvement of communities in learning enhanced the credibility of the research team and of the solutions adopted.

The team applied PAR for problem-solving. This made the approach adaptive and responsive to the rapid changes in lagoon exploitation. For example, PAR dealt with the new expansion of pen culture. The approach not only provided effective tools for the research team but also for government officials in learning about the context, analysing the situation and designing interventions. The tools were also helpful as a means to facilitate negotiation, dialogue and to share learning among the local stakeholders. This enhanced the involvement of the local government in locally driven initiatives of planning for NRM.

The effectiveness of participatory planning

In Quang Thai, the new participatory planning process was effective in reducing conflicts and improving both equity and environmental quality. This was a different result from the earlier experience in Tan Duong. With less severe conflicts and with the benefit of earlier lessons, the research team was able to adapt participatory research and facilitate successfully a new local planning process. Local government recognized the importance of the actual process involved as opposed to only acknowledging the final planning document with its approval stamped by senior government. Moreover, the participating stakeholders were willing to try new roles, rather than remain stuck in conventional practice. For example, officials from the local government office and line agencies went to the lagoon to witness the demarcation of allocated zones and provide legal recognition, instead of just approving a plan document in their offices.

The planning process was based on local knowledge and meaningful participation in problem-solving, which addressed not only the conservation and ecological issues of the lagoon resource base, but also the economic issues of local livelihoods. Most of the solutions and strategies came from the suggestions of local people themselves. This greatly strengthened local commitment and participation in plan implementation.

The plan recognized customary rights and current (informal) resource use rights in the lagoon, so it did not threaten any groups of resource users. This commitment to resource users greatly increased their buy-in to the planning process, reduced the fear that one group would benefit at the expense of others and lessened the risk of long-term over-exploitation by non-participating users.

The role of the research team in ongoing support for the planning process was crucial. The team introduced the concepts and practices of participatory decisions and adaptive learning, and emphasized to all stakeholders the value of scientific evidence to help achieve equity and sustainability, through several years of engagement in participatory research work. The team's skills in communication and facilitation were essential to gain the support of local government, and to build trust and foster dialogue between stakeholders. The research team maintained its engagement throughout the process of background preparation, planning and implementation, in order to ensure continuity and address technical issues, negotiate conflicts and prevent miscommunications, even as more and more of the leadership for planning and management was being taken by local user groups together with the commune.

The research team did not predetermine the introduction of the participatory planning. This outcome emerged as the dynamics of resource use changed in the lagoon, as all stakeholders came to share a common understanding of the problems, and as they gained experience with new aquaculture technologies and tenure options. The local government and resource users took advantage of the opportunities afforded by the reform of national fisheries legislation to develop an effective participatory planning response.

Everybody had to learn a lot along the way, but learning takes time. Effective preparation for engaging different groups in participatory planning involves time-consuming step-by-step processes, with frequent setbacks and false starts. These steps are crucial to allow the research team, local officials and resource users to understand the context and reach shared expectations for planning. With experience, they can be improved to some extent, but the emergence of effective local participatory planning processes will never be a smooth or rapid process.

Conclusions

When it is undertaken with attention and rigour, PAR provides an effective tool for researchers to involve the community in the learning process about NRM problems and solutions. It facilitates the identification of problems and emphasizes the most effective interventions. Participatory research helps build awareness and trust, and this leads to the sensitization and involvement of the community, government and other stakeholders in local planning for natural resource co-management.

Participatory research made it possible for the research team, the local government and other stakeholders to modify their positions on issues of conflict through dialogue and negotiation. This was key to reaching a common understanding over time of the new processes, roles and actions for lagoon resource management.

The new participatory planning model in Quang Thai not only resolved conflicts and responded to resource degradation but also helped stakeholders to make the changes in processes, organization, representation and roles required to move towards better governance and CBCRM.

Acknowledgements

The research project was conducted with the financial and technical support of the IDRC and CIDA and with special acknowledgment to Stephen Tyler and Gary F. Newkirk for their efforts to initiate and guide the project. Acknowledgement is also extended to the reviewers, editors and experts from the 2004 CBNRM writeshop in Tagaytay, Philippines, for their substantive comments, technical guidance, and support in preparing this paper. A number of institutions and individuals have been involved in the implementation of this planning effort: Hue University of Agriculture and Forestry; Hue University of Sciences; Fisheries Department of Thua Thien Hue province; Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of Quang Dien district; and the Commune Government of Quang Thai. The lead author's background is described elsewhere. Co-authors Chat, Hanh, Tinh, Thanh and Suong are all affiliated with Hue University of Agriculture and Forestry; co-authors Than and Phap with Hue University of Sciences. The research team would like to thank all those people who have been involved and who have contributed to this project: government technical staff, faculty members, researchers from participating institutions, local officials and particularly the villagers – the women, men, fishers and farmers from Quang Thai.

CHAPTER 5
Towards upland sustainable development: livelihood gains and resource management in central Vietnam

Le Van An

Abstract

The livelihoods of upland ethnic minorities in Vietnam were traditionally dependent on shifting cultivation and harvesting non-timber forest products. Declining forest cover, government policies banning shifting cultivation and the migration of lowland farmers into upland areas have all led to dramatic pressures on upland communities to adopt new livelihoods. A research team from Hue University of Agriculture and Forestry took up the challenge of working with the uplands communities in the Hong Ha commune of A Luoi district in central Vietnam. The researchers used participatory methods to help farmers experiment with new agricultural production systems and build new farmer-led organizations for mutual support. Results appear to have benefited both men and women farmers, and have attracted attention and support from district extension officials. Based on these successes, the community has negotiated new forms of tenure on restricted forest lands, and increased the area they are allowed to cultivate. Lessons are being transferred to adjacent communities through a variety of mechanisms. We conclude that community-based upland natural resource management approaches should balance long-term resource management sustainability, mainly through resource tenure issues that are typically complex and difficult to resolve, with satisfying the shorter-term livelihood needs of villagers.

Introduction and background

Shifting cultivation is a traditional subsistence practice of upland minority peoples in Vietnam. During the war era in the municipality (commune) of Hong Ha, upland minorities migrated to forest areas along the Vietnam–Laos border. As they resettled their old lands and homes after the war, they were and continue to be faced with new challenges. These include forests that were seriously damaged by war (especially because of use of chemical defoliants), and new government policies requiring them to shift from their traditional swidden agriculture to a more sedentary farming system. According to the government, these policies are designed to protect the forest and provide better services and livelihoods. In addition, most traditional lands and forests were declared a watershed protection area and access to their forests and other natural resources is now limited. Trying to adapt to this new reality is very difficult, particularly because the arable land area per family is small.

To improve forest cover, in the early 1990s the government of Vietnam made efforts to invest in reforestation under national programmes such as 'Program 327', the United Nations World Food Programme reforestation effort and 'the five million hectare' reforestation programme. The government also issued a new forestry law (1991), a land law (1993) and a number of regulatory rulings recognizing and increasing the rights of farmers to land and forest. However, conditions in the uplands – and the top-down operation of state agencies – have contributed to a fragmentary implementation of these policies. These programmes were designed with little local consultation. Local people also complain that benefits often do not reach the local level and, when they do, local officials are forced to follow regulations that simply do not make sense to communities. Government officials blame poor management systems and the limited understanding of local people's implementation problems.

In Hong Ha, most of the land in and around the commune is now under watershed protection and management by the Bo River Watershed Department (a government agency). In practice, this means that local people only have access to about 1 per cent of the total land area for agriculture. At the same time, the population increased from about 300 people in 1975 to 1,200 people in 2003. Combined with the required changes in agricultural systems and the loss of access to resources, upland people have no option but to find ways to improve their livelihoods while using and managing their natural resources sustainably.

In response to these critical problems facing many uplands communes in Thua Thien Hue province and in other parts of central Vietnam, the Community-Based Upland Natural Resource Management project was developed by the University of Hue with support from the IDRC and the Ford Foundation. The project has been implemented by a research team from the Hue University of Agriculture and Forestry. Hong Ha commune was selected on the basis of its social, economic and natural conditions, as representative of the upland situation for many communes in central Vietnam. The aim of the project was to gain a better understanding of the links between poverty, resource degradation and policy, and to test local options to improve agricultural production and build human and social capital. Some recent changes in policy are encouraging. Local authorities have been meeting the researchers and the villagers to discuss various joint resource management arrangements or agreements. One of our ambitions is to make policies work for the poor. This requires involving different stakeholders at district, provincial and even national levels.

The project site

Hong Ha and Huong Nguyen communes are located in the A Luoi district of Thua Thien Hue province, in central Vietnam (Figure 5.1). There are 21 communes in A Luoi, a mountainous area where most local people belong to Pa Co, Ta Oi, Ca Tu and Pa Hy minorities. Hong Ha and Huong Nguyen are two of the 16 poorest communes in the A Luoi district, and among the approximately 1,200 designated poorest communes in the country, according to national poverty criteria. Hong Ha has been the initial research site of the project, since 1998. Huong Nguyen is a new site where lessons learned from Hong Ha will be disseminated in cooperation with different agencies, particularly the provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (DARD). Lessons from Hong Ha and Huong Nguyen will also be used to expand community-based upland natural resource management approaches to other upland communities.

Hong Ha commune has about 230 households with approximately 1,200 people from different ethnic groups, such as K'tu (47 per cent), Pa Co/Pa Hy (28 per cent), Ta Oi (16 per cent), Kinh (7 per cent) or lowland Vietnamese and BruVan Kieu. The commune's land area is 14,100 ha, consisting of agricultural lands (180 ha), forestry lands (11,000 ha) and barren hills (2,700 ha). Very little of the forested area is in good condition. In 2002 and 2003, thanks to support from a state agency, about 120 ha of forestry land was converted to new rubber plantations. Most of the forest is under the management of the State Forestry Enterprise or the Watershed Protection Board of Thua-Thien Hue province. People in Hong Ha are adapting to new agricultural production systems in conformity with the local and national policies, as explained above. They also keep some livestock, mainly cattle, which roam freely.

Currently, Hong Ha has a primary school with five classrooms accommodating 250 pupils in grades 1–5, and two kindergarten classes. Children who want to enrol in higher grades must go to Hue City or to A Luoi, far from their homes. Almost 30 per cent of the local people are illiterate.

Hong Ha has a new village health centre but it possesses limited medical and other support services. Due to limited cash income, people usually depend on traditional medicines and health treatments. Only when they get seriously ill do they buy medicines or visit a health centre or hospital. Common health problems include malaria, dysentery, asthma, influenza, miscarriages and premature births for women, and malnutrition among children. Other important problems in Hong Ha when we started our work were a lack of food and food insecurity. People remain extremely poor but we have seen significant changes in recent years.

With a total of 20 ha of paddy field, wetland rice provides the main commodity production and income of the local people. At the start of the project, rice yield was very low, with only 1.9 tonne/ha in 1998. Cassava was the main food crop and was used as staple food. Due to soil erosion and cultivation methods, crop production suffered from low productivity.

Huong Nguyen, like Hong Ha, is also one of the poorest communes in the A Luoi district, but in many ways, people are worse off. Their commune lies adjacent

Figure 5.1 Map of Vietnam, depicting its central region and study site
Source: Bao, 2002.

to Hong Ha, along the road from Hue City to the A Luoi Valley. Huong Nguyen was newly settled in 1995 under the government's compulsory resettlement programme. Originally, these people lived in a remote and inaccessible mountain valley and very rich forest area, near the Vietnam–Laos border. When they resettled, they were allocated unproductive Imperata grasslands, or wastelands, that needed to be converted to agricultural fields. They were allotted some farming tools and some food to help them begin their new lives. Unlike Hong Ha villagers who moved back to their own homelands after the war, these villagers were forced to resettle. Moreover, to compound their challenges, some time after being persuaded to resettle, the people observed that a state logging company was extensively logging their traditional forests. Outsiders had begun to harvest rattan and other forest products in a non-sustainable manner. They wondered why this was allowed to happen while, in their new homes, they did not have enough to eat. They were told by state authorities that this new life would be better for them and their families. However, many of them wanted to return to their own familiar forestlands.

Our participatory research approach

A farmer's expectations are usually clear and simple: to meet daily requirements such as food, income, health and education. Hence, the project started with trying to improve farmers' livelihoods first. Simultaneously, project participants worked with state authorities to see whether the people's access to forests and other natural resources could be expanded.

They also asked for technical assistance in agricultural production. PAR was used to strengthen participation in the research process, from the identification of problems and possible solutions, to the joint implementation and testing of options. We employed participatory monitoring and evaluation as the work was undertaken (Figure 5.2). Participatory learning approaches were designed to include women and men farmers in all stages of the project.

Development of participatory approaches with local people and stakeholders

It is not easy to get male and female farmers and other stakeholders to participate in the whole process of action research. Participation is usually influenced by traditional top-down approaches to which researchers are accustomed. Researchers normally play all the main roles in all stages of research, from identifying problems to the implementation and evaluation of solutions. The levels of farmers' participation are low or nil. Through our work, we have learned that a good participatory approach requires a variety of methods. These must meet the practical needs of the farmers and simultaneously enhance their confidence. Some of the ways we tried to improve PAR and our CBNRM work are described next.

Figure 5.2 Learning cycles in PAR
Source: An, 2002.

The importance of a good initial diagnosis

It is crucial to diagnose the situation and research issues carefully at the beginning of the research process. Meetings with villagers should be organized according to different groups such as women, men, groups of the poor and groups of leaders. Most farmers are more interested in specific aspects of their daily lives and probably less interested in other things. For example, a good rice farmer is particularly proud of his or her production methods but another may be much more interested in cattle, which are looked after with great pride and care. In complicated production systems, one will always find farmers who are experimenting on their own and researchers can learn a lot by working with and learning from them. We were once told, 'If you want to teach a farmer you must first learn from a farmer.' This is something that we began to appreciate more and more. Problem diagnoses by different groups varied a great deal. Rather than leading to confusion, this helped researchers and villagers to understand the complexities of their situation better and to develop further steps for possible interventions (Table 5.1).

Improved criteria for selecting participants

Not all farmers have the same capacity to participate. It is normally easier for wealthy farmers and those who have higher social status in a community to articulate their views and participate more. Women and poor farmers rarely

Table 5.1 Solutions identified by different farmer groups in Hong Ha

Source: Farmers' meeting in Hong Ha, 1999.

involve themselves. To encourage participation, community leaders helped the project team to list and classify farmers according to different wealth categories (very poor, poor, middle, better-off, and very rich) and according to a range of social indicators, not just income. Another categorization was based on people's motivations to work with one of several different production groups (we discuss these groups in more detail later on).

Acknowledging different farmer's motivations

Farmers have different reasons for participating in PAR. The usual reason is to improve production and income as well as to gain direct financial benefits. For example, some farmers wanted to be involved in the project's home gardening groups because they offered some financial subsidies for planting materials. However, their real intention was to use project funds for other purposes.

Based on past government-led interventions in Vietnam, farmers often expect financial support from outsiders for their needs. During initial meetings, villagers explain their situation mainly by the phrase 'a lack of'. Lack of money is often the highest priority, based on farmers' perceptions. In our project, we had to proceed carefully to explain that we were not a development agency. We needed them to understand that through participatory action research techniques, we wanted to learn with them and hoped they could learn and benefit from us. A deeper understanding of the situation emerged after many long discussions and many evenings spent in the village.

Upland people are poor and they often conceive of being poor as lacking money. However, many of them do not understand how to invest money loaned from outside agencies, a fact that usually results in them having heavier obligations and losses after such loans. We heard many unhappy stories regarding this situation from them. Hence, a careful analysis is vital. Farmers and village leaders were surprised to find that an outside group wanted to understand their situation and learn from them. This was vastly different from their experiences, where development agencies and government officials arrived already knowing the answers.

The social or economic status of a farmer or individual greatly affects the diagnosis of the problem. CBNRM starts with an understanding of the current situation and the diverse needs of many different groups in a given community. We must develop ways to help different groups overcome different problems, on their own.

Increasing farmers' participation

Using participatory development communication (PDC) methods and tools can improve local engagement in PAR. PDC is a powerful tool that facilitates the involvement of community members through various communication strategies (Bessette, 2004).

We used PDC in a variety of ways. For example, the use of video cameras and the production of leaflets encouraged farmers to participate and helped document new techniques that were applied locally. Project leaders were trained in how to use these kinds of communication tools and media for the benefit of researchers and local people. In the project, farmers were able to learn new production methods more easily with the help of videos on fish raising and livestock feed conservation. This was especially useful for illiterate farmers. An information resource centre was established in the commune, and stocked with a variety of information materials. Farmers said that they liked this manner of supplying information as it made access easier, although it was a challenge to provide suitable resources for low-literacy situations.

When interviewing or working with farmers, the types of questions and manner of talking are important to ensure good-quality participation. In-depth topical studies were used to help better understand their situation and ambitions. Open-ended questions were used to introduce topics and gather general information, but were followed up with probes for specific detail.

We encouraged farmers to form groups with shared interests to hold regular meetings and share information about their activities. This helped build their confidence to participate in other CBNRM activities, and to engage more actively in local government as well as in other types of meetings.

Arranging for adequate time and a proper place to participate

It is very important in the PAR process to consider the time and place of meetings. Most women (80 per cent in our study) noted that they could not attend meetings in the community centre. The centre is usually too far from their homes and is mainly used by community leaders, not by women. They stated that they were uncomfortable in this setting. Organizing meetings near their hamlets facilitated higher attendance and more active engagement. Even when they do not always attend such meetings, they often drop in as observers and then discuss with their friends later what they heard and observed. Researchers and extensionists need to sometimes stay overnight in the community and participate in household farming work. Team members who were able to do this found it a very productive way to learn and to build social relationships – and trust.

Improving the material livelihoods of the upland poor

Upland farmers in Hue and in many other parts of the country are adjusting or adapting both to new realities and farming systems. The policy environment for rural development has also changed dramatically over the last decade. Following the principles of PAR and PDC, our research project started by identifying farmers' needs and how to satisfy them. Meetings were conducted to identify problems and possible solutions. Partial results for some of our earlier meetings are summarized in Table 5.1.

Farmers' learning groups were then formed by inviting farmers to share their own interests and livelihood systems. These groups were built around different agricultural commodities. Each commodity served as an entry point to other linkages in the larger farming system, so the group interests were always broader than their main commodity. Groups included:

• rice production group;

• pig production group;

• fish raising group;

• home garden improvement group;

• cassava production group; and

• forestry production group.

The following section reports on some of the research team's experiences in improving livelihood options among poor farmers in Hong Ha. We focus on the lessons learned in our work with rice and pig production groups, because these are the foundations of their mixed farming system. Pigs are of particular interest to female farmers who see them as a way of earning a bit of extra cash for their other family needs. Extra cash allows them to pay for medicines, administer care when someone in the family is ill, or to buy books or other school supplies. When people in a village are desperate, often they can rely upon social support systems. However, having even small amounts of discretionary cash is extremely important for women.

Rice production group

Each production group initially consisted of no more than 15 farmers. Members began by discussing and explaining the problems they were facing, and identifying possible solutions. The project team facilitated these discussions, using their scientific and technical knowledge to complement the local people's knowledge.

As shown in Figure 5.3, one of the problems identified by the rice production group was low rice yields and productivity. They developed possible solutions, directly addressing the causes of the low rice yields and productivity as understood by them and the researchers. A range of solutions to be tested in their fields were discussed, as shown in Table 5.2.

The group decided to test these options:

• three new rice varieties (TH30, Khang dan, D116), using the local variety as a control;

• various levels of fertilizer application; and

• labour saving transplanting and direct-sowing methods.

In each experiment, between three and five farmers agreed to test one of the three options. The farmer group selected the farmers who would apply the different tests. Other group members participated in evaluation and learning meetings at least three times during the growing season: at the beginning during the planting and experimental design stage; during the growth period of rice; and at harvest time. During each meeting, farmers developed their own criteria to monitor and evaluate results, and made decisions on which varieties were performing well, how much and what fertilizer to apply, and which cultivation techniques to use. The results of on-farm monitoring and evaluation were shared with other rice farmers in the group, as well as with non-members and other production groups. Because of this, the learning process was expanded to other farmers in the community.

Based on the lessons learned from the on-farm experiments, researchers needed to take on facilitator roles to help farmers develop solutions based on their personal situation. Some farmers then could test new technologies, while others could monitor and evaluate the results and thus learn from those testing

Figure 5.3 Problem analysis as performed by rice farmers
Source: Farmers' meeting in Hong Ha, 2002.

the options. The adaptability of options or solutions to other farmers should also be discussed, with the farmers supported by the researchers. The more familiar farmers become with new technologies and research results, the easier it is for them to share lessons more broadly with others (Table 5.3).

Pig production group

Similar steps of problem diagnosis and formulating solutions were also developed by the pig production group. Due to lack of agricultural land, farmers wanted to try to increase their incomes from livestock production. Some years ago, a number of projects had supported and introduced cattle to the commune. However, this only worked for middling well-off or better-off farmers who had sufficient money to buy better breeds or to pay herders to watch the cattle.

Poor farmers in Hong Ha and Huong Nguyen chose pig production as this endeavour is more suitable to their conditions. Pigs can be fed with farm products, such as cassava, vegetables and other home-grown or collected feeds. Some farmers had kept pigs in the past but their productivity was low. Pig production in upland conditions posed many problems such as low performance, poor husbandry techniques, lack of suitable feeds and diseases (Toan, 2003). Three experiments were carried out by different farmers: raising Mong Cai, a

Table 5.2 Rice production group: farmer-defined problems and solutions (not in priority order)

Table 5.3 Rice production group: results of testing options and adaptation rates by other farmers

local breed of pigs that farmers favour, as mother pigs or as sows; raising crossbred animals associated with the fattening of pigs for the market; and making green feed (silage) from the widely grown cassava root and leaves.

In addition, two farmers were trained in basic veterinary practices for one month in Hue. This was supplemented by follow-up training in the village with the help of researchers and students. Vaccinations were also applied through veterinary service centres.

Meanwhile, other group members went to the district market centres to gather information on prices of the slaughtered pigs before selling to intermediaries. The farmers decided to sell their pigs together to get a higher price. These activities helped build social capital in the pig production group.

However, not all options or tests developed through PAR were successful. Mong Cai sows were introduced to 10 farmers. The sows produced good piglets in the first year through an artificial insemination service from the university. However, without the support of researchers or students, these sows could not get stud service since there were no boars in the village. As a result, Mong Cai sows stopped producing piglets and villagers decided not to keep sows any longer. Farmers now usually obtain piglets from a lowland commune near Hong Ha where sows produce high-quality piglets. It is anticipated that some of the more successful farmers may eventually invest in a boar or stud service and breed sows, after which time they will sell piglets locally.

Lessons learned

Over the last five years, livelihoods in Hong Ha commune have changed markedly as farmers have adapted technologies and modified both the forms and roles of local organization (interest groups, women's union, farmers' association and hamlet leaders). They have greatly improved their management capacity (collected information, made joint decisions, evaluated outcomes). This has resulted in increased food production and substantial income generation. The lessons learned from these initial experiences are as follows.

1. How to work with the poor and the disadvantaged groups in community. Poor and disadvantaged farmers usually do not participate in extension or development programmes because of assumptions about their poor status, low technical knowledge, and capacity to apply new technologies. Therefore it is important for researchers to understand and follow PAR and PDC methods with special attention to the poor. Farmers prefer to work in homogeneous groups where members have similar resource constraints and interests. It is also important that some farmers also want to belong to several groups. As farmers learn from one another and begin to adapt their own production methods, they gain greater confidence, judgement and skills. This helps them respond to new opportunities.

2. How best to adapt results to other people in the community or beyond. Research or development projects cannot work with everybody in a community at the same time. In this project, technical interventions were initially tested by a small number of farmers in the different interest groups. Other farmers had the opportunity to learn through the processes of research, communication and farmer-to-farmer interactions. Adapted technologies were evaluated by the farmers, who shared the lessons with other farmers. The role of researchers was generally limited to facilitating the learning process from farmer-to-farmer first in a commune and then at a broader level. Farmers themselves (or perhaps the provincial extension service) need to do this and researchers can only facilitate. The researchers' initial contribution was diverse, given that each group and each farmer had different interests and different resources. Therefore, they adopted or rejected new methods based on their own situation.

There is little sense in trying to push a technology at farmers if they are not interested. For example, farmers planted new cassava varieties as on-farm experiments, to find the best for cultivation. Some farmers would prefer a particular variety while others differed. The reasons for this could be explained by their points of view regarding yield, market value, or taste, depending on the purpose for cultivation as well as individual preferences.

3. How to work with other line agencies for the poor. The results of our research would be more significant if applied and expanded to other areas and supported by additional agencies and policy-makers. In Vietnam, the agricultural extension system has a top-down approach, from central government to grassroots communities. Agricultural extensionists play critical roles in connecting the poor to different line agencies. Agricultural extension agents at provincial and district levels have cooperated in our research project as

working partners. As a result, they are now beginning to use farmer-to-farmer learning approaches in their own work.

These are lessons that are important for agricultural extension agencies to grasp. In the research project, extensionists were given opportunities to participate in PAR processes themselves, as a way to facilitate their learning. Experiences from Hong Ha were shared with other communes throughout A Luoi district in extension meetings. Aside from individual farmer-to-farmer learning, extension meetings provide an opportunity to bring ideas to many other communities and gain feedback. The processes of participatory extension and adaptation with farmers need to be constantly evaluated. Government agencies must learn these processes.

An important tool for extension agencies is the participatory monitoring and evaluation process in which evaluation criteria were developed by farmers with support from extensionists and researchers. Evaluation workshops were organized regularly at community and district levels. In one of the earlier evaluations with both women and men, we were surprised to learn of the very high importance given to farm exchange visits and technical training. Farmers ranked this as their second most important priority (after work on rice). We adjusted our work accordingly. Another priority was that of building social assets in different ways, once basic livelihood needs were more secure.

Building assets

From our work, we have learned that agricultural production is an integral part of CBNRM. Natural resource management in complex uplands production systems requires that both private and collective resources be managed in a complementary fashion. Building assets (which includes access and rights to natural resource use) is essential to the process of poverty alleviation (Ford Foundation, 2002).

Assets as conceptualized in the research project include:

• financial assets such as credit and savings, and financial resources that local people can have the opportunity to access and utilize;

• natural resources in the uplands, such as forests, non-timber forest products (NTFPs), wildlife, land and livestock, which can provide communities with sustainable livelihoods with significant cultural value as well as environmental services, such as a water supply and quality;

• social assets which include the capacity to build productive relationships and organizations between people in the community and with the outside world (or terminate these links them when harmful); and

• human assets, including knowledge and skills, that can be employed to access services, market, health care and other opportunities.

Upland people are often deprived of these assets. Being poor makes people less secure in their livelihoods, and reduces access to educational opportunities, health services and other government programmes. This project has worked with local people to understand their asset situation, support local organizations and build assets of individuals in the community.

In most communes, social assets are constituted by formal and informal organizations. Formal organizations are established to manage community resources according to current government systems, such as the People's Committee of the commune, the Farmers' Association and the Women's Union, among others. These organizations have functions and responsibilities in developing upland communities. The research project has supported and worked with all three organizations very closely as they have long-established relationships with farmers and the poor within communities. Many meetings were held with these organizations to understand their roles, functions, and strong and weak points, and to formulate development plans with them to help build and empower their groups and organizations. Some of the results of this analysis are shown in Table 5.4.

The farmers' production or interest groups discussed above formed their own regulations on how to select members, how to request financial or technical support, and how to work together. (The box illustrates an example of this organization's set of requirements.)

Improving the skills, knowledge and confidence of leaders, individuals in the groups and commune organizations is one of the most important forms of human asset building. Participatory learning and evaluation approaches were introduced and applied by local organizations for their own needs, where users were encouraged to develop their own priorities and plans, and make greater contributions to community plans and activities. Training and study visits were also organized to provide learning opportunities and build confidence, especially in relation to outside groups.

In 2002 and 2003, study visits to China and Thailand were organized for commune leaders and others in their local organizations. They were given the opportunity to learn from innovative upland farmers and commune groups in these countries. The study visits helped create changes in the attitude of leaders, who became more active and motivated and better understood their own situations. As a direct result of our capacity-building efforts, Hong Ha was treated as a special case in the province in order to test different delivery approaches for local government support. The government of Vietnam currently has a special poverty alleviation plan for the 135 poorest communes in the country. Hong Ha is one of these, and will receive financial support (about US$30,000/year) for development activities. Hong Ha is the first commune in Hue province that has gained the autonomy to develop its own plans for spending the money. The community management board of Hong Ha is considered as the best among the upland communes in Thua Thien Hue. Its chairperson now also sits on a national committee for minority people, which provides further opportunities to share local lessons, and provide inputs into policies and programmes at a national level.

As far as financial assets are concerned, the commune Women's Union and the Farmers' Association were trained how to manage small, revolving credit

Table 5.4 Analysis of local organizations

Source: Local organization analysis by villagers, 2000.

schemes with an initial capital investment from the project. The fund started with about 10 farmers in the commune. After three years, 47 women had obtained benefits from the fund, which is entirely managed by local members. With this experience in credit management, both associations submitted a successful proposal for a much larger credit fund from an international NGO. They received about US$20,000 and started work in March 2004.

Improving access to natural resources

In the uplands, local people's access to non-agricultural lands and forest resources is essential to their livelihood. In this section, we discuss access to forests to highlight the third pillar of our work. With over 70 per cent of the country's land area covered by forest (which is often badly degraded) and 20 million people living in upland areas, these resources can play a vital role in Vietnam's development (Quy, 1995; Rambo, 1995). Forest degradation continues due to the expansion of agricultural frontiers and a drive by the government to cultivate export crops. Improper policies or programming and illegal cutting of timber in some cases also challenge the sustainability of forestry resources. Maintaining existing forest or controlling degradation is a major challenge in efforts to reduce poverty and encourage sustainable development of the uplands. (Bao, 1999).

In Hong Ha, the agricultural land base is limited. However, forest lands cover 78 per cent of the land area, while unutilized lands or steep slopes covered by Imperata grass represent around 20 per cent. Forests help supply uncultivated foods, income from NTFPs, materials for house construction and traditional medicines for human health care. Sustainable extraction of these products need not degrade forests if they are well managed (Bao, 2002). It is important to note that the forests in the study sites are badly degraded. They have generally not recovered since the Vietnam war years; in fact, recovery has only commenced in a few valleys.

Under the Vietnamese land law (1993), all land belongs to the state. The state can assign user rights to individual farmers or legal organizations for a certain period. All the lands in Hong Ha once came under the jurisdiction of the commune, but now local people are given user rights only to agricultural lands. Forestry lands are managed and controlled by state forest enterprises or government forestry organizations. The Forestry Department of A Luoi district has the authority to check on timber extraction and protect the forest from illegal timber cutting. However, most of the forestlands fall under the provincial-level Watershed Management Board.

Forest policies and management are a major national issue in Vietnam. There are many programmes initiated by the central government designed to protect and reforest using central or local government funds. However, these programmes are often implemented differently in different districts and can create, or exacerbate, local conflicts. Programmes and funds often do not even reach the local level. As well, the duties and responsibilities of forestry departments at different levels overlap and are unclear (Du, 2003). Finally, the number of people available for forest security is insufficient to protect large areas and to stop the illegal cutting of timber.

By the early 1990s, reforestation was encouraged by the UN World Food Programme and national "327" programmes. The barren hills and unutilized lands were used for planting forest with Eucalyptus and Acacia species. The aim of the programmes was ostensibly to increase the surface area covered by forest in the country.

Programme implementation has been problematic. For example, the use of single species such as Acacia mangigum or Acacia eucoliformic for large reforestation projects and to protect watershed areas has been undertaken. Nevertheless, in large-scale plantations, this species is only useful for pulp production, and provides none of the benefits local people seek from forestlands. Local people are paid for their labour in planting and protecting tree seedlings, but have no rights to use the forests or products. Although the government has issued a number of more recent decrees on forestry and in some cases allocated lands to individuals or organizations, these have not been implemented in Hong Ha.

In general, forestry policies and management have focused mainly on protection, creating conflicts between forest protection and livelihood development needs. In line with this, the government enacted regulations under Decree 178 (November 2001). Unfortunately, this law is difficult to understand and has not been explained to local people. One important article is that local people can annually harvest up to 20 per cent of the total biomass in protection forests; therefore, about 80–90 per cent of the products should belong to them (Sen et al., 2003). In our study, this question was raised with the Watershed Protection Board: how can local people share in the costs and benefits in forest management? Discussion continues with co-management systems, benefit-sharing being our ultimate goal.

Experimenting with co-management and non-timber forest products

As a first step towards possible co-management regimes, the project organized meetings with those local farmers, commune leaders, district extension services and provincial agencies (especially the Watershed Management Board) which are responsible for identifying possible land and forest management options. Using a participatory approach, the group selected NTFPs as one area of high potential. This area could be developed by introducing valuable non-timber species into the existing forest plantation. With support from all the key stakeholders, the research team developed a trial to test the introduction of the Do Bau tree (Aquilaria crassna) in the Acacia mangium forest plantation. This species increased the density of the protection forest and provided income to farmers. Another experiment was to interplant bamboo in the forest and along the riverbanks to reduce soil erosion while providing a fast-growing cash crop for farmers.

Through these interventions, farmers have been able to increase their income and extend their formal resource tenure rights in forest areas. The lands with Aquilaria crassna and bamboo plantation have been recognized and legally allocated to farmers in the commune. The research project demonstrated that the NTFP model plantation did not cause any problems from an environmental perspective and the plantation is now legally recognized by the state.

The NTFP models established in Hong Ha with stakeholder participation are now informing the forest management strategy employed in A Luoi district by the agricultural and rural development sector. Aquilaria crassna and bamboo plantations have been recognized by the District People's Committee in 2004 as representing worthwhile production opportunities throughout the district. The budget for the district's agriculture and rural development department includes funds for seedlings and technical support in forest plantation. Lessons learned are also shared with other communities in A Luoi. Therefore, NTFP production is becoming an important element of the provincial agricultural extension service. The Bo River Watershed Protection Board is now using Aquilaria crassna as well, instead of only Acacia, in its reforestation projects.

More recently, the project has been working together with several of these government agencies to implement joint forest management where benefits and costs are shared between the government and local farmers. This is an important new research avenue that we will explore further. In meetings with A Luoi district officials, research on participatory forestry management options has been proposed by local government. The researchers hope that in the next several years options of co- and joint management forest tenure will be tested in A Luoi.

Conclusions

Commune leaders have told the research team that this CBNRM approach is very different from other projects. In the past, the ideas, priorities and local knowledge of commune leaders and other local people were mostly ignored by rural development experts or agricultural extension services. Giving poor farmers, including women, the opportunity both to improve their understanding and to work on their interests, as this project has done, builds confidence and skills among locals. Our experience suggests that poverty reduction in the heterogeneous upland areas of Vietnam is much more effective when it employs participatory tools and fosters adaptive learning.

We can summarize the key conclusions of the action research project in Hong Ha and neighbouring Huong Nguyen communes. First, improving their livelihoods is the first priority of the upland poor. Not all farmers have the same interest and capacity to improve their production and income generation, so participatory approaches must make special efforts to engage all local people, especially the women and poor. Second, successful new technologies and institutions can best be disseminated by structured farmer-to-farmer learning activities, and by extension agencies that use participatory tools and methods. Third, the key lesson learned from forest management in Hong Ha is that resource and land tenure must be identified clearly, along with other rights and responsibilities for forest protection, in order to ensure that there are local benefits. The direct involvement of different stakeholders from various levels of government is vital for learning, building consensus and resolving conflicts. The final goal of CBNRM is to achieve better natural resource management options in which the local community plays an important role. Increasing access to resources and building assets of upland people for collective action help to build social equity. Long-term resource management options should be balanced with the short-term needs of local people and other stakeholders.

Acknowledgements

The author acknowledges the extensive contributions to the research and preparation of this chapter made by other research team members: Hoang Thi Sen, Le Quang Bao, Le Duc Ngoan, Ngo Huu Toan, Nguyen Thi Thanh, Nguyen Thi Cach, Nguyen Minh Hieu, Nguyen Phi Nam, Dao Thi Phuong, Le Quang Minh, Nguyen Xuan Hong, Hoang Huu Hoa, Tran Minh Tri, Truong Tan Quan, Le Thi Thuy Hang, Tran Ngoc Liem and Nguyen Khoa Hieu.

Financial support from the IDRC of Canada and the Ford Foundation in Hanoi is gratefully acknowledged. The author would also like to thank Dr John Graham, IDRC senior program officer; Dr Charles Bailey, representative of the Ford Foundation in Hanoi, Vietnam and Thailand; the Department of Agricultural and Rural Development of Thua Thien Hue province; the Agricultural Extension Centre of Thua Thien Hue, the Forestry Department; the Watershed Management Board; the People's Committee of A Luoi district; the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of A Luoi district; the Department of Forestry of A Luoi district; the People's Committee of Hong Ha commune, and farmers in Hong ha and Huong Nguyen communes.

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CHAPTER 6
Co-management of Pastureland in Mongolia

H. Ykhanbai and E. Bulgan

Abstract

This chapter describes and analyses participatory action research (PAR) undertaken by the Ministry of Nature and the Environment of Mongolia (MNE) to promote community-based pasture management in the country's changing policy environment. Stakeholders in pasture and natural resource management (NRM) are faced with a triple challenge: how to continue unlearning a centrally planned economy and society, how to handle changes given the economic and political opening up experienced in the country, and how to develop a herding and pasture management system that is sustainable under the current socio-economic and ecological challenges.

With weak central and local governments, the sustainable management of pastureland as a common property resource requires the participation of all stakeholders in strong herder organizations. This can be facilitated through co-management agreements supported by appropriate policies linked at national and local levels.

Co-management processes establish effective roles and responsibilities of stakeholders. Over time, such processes should help avoid the degradation of pastureland. In the case of transitional economies, the implementation of CBNRM approaches requires time so as to establish the legitimacy of the concept as well as supportive policies. To some extent, the Mongolia case supports theories about collective action in the CBNRM literature, although questions related to exclusion remain unanswered.

Background

Grasslands in Mongolia make up approximately 82 per cent of the land area and are currently home to 25 million head of livestock and 172,000 herding families. Nomadic livestock producers are the backbone of the Mongolian economy, and in 2003 livestock production accounted for 45 per cent of employment and 19 per cent of gross domestic product (National Statistical Office, 2003). More than these numbers indicate, herding is a way of life for Mongolians and is rooted in the country's long history.

In Mongolia, grasslands have always been controlled by the government. Until 1921, pasturelands were under the control of feudal officials, clans and tribal groups. But the pasturelands were used in common by herders according to their livelihood needs, following wide-ranging seasonal migrations of animal herds and herder families.

Animal husbandry was linked with the socio-economic conditions of the time and the needs of society. For example, during the Genghis Khan period (13th century), the Ministry of Horses regulated nomadic pasture because of the importance of horses for imperial military purposes. During the Manchu Dynasty (18th century), camels were important for their use in caravans along the Silk Road trade route of Central Asia. At present, goat populations are increasing because of the high price of cashmere wool on the international market.

During the Soviet era (1921–90), citizens had almost no right to own livestock. They worked for the state and used pasturelands to herd state-owned animals for salaries. Another change began in 1992. Mongolia moved from the centralized, Soviet-style management system towards a more market-oriented one, where private ownership of animals was reinstituted. As state enterprises failed and unemployment increased, herding became an easy-entry livelihood option. Between 1992 and 1999, the number of families involved in herding more than doubled, and livestock numbers increased by some 30 per cent (National Statistical Office, 2003). For the first time in Mongolia's history, in 1999 the number of livestock in the country reached 33 million. In this ongoing transition period to a market economy, because of the weak arrangements between herders and local administrations coupled with the lack of an appropriate management system, pasture conditions are deteriorating rapidly and overgrazing is a common problem.

Historically, herder groups used different pastures or areas for spring, summer, autumn and winter grazing. It was a system developed and adapted to meet local climatic variations and livelihood needs. Herders moved their animals and camps throughout the four seasons, and it was common for a small group of herding families (khot ail) to move together to a new seasonal pasture. Within a given season, there were also shifting and rotational systems, which meant animals grazed in different areas in a seasonal pasture, as agreed by customary groups of herders and local governments. Figure 6.1 further details this scheme. During the Soviet era, full employment was guaranteed to herders, and some elements of the customary systems were maintained. In the post-Soviet period, herders are no longer state employees. Few remnants of the customary system remain, and there is increasing pressure on the fragile environment from new, unemployed entrants and herders wishing to increase their herd sizes to maximize profit. This has increased environmental degradation, poverty and an inability to adapt to climatic extremes.

Currently about 70 per cent of herders have herds of fewer than 100 animals. These herders own only 25 per cent of the national animal population, so 75 per

Figure 6.1 Customary pasture shifting scheme
Source: SUMCNR, 2003.

cent of the national total is owned by only 30 per cent of the richest herders. A herder who has less than 100 animals is considered poor (National Statistical Office, 2003).

Pastureland ecosystems in Mongolia are fragile, highly susceptible to degradation and slow to recover, primarily due to the cold, dry climate. Some estimates show that more than 76 per cent of the pastureland is subject to overgrazing and desertification (MNE, 2003). The degree of degradation is also drastically increasing year by year. Why is this? Poor management or increase in herder families and animal numbers? Climate change? Do we need to reinstitute traditional methods of herding and grasslands management, or intensify agriculture? There is no single answer.

In the post-Soviet era, disagreements on pasture use between stakeholders have increased. With the increase in herd size in the 1990s, there has also been an uncontrolled concentration of animals around water sources, settlement areas, hay lands and seasonal camps, combined with an ongoing degradation of pasturelands. The unprecedented scale of recent dzud or severe winters has had a devastating impact on the livelihoods of most herders, particularly new and inexperienced ones. These consecutive dzuds during 1999–2002 resulted in a combined loss of over 10 million animals, or over 30 per cent of all livestock. Almost 12,000 herding households were left with no animals, and a further 18,000 were left with fewer than 100 animals (Ykhanbai et al., 2004). It seems that in the near future, overgrazing will continue to be a serious environmental and economic problem, given the very harsh and fragile climate of Mongolia. Change is needed.

Tragedy of the commons

A very important reason for the current pastureland degradation is herders' desire to satisfy their immediate economic or livelihood needs. Herders want to increase the size of their herd as a means of survival and for profit maximization in competitive market conditions, where herding has low entry costs compared with other livelihood opportunities. According to the new constitution of 1992, there is no legal base for ownership of pastureland in Mongolia under which an individual has the right to exclude others and to regulate the use of the resource. Rights to the resource under the existing state ownership of pastureland, which includes controlling access and regulating use, are vested exclusively in the government. As the state's capacity for effective monitoring and management of all pastureland is limited, an open-access situation has been created, in which everybody's property is potentially nobody's concern.

This appears to be a situation of Hardin's 'tragedy of the commons' (Hardin, 1968). In this situation, a better pasture-management system could avoid pasture and ecosystem degradation. The 'tragedy of the commons' argument is that individuals have no regard for common resources except to maximize personal gain. Hardin illustrated this point by envisioning a pasture that is open to all, in which each individual herder is motivated by self- interest to add more and more animals, leading eventually to overgrazing and degradation (Hardin, 1968).

Historically, however, pastureland in Mongolia was not open-access but a common property resource in the sense used by Ostrom (1990). Common property resources exist where one person's use subtracts from another's use, and where it is often necessary, albeit difficult and costly, to exclude other users outside the group from using the resource (McCay, 1999; Ostrom, 1990).

According to Ostrom (1990), there are many enduring indigenous institutions, which for centuries have ensured the sustainable management of natural resources. Under the right conditions, interdependent resource users can organize and govern themselves to obtain continuing joint benefits despite the tendency for opportunist behaviour such as free-riding.

In Mongolia, the community management of pastureland and other natural resources is becoming important, because individual herders now absorb the risks of pastoral agriculture, rather than the government as during the Soviet era. This suggests a strong argument for co-management approaches to pasturelands and herd management, because individual herders need to cooperate and work together with their groups and with other stakeholders to ensure future sustainability. These approaches could build on past customary practices, but also must take account of current political and economic reforms and the opportunities these create.

Project objectives and study sites

A research project to develop alternative institutions for pasture management (the Sustainable Management of Common Natural Resources or SUMCNR project) was developed in 2000 and supported by the IDRC. It has been implemented by the MNE, in cooperation with the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, the Research Institute of Animal Husbandry, the Mongolian State University, the Gender Centre for Sustainable Development and others. The primary objective has been to develop new ways to improve the livelihood and livestock management opportunities of local communities. This has been achieved through more efficient, sustainable and equitable use systems for pasture and other natural resources by jointly designing and developing co-management options and appropriate improvements for pastures and other natural resources. As well, appropriate policy options for natural resource management have been studied and tested with input from herders and local and higher levels of government. Figure 6.2 illustrates the various activities discussed in this case study, including the linkages between them.

Figure 6.2 Project activities and the case study structure

The MNE was founded in 1987 and is responsible for overall policy formulation and coordination relating to the management of natural resources and the environment. One of the most important issues is how to deal with desertification and natural resources degradation. The involvement of the MNE in pasture management is relevant because of its role in sustainability policy, and the protection of pastureland and other natural resources.

Mongolia's vast land area is divided into five ecoregions: desert-steppe, steppe, mountain-steppe, steppe-forest and forest. The project addresses the challenge of environmental degradation through a combination of participatory and action-oriented field research in three sum, or local government districts. They were selected because they were considered representative of all the herding systems, as well as the three main ecoregions (steppe, mountain-steppe and steppe-forest) and the different forms of social organization. The three tested the feasibility of co-management arrangements in different settings. The study sites were chosen in part because the multidisciplinary project team was familiar with them. The team was made up of eight women and seven men, most of whom were born and spent their childhood at one or another of these sites with their herding families.

The Khotont study site represents the steppe-forest ecosystem and its diverse ecosystem components – forest, water, grasslands and wild life. There are good relations among herder households and a tradition of community coherence. The herder population originates from the major Mongolian ethnic Khalkh group.

The Deluin study site represents the mountain-steppe ecosystem. Here, customary pasture division systems by seasons were maintained through the Soviet period. There was higher interest displayed among herders in operating co-management systems because of the extensive degradation of this area's

Figure 6.3 Map of project study sites

Figure 6.4 Proportion of households in different herd size categories at each field site, 2003
Source: Tserenbaljir, 2003.

pastureland. Local groups are organized around kinship relations and the population is made up of the minority ethnic Kazakh group.

The Lun study site represents the steppe and prairie ecosystems, and due to its closeness to the capital city has a higher concentration of animals. Herders display individual market-oriented behaviour and originate from different geographical locations throughout the country.

In each study site, the number of animals varies seasonally from approximately 1.2 times to about 2.3 times the pasture's carrying capacity. Wealth-ranking analysis was carried out in the study sites prior to the implementation of co-management arrangements. The research showed that almost 70 per cent of herder households in the Khotont study site and 40 per cent in the Deluin study site were considered poor, having fewer than 100 animals per household. In contrast to these groups, about half of the herder households in the Lun study site have more than 250 animals, and are considered richer, as depicted in Figure 6.4. Their average annual income was roughly four to seven times higher than the poor households.

PRA was used as the main method for the study. Various PRA tools, such as focus group meetings, oral testimonies, mapping of herd movements, seasonal diagramming and semi-formal interviews were used for qualitative analysis. These tools were very effective in sharing information between stakeholders. PRA was coupled with other methods such as semi-structured field interviews, household surveys and gender assessment study.

Working for co-management

Respected herders were the entry points for the project team to begin local discussions. After the first PRA meetings and discussions, herders on their own initiative consulted with each other about the possibility of forming a community organization. Up to then they had all managed pasture individually. In further meetings, members of the project team outlined the advantages of community cooperation, organization and co-management. After hearing this, most herders formed a community organization. An unexpected result was that women became very supportive of co-management. After long years of top-down governance, their voices could now be heard. In fact, originally only men attended meetings, but later on women joined, spoke out and took part in decision-making. At first, the rich herders were not so willing to join the community organization and co-management system. They thought they had nothing to discuss with the poor herders. They were uneasy about the idea of sharing their good pastures with the poorer households which were occupying pastures of lower quality.

To facilitate the establishment of these new organizations and investigate suitable conditions for pasture co-management, the project suggested a working definition of community as a social entity made up of herders who lived in the same area, watershed, mountain or valley; who had pastures close to each other; and who were willing to modify their customary pasture management system for current conditions. Each community was a relatively homogeneous socioeconomic group (herding together in one khot ail, a group or camp of herders) based on social or ecological (sharing the same watershed or mountain valley) conditions. Otherwise, the communities had not been defined in any formal or official sense prior to the project.

One of the main priorities of the herders was to keep their local and familial connections, a need which was recognized and supported by the project. Some herders joined community organizations later, after they understood that the new management organizations encouraged participation of all herders, regardless of their wealth or opinions.

Both rich and poor herders were interested in reducing environmental degradation and increasing economic benefits. But there were also some differences between rich and poor. The latter were the most interested in being involved in CBNRM. This is because they needed to improve their livelihoods, secure pasture, participate in decision-making and reduce the costs of herding animals through cooperation with others. Wealthier herders were interested in maintaining positive social relations and hiring labour for agriculture production. Some wealthy herders, who were unwilling to participate in the community organization at the beginning, joined later, after discussions and negotiations with the sum management team.

CBNRM proved to be a process whereby herders learned how to represent themselves to senior officials in local government, and strengthened their engagement in governance by participating in decision-making on pasture and NRM. By joining the community organizations and co-management arrangements, herders and other stakeholders became aware of one another's views, aspirations, opportunities, and the collective potential for local development and NRM.

Setting up co-management teams

Sum-level co-management teams were established in all study sites to act as local umbrella institutions. Their aim was to facilitate and monitor co-management arrangements among concerned stakeholders. At a later stage, they also began to handle the scaling-up of co-management activities in the sum. A team consisted of 8–15 persons, headed by the sum governor, and included representatives from herder community organizations, local government officials, NGOs, schools, private companies and the project team. The team usually meets twice a year or as necessary. It coordinates sum-level co-management through consensual decision-making processes.

At the start, PRAs and other meetings allowed individuals and other stakeholders to better understand one another and work together. During the PRA exercises, local problems were prioritized and solutions identified by local herders. Communities also mapped their pasture management practices, the location of seasonal pasture, water sources, natural resources and infrastructure. The PRA exercises were strongly supported by herders, as these were their first attempts to identify and represent ecosystems with which they were already very familiar and locate key resources. This exercise allowed herders to feel that they were the real 'owners' of the pasture and ecosystem in their environment.

In most cases, after the PRA, herders better understood their environmental and socio-economic problems as well as the need to jointly protect and manage their degrading pasture and natural resources. Most of the herders enthusiastically agreed to cooperate, viewing co-management as one way to solve this problem. Another reason why herders, especially women, supported co-management was that it filled an unmet need to be involved in community social activities and services. During community meetings, people could meet each other and chat, get community help when someone was sick or needed money, or learn the best practices of herding, farming and livelihood improvements from each other.

One of the constraints to herders' participation in the community meetings was the distance that they had to travel, up to 15 km. This was particularly challenging in terms of women's participation during the winter season, because they could not travel that distance with their children. In future, in order to organize, communities need to plan meetings well in advance so that the right time can be chosen for women and other herders. Advance notification also needs to be planned so that women and other herders can organize their work.

As of summer 2004, more than 15 communities or herder groups exist in the project study sites, with about 13–32 herding families in each group. New groups are being formed through the facilitation of research teams or, sometimes by sum-level co-management teams as the research project and scaling up continue.

Based on the experiences in earlier stages, the research project team has produced and distributed a guidebook for local government and herders on the establishment and facilitation of community co-management organizations.

Increasing accountability and transparency

The election of a community leader, vice-leader, secretary and accountant was on the agenda of the first community meeting. It was very important and exciting for the people to elect their own leaders. Households that wanted to join the community were registered, and the community was usually named after the mountain or river where they lived. The election of community leaders was important, because future community successes or failures depended on how they would facilitate joint activities of the group. The election process supported greater accountability and transparency.

Prior to the election, the project team consulted with local governors and elders about potential group leaders. However, the community members themselves strongly favoured an election process. In most cases, a man was elected as community leader. The election was usually done by secret ballot but, in some cases, by show of hands at a public meeting.

Women's groups

In pastoral agriculture, women and men play important, but different, roles. However, women's roles and participation in natural resource use, decision-making and implementation have been undervalued. In many cases, in research and policy-making, women's knowledge and abilities are neglected.

Project interventions on co-management have been designed with a major role for the community, including for women as a separate, disadvantaged group. Women's groups were established in all communities to help increase their participation in decision-making for NRM. The establishment of women's groups facilitated the promotion of gender equity in NRM and created an environment to support women's participation in the co-management of natural resources. It also encouraged women's initiatives to protect natural resources according to inherited knowledge and customs.1

Women have clear roles in natural resource management. By establishing a women's group, they can join and share opinions, make joint decisions, and help each other. (Female, secretary of community organization)

Later on, women's groups helped the community leaders to organize income-generating activities among women, such as handicrafts, felt-making and vegetable growing; to provide venues for mutual learning (teaching skills to other community members, learning from other communities, organizing various training activities on sustainable livelihood options and NRM); and to undertake participatory monitoring and evaluation (PM&E) of the community's co-management efforts.

Community revolving funds

When the community organizations were established, herders agreed to create community revolving funds (CRF), which were made up mainly of contributions

by members of the community. The contributions took the form of animals, such as several sheep or goats, cash or cashmere. In each case, the project contributed some cash and provided organizational advice. These revolving funds are used by the communities to organize activities targeted at such issues as improving women's income generation, and to support poor members. Currently, communities have CRF of up to MNT2 million (US$1,725) each.

Co-management agreements

Co-management focuses on partnership arrangements between government and the local community. It represents a decentralized approach to decision-making that involves user groups as partners or co-equal decision-makers with government (Jentoft, 1989; Pinkerton, 1989; Berkes et al. 1989]]).

CBNRM is people-centred and community focused, while co-management focuses more on a partnership arrangement between government and the local community. Figure 6.5 illustrates the relationships.

Co-management actors can be classified as primary and secondary, and on this basis are accorded different roles and responsibilities. Primary actors are herders, communities and local governors. All others such as non-community herders, economic entities, schools and so on are classified as secondary.

Based on the results of discussions and negotiations among the primary actors, three co-management contracts were devised: between the community leader and community members; between the bag (subdistrict) governor and the community leader; and between the sum governor and the community leader. These are outlined in Box 6.2.

Co-management contracts allow herders and other stakeholders in NRM to assume clear obligations, roles and responsibilities. One of the most important aspects of the co-management process was clarification of and agreement on the boundaries of pasture areas or the geographical sizes of the community pastureland.

As part of the project interventions, several communities entered into contracts with the local government on pasture use. In these contracts, boundaries for seasonal pasture were clearly agreed on, using topographic maps. Then all regulatory measures, responsibilities of protection and use rights were transferred to the community.

Figure 6.5 Co-management actors (stakeholders)
Source: adapted from SUMCNR, 2003.

Geographical size and distance of herder movement between seasons also differed according to the specific ecosystem, with the main determinant being grass yield. There was a longer or more distant movement when grasses were shorter or when yield was lower, particularly in the mountain-steppe ecosystem of the Deluin study site.

After one year, all initial co-management agreements were revised and re-approved in the communities, taking into consideration the recommendations of the women's groups. The ideas and perceptions of women were included so as to promote gender equity. As women defined their views on co-management agreements, they started to become more actively and meaningfully involved in the community decision-making around natural resource management, as shown in Box 6.3.

A questionnaire survey conducted in late 2003 revealed that respondents, who were members of the co-management groups, were highly satisfied with the revised co-management agreements and with the new roles and performance of key local government officials in the new co-management system (Enkchimegee and Tsendsuren, 2003).

Participation and equity issues

One of the main objectives during the implementation process was the participation of all stakeholders in NRM. Stakeholders' equal participation in the planning process is crucial on several levels.

• It provides a venue where stakeholders' voices can be heard and included.

• It supports herders' and communities' initiatives.

• It ensures that the varied knowledge of different stakeholders is included in planning and implementation.

• It contributes to joint planning for the efficient use of labour.

Participatory assessment of the roles and responsibilities of the stakeholders and their inclusion in co-management agreements are important for successful co-management.

Our goal is to extend the community activity not only within that area but also to other regions of the bag. We are also making agreements with incoming herders from other areas to limit their access to that community pasture area. (A bag governor)

The establishment of NRM groups as communities has become a principal activity to emphasize ecosystem sustainability. They also promote change at a broader level, that is, that they should not only concern themselves with pasturelands to the exclusion of other natural resources. Today, herders are not only responsible for their animals and pasture. They are also an important unit of rural development and NRM. Therefore, communities in all study sites implement improvements in forest, wild life, plant and water resources management. Co-management contracts in the community were developed and enforced for the sound use of water wells in the pasture. In the steppe-forest ecosystem, communities agreed to have co-management contracts among forest and water resource stakeholders.

Community-based co-management arrangements allow local resource users to make participatory decisions about pasture boundaries and use which can be defined both by season and by geographical features such as valleys, mountains and rivers. These were traditionally used to define seasonal herding arrangements. According to co-management agreements, pasture in a community area is managed under a common property regime, but other communities or outside herders can be excluded, especially for crucial winter and spring pastures.

As this is a source of potential conflict, it means that there is greater need for communication among stakeholders.

Disagreement in the community

In most cases, disagreements in the community are related to periods of seasonal pasture use. Some herders want to remain in autumn or spring pasture at a time when the majority would prefer to move to allow pasture to regenerate. To resolve disagreement on this, the project team facilitated several discussions and meetings with all stakeholders, to agree on the best way to pasture animals for the community as a whole. Researchers discussed with herders how important it is to shift the pasture during the vegetation-growing period, and to take part in collective decision-making. This was supported by most community members; the minority had to accept the majority decision in order to stay in the community organization. Hence, they have started to make annual plans and to agree on the timelines for seasonal shifting of pasture. Over the long term, communities will need to make these decisions by themselves.

Disagreements between herders within and outside the community organization

There are local households which choose not to join the community organization. These include newcomers, wealthy households which control their own pasture and those who have misunderstandings or disagreements with others. They live in the same area, but are not involved in the co-management activities and thus their exclusion reduces the effectiveness of community decisions on pasture shifting or other joint activities. For example, when the community decides to move to distant pasture, such herders either refuse to move, or in some cases, allow outsiders to use community pasture in exchange for payment.

However, after some time (one or two years), when most of the herders are involved in co-management, when non-participants see others receiving its benefits, they do not want to be left out. Some awareness-building activities also help these herders to understand the importance of co-management. These activities include co-management meetings, visits of the project team and local governors to their homes to explain co-management benefits, and community-day activities which are held annually in study sites in order to exchange experiences among the communities and herders.

Another type of disagreement arises between the community and its neighbours. Neighbours are often afraid that the community might take their pasture. As a result of better communication and awareness-building, they can understand what the new co-management groups will do, and become reassured.

In cases where newcomers settle in an area without the community's permission and arbitrarily occupy pasture, pressure is exerted on herders and on local authorities. The project facilitated several discussions on the relationship between community and non-community herders. It also became necessary to include local government officials. The new land law allows herder groups to enter into contracts with sum governors for the exclusive communal use of winter and spring pasture only. Therefore, in co-management contracts between communities and local governors, a special article was included on how to settle issues of access to community pasture for non-community herders.

Relations with authorities

Good communication between herders and local authorities is key to co-management. One case where this is evident is the use of distant otor (emergency winter pasture) for herders, which is regulated by agreement among the governors of the neighbouring sums and aimaks (provinces). Sometimes herders ignore these regulations. One case occurred during the winter of 2002–3 when some herders from the Tsagaan-Uul community of Lun sum moved to an otor in the neighbouring Tseel sum because of the bad grass yield in their area. This was based on an agreement made only between herders of the two sums. But in the middle of winter, the herders from Tsagaan-Uul were forced to return to their original area because the agreement made among the herders was not supported by local governors. As a result, the herders of Tsagaan-Uul suffered more losses than others in the same community who had not moved their herds.

Capacity-building – training and livelihood activities

The research team's engagement with herder communities started with an assessment of their natural resource and social conditions. This quickly led to community interest in co-management experiments, and also to the identification of the need for training and capacity-building in support of new co-management efforts.

Training efforts included introducing local leaders, both men and women from herder households, to PRA methods and later to PM&E tools. General awareness-raising and educational efforts were needed to link local problems to the concepts of natural resource and pasture management. This led to extension advice on techniques such as seeding degraded pasture or hay lands and reforestation. Training in livelihood opportunities was also arranged, especially at the request of women. These included vegetable growing, raw materials processing, handicrafts and sewing.

As groups became more active, they required training and support in group processes such as running meetings, financial and other management procedures, and formalizing new kinds of groups such as a council or a women's group. Although the research team provided technical advice in some areas, and helped establish a pasture and natural resources database in each study site, much herder learning evolved through experience-sharing during intersite seminars and meetings, farmer-to-farmer exchanges, community information days and exhibitions, and exchange study-visits to other regions to compare experiences.

There is strong support for improving the capacities of newly established community groups in a 'bottom-up' manner.

I agree that we should also think about other income sources, rather than increasing animal numbers. We will have to involve other herders of our bag in our community activity, if they are willing to join us. (A community leader)

I attended the felt-making training in Darkhan city. I learned to make good-quality felt and felt handicrafts using new equipment. I think that it is a very effective way of gaining additional income. (A woman herder)

The action research on co-management carried out by the team has gone hand-in-hand with research about economic diversification and improvement of livelihoods (Ykhanbai et al., 2004). During PRA in the early stages of the research, community members defined their preferred options for additional income as improving dairy production, felt and felt products, and planting vegetables. Exploring additional income sources is important because such funds can diversify the herders' livelihoods, reduce poverty and reduce pressure on pastures, which indirectly addresses ecological problems.

In cooperation with the research team, pilot communities in the field sites are carrying out a number of action-research experiments. These include growing potatoes and vegetables; collecting and processing medicinal plants; and improving the processing quality, diversity and marketing of animal-derived products, particularly felt, wool and cashmere, furs and leather. Products include tapestries, clothing, slippers, hats, gloves, socks, home decorations and boots.

Policy and legislation

Several national policies and laws affect CBNRM and the co-management of grassland resources. Many laws and regulations support the devolution of decision-making on pasture use and the leasing of natural resources to citizens, economic units or herder groups. With ongoing concern about land degradation and desertification, the government is also providing economic and regulatory incentives for improved pasture management, such as credit and taxation policies. Official support has been directed mainly to cooperatives and private companies, but is now being made available to herder groups as well. However, the many separate and inconsistent laws and regulations make it difficult to develop integrated ecosystem management practices. This is being addressed through policy and legal reforms to unify natural resource management, including the new land law and water law. The project team and herder groups have made substantive contributions to the drafting of these laws.

The land law was approved in 2002. The project team proposed ideas to the working group which was drafting the land law, including suggestions on how to include aspects of pastureland co-management in the draft law. Proposals included provisions for the long-term leasing of pastureland by the herder groups and the establishment of a legal base for co-management contracts on pasture use. Some of the team's proposals were eventually included in the final legislation after an extensive revision process.

Provision 53.2 of the new land law allows long-term pasture use agreements between herder groups and the state, rather than leasing, if they have jointly defined roles and responsibilities with local government to ensure sound use and to restore and protect degraded grasslands. Balance is needed between conflicting longer-term sustainability issues. Leasing arrangements that promote the herders' investment in pasturelands need to be balanced with political sensitivities related to control over these lands. In cooperation with communities and local governors, the research team continues to experiment with principles related to specific pasture use contracts.

Under the land law, if herders and local governors cannot arrive at a consensus decision, a higher-level governor or the central government arbitrates disputes. Also, the central government defines the location of reserve otor pasture in the case of zhuds (hard winter, characterized by extreme cold and heavy snows which prevent animals from foraging effectively), which can include protected areas for temporary use.

The project team also participated in the drafting of the pasture use payment law and the water law. In the new pasture use payment law, the team recommended higher fees for pasture use around heavily degraded areas, such as near the cities, settlements and water sources. For the water law, the team brought forward the recommendations of herder groups themselves for the establishment of participatory watershed management committees.

Linkages between local planning and national policy-making

During 2001–4, linkages between NRM policy and planning activities at local and national levels were strengthened as the project facilitated flows of information on natural resource policy-making.

Local regulations and policy implementation link local issues to national plans. Provisions to support community initiatives for the protection and sustainable use of natural resources were included in the National Action Plan to Combat Desertification, which was revised and approved in 2003; the Rural Development Policy (approved in 2003); the National Forest Action Programme (revised and approved in 2002); and the National Water Policy Reform Programme (approved in 2004).

Regular engagement with herder groups in the project sites enabled the project team to discuss drafts of national policy and legal documents with them to facilitate feedback on strengths and weaknesses. In the absence of other systematic mechanisms for public input, these suggestions from local herder groups were often influential in revisions to the draft documents. For example, the implementation of the law on expenditure on environmental protection and natural resources restoration from natural resources use taxes (2000), drafted initially by the project team at the request of MNE, was evaluated by herder groups, government representatives and local politicians. This law covers the reinvestment of taxes gathered from natural resource use for the protection and restoration of the particular resource. The income from the taxes could be one of the main sources for financing local co-management activities. However, at present the funds do not reach the communities, or the bags, sums and aimaks. Although policies and laws are becoming better on paper, there is a risk that de facto improvements remain elusive. The government needs to transfer the funds fully to the local authorities in order for them to support local co-management strategies.

Extending results

The efforts of the research project in selected areas of each field site have resulted in roughly 20 per cent of all the herders in each sum belonging to herder groups and supporting the experimental co-management agreements. The project team plans to involve more herders and other stakeholders in co-management activities, in response to mounting requests for support in forming new herder groups in every one of the sums in which we are working. This expansion will strengthen the effectiveness of existing groups, and is one of the objectives for the next phase of our ongoing research programme.

Changes and outcomes

As a result of introducing and implementing co-management procedures with local herders in pilot sites, a number of significant changes have been observed.

The most important has been the introduction of new cooperative processes and mechanisms between herders, local governors and other stakeholders, even though some external facilitation is still required. Herders understand the benefits of cooperating with one another and with new regulatory institutions, because the effectiveness of management depends on their joint actions. All stakeholders have started to realize the importance of sound use of natural resources, and their new roles and responsibilities are clarified under the co-management agreements. Herders more freely express their ideas and opinions with other stakeholders, which supports the concept of joint decision-making. By being part of a community, herders are beginning to realize their strength, which lies in their influence upon sum or bag governors, as well as their contribution to the formulation and implementation of resource management policy. Participatory research methods to define and assess the problems are novel to both the team and to local herders, and have played an important role in demonstrating the value of collaborative and participatory NRM mechanisms.

New CBNRM institutions have been established at the local level, and the organizational capacity of communities has increased. In three years, the number of organized communities in the three project sites has increased from three to 15, and new groups are being established regularly. Community members' knowledge and skill in applying group processes, management and learning have increased, and women have gained confidence through their involvement and application of tools such as PM&E. Women's groups have also started to share their experience with other communities. As a result of implementing new livelihood activities, direct economic benefits from co-management are being reported.

Customary pasture management practices have been introduced, along with innovative approaches derived from research and extension efforts. Pasture quality in areas of intervention appears to be improving, although this is difficult to measure in such a short time. Before the introduction of co-management, herders in the study sites were not very enthusiastic about protecting natural resources; they were only thinking about their individual benefits. But now, three years after the introduction of co-management principles, the local people's knowledge and understanding of NRM dynamics have improved, and even when acting as individuals they now make better-informed decisions. Responses to an independently conducted survey at the end of 2003 show that approximately 87 per cent of community members think that community joint efforts to shift and rotate seasonal pasture have improved overall pasture quality. About 60 per cent of community members in all study sites are now able to estimate the pasture carrying capacity by themselves, as a result of project and community training that has enabled them to make better management decisions (Enkchimegee and Tsendsuren, 2003).

Ecosystem and management changes in the study sites are monitored and evaluated by herders through various methods, one of which is through regular comparisons of photographs by season and under specific ecological conditions. But it remains challenging to measure the actual impacts of pastureland improvement efforts because of the effects of broader trends, such as climate change and desertification.

Preliminary evidence suggests that these interventions are leading to improved livelihoods for herders in the study sites, which saw income increase from 9 per cent to 67 per cent during the last three years. Through protection and improvement of community hayfields, establishment of hay and fodder funds, and preparation of additional fodder for the winter season, community herders in project study sites have reduced animal losses by 6–12 per cent on average.

Challenges

Despite the general enthusiasm among the herders in the study sites for the evolving co-management arrangements, the research team has identified a number of challenges to spreading the CBNRM concept. These are areas which require ongoing effort and innovation at the local and national levels.

Herders are almost totally dependent on animal husbandry as their only income source. Combined with the lack of local or national pasture management systems, this situation creates a strong incentive for individual herders to raise more and more animals to raise their income and welfare. Even in the pilot sites, herders are still struggling to develop a sense of shared interest in co-management of pasture and natural resources. Engaging a high percentage of community members may require an extended time period, probably 5–10 years. During the previous 60 years, herders followed instructions from the state. They now find it difficult to accept responsibility to solve problems independently and to apply new management techniques.

Legal and administrative systems are not yet structured to recognize local voluntary organizations which are not formed solely for the purpose of profit-making. In the transition to a market economy, legal reforms have been almost entirely oriented to privatization. The status of pastureland as falling under exclusive state ownership also poses some challenges to ensuring long-term tenure rights for herder co-management groups. The legal framework in Mongolia is changing, and the research lessons are influencing those changes. But even so, information about such changes reaches local herders only gradually. Recent reforms which favour decentralization and privatization, and enable co-management are not widely recognized.

Public administrative structures are sectoral and disconnected. NRM bodies are only responsible for one area: the animal husbandry sector manages pasture resources; the hunting sector manages wild life; the forest sector looks after forests and their restoration. At the local level, there is now increasing recognition of the linkages between different resources and their respective management strategies. However, formal decision-making has yet to integrate across sectors in a way which supports co-management interventions.

The new sum-level co-management teams do not yet have sufficient capacity to effectively implement the co-management procedures which they are developing, and there are no official sources of technical support or extension for them. One of the key issues the co-management teams grapple with is the question of the exclusion of new entrants so as to protect pastureland and enforce co-management agreements. And finally, the effectiveness of co-management and other CBNRM approaches is premised on familiarity with participatory approaches and transparent decision-making processes, both of which are radical concepts and departures from historical practice. Project researchers, herders and local governors are still learning about these approaches and the skills needed to implement them successfully.

Lessons learned and conclusions

In Mongolia, the current capacity of national and local governments for pastureland management needs to be strengthened, both in terms of policy guidance and extension for resource users. We think that there needs to be more visible and appropriate policy support for building on communal arrangements, where the resource is held by an identifiable community of users who can exclude others and regulate use. This means that inside the community, pastureland will be used as a common property resource. However, where non-community herders are concerned, their inclusion will be regulated through co-management arrangements. These will be made by the community along with local governments and other stakeholders, according to the legal rights and responsibilities of the stakeholders.

If co-management is supported by all stakeholders, then it can overcome the 'tragedy of the commons'. For this to happen, new roles and responsibilities of stakeholders need to be clearly established. Outside facilitation has been required for some time to promote collective action within the communities.

The experience with implementing pilot pasture co-management arrangements in Mongolia has had a generally enthusiastic local reception, and has engaged local government officials in new roles and responsibilities. The success has come as a result of the involvement and participation of a high proportion of herders in the local pilot sites. This has required building awareness and shared understanding about NRM and local problems. It has required transparency, collective decision-making and broad participation across different social groups, including women, elders and youth. Successful local interventions required the establishment of joint co-management agreements by all stakeholders at multiple levels of government. Methods adapted from participatory research experiences in our project have proved very useful in the Mongolian context for promoting the co-management of pasture and other natural resources. Feedback on policy and regulatory reforms has also been very useful in drafting new legislation.

Community-based management of pasture resources can be more effective when integrated with management of other natural resources (forest, water, plants, biodiversity), because of the interrelations between them. This is more important in the case of the steppe-forest (Khotont study site), and the mountain-steppe (Deluin study site) ecosystems, where herder groups also want to be engaged in forest and biodiversity management.

One of the lessons learned from comparing the different study sites is that herders who live in an area with limited pasture capacity or far from market and government services (such as Deluin and Khotont) are more committed to trying CBNRM approaches than herders who live close to the city and market centre (Lun). These approaches may not be suitable to the same extent in all areas. We have found that co-management arrangements work more effectively when there are strong local social relations (such as in the Khotont study site) and clearer community boundaries (as in the Deluin study site).

This action research project has been characterized by extensive learning among all the stakeholder groups engaged in the project. Herders in the study sites, for example, learned to participate in decision-making for pasture and NRM at the community level. They shared ideas and thoughts with other stakeholders and became able to estimate the carrying capacity of their seasonal pasture. They learned to evaluate community activities using structured PM&E techniques, followed community arrangements for seasonal pasture use and introduced pasture-shifting and rotation methods. They also developed new livelihood opportunities such as growing potatoes and making felt products.

Local governments learned to work closely with herders and communities, to pay more attention to herders and other stakeholders, and to link their requests to local policy-making. Researchers learned to carry out participatory action research with herders and other stakeholders, use PRA and PM&E methods, and to facilitate the planning and implementation of policies, programmes and innovative technologies by local people and multiple levels of government.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge B. Minjigdorj, B. Biniye, Ts. Odgerel, B. Naranchimeg and all other research team members of the Sustainable Management of Common Natural Resources in Mongolia project, along with R. Vernooy, J. Graham and Tony Beck for their valuable contribution to writing this case study.

CHAPTER 7
Exclusion, accommodation and community-based natural resource management: legitimizing the enclosure of a community fishery in southern Laos

Nattaya Tubtim

Abstract

CBNRM is normally practised within a co-management framework. It often deals with managing common property collaboratively among different groups who possess diverse worldviews and agendas, which raises the potential for significant conflict. This case study deals with a CBNRM project intervention that involved unexpected exclusion, but in a way that did not limit the success of the project. Rather surprisingly, the exclusion occurred without creating significant conflict.

The case study involves enclosure of a communal backswamp previously accessible to 17 communities, through the establishment of an exclusive regime by a single village in southern Laos. The enclosure was an inadvertent consequence of a CBNRM project intervention. This chapter examines the perspectives of officials, villagers and a researcher on the transition of the property regime in the context of development and associated legitimizing discourses. It explains how the enclosure in this case was achieved with relatively little social friction, and aims to encourage practitioners to recognize different perceptions of key actors on various points.

Introduction

CBNRM has become a popular strategy for organizations working on rural livelihoods and sustainability. The tone of most literature in the field is that CBNRM has an inclusive approach and involves peaceful collaboration among various groups – the project, officials and villagers. But in fact, CBNRM does not necessarily arise from shared interests. Each agent involved has its own agenda, and the process of establishing collective resource management must deal with this reality. Despite the collective nature of CBNRM, its implementation can lead to some groups being excluded from being able to use resources. This does not always cause conflict because it can be legitimized by the actors involved. However, it should not be overlooked when cases are documented.

This chapter does not detail the methods or formal results of the research study in this particular case, nor does it describe the research project's activities. It describes the story of an incidental outcome from the research team's interventions in studying small-scale fisheries in southern Laos. It emphasizes that CBNRM is not necessarily a consensus-based process and that it can function as a platform enabling different views to coexist.

The case is about changes to the property regime of one backswamp in southern Laos. The property regime of the backswamp shifted from an inclusive one, where it was accessed by many communities, to one where it was used exclusively by a single community. This change resulted from a CBNRM research project intervention. A surprising outcome was that the exclusion did not create serious conflicts between the communities. The description of the case relies on observations, conversations and stories shared with key participants on all sides of the issue during my work as a field research adviser to the project funded by IDRC from 1997 to 2001.1

Setting the scene: the case and local realities

The Lao Peoples' Democratic Republic (Lao PDR or Laos) is a post-socialist, one-party state. After the failure of collectivization, in 1986 the government declared the new economic mechanism designed to accommodate a market orientation (Evans, 1995). Laos has traditionally based its development on natural resources; therefore, common property has been very important for local communities in Laos. This has been especially true for the poor. Over time, several relevant policies were developed on NRM, such as land and forest allocation to village communities, decentralization and the encouragement of production for market surplus. These policies have guided the development of market-oriented growth. Since 1986, there have been changes at all levels during this period of policy transition in Laos.

Traditional Lao communities have an agricultural subsistence base and rely upon common property resources. Apart from farming private land, local communities rely upon the area's natural resources for household consumption and income. These common property resources include forests, rivers and streams. From these areas, villagers gather wood and fencing materials, as well as their daily food, which includes fish, some insects and wild vegetables. The poor have limited private land and depend on these resources, which have very limited commercial value but are accessed across village boundaries.

Villages share other ties, too. Neighbouring communities know each other quite well and marriage relationships cross village boundaries. People rely upon each other and participate in various shared activities other than farming, such as planning for and celebrating festivals. Hence, individual communities are interwoven in multilayered ways.

In 1997, I started working with the Indigenous Fisheries Development and Management Project (IFDMP). My task was to work with local communities in collaboration with local officials at both the provincial (Provincial Livestock and Fisheries Office, PLFO) and district (District Agriculture and Forestry Office, DAFO) levels. We surveyed diverse aqua-ecosystems and people's livelihoods in Sanasomboun District, Champassak Province, in southern Laos (see Figure 7.1). The study revealed that fish catches were declining in all types of natural water bodies – rivers, streams, rice fields and backswamps – because of the pressure of an increasing population, improved fishing gear and the rising commercial value of fish. The project's focus was changed to Small-scale Wetland Indigenous Fisheries Management (SWIM). SWIM narrowed its focus to small-scale water bodies such as wetlands. This was because the villages already had rules for

Figure 7.1 Map of Laos and study site in Sanasomboun district, Champassak province

these resources and the size was manageable at the local level. SWIM started the process of participatory action research. Its co-management approach aimed to increase fish catches to improve people's livelihoods.

Farming initiatives in these villages included wet rice crops, raising livestock (including pigs and poultry), fishing and some home gardens. Even though the market economy had been promoted for some time, it had not yet reached this rural area because of geographical barriers, poor infrastructure and lack of money.

Laos wetlands management

After studying how people used and managed their small wetlands or backswamps,2 project members found that their management systems were not only complex, but also that they varied by locality and season. Tenure of most backswamps is de facto, where there is no legal approval but rather a set of customary rules that often involve spiritual beliefs. Tenure shifts from open access, when flooding makes the boundaries unclear in the rainy season, to exclusive property rights, when the water level lowers and clear boundaries emerge during the dry season.

We also studied the cyclical relationship between fish and the backswamps. Fish come from the river to spawn in the backswamps. When the rainy season ends and the backswamps become disconnected from the river, some fish are trapped in the shallows. Because fish are a mobile resource, fishers must discover where they are in the different seasons. Some large backswamps are good sources of fish in the dry season when other water bodies such as streams and small backswamps have dried up. At this time of year, other wild foods are also scarce.

Relationship between state and village

The village is not isolated but is influenced by various factors from the outside, including the state and the market. The state is a powerful agency that affects the local level through policies and laws. Two influential policies were implemented at the time of the study: the Land and Forest Allocation Programme (LFAP) and decentralization, which have affected resource management at the local level in both direct and indirect ways. The key actors that play a significant role in putting the policy into practice are the district authority and the village committee.

Since 1993, Laos has been implementing LFAP, which clearly defines and demarcates property rights. The government claims that LFAP leads to secure land tenure and thus provides an incentive for people to move from subsistence to surplus production. This is seen as an important step to facilitate marketization, which in turn is expected to lead to development. LFAP categorizes all resources into three main property regimes: state, community and private. State property includes national protected forests and rivers. Resources such as streams, natural ponds and forests are defined as the common property of the village. At the village level, paddy fields and residential areas are formalized as private property. Maps are drawn and neighbouring villages are invited to confirm the village boundaries. A map showing the boundaries is posted at the entry to each village (see Figure 7.2). As a result of LFAP, rights in each different property regime are confined to the designated geographical areas.

Vandergeest (1996) explains that LFAP encourages territorialization because the state uses mapping and territorial delimitation to formalize and legitimize resource tenure. This agenda is also interpreted as 'state simplification' (Scott, 1998). The state can regulate resources more easily when they are mapped and categorized than when they are under complex property regimes. This is especially true when the common property regime uses customary practices that are only understood by the people in each locality. However, clearly defined property regimes are not only the state's agenda. Communities can use them as well to make claims, particularly when economic incentives can be applied to resources. But even where resources are mapped as a certain property type, they can be used in overlapping ways, especially if there is no pressure from scarcity or commercial incentives.

LFAP is more progressive than Thai law, which only has private and state property regimes and where villages cannot own or manage communal resources. Laos may be different in this regard because the government does not have the resources or capacity to enforce rules that are more restrictive. However, even though the Lao government recognizes common property regimes, these are only defined within the administrative boundaries of a single village. In addition, government authorities still have the authority to intervene in how communities manage their resources. For example, the village must get district recognition or approval every time it wants to change the management rules or obtain benefits from communal resources, such as selling timber for electricity.

In the late 1990s, a few years after the economic crisis in the region, the national government implemented a policy of decentralization, to respond to fiscal pressures and macro-economic imbalances. The government made up a slogan, Kwaeng pen Yudtasaat, Meuang pen Ngobpamaan, Ban Jadtang Patibat, which translates as 'The province plans while the district finances local development plans and the community has to participate, contribute, and implement.' It forces local villagers and authorities to increase their self-reliance in development at the provincial, district and village levels. This kind of decentralization is not designed to devolve power to the local level. Instead, it allocates administrative functions, especially financial responsibility, to local authorities (Fisher, 2000). This policy has eased the financial constraints of the central government, but the government still reserves the exclusive authority to plan (through its provincial line agencies) and make decisions about local-level policies and development directions.

Lao village committees consist of four groups: the village heads and village party; respected elders; mass organizations (for example, women's unions, youth organizations, village patrol units); and a technical group including the forest caretaker, village doctor or village veterinarian.

Figure 7.2 A board showing the village boundaries
Photo: N. Tubtim.

These village committees can represent both the state to the community and the community to the state, depending on the context. Even though full participation in a village meeting is the ultimate decision-making mechanism, the village committee is influential in the affairs of the village. The village heads do not have absolute power, but they can raise issues and initiatives, bring these topics to village meetings, facilitate the meetings and conclude decisions from the meetings. Most issues and initiatives are first discussed in the village committee, and then decisions are made in the village meeting.

In my experience working with several villages in rural Laos during the past decade, the village committee is very influential in directing decisions. This is because many people do not bother to participate in sharing ideas, but instead choose to follow the decision made by the majority. They also tend to be quiet in public and more active in the informal sphere. People discuss and gossip about the failure of some collective activities. However, ordinary villagers may not express their opinions at a meeting, especially when the topic or decision discussed does not have any direct impact on their families.

Policies do not come into force at the local level overnight. People become informed about them at the village level through the meetings and training sessions that the state arranges for the village committee. People also do not implement policies until they have some experience with what they mean in practice. Two examples of this are the policies that people implemented only after they mapped the resources in their village or after they enclosed Nong Bua. However, some policies simply endorse what is actually everyday practice, such as exclusive rights over an individual's rice fields. Development discourse can facilitate the acceptance of new policies such as an exclusive property regime for productive management.

The case

Our CBNRM case started organically. The project was not originally intended to initiate interventions, but while studying wetlands management, we raised local expectations. While I was being amazed at the complexity of the backswamp fisheries, the villagers, district and provincial staff asked me the typical Lao question: 'You have been walking in and out of the villages and asking many questions; what are your findings and what is next? Will you do some development? What about giving villagers some fingerlings?'

As I have done in previous projects in Laos, I replied that this was a research project and that we did not have many resources at our disposal. However, I knew this was not a good answer for them because it did not show what direct benefit they would gain from our research. They expected something concrete to come out of the project, especially when it involved a foreign expert.

This reaction is understandable because Laos has very limited development resources. Therefore, the government has placed a priority upon infrastructure development while leaving most development activities at the village level to international organizations. These included NGOs and donor organizations such as the UNDP, the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA), the Japan International Cooperation Agency and Canada's IDRC. The notion of project, or kong kaan, in Laos, when it involves foreign experts, clearly implies the expectation of both new knowledge and investment in facilities or infrastructure.

On reconsideration, I thought that the request from the district was not unreasonable, and that a small project such as ours could afford it. The more important rationale was that it would be a good opportunity for the project to demonstrate support for the local initiatives of both officials and villagers. In this way, we could meet our goal of encouraging the co-management of communal resources and improving food security through low-cost development activities. We decided that our project would give 10,000 fingerlings bred by the provincial fishery station to each backswamp, at a cost of approximately US$100. With financial support from the project, PLFO offered training in fish nursery and fish breeding practices.

The case was interesting because there was a range of rules and tenure differences in the four backswamps we studied. Three were roughly 2–6 ha in size, while one was much larger. Also at issue were the spiritual beliefs held by local people. These placed restrictions on particular types of fishing gear as well as limitations on who could fish and when. The three smaller backswamps were used exclusively by a single village, even though there was some provision for other fishers (usually relatives) to fish on a single day in the dry season. All fishing was for household consumption, so few fish were sold. In contrast, Nong Bua is a comparatively large backswamp of 28 ha (see Figure 7.3). It was the only one of this size in our project, and there were no restrictions on use. Therefore, fishers from outside Kaengpho district, where Nong Bua is located, could come and fish here. In fact, this backswamp was used by 17 different communities. The only prohibition at Nong Bua was on certain fishing gear, based upon a spiritual belief.

The project-supported fish stocking began after the rainy season finished in late October. The communities introduced new management rules prohibiting villagers from fishing between stocking time through to the end of the dry season in April or May. This allowed fish to grow for about five months so that people could catch bigger fish and obtain a higher yield. Harvesting in all four backswamps now changed its focus from subsistence-based household fishing to a carefully managed harvest system. All fishing was prohibited until an agreed opening date near the end of the dry season. At that time, the village committees fished for some time, and all proceeds from the commercial sale of the fish went to a collective community fund. (In all cases, this period was followed by a stretch of individual, household-based fishing.) The villages used their community fund for communal purposes, such as maintaining temples, schools and roads. In the absence of sufficient income, some villages levied a fee from each family for these purposes. Other income-generating activities included organizing festivals, which would draw paying visitors, or selling some other community resources, such as fishing rights or wood in their forest.

Fish stocking did not create problems for the three backswamps that were exclusively used by a single community. For Nong Bua, however, the project intervention led to the exclusion of communities that had previously held access rights.

The Nong Bua exclusionary situation

Nong Bua is located inside the boundaries of the village of Kaengpho, a medium-sized village that had 111 households and 662 people in 1999. It is situated on the left bank of the Sedone River, a tributary of the Mekong River (see Figure 7.4). Nong Bua is surrounded by rice fields that Kaengpho's villagers use. Prior to the stocking of fish, the property regime of Nong Bua was inclusive all year round. People from other communities could fish here at any time, although they did not bother during the wet season when fish were abundant everywhere and people were busy with farming. There was only one management rule, which prohibited specific types of fishing gear based upon the belief that these would offend guardian spirits.

At the end of the flood season, many fish are trapped by filter traps (tawn) set in 18 channels that connect the backswamp to the Kaengpho villagers' rice fields. The catch supplies families with enough to preserve as fermented fish for their households' annual consumption. During the dry season, especially between February and April when fish are concentrated in a small area, Nong Bua becomes an important source of low-cost protein and secondary income for people in

Figure 7.3 Nong Bua, one of the four study sites
Photo: N. Tubtim.

Figure 7.4 Map of Kaengpho village area

these 17 communities surrounding the backswamp. During this time, most other water bodies dry up, so food that is abundant at other times of the year becomes scarce.

The furthest community from Nong Bua is about 1–1.5 hours away by bicycle or on foot. On a daily basis, some fishers from a couple of communities sold fish caught from Nong Bua to buy rice. Many villages have their own backswamps, but they are small and dried up during the dry season. Some of these wetlands are far from the villages and are not connected to the rivers, meaning that there is not much fish. Therefore, only Nong Bua was readily accessible and had ample fish, so people from many communities preferred to go there.

Nong Bua is believed to be protected by two fierce female guardian spirits, Maetho Kammai (a female widow) and Nang Waan (a female spirit who likes sweets). People have found house posts and some pots in the backswamp that they connect to the tale of 'Phadaeng Nang-Aai', a common legend of widow spirits living in big natural ponds in Laos and the northeast of Thailand. People pay strict respect to the spirits. Certain fishing gear and activities are prohibited.3 Those who suffer from an unidentified sickness or who die are believed to have broken the rules. At one time, almost 100 animals died and people believed that the spirits had been offended.

One elder in Kaengpho explained to me that worshipping the spirits is the last resort in treating illness when modern and traditional medicines fail. If the patient recovers after this, however, the cause of the sickness is often traced to an offence to the spirits of Nong Bua. Because of this type of event, the Kaengpho village committee once sent letters to the surrounding communities who came to fish in Nong Bua. They asked the outsiders not to break the rules because they feared that if they did, problems and sickness would befall the people of Kaengpho.

Those who break the rules must appease the spirits by offering gifts to the village shaman. The offering consists of two pigs (a black one and a white one), a piece of cloth, a bottle of whisky, a khouai yai (phallus or large timber carved in the shape of a penis) and some dessert. This is quite costly for villagers. Because of that, some people have recently switched from pigs to chickens for their offerings. During this case study, I saw one of the large phalluses at the spirit house located near the backswamp.

Kaengpho people told me that in the past the situation was more serious than now, because back then they could not even build a house near the backswamp. Now, new houses are being constructed closer to the backswamp because the original residential area is crowded. However, the community has to worship the spirits first to ask for their permission. As for the prohibited fishing gear, the restrictions remained in effect at the time of my study.

Around May each year, when Kaengpho people worship the village spirit before the new crop season, they include the two guardian spirits of Nong Bua in this village annual ritual. Commonly, people think that there are both good and bad spirits in nature. Some readers might think that this was just a belief of people that was not based on scientific evidence; however, these beliefs are common in Asia and they determine people's behaviour to some extent. In the case of Nong Bua, this belief was shared among people in both Kaengpho and the surrounding communities. It was more effective in influencing user behaviour than many legal rules that the government has tried to implement in the area.

Enclosure of the backswamp

After stocking fish in Nong Bua, Kaengpho people claimed exclusive rights over Nong Bua and prevented the 17 surrounding communities from fishing there. Kaengpho people maintained the belief that guardian spirits prohibited the use of certain fishing gear and added an additional rule forbidding the use of gill nets. More importantly, they prohibited other communities from fishing in the dry season. Kaengpho people still fish during the dry season, but only use hooks and lines.

When I asked why other communities were excluded, I was told that they did not enclose Nong Bua in the rainy season. However, it was widely understood that during that season other communities do not fish in Nong Bua in any case because fish are abundant and they use other closer locations. Therefore, I think people tried to find an answer to please me.

Kaengpho used the money gained from communal fish harvesting under the new management to help fund a new primary school in the village and to buy fingerlings for re-stocking the next year. The project was considered successful by the villages and the district authorities. However, it does not mean that everybody agreed, especially if they happened to be from the excluded communities. Nevertheless, the enclosure did not cause a lot of conflict between Kaengpho and the excluded communities.

Nong Bua legitimization process

The legitimization of the situation in Nong Bua started immediately after villagers got to know that they would receive fingerlings as a direct result of the project. Kaengpho villagers organized a meeting to establish a community fishery committee to set the new management rules. Afterwards, they invited DAFO to attend the meeting so they could offer comments. As a result, changes were made to some details in the new exclusionary rules. DAFO then announced the new management regime for Nong Bua to the other communities. These steps were required because villages do not have authority over one another. Therefore, they needed approval from a higher authority which would endorse the new arrangement. This process is followed in Laos whenever a change in management rules is made.

When fish were stocked during the first year of the project in Nong Bua, I was delighted that officials and villagers had initiated the intervention on their own. In addition, on the first fish release day, I was amazed to see the elaborate decorations adorning the area near the backswamp. As well, time was spent feasting and hosting invited guests from the province and district, as well as representatives from neighbouring communities. Monks were also invited to chant, after which the district head made a speech, emphasizing how this type of project represented a good opportunity for village development.

A village party member of Kaengpho then announced Nong Bua's new property regime, suggesting that its management goals included both the community's development and its collective benefit. Following these speeches, the district head released the first fish, after which other officials did so too, including project staff, representatives from other villages, and lastly, Kaengpho people (see Figure 7.5). It is a common tradition in Laos to make events very formal, especially in ceremonies involving government officials and foreign project researchers.

The ceremony on the fish release day was part of the legitimization process. The enclosure of Nong Bua was endorsed through this ceremony by the officials' speeches and the presence of invited guests from the project. This was a way of giving authorization to the new claim. Simultaneously, the participation of representatives from neighbouring communities was automatically a sign of their acceptance of Kaengpho's new exclusive management of Nong Bua.

Before the fish release, the new property regime of Nong Bua had been announced to the excluded communities through the district. Therefore, apart from the ceremony, the Kaengpho village committee itself had never communicated directly with the other villagers to describe the new rules. There was only one confrontation between Kaengpho and the excluded fishers from

Figure 7.5 Fish being released in Nong Bua by villagers and district officials
Photo: N. Tubtim.

the other communities in the first year of fish stocking. A group of fishers from one village came to catch shrimp and fish in Nong Bua. When the Kaengpho village committee could not convince them to leave, one of the members of the committee fired a gun into the air to chase away the intruders. The excluded group of fishers reported to their village head and the district. However, although DAFO received this report, they did not do anything about the incident.

After that, there were no direct arguments between Kaengpho and the other communities. This is partly because the culture of rural Laos avoids direct confrontation on conflicting issues. Although this behaviour helps ease problems at some levels, it does not mean everyone agrees with the outcome. Because of this community incident and how it was dealt with, there was much teasing, gossiping, and arguing back and forth among residents of the other villages as well as third parties such as traders and students. As a researcher who asked many questions, I was privy to much of this gossip and teasing. However, complaints faded out over time and eventually most people supported Kaengpho.

Some Kaengpho elders told me that at first they were not confident of their exclusive claim. They were not afraid of the other communities because they felt they had support from the district and the project, which also meant the provincial authority. What mainly concerned the elders was that the change might upset the spirits. However, their fear disappeared three years later.

In 2000, Kaengpho sold fishing rights for one day only to fishers from other communities to overcome the problem of weeds that had become invasive after the enclosure of Nong Bua. Prior to the exclusion, weeds were fairly controlled by the number of fishers who tramped around in the backswamp. In this one-day event, 200 or so people from many villages, including the excluded communities, came to fish in Nong Bua because it had many more fish than other neighbouring wetlands. The event was envisioned as a kind of ceremony and festival with feasting, whisky, music and dancing, so people thoroughly enjoyed participating. This was another step in the legitimization process, too, because when the excluded fishers bought tickets to fish in Nong Bua, their action acknowledged Kaengpho's rights over Nong Bua.

However, the most significant event of the day was when the spirits intervened. The first indication of their presence came in the morning. Villagers were surprised to discover that over half of the fish collected on the previous day for the feast had disappeared from their cage in the backswamp. Moreover, at the close of the day, a normally shy pregnant woman in Kaengpho greatly altered her usual character by speaking to people and laughing loudly, and by drinking a big glass of whisky and smoking a cigarette. She said that she was Maethao Kammai, one of Nong Bua's guardian spirits. She said that the festival atmosphere was fun, that she had released fish from the cage and she would help look after Kaengpho people. The elders and shaman interpreted this to mean that as long as everyone in the village agreed and worked collectively, the spirits would protect everyone. As a result, this case became a confirmation for the Kaengpho people, proving that what they were doing was accepted by both the spirits and other communities.

In the next section, I describe how the Nong Bua situation is perceived from the perspective of a researcher, local officials and villagers. They explain the exclusion based on their different worldviews. I will also explain the roles of the researcher and of the CBNRM processes in this context.

People's differing perspectives

The following stories are taken from my many discussions with local officials and different groups of villagers through the project's life from 1997 to 2001. These stories do not necessarily represent facts, but they convey underlying messages that the officials and villagers needed the outside researcher and project representative to understand. These descriptions were their views at the time of the study, but might have changed after the project finished.

Different views

When I asked the head of DAFO whether the new property management at Nong Bua was appropriate, he said, 'There was no kaan jad kaan (management) before.' However, I had a different opinion. I thought that the strict prohibition of some fishing gear based on spiritual beliefs was a kind of management in itself. He explained:

Kaan jad kaan has to have a kind of proper rules. The rules from spiritual beliefs did not help people manage the resources better, instead they obstructed development. In the Nong Bua case, the backswamp had lots of weeds but superstition did not allow people to separate out an area for harvesting fish so it made a big problem. Anyway, this will be changed gradually when people see the benefit from management and development.

This statement illustrates that the officials view management as a formal arrangement intended to facilitate the efficient use of those resources that can foster development. It is a common belief among orthodox Lao socialists that superstition is one of the primary obstacles to Laos's progress. An elder told me that after the socialist government came to power in 1975, the government commanded people to destroy their spirit houses. However, after the country adopted new economic mechanisms in 1986, the government gradually softened this approach.

Another related point is that officials wanted to devise a simplified, standardized type of institution to manage development because the state has difficulty working with a unique set of rules in every community. This is what Scott (1998) means by 'seeing like a state'. There is also the issue of language and culture. The term kaan jad kaan, which applied to socialist views of development, could not be used in relation to the prohibitions attributed to spirits.

It is interesting that even though the Lao officials did not support the Kaengpho people's belief in superstition, they let them keep the rules regarding guardian spirits and arrange a ceremony to ask permission from the spirits before releasing any fish. One reason was that these beliefs and ceremonies did not conflict with their agenda of formalizing property regimes through the land and forest allocation and productive management policies.

Regarding productive management, officials both at provincial and district levels congratulated me on the success of the project. They explained:

Fish stocking in the backswamp was a low-cost input but it initiated a good idea for village development that later people could adopt by themselves. People should start producing for surplus. Our government does not have sufficient development budget. Today even the district has to look for our own sources of money to pay our staff.

Later the district and the province helped Kaengpho by mobilizing additional resources. They organized a fish release at Nong Bua in celebration of provincial wildlife conservation day, where the province subsidized the fish fry. They convinced the district education office to support Kaengpho by providing some construction materials for the school. The research project also provided money for the school. Because of the decentralization policy there was no state or provincial budget for school construction, but officials were able to pool small amounts of additional funds from various sources based on the community's initiative. Moreover, officials stated that these kinds of development activities should become a model for other communities.

The concept of a 'model village' is well known in Laos. The Lao government has few resources for rural development at the village level, so examples of villages that initiate development activities or of farmers who can produce a higher yield of rice become a way for officials to encourage people and communities.

However, Kaengpho people did not want to become the sort of model village that the district wanted to promote. The village committee said:

It is not good to show to the other villages that we are better than them or they should follow us. In fact, we want to ask them for understanding that we did not have other resources for development like the others have. If we do not do this (enclose Nong Bua), we will never be able to have this school for our children.

This interpretation reflects the tradition that Lao villagers try not to put themselves above their neighbours. Culturally, Lao people are more inclined to modesty and to seek sympathy. Because Kaengpho people still had to relate with their neighbours, they probably thought it would be better to express positive feelings.

As a researcher, I began to understand these varied viewpoints, although I was still concerned about the exclusion, as it seemed to be unfair to the excluded fishers. However, officials and Kaengpho people had different opinions. The Kaengpho village head explained:

Kaengpho does not have a proper school, no road, and no electricity while the other villages do. So, the project helps us to be able to keep up with the development of the others.

This means that Kaengpho also legitimized their claim based on equity with other communities, while pointing to differences in infrastructure development. I should note here that Kaengpho was no poorer than the other communities in terms of livelihoods; for instance, they had as much rice as their neighbours. However, Kaengpho villagers did have less infrastructure, and this is how development was understood locally. District officials did not object on the point of less development, but they felt that development could not happen evenly, at the same time. They explained that villages were not equal: some had resources and kwam samakkee (solidarity), so they could mobilize collective activities better than those that did not have such facilities. This made sense from the local officials' position of encouraging development at the village level under conditions of severely limited resources.

Shared views

I also discovered some shared opinions that sprang from customary practices, development discourse, exclusive management, the villagers' capacity for collective action and socialist values.

Both Kaengpho residents as well as those in other villages believed in guardian spirits. Moreover, the excluded people knew about the spirit's possession of the pregnant woman. Their shared beliefs helped formalize the exclusive ownership of Kaengpho over the backswamp. The district officials also heard about this and chose not to oppose it. This was perhaps because the belief did not obstruct their vision for new management of Nong Bua.

As to development discourse, the officials considered fish stocking to be an investment. Therefore, it would not be useful to open up access to everyone, as had previously occurred, because:

To reach development, the villagers had to put something back into the resources so that people could gain benefit from the resources. People should not just take from nature. Resources might be enough for subsistence, but with increasing population and the need for development, they will be used up quickly.

Village heads of the excluded communities also recognized that it would be a shame if benefits to the community were lost when the project ended. This is a familiar situation in rural Laos, where benefits disappear once projects are finished. Both local officials and villages prefer projects that support sustainable productivity improvements. In order to gain concrete, ongoing benefits from fish stocking, Nong Bua needed exclusive management.

One member of the Kaengpho village committee said they considered allowing other people access if they used certain types of fishing gear such as hooks, to ensure only big fish were caught. However, the committee decided not to do this, because:

It is impossible to monitor everyone. If Nong Bua is partly opened for the others, they may cheat and this might lead to conflict within and between the communities more often. Therefore, it was better to displease the others once rather than feeling paranoid, and distrust each other forever.

Everyone whom I interviewed from the excluded communities agreed to exclusive management. They thought it would be easier to manage the resource under one administrative authority because costs and time for such events as meetings, for instance, would be reduced, particularly if benefits from the resource were small. People knew of a collaborative fish-stocking project where two communities owned a backswamp, but the project ended after a year. Afterwards, one family in the village got the concession to operate it. The village head explained that mobilizing people to work collectively was not easy and sometimes created more problems than it was worth.

In the case of the exclusive management of Nong Bua, the excluded villages were able to accept the change for two main reasons. First, the Kaengpho village committee had a good reputation. Second, the collective mobilization linked well to socialist ideology, which emphasizes action for common benefit (suan ruam).

The village committee explained that the new management of Nong Bua was intended for the benefit of the whole village and for the children, because as a result of the project the village could build the school. In fact, some of the village's poor gained a larger proportion of the benefit, especially the women. After Nong Bua was enclosed, these women could catch some shrimp and buy fish from the other fishers in the village for trading. The women were able to sell them to Kaengpho families who did not often fish and to outside communities, but now without any competition from the excluded villages. This benefited only select individuals, so it was not mentioned as an incentive for the project's acceptance, nor was it in the district's declaration. This information was related to me as a researcher, but not shared with the other communities. At the same time, according to the village head, he and other wealthier members of the village gave up benefits because the new rules prohibited the use of their costly but effective gill nets. These decisions added to the village committee's good reputation and their claim demonstrated their commitment to collective benefit.

Elders and village committees from the excluded villages responded positively to the collective benefits, noting, 'If they had excluded us for their individual profit, it would not have been so easy.' The excluded group might not want to accept the new regime but they still had to present the image of supporting 'socialist' development. This moral value is well accepted in socialist rural Laos. However, the idea of collective benefit refers exclusively to a single village.

The exclusive management of Nong Bua fit well with LFAP's goals. Even though the programme was implemented formally in Kaengpho in 1999, only two years after the initial fish stocking, the idea of formalizing property regimes and creating incentives for productive management had been with both local officials and villagers for quite some time. This does not mean they aimed to enclose and exclusively manage every resource located inside village boundaries. Procedures vary depending on the characteristics and value of the resource in question, and after considering whether it is possible or worthwhile to enforce management rules.

People in the area tend not to prohibit neighbouring villagers from collecting food from nature for their own household consumption. Nevertheless, when a particular resource becomes scarce or valuable in the market, village boundaries can be easily brought into play to claim exclusive rights. In the case of Kaengpho, the reaction from the excluded group did not challenge the village ownership of Nong Bua or the jurisdiction of the guardian spirits. Some people attempted to return to fish, claiming they were following the usufruct right that they used to have. However, this argument failed when district officials chose to ignore their complaint.

The implementation of LFAP in areas where people have permanent farms with clear individual ownership such as at Kaengpho has not led to conflicts as are experienced in situations where shifting cultivation has been practised. Rather, it has helped to reduce conflicts between communities in some ways. Many village committees in the area told me that since LFAP was implemented in their villages, there were fewer arguments about resource access and management than before. In the past, people could raise reasons for using some resources in other villages and access could not be denied very easily, because good relations among neighbours had to be maintained.

After a few years, members of excluded communities stopped complaining about the exclusion for a number of reasons. Initially they tried to voice their complaints in the name of the entire village, but in fact, their own village head did not support them. Village heads are part of the state administration and in situations like this they tend to side with the state. At the district level, meanwhile, officials ignored the complaints in order to demonstrate to the excluded groups that they actually supported Kaengpho. Opposition finally collapsed after villagers (and in particular a very vocal leader who was opposed to the project) discovered they had personally obtained benefits from fish stocking, because some fish from Nong Bua appeared in their own rice fields during the wet season.

On the one hand, the local officials and Kaengpho villagers were able to work together on the new exclusive management of Nong Bua even though they did not base legitimization on the same issues. On the other hand, even though the villagers of Kaengpho and the excluded communities did not completely agree about exclusion, they shared the same perspective on development and the belief in superstition, proving that they held common ideas, too.

Conclusion

CBNRM is not a process in which people agree on everything. However, it can be a way for them to work together to meet different objectives. The real power of the experience comes from this collaboration.

Collective resource tenure as part of CBNRM can lead to exclusion, but it may not necessarily lead to conflict if all the participants accept the exclusion. It is also possible that while some will want it, others will accept it reluctantly, while still others might oppose it, depending on material circumstances and discourses of what is or is not legitimate. In this case, exclusion was a subtle process of making a claim over Nong Bua in the context of legitimizing development discourses and spiritual beliefs. The exclusion was accepted because, while the project was trying to meet its agenda on CBNRM, it was also facilitating the implementation of government policies, as projects in Laos are expected to do.

Exclusion was not a goal of this research project. However, the new property regime was initiated because part of the project agreement entailed the support of fish stocking, and afterwards, project members had little control and had to limit themselves to providing technical support. In addition, it was only the foreign researcher who was concerned about the enclosure, while the local people and officials focused on different issues. This case shows that researchers should be aware of and reflect on their roles in the process of CBNRM, especially where projects could lead to exclusion.

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Part III
From local action to policy impact

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CHAPTER 8
Building networks of support for community-based coastal resource management in Cambodia

Kim Nong and Melissa Marschke

Abstract

This chapter examines the role of one PAR team in creating relationships to support CBNRM. Relationships, in this case, occur at various scales (international, national, provincial and community) and take place in various forms such as through partnerships, networks or facilitation by the research team. The chapter highlights the role of such relationships, including an analysis of why creating networks is a key strategy for facilitating CBNRM. Field stories about stolen fishing gear, water conflicts and mangrove logs shed insights into these processes. Unless adequate networking mechanisms and facilitation support are built into the CBNRM processes, community management plans and maps alone will do little to enhance local livelihoods or engage critical provincial and national actors.

Introduction

In part as a response to declining access to natural resources, community-based management (also known as community fisheries, community forestry or CBNRM) has emerged in Cambodia. Although approaches can vary, communities are establishing management plans and territorial claims, often with support from NGOs or government agencies. In comparison with a handful of sites in the late 1990s, in 2002 there were an estimated 162 community fishery sites and 237 community forestry sites in Cambodia (McKenney and Prom, 2002). Many of the community forestry and fishery sites in the country have an elected resource management committee (also known as a community fisheries or forestry committee) that is responsible for guiding resource management activities. This growing community emphasis in resource management appears to be a departure from past practices in Khmer villages, which were based on technical leadership from government institutions and informal regulations directed by village and commune leaders.

Much of the initial community-based work, which began in the 1990s, was experimental because community members, NGOs and government facilitators needed to understand just what resource management could look like on the ground. These initial experiences have contributed to the proliferation of community-based management processes – or at least fragments of them – throughout Cambodia. Examples include approaches to government decentralization, land management activities and increasingly formal community forestry and fisheries programmes. However, it is difficult to get a sense of what it really takes for CBNRM to work once plans are finished, maps made and documents approved. What issues are community resource management committees solving and what support do they require?

Cambodian rural households typically depend upon a diverse range of income sources, including those derived from a combination of common property resources such as fish, forest and water sources. However, access to these depends upon where a household is located and what livelihood opportunities the household is able to harness (Helmers, 2003). There is limited research that only hints at what it really takes in practice to enhance livelihoods, solve conflicts or increase access to resources for rural dwellers. Households and village-level institutions already do implement a variety of resource management strategies, including using forests as buffers from wind and storms. However, lessons from older CBNRM projects suggest that resource management strategies can more easily be enhanced when there is appropriate support that exists beyond the village level for community involvement in CBNRM. Perhaps greater consideration of Cambodia's cultural context1 is necessary while working on CBNRM. In this country, village-level institutions often cannot engage in resource management practices such as patrolling or enforcement activities without some form of higher-level support.

This chapter tracks a specific case (Marschke and Nong, 2003) in which it is argued that both bottom-up and top-down strategies are needed to successfully bridge knowledge gaps and bring different players together to support CBNRM processes. Specifically, the chapter examines the role that one project team, Participatory Management of Mangrove Resources (PMMR), has taken in creating relationships to support CBNRM. Relationships, in this case, occur at various scales (international, national, provincial and community) and take place in various forms. These include partnerships, networks and facilitation by the PMMR team. This chapter highlights the role of such relationships, including an analysis of why creating these types of networks is a key strategy for facilitating CBNRM. Field stories relating to stolen fishing gear, water conflicts and mangrove logs shed insights into these processes. Unless adequate networking mechanisms and facilitation support are built into CBNRM processes, community management plans and maps alone will do little to enhance local situations or engage critical provincial and national actors.

The PMMR team and coastal villages

The PMMR team, funded by the IDRC, is composed of government staff at the national and provincial levels who come from various technical departments. This is an action research project, which means that team members are engaged with other stakeholders in CBNRM research. The lead institution is the Ministry of the Environment (MoE), and the provincial team is interdisciplinary. The PMMR provincial team members come from the Department of the Environment, the Department of Fisheries, the Department of Rural Development and the Department of Women's Affairs. This research team works directly at the village level, more recently with local-level resource management institutions.

Because team members belong to different institutions, partnership building could only begin once the PMMR research team had a better sense of what actually was happening (or not) within their own institutions as well as at the local level. For example, after the project team had worked together for the first few months, the original name of the project, Community-based Mangrove Management, was changed to the current name, Participatory Management of Mangrove Resources. This happened because the team felt that the term 'community-based' could potentially alienate government partners since they are not community members. Figure 8.1 explains why this research team chose to build partnerships at different levels. Team members found themselves taking on multiple roles in this action-research process, from learner to facilitator to researcher to trainer. However, perhaps more than any other role, the team considers itself a bridge connecting those with typically less power with those with more power to discuss, and potentially solve, coastal resource management issues.

Most of the PMMR team's village-level work takes place in a handful of in-migrant fishing villages in and around Peam Krasaop Wildlife Sanctuary (PKWS) as shown in Figure 8.2. Many of these households were displaced by internal conflicts and economic disasters in other provinces, and so they migrated into this area with the hopes of taking advantage of lucrative resource extraction activities. Most households have learned to harvest various resources, after other income-generating activities collapsed, such as charcoal production and shrimp farming. As resources such as mangrove trees and fish declined, some villages requested support from the PMMR team to help them with resource management initiatives. Although the team initially spent time doing a series of environmental education activities in these villages, they did not help villagers to organize themselves or create resource management plans unless villagers specifically requested help.

The PMMR team's main focus is to research how local-level resource management institutions can engage in resource management and how local livelihoods can be enhanced. The team has worked hard to establish good relationships and cooperation with all governmental levels, and to aid this, the PMMR team facilitates between the national government and local people. In

Figure 8.1 Why PMMR builds partnerships at different levels

Figure 8.2 Location of the Peam Krasaop Wildlife Sanctuary in Cambodia

order to build the capacity of provincial and local authorities, the PMMR team has held many training courses and sent provincial and local leaders to participate in training courses on mangrove forest management in Thailand. Local villagers have been sponsored on study tours to other areas in Cambodia where local people are also working on CBNRM. In adopting an action research approach, much of the team's learning has come from working directly with villagers on resource management issues, and from networking with partners to help them to better understand CBNRM processes. It is argued that much of the success of this research project is due to this explicit orientation to learning with partners versus implementing blueprint plans, regardless of how the latter may be developed. Perhaps, in part, this learning orientation was in reaction to individual experiences of team members while working with or watching NGOs and government institutions facilitate time-consuming and complicated planning processes led by a small number of people. Such processes sometimes resulted in plans that were not accepted by villagers.

International and regional partnerships

The PMMR project began in late 1997. This was a time when only a few donors were working on community-based management in Cambodia, when CBNRM as a concept was very new to all participants. Much of the initial emphasis of earlier projects was upon community forestry. The PMMR project did not quite fit into this dialogue, given that the team was working in mangrove fishing communities with many in-migrants. Consequently, at first a national–international dialogue was critical while national-level staff sought to understand CBNRM concepts, and while international advisers started to comprehend the unique Cambodian context. Networking with other IDRC partners, therefore, was an important first step in PMMR. It allowed everyone to learn what was involved with community-based management, and to learn participatory, analytical and other skills related to researching resource management issues.

Project advisers who visited from Canada or who lived in Cambodia have held multiple roles with the PMMR team, being friends, facilitators, trainers, questioners and sceptics. As the CBNRM work unfolded, from the PMMR team's perspective it was essential that there was a dialogue among national and international members regarding questions and situations that arose. Although initially advisers played a critical role in helping to shape the project, with time this shifted into local staff taking the lead. Therefore, the role of project advisers evolved over time. Now, in a supportive context, their role is to challenge team members to help them to reflect and learn more from their experiences. Table 8.1 lists these PMMR partnerships.

Networking in Asia and Canada

Similar to the PMMR team's relationships with project advisers, the team's experiences with regional networking evolved over time. Networking in the region and through international study experiences always seems like a good idea. In fact, several national staff participated in university courses in Canada. Comments such as 'we need more training', or 'we need to build our capacity', are common, especially when embarking on a research project that demands an analysis of complicated situations. Hence, PMMR team members were exposed to several training events, both in the region and in Canada.

My first trip to Canada, learning with other students, was really hard. I had been so excited to have the opportunity to learn from others, but I found it really hard to follow the ideas or to share very much even though I had a lot

Table 8.1 Partnerships with PMMR: enhancing a movement

Source: PMMR, 2004.

of field experiences. I really had to make an effort to speak and to get people to listen to me.

Ouk Li Khim, a national PMMR team member

However, training, study tours and international courses alone are not enough to understand CBNRM concepts. It takes continuous practice, reflection, more training and then refinement before experiences can be synthesized and fully understood.

At times, workshops, meetings or projects with regional IDRC partners have created a cooperation that actually felt forced, like something that PMMR was obliged to participate in. At other times, team members have been genuinely excited by such opportunities. Team members' skills in English might be considered adequate, but none is particularly fluent. It takes serious effort to respond to e-mails, read documents, search the web or contribute to discussions. Regional networking takes away from local work. However, regional interaction can provide the spark that helps people really grasp what they are doing. Over time, the research team began to appreciate the value of such networks and the potential that the learning brought. 'Sometimes I need to hear outside ideas, even if I don't fully understand them, to consider if these may help me in my work,' noted An, a provincial team member.

Over time, the PMMR team became more sophisticated in ensuring that they could benefit from these sorts of exchanges. For example, when the team wanted to initiate a reflection session with local institutions, they knew they did not have the time to design an in-depth training programme. They contacted a Philippine CBNRM networking project called Learning and Research Network for CBNRM (LeaRN). This group designed an approach that would enable the team to learn more about participatory monitoring and evaluation approaches. For LeaRN, it was an excellent chance to learn about a new context and to adapt their skills. After LeaRN facilitated a training session in Phnom Penh, the PMMR team was able to adapt the lessons so that they could facilitate an appropriate village-level reflection session (with support from LeaRN). Such a networking approach, which enables both partners to learn, results in greater appreciation for context and differences. Moreover, it builds a pool of resource people in the region who can contact each other, long after projects end, to work through other issues.

PMMR team members have linked with other networks too. In August 2003, they hosted a workshop in Koh Kong for fishers from Thailand, Sri Lanka and Cambodia. Although Cambodian fishers had participated in such exchanges previously, it was the first time that the network had come together in Cambodia. The workshop was hosted by the PMMR team in collaboration with local resource management institutions. The emphasis was on fishers learning with each other. One fisher from Siem Reap province who attended the Koh Kong workshop noted:

While sometimes this is a new way of thinking for us, but if we think about our homes and what we do, it makes sense that we have to take care of the fish and the. forest. I am just very sorry that those with power do not see the importance of this. (Marschke, 2004)

For this fisher, such exchanges created an understanding of environmental issues and the reasons why villagers play a role in resource management. Exchanges help broaden views, incorporating complicated issues that concern government officials, community members and international experts. Networking can also create unexpected opportunities such as securing additional funding, learning new skills and solving a problem.

Understanding the national policy context

Since Cambodia is a strongly hierarchical social context, having high-level political support for NRM activities is essential. That is, one needs to engage with policy-makers in ways that are both formal (laws) and informal (official endorsement). Consider the fisheries reform. In October 2000, the prime minister of Cambodia visited the provinces and heard about conflicts between fishers and fishing lot owners. He immediately announced the release of 8,000 ha from the 84,000 ha under commercial fishing lots in Siem Reap province. By February 2001, the government had agreed to release 536,000 ha from the fishing lot system for local community management, which represented 56 per cent of the entire area under commercial fishing lots in Cambodia (Evans, 2002). Although no law was in place to support such a reform, the prime minister wields enough power to mandate such a change.

It is perceived by many government officials that villagers have a low capacity or limited skills and experiences for resource management. This, in part, is related to the hierarchical nature of Khmer society. The challenge, therefore, is to break down negative perceptions while getting higher-level officials to support CBNRM processes. The PMMR team has had to consider how to present CBNRM concepts, especially to those persons who can make decisions to support – or not support – community involvement in NRM.

Exchanges with government institutions: national and provincial partnerships

A direct benefit from extensive networking during meetings, study tours, field visits, workshops and socializing is the strong support all PMMR project team members derive from national and provincial government organizations. For instance, higher-level officials are willing to give their support to village-level resource management activities, even though there is no legal framework to mandate such activities. That is, each local-level resource management institution, known as a village management committee (VMC), has created a management plan, which includes rules and regulations along with an area to manage. These plans are recognized by appropriate technical institutions and by the provincial governor, as well as by the Minister of the Environment, for those villages found inside a protected area. When dealing with resource issues, it helps the VMCs to know that they have support for their work, whether it is to stop illegal activities or to try different village-level initiatives.

By enhancing decision-makers' understanding of CBNRM concepts, the PMMR team has had a significant influence in the MoE and in Koh Kong province. Between 1997 and 2004, the PMMR team organized a series of workshops and strategic field visits with national and provincial government officers whose mandate was to develop coastal resources and local livelihoods. This strategy involved consistently bringing key decision-makers to the field and facilitating an exchange between villagers and government officials. Table 8.2 outlines the strategy.

While the PMMR team has hosted multiple workshops and study tours, written reports and papers, and encouraged villagers to speak in many venues, the annual televised field visit from the MoE and other high-ranking officials has been the activity which has contributed the most to promoting the work of the communities. These visits, combined with annual mangrove replanting activities, were what the villagers remembered as most significant. In fact, some activities facilitated by the PMMR team have been particularly useful for villages while others have been insightful for government staff. This is why engaging in a range of strategies is an important aspect of the research team's work.

Initially, the PMMR supported villagers to plant mangroves in exchange for rice. After several years, the provincial governor began supporting this activity personally, and it appears that support for mangrove replanting continues to grow. In 2004, a National Assembly member pledged his support for the communities to replant mangroves in exchange for rice. Sok Net commented, 'Did you hear that Tia Bun (a National Assembly member) will support our

Table 8.2 Creating relationships with strategic government officials

Source: PMMR, 2002.

mangrove replanting? He will provide 15 t of rice for us, and 5 t for Koh Kapic [a neighbouring village]. I'm really pleased.' Net, although not a member of the VMC, participates annually in mangrove replanting activities. She was pleased that a high-ranking official would consider supporting her community.

Sometimes additional attention can lead to conflicts among the VMC members or in the community. For example, unknown to the PMMR, the MoE issued a certificate of dedication to key villagers working on community-based management in various protected areas. The provincial director of the environment nominated one VMC member from Koh Sralao who was given this certificate. Other villagers became angry because they felt that the entire committee worked on community-based management and that one person should not be favoured unless it was the VMC chief. The provincial director of environment never thought to ask the PMMR team or the VMC members before making this appointment. In addition, he did not consider the internal ramifications of what he perceived as a nice gesture. The PMMR team, therefore, held group sessions with government officials encouraging them to think about the implications of their deeds before acting. Also, they were asked to consult VMC members so that people would not have bad feelings about one person being singled out, but rather feel proud that someone in their village had been recognized.

Local authority cooperation

In Cambodia, local authority refers to administrative units that conduct various government functions. Provincial, district, commune and village administrative units all fall under the Ministry of the Interior. Any community-based management initiative requires both support from and participation by local authorities, especially endorsement for activities at the village and commune levels. Of note is that commune powers increased with the 2002 elections. If civil society movements emerge without local support, conflict can arise. Therefore, the PMMR team took the approach to involve local authorities wherever possible to ensure smooth operations at the village level. This provides village institutions with a line of communication, apart from the PMMR team, when they wish to solve their conflicts.

However, the following story indicates the challenges of getting local institutions (police and the VMC) to cooperate to solve resource management conflicts:

Dom was acting as the temporary head of Koh Sralao's VMC, since the VMC head was exploring livelihood opportunities elsewhere. Stolen fishing gear is one of the biggest challenges fishers face, and sometimes the VMC is asked to help solve thefts.

Sareun, a crab fisher from Koh Sralao, came across 40 empty crab traps near his fishing ground. No one claimed these traps during the time he was out fishing, so he decided to take them himself. When he returned to the village, he talked to Dom. They decided that most likely someone had stolen the traps and subsequently left them. They agreed to leave three traps at Dom's house and the rest with Sareun, and to advise the villagers that some crab traps had been found. They documented what they were doing and thumb-printed the paper to make it clear that Sareun did not steal these traps.<