WORLD RESOURCES INSTITUTE CONFERENCE ON DECENTRALIZATION AND THE ENVIRONMENT BELLAGIO , I TALY 18-22 February, 2002
DECENTRALIZATION AND NATURAL RESOURCE MANAGEMENT: A NICARAGUAN CASE STUDY
Anne M. Larson University of California, Berkeley Managua, Nicaragua Email:
[email protected]
WORLD RESOURCES INSTITUTE 10 G STREET, NE WASHINGTON, DC 20002 www.wri.org
I.
Introduction
The current process of decentralization in Nicaragua began in the late 1980s and has generated important changes both structurally and within civil society. Elected municipal officials, which did not exist prior to 1990, have been granted important responsibilities for the management of their territories in general, as well as for their region’s natural resources. A national movement, comprised primarily of municipal government representatives, decentralization advocates and NGOs, has pushed the concerns and priorities of local governments onto the national agenda, and onto the agenda of the candidates for the November 2001 national elections. On September 18, 2001, 200 representatives of civil society and members of, or candidates for, government signed an “Agreed Declaration for a Municipal Agenda,” calling for increased municipal autonomy, sustainable development and local participation, and committing the signatories to promote specific laws and policies to further that agenda. This apparent generalized enthusiasm for decentralization, however, contrasts rather sharply with the current reality of the process, which many professionals agree has largely stagnated. First, the government has still not adopted a national decentralization policy, though a draft is reportedly in circulation. Second, “decentralization,” so far, has been primarily a process of deconcentration and privatization, and many analysts believe that the central government has no real desire to give up any further power. Third, there is no law guaranteeing central government transfers, and the most the municipalities have received so far is only 1% of the national budget (for 2001). 1 This case study is based on the analysis of three years of research on decentralization and municipal natural resource management in 21 of Nicaragua’s 151 municipalities, with a primary focus on forest management. The research was sponsored by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and the Nitlapán Institute of the Universidad Centroamericana (UCA), Managua. Additional interviews were conducted for the purposes of this paper. The prior studies upon which this paper is based primarily examined municipal government capacity and local natural resource concerns, 2 as well as how and why local governments have begun to assume natural resource or environmentrelated responsibilities (Larson 2001a, 2002). II.
Sketch of actors
Central Government. At the central government level, the Presidency established the Sectoral Commission for Decentralization (CSD) to be in charge of coordinating decentralization, defined as “the transfer of functions, resources and authority from central to autonomous entities, to municipalities or to organized civil society.” The CSD was created in 1994 under President Chamorro and was resurrected in 1997 under 1
The 2002 proposed budget currently only includes 0.9%. See Barahona & Mendoza (1999), Fauné & Kaimowitz (1999), Fauné & Martinez (1999), Fauné & Mendoza (1998), Larson & Barahona (1999a,b), Martinez & Rocha (1999), Martinez & Mendoza (1999), Mendoza & Artola (1999), Mendoza & Martinez (1999), Parrilli (2000) and Rocha and Barahona (1999). 2
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President Alemán. It plays primarily a policy role. The CSD is currently drafting a national decentralization policy and has promoted specific legal reforms, particularly the Organic Law of the government’s Institute for Municipal Development (INIFOM) and reforms to the Municipalities Law. The National Assembly must pass most legislation governing municipal governments and natural resource management. The majority of current legislators are members of the Liberal Party and are closely tied to president Alemán. They are highly unlikely to approve legislation without the President’s approval. They have refused to act on a bill, for example, promoted by the country’s mayors, that would guarantee that 6% of the national budget to municipal governments. They did, however, approve the first discretionary transfer for 2001. The Nicaraguan Institute for Municipal Development (INIFOM) is the central government body in charge of coordinating and implementing central government policy toward the municipalities. 3 With regard to natural resources, the three most important central government entities are the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources (MARENA), the Nicaraguan Forestry Institute (INAFOR) of the Ministry of Agriculture, Ranching and Forestry (MAGFOR) and the Ministry of Development, Industry and Trade (MIFIC). MARENA is in charge of establishing the norms and regulations for the conservation and preservation of the nation’s natural resources. INAFOR is in charge of overseeing forest management on private lands, while MIFIC manages concessions for forestry, mining and fishing on national lands. In the past year, INAFOR launched an ambitious deconcentration of many responsibilities to local field delegations as well as smaller steps toward decentralization, but the director was fired in early October, and it appears that many of her initiatives will be reversed. MARENA has also undergone some deconcentration. MIFIC is entirely a centralized entity. The Regional Level. Nicaragua’s two Atlantic Coast autonomous regions are governed by Regional Councils that have certain authorities that lie between the national and municipal levels, based primarily on Law 28, the Autonomy Statute of the Atlantic Coast Regions. Though they have legal authority, the Regional Councils have almost no funding and have been in competition with municipal governments and indigenous authorities for overall legitimacy, as well as for the right to obtain income from natural resource exploitation. The Local Level. Nicaragua has 151 municipal governments, each with an elected mayor and vice mayor plus 4 to 9 councilors, depending on the size of the local population. The Municipal Council consists of these councilors plus the mayor. 4 Since 1993, Nicaragua’s municipal governments are all members of the Nicaraguan Municipal Association, AMUNIC. AMUNIC is funded by the municipal governments themselves 3
INIFOM is a recognized springboard for political candidates, because it gives them broad national access. Mention of INIFOM tends to raise eyebrows among the representatives of financial institutions that fund projects there. It is generally hoped that its competency will increase with an internal reorganization that began in 1998-99 and, according to World Bank officials, is just getting underway (Boyer, pers. comm.). 4 The Council has 20 members only in Managua, where 25% of the country’s population resides.
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but also receives international and NGO funding for numerous specific projects. Its paramount goal is to increase local government capacity and political, administrative and financial autonomy. It has played a key advocacy role for municipal autonomy as well as promoting transparency, local participation and effective natural resource management. 5 The Constitution and municipal and natural resource laws grant local people the right to participate in environmental management, monitoring and protection, as well as the responsibility to act according to a region’s Management Plan if they live within a protected area. Participation in natural resource management at the local level is granted principally by the Municipalities Law, which authorizes municipal governments to create bodies for citizen and inter-institutional participation. MARENA also has the right to contract out the management of protected areas to civil society organizations. 6 Indigenous communities are groups of local peoples that often do not fall within any single municipal jurisdiction. They do not have any specific rights by law over their natural resources, though the Constitution and Autonomy Law both protect the rights of Atlantic Coast communities in general “to enjoy, use and reap the benefits of the waters and soils of their communal lands.” The Municipalities Law states that municipal governments must recognize indigenous communities located within their jurisdictions and respect their traditional leaders, “who should be taken into account” in municipal planning and decisions that affect them. Though they are not part of the legal structure, important support for decentralization has come from numerous foreign-funded projects and NGOs that have promoted local capacity-building throughout the country. Many, if not all, of these NGOs are members of the Nicaraguan Network for Local Democracy and Development, which works with AMUNIC to promote municipal autonomy. III.
Central government relations with local institutions
It could be argued that the powers municipal governments have over natural resources are not the ones they want, and the powers they want are not the ones they have. In general, municipal governments consider the responsibilities they have been given as an additional burden that they do not have the resources or capacity to undertake, and which takes time away from what they consider to be their priority—service provision. The Municipalities Law grants municipal governments the rather sweeping responsibility: “to develop, conserve and control the rational use of the environment and natural resources as the basis for the sustainable development of the Municipality and the country, promoting local initiatives in these areas and contributing to their monitoring, vigilance and control in coordination with the corresponding national entities.” 5 6
AMUNIC and INIFOM have also reached an agreement to work cooperatively on municipal concerns. For example, a national NGO FUNDENIC manages a forest reserve on the Mombacho Volcano.
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This and other laws give municipal governments numerous specific attributions regarding the environment and natural resources. 7 The most important of these is the right to give their opinion, known as an aval, prior to central government approval of resource exploitation requests, which include both concessions on national lands and extraction permits on private lands. Municipal governments also have a right to 25% of the income the Tax Office receives from these contracts. Other rights and responsibilities include the establishment of municipal parks for the conservation of important local resources and the development of land-use plans. Municipal governments must coordinate with MARENA and/or MAGFOR to undertake various other tasks. These include participating in environmental impact evaluations, managing protected areas, declaring soil conservation areas, controlling forest fires and establishing norms for ecosystem quality. In general, municipal governments have the responsibility to regulate rights regarding natural resources, but not to create rights (Ortega, pers. comm.). Despite all of these attributions, based on Article 102 of the Constitution, the central government reserves for itself the right to make key decisions over natural resource exploitation. Specifically, though legally required to consider municipal government opinion, it is the central government that enters into contracts for forestry, mining and fishing. In reality, local government opinion is sometimes not even requested, and dissenting opinions can simply be ignored. 8 Similarly, local governments have received only a small portion, if any, of the income they believe they are owed from the tax revenues generated by these contracts. 9 There are numerous other problems which can be summarized as a general state of “legal confusion” (Ortega, pers. comm.). The bottom line is that the central government has retained control over those aspects of natural resource management that generate income. It has also failed to transfer sufficient funds to local governments for these to be able to meet their obligations to their constituents, and there is no law as of yet requiring it to do so. The Social Investment Fund (FISE)--the main entity promoting municipal “development” projects, that is, the construction of roads, schools and health centers--is centrally managed and controlled, though analysts argue that municipal governments could undertake the same projects for roughly 75% the cost (Fitoria 2001). Many people, primarily those who are not members of the governing Liberal Party, complain that the central government has managed the funds in order to maintain control over, as well as favor, its party members. The main reason given for failing to provide municipal governments with more funds is that they do not have the capacity to manage them. Central government representatives also argue that there are still local funds available that municipal governments are not 7
These are granted by the Municipalities Law (No. 40 and 261), the General Law of the Environment and Natural Resources (Law 217) and related enabling legislation (Decrees 9-96, 45-94 and 14-99). Fire control was established by Decree 207 in 1972. 8 In the case of the Regional Governments of the Atlantic Coast, the central government is required by law to get their approval for concessions, though it has sometimes failed to do so. 9 Negotiations were underway with several municipalities to provide the funds owed from INAFOR when the director was fired.
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tapping. 10 Liberal President-elect Enrique Bolaños, 11 for example, has promised to provide matching funds to municipalities based on their own developed capacity to expand their local tax base. Another argument against prescribed transfers is that legislators “need freedom at the time of planning the budget” (Fitoria 2001). The reason for limiting local government control over forest resources is similar: because municipal governments do not have the capacity to make technical decisions. An INAFOR official stated that if a municipal government gave an unfavorable opinion for a milling contract, he would not take that opinion into account unless it was backed up by a rigorous technical argument. Very few municipal governments have technical personnel. Nevertheless, important changes had begun to occur under the directorship of Sandra Tijerino in 2000-01. Tijerino was actively committed to deconcentration and decentralization and was very responsive to the complaints and suggestions coming from the municipalities. She was also committed to eradicating corruption within INAFOR. One of the most important actions she took was to negotiate the transfer of 25% of forestry revenues to municipal governments in forested regions, on the premise that they would only begin to take INAFOR and the legal framework for forestry seriously if INAFOR fulfilled its legal obligations. She held regular meetings with municipal leaders and provided them with all of the information regarding logging and the forest industry that INAFOR held for each municipality. She won the support of agroforesters and their organizations at the local level by simplifying the permitting process and giving greater power to INAFOR’s municipal delegations. 12 Tijerino was fired in the first week of October. The MAGFOR Minister was reported by the local media as saying it was because she was allowing local governments to overexploit their forests without any control. 13 This is clearly not true, but it implies that her efforts toward decentralization and perhaps even deconcentration will be reversed. From statements made by long-term INAFOR officials, it also appears the decision to transfer the 25% of forestry revenues may also be reversed (Ortega, pers. comm.). The central government has numerous mechanisms for holding local governments accountable, but the primary one is its tight control of funding for projects. 14 The legislature must approve municipal budgets and also establishes the legal guidelines for local taxes. INIFOM has regular contact with all of the nation’s mayors and is committed to raising local capacity; nevertheless, given the generally low level of capacity in INIFOM itself, as well as myriad political and personal interests, the extent to which it is able to do this currently is questionable. INIFOM manages one portion of a World Bank 10
AMUNIC agrees on this point but does not believe that this affects the need for central government transfers. 11 He was not one of the candidates who signed the Municipal Agenda. 12 The head of a pine forest owners association in Santa Clara told a Community Forest Forum that, thanks to Tijerino’s initiatives, the cost, inconvenience and bureaucracy that plagued them before had ceased to be a problem. 13 Tijerino, on the other hand, states she was fired shortly after refusing a direct order from the Minister to authorize an illegal logging permit (Tijerino, pers. comm.). 14 At one point, the INIFOM director actually “fired” a mayor, though this action was illegal.
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project to promote municipal government development and natural resource management, though in general it has does very little with respect to natural resources. 15 With few other alternatives, local governments have sought to hold the central government accountable primarily through organizing, particularly through AMUNIC, with the support of the media, NGOs and other local organizations. In addition, foreign aid agencies such as US AID, IBIS-Denmark and the German aid agency GTZ have played an important role by lending legitimacy and funding to the process, and directly promoting the training of local officials. 16 Recently, AMUNIC, the NGO network and the media have focused on the demand for transfers of a fixed percentage of the central government budget (so far unsuccessful); the demand for 25% of tax income from resource extraction, required by law but not done in practice (except by INAFOR this year); and the commitment by key political leaders to a specific municipal agenda (signed in September 2001). In the past decade, local citizens and governments have also tried to hold the central government accountable on numerous different occasions regarding unwanted natural resource contracts or concessions. Successful strategies have included local campaigns and the issue of municipal ordinances, such as those “prohibiting” mining in El Castillo and San Carlos; a national campaign against a logging concession on indigenous lands (Awas Tigni) that was taken to the Human Rights Commission of the Organization of American States (the concession was canceled in 1998, and the OAS commission ruled in favor of Awas Tigni in 2001); and the destruction of property (the Nycon Resources Company mining installations in Bonanza). There is strong grassroots support for decentralization in Nicaragua. A study conducted in 14 northern municipalities in 1996 found that 65% of the people surveyed opposed the concentration of resources and decision-making in the Executive Branch, and 68% believed that municipal governments could do things better than the central government. The overwhelming majority, 97%, believed that the best way to solve problems was with citizen participation. 17 (Ortega and Castillo 1996) NGOs have mixed responses when asked specifically about municipal management of natural resources. Several people interviewed in the CIFOR-Nitlapán studies argued that municipal governments were not the appropriate entities to oversee natural resources or environmental problems. These were usually people located in municipalities where local governments were particularly incompetent or corrupt. On the other hand, some NGOs are committed not only to working with local governments but also to enhancing mechanisms for civil society participation in their decisions. 15
The World Bank is beginning an ambitious Second Rural Municipalities Project and INIFOM Strengthening Project in 2002. 16 Some of these agencies, such as AID and GTZ, also fund INIFOM. 17 Still, 66% said that a person could only get something from a municipal government if she or he was well connected. This contrasts with a more recent poll (in a different region) that found that only 10% of the people surveyed believed friends of the mayor were the primary beneficiaries of INIFOM-funded projects (Boyer, pers. comm.).
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In summary, it is probably most accurate to say that decentralization as an official process is very incomplete, with important blockages with regard to actual discretionary powers and decision-making over some of the most important concerns, and with regard to funding. Decentralization with regard to legal control over resource extraction is virtually nil. In addition, capacity is, in fact, low among most municipal governments, 18 but there are many projects working to change that. The central government tries to maintain tight control over municipal governments, but this appears to be aimed less at improving their accountability to the citizenry than to party bosses. On the other hand, decentralization as a grassroots process shows substantial potential. Local governments have enormous support from important sectors, particularly from civil society but also from some central government officials. They have also undertaken important initiatives to increase their own capacity and authority. IV.
Local institutions and local peoples
Municipal government representatives are elected by majority vote, though local peoples may have little say regarding who the candidates are for each political party. The mayors, if not most (or all) councilors, tend to be from urban areas and better educated than the poor majority of the municipal population. Nicaragua has a history of rule by caudillos and government paternalism. Party affiliation tends to be a very important factor in determining the sector of the population that believes the municipal government to be working for its benefit, and the sector to which the mayor believes him or herself to be accountable. The only established mechanism through which local governments are required to promote citizen participation is the municipal cabildo, or town meeting. Ordinary meetings are to occur twice a year, and one should occur prior to the final approval of the annual budget. Extraordinary meetings may also be called, including at the initiative of local citizens. The Municipalities Law states that the municipality “will promote and stimulate citizen participation” but does not establish any other specific participatory mechanisms. 19 The required town meetings do not always occur, however, nor is the budget always public information. Local actors have tried to hold local governments accountable in various ways. For example, several municipal councils have had mayors removed from office, though others have tried and failed. The petition to recall a mayor or councilor must be approved by two thirds of the Municipal Council and then by the Supreme Electoral Council. Particularly where incompetence is more the issue than corruption, the attempted recall has often failed, even in cases where the official in question has clearly violated the specific provisions of the Municipalities Law justifying dismissal. 20 In other 18
INIFOM classifies 75% at 6-40% of relative capacity, 11% at 40-60% and only 4% at 60-100%. AMUNIC, together with several human rights organizations and other entities, has drafted the Law of Citizen Participation to establish mechanisms of participatory democracy, guaranteed by the Constitution, at all levels of government. It has been signed by 25 legislators so far. 20 In San Carlos, for example, two or three separate attempts to recall the mayor between 1997 and 2000 failed, and the municipal government spent four years at a virtual standstill. 19
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cases, however, mayors have succumbed to pressure and have resigned. Bonanza is one of the few municipalities where the desire for government “accountability” actually led the indigenous population to promote candidates for public office. The current mayor of Bonanza is Mayangna. Most of the pressure on local governments regarding conservation issues comes from NGOs and other donors, which have used financial pressure, organizing and legal strategies to influence local government behavior. For example, in El Castillo, DANIDA threatened to withdraw funding three different times in the past five years if the local government did not do as it requested. 21 An NGO in Cua-Bocay organized an alliance of community groups to oppose a mining concession in the municipality and convinced the local Municipal Council to vote against the concession. 22 Some NGOs, AMUNIC and MARENA have pressured or encouraged local governments to form Municipal Environment Commissions (CAMs) and institutionalize their participation, as well as, at times, the participation of other groups. NGOs have also drafted resolutions and ordinances regarding natural resource management and presented them to the Municipal Council for negotiation and approval. Local groups have also gone to the media with complaints about local governments. This has occasionally backfired, however. One Municipal Council voted to declare the head of a local NGO, who had spoken with the media in opposition to the local government’s approval of logging on several occasions, persona non grata in the municipality. The main problems for local owners, users and/or extractors of natural resources lie not with their local governments but with the central government entity that oversees their activities, such as INAFOR in forestry. Conflicts arise with local governments when these try to charge additional fees or taxes for their resource use or extraction, which many do, often with the support of the NGOs. In summary, downward accountability is currently quite limited. Some mayors have continued to maintain their posts in spite of significant local opposition, even from their own municipal councils, and in spite of a total failure to function as a local government. There are few institutionalized mechanisms of accountability that are required by law, and even those that exist are not always respected. On the other hand, citizens and NGOs are not completely empty-handed. At least with persistence, they have managed to have some mayors removed and, in other cases, have convinced municipal councils to adopt desired natural resource policies, though the outcome may not always be what was intended. With regard to natural resources and local participation, AMUNIC is an important ally for local peoples.
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These requests involved rejecting a central government mining concession, reinstating technical assistants that had been trained by the project (fired in a change of administration) and taking action to evict colonists from inside a forest reserve. 22 The mining company, however, lobbied councilors, as well as the community that would be directly affected; the Council voted in favor on the concession in its next session.
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V.
Outcomes for people and the environment
It would be very difficult in Nicaragua to measure the “before” and “after” of decentralization for two main reasons. First of all, the decentralization that has occurred is still in process and faces important obstacles before municipal autonomy can be considered in any way “complete.” The process is even more incipient with regard to natural resources. Second, the country has gone through other fundamental structural changes in the same time period, particularly the transition from war to peace and from a revolutionary socialist to a capitalist government. What we can identify are ways in which municipal governments or local citizens have taken advantage of an increase in local authority, based on laws aimed at decentralization, to promote certain types of actions. Attempts to protect local resources from outsiders . Protests against central government concessions are probably just as likely to have occurred under centralized schemes, but the presence of a local political entity that officially opposes a concession may give that protest more credibility or force. Local groups protested against mining concessions in El Castillo and in Bonanza, and both convinced their local governments to take their side. The central government did not actually cancel the concession in either case, but in both cases, neither of the two companies involved has ever chosen to act on the concessions. 23 In other cases, the local protest is directly aimed at local government. The people of the Ocotal district of El Sauce objected to logging being carried out by a company from a neighboring municipality. They demanded that the government take action, and threatened to blockade the logging road if it did not. When the municipal government failed to respond, the population fulfilled its threat, took the roads and forced the government to negotiate a municipal ordinance that suspended existing logging permits for six months and required district council approval of new permits. Local action has not necessarily resulted in better results for forests, however. In Jalapa, the local government banned the export of unprocessed logs from the municipality in order to increase locally added value and support the local sawmill. This caused prices to drop. At the same time, the government continued to charge logging taxes and refused to forgo them for sanitation cuts that were required to control the outbreak of bark beetles. The combination of taxes and low prices appears to have discouraged forest owners from carrying out the required sanitation cuts, and encouraged a beetle problem that has since devastated thousands of hectares of pine forests (pers. comm., World Bank official). 24
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On the other hand, in spite of local opposition, local governments have also sometimes supported the outside company. In Rosita, the municipal council approved a logging concession to SOLCARSA, though local and national opposition managed, after more than two years, to have it canceled. In Cuá-Bocay, the local government was initially convinced by local opposition to oppose a mining concession to Renaustra, but then changed its vote after lobbying by the company that, according to one councilor, included bribes. 24 This was clearly not the only reason the pine beetle spread, however, since neighboring municipalities had different policies and also have a serious blight problem.
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Ordinances and resolutions . Some municipal governments have attempted to protect local resources by issuing municipal ordinances and resolutions. Many of these address problems of contamination, deforestation or over-exploitation, by stating local government policy and establishing fees for resource use and/or fines for noncompliance. Many of these have been passed at the pressure or urging of NGOs working in those municipalities and could, if enforced, improve environmental conditions or prevent deterioration. Charging fees for use, however, could also have other effects. Taxes on resource extraction, for example, could promote an increase in illegal extraction, as well as engender direct conflict with local resource users. Some agroforesters, for example, have threatened to clear their trees for ranching because the taxes on logging are so high. Some of these charges are also illegal. 25 Municipal Environmental Commissions . The CAMs are the most common way in which local governments have promoted civil society participation in addressing natural resource or environmental concerns. Prior to the 2000 municipal elections, just over one third of Nicaragua’s municipalities had established CAMs, though few actually met on a regular basis with a clear and dynamic agenda. Some particularly active CAMs have drafted important municipal ordinances controlling resource extraction, manage environmental education campaigns, coordinate activities among INAFOR, MARENA and the local government, and investigate citizen complaints of irrational or illegal extraction. 26 Fire controls. MAGFOR and MARENA have actively promoted fire prevention since a drought in early 1998 led to massive forest fires throughout Nicaragua and the rest of Central America. Officially, this has often been coordinated by the mayor’s office with the participation of the local representatives of several central government entities and local civil society (NGOs, projects and farmers). Unofficially, the primary role of the Municipal Council has been to issue an appropriate fire ordinance establishing requirements for burning permits and fines for burning without a permit, and declaring local government support for the campaign, which is then usually managed by NGOs. A few municipal governments have actually fined or jailed farmers who lost control of their fires and damaged other people’s property. Personnel. Some local governments have hired their own personnel to oversee natural resource problems in the municipality. This is particularly important where central 25
While at INAFOR, Tijerino was able to convince many municipal governments to eliminate the forestrelated charges after negotiating the payment of a percentage of forest revenues from the central government (Tijerino, pers. comm.). AMUNIC’s environmental lawyer complains that NGOs and others, including the World Bank, promote municipal government initiatives without regard to the current legal framework (Ortega, pers. comm.). The result is laws that are illegal, then frustration on the part of municipal officials who feel they have been “made fools of” when they cannot enforce their rules. This leads to even greater reticence to attempt to regulate natural resources. 26 Some, however, have overstepped their authority and tried to impose their decisions on municipal governments (Ortega, pers. comm.).
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government offices do not have enough personnel to control or monitor resource extraction. The mayor’s office of Chinandega, for example, has three forest inspectors and four park rangers. Nevertheless, few local governments have funds for non-essential personnel and particularly for higher-paid technical staff, especially poor, rural municipalities—the majority in Nicaragua. The few technical staff that exist in these municipalities are all paid by NGO or project funds. Corruption. Some local governments have taken advantage of their new power to reap economic benefits at the expense of their constituents and their local resources. The mayor and two councilors from Waspán, for example, were accused of illegal wood trafficking, together with the INAFOR delegate and others. The accusations were under investigation in early 2001 (La Prensa 18/1/01). Marginal groups. Marginal groups can be better off under decentralized management, though not necessarily. (There is no reason to believe that they are any worse off, however.) In Bonanza, the indigenous Mayangna population has increased its power and authority in the region by participating in the traditional political system. This has made it possible to put indigenous concerns, such as the legal demarcation of indigenous territories, on the political agenda. In contrast, in neighboring Siuna, the mestizo 27 mayor has taken the side of peasant colonists who are invading indigenous territories.
Local governments have become an additional important actor that has the capacity to facilitate or inhibit “good” natural resource management, and to facilitate or inhibit local participation. If the results are mixed, under what conditions do we find better resource management? One of the problems with these questions is precisely what is meant by “better resource management.” There is little doubt when we are talking about contamination, for example, that less contamination is better than more; or with logging, that some form of control over extraction is probably more likely to be less destructive than totally uncontrolled logging. But on many other issues there is significant gray area and differences of opinion and interests. This will be addressed further in the following section. In our Nicaraguan studies, we found that local governments had little interest in most aspects of their new responsibilities associated with the environment and natural resources. In general, neither local governments nor local citizens associated natural resource or environmental concerns with development, but rather with conservation, which they associated not with local government but with MARENA. For example, before researchers prodded deeper, in many municipalities the only relevant projects many local government officials mentioned undertaking were those related to reforestation. 27
Of mixed Spanish-indigenous descent, as is over 90% of the Nicaraguan population.
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Nevertheless, many local governments had undertaken myriad activities related to natural resource concerns, though of 21 studied, only one—the mining community of Bonanza— appeared even close to considering these issues integral to the overall management, organization and development of the municipality. In most other municipalities, relevant interventions were fairly haphazard, uncoordinated and unplanned. The rest of this section, therefore, will attempt to answer a somewhat different question: why do local governments get involved in resource management or environmental concerns at all, and what does that imply for the quality of environmental outcomes? Four key factors played a role in government action: an economic interest in generating municipal revenue; a specific conflict or crisis; NGO or project pressure or influence; and recognition of the problem. We found that the first three, often in combination, were the main incentives for action. And in some cases it appeared that they could lead, over time, to the fourth—a greater recognition and understanding of environmental problems. The nature and quantity of the interventions taken make it clear that many municipal governments’ main interest in natural resources is in generating revenue. It is often this possibility that wins their attention to the issues, when pressured or lobbied by civil society organizations or other parties interested in promoting local resource management by municipal governments. This has occurred in a context where the central government controls the vast majority of resource revenues and has generally failed to hand over the legally required share to local governments. 28 In other cases, conflict or crisis leads to action: the mayor’s office of Posoltega promoted watershed protection after over a thousand people died in a devastating landslide provoked by Hurricane Mitch in 1998. In other cases, local citizens chose to fight outside interests and turned to their local governments for support and action, if not actually forcing their hand in the matter. Other times municipal governments have avoided intervening even when a serious problem arises. In Jalapa, neither local government nor INAFOR personnel took action to address the pine beetle problem in time. Municipal authorities said they did not have the technical expertise to manage forestry problems, nor the funds to hire technical personnel. This is true in spite of the fact that logging is one of the most important economic activities in the region. In many cases, NGOs provided important incentives through their initiative, influence and persistence. This includes threats to withdraw funding, persistent lobbying and negotiation, hiring “municipal” personnel and drafting ordinances themselves and presenting them to the Municipal Council for approval. Not all of these activities promote government assimilation or understanding of the problem, however. They do, though, represent the leverage of certain sectors of civil society. 28
It is also important to remember that some of these charges are illegal.
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The fourth factor, then, recognizing—and addressing—the problem, tends to be part of a learning process that is the preferred outcome of some combination of the other three factors. Of the 21 municipalities studied, this factor may have begun to play a role only in Bonanza. Though an interest in income generation is the main incentive for local government action so far, it may be the least likely to promote better natural resource management. The prospect of substantial increases in municipal budgets with increased resource extraction can lead to the promotion of extraction, as occurred, for example, in El Castillo, where 36% of the municipal budget in 1998 came from logging. Overextraction may occur where other income options are limited, and where local governments lack a long-term vision. Re-election is prohibited in Nicaragua, and the “time-lines” of elected officials tend to be set at five years. 29 This is a specific issue where civil society participation could make an important difference—but longer-term and more integral visions of development are not necessarily prevalent among civil society either. Specific conflicts or crises, often with outsiders, have usually forced the government to stand on the side of its constituents. (They are less likely to take action where two groups of local citizens are at odds.) This does not necessarily mean the results are better for natural resources, of course, but they at least appear to be what local people, or at least those involved in the conflict, want. On the other hand, local governments have occasionally responded to citizen complaints by placing complete bans on logging, which adversely affects local agroforesters. NGO or donor pressure has clearly led to greater municipal government involvement in natural resource management. The activities they have promoted are certainly aimed at promoting positive environmental outcomes, though whether they always do is, of course, a matter for debate beyond the space available here. There are other problems apparent in the work of NGOs, though: -
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they may push for local government decisions or activities that then receive no follow-through or enforcement (because the local government really was not interested or does not understand the issues), or that are actually illegal; they may do the work themselves in the name of the local government (hence, when the project closes, the environmental work ends); they do not always represent local peoples, or a very broad sector of local people even if the NGO is local.
The best NGOs have worked closely with local peoples and sympathetic municipal government representatives to build a clear understanding of the issues and an institutional framework for the future. 29
Nicaragua also has a serious historical problem of elected officials using public office for personal enrichment, and using the powers during their stay in office to guarantee their futures out of office by usurping public goods. World Bank officials privately consider the Alemán government (1/97-1/02) to be one of the most corrupt in Latin America.
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VI.
Cross-cutting issues
Local people do not necessarily manage local resources “better” than others. Just as nonlocals may, “local people” may be driven by the profit motive or the desire for personal enrichment; they may have economic needs that promote over-exploitation of resources. It is most likely that there will be different groups of people with different resource needs and interests. To name a few, these may include indigenous populations; NGOs, which may be oriented more toward preservation or more toward sustainable use conceptions of “conservation,” and which may represent broad sectors of local people or only a small elite; groups of peasants or otherwise poor resource users; and capitalist enterprises, which may be run by local people or represented by local intermediaries. Under these circumstances, what does it mean to promote local participation? The poorest and most marginalized groups—even if they are to enter a forum for negotiation—have the least political power. Decentralization in the interest of equity should promote not just the participation but also the empowerment of these groups. Participation cannot simply mean putting different people around a table and facilitating better communication. According to Leeuwis (2000), the fundamental problem is not that people have not had anyone to facilitate communication but rather that certain actors are “not willing or able” to take part in such a process (emphasis in original). He argues for recognizing the strategic positions of different stakeholders as well as making the role of the facilitator much more deliberate, as a basis for promoting participation. What is the relationship between the effective participation of these groups and “positive environmental outcomes” of decentralization? It is widely accepted now that poverty and degradation are closely linked in a downward spiral (Sinha 2000), and that degradation increases vulnerability. Hence poor, vulnerable populations should benefit most from environmental improvements. But at least in some cases, increasing the incomes of poor populations increases degradation (Larson 2001b, Farris 1999). This is particularly true with regard to deforestation in Nicaragua’s remaining rainforests, where peasants consider the most reliable path out of poverty to be ranching. 30 In addition to all the different specific interests that these and other players may have in resource preservation, conservation or exploitation, local peoples as a whole may represent different interests in or concerns about natural resources at the local level than others might at the regional, national or global level. What does it mean, then, to manage resources “well”? A “positive environmental outcome” at the national level, for example, such as protection from global warming, may refer to the effective protection of a forest reserve at the expense of local peoples’ livelihood needs. Similarly, “effective local participation” may lead to the invasion of a rainforest reserve, the sale of its timber to a local sawmill, and the conversion of vast areas to pasture. Conservation NGOs present a perfect example of the contradictions. Though promoting local participation has become a priority in policy, many conservation projects have a 30
Utting (1994) finds the same in Central America as a whole.
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very poor record of promoting “real” participation. There are many reasons for this, but one of them is that their interests and local peoples’ interests do not completely coincide, hence some conservation organizations prefer to take advantage of their greater economic and political power to “influence” local peoples to do what the NGO wants. Real participation—or local empowerment—might turn the tables. VII.
Conclusions
In the case of Nicaragua, decentralization is still largely incipient and only partially developed. Municipal autonomy is blocked to an important degree by an inadequate legal framework and the unwillingness of the central government to give up control over natural resource extraction, as well as insufficient funding and low local capacity. Local governments see the responsibilities they do have as an additional burden, rather than an opportunity. At the same time, local participation and accountability are insufficient and poorly institutionalized. While it is, therefore, not possible to identify post-decentralization improvements in environmental management, we have been able to identify a number of actions local governments and local peoples have taken under the evolving new framework. Some of these are directly related to the presence of local governments and their new natural resource responsibilities, including the issuance of local ordinances and resolutions to control resource extraction or contamination, as well as the local fire controls, Municipal Environmental Commissions and technical staff that did not exist before. Local government support may also have given greater clout to local protests against unwanted concessions. All of these actions have strong potential for improving natural resource and environmental management. These kinds of actions are taking place under a similar set of conditions. First, they have occurred in municipalities that have large budgets and/or important financial and logistical support from an NGO or foreign donor. Second, a specific incentive promoted government action in almost every case—an economic interest in generating revenue, a specific conflict or crisis, and/or the pressure of an NGO or project. Two of the most important actions, because, in some cases, they raised the capacity to undertake many other resource-related actions, were the creation of the CAMs and the hiring of technical personnel. In virtually every case where actions are being taken, there is at least one NGO actively lobbying or working with the local government on resource conservation or management issues, though the results of this are mixed. There is a strong assumption behind many arguments for decentralization that local peoples will manage natural resources better, even in an earlier version of the conceptual paper for this workshop. Though we may choose to combine the issues of participation and natural resource management for strategic purposes, for conceptual purposes I think it is important to keep the two issues separate. For example, the fact that decentralization is an unfinished process in Nicaragua may actually work to the advantage of the NGOs that have been able to have a positive
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influence on local governments. NGOs tend to have clout because they have funding but do not necessarily represent local peoples or interests. They may be staffed with people who are not locals and who have a higher level of education than the majority of the municipality; they are likely to have a more regional, national or even global vision. Hence, building local governments that are truly accountable to local peoples may actually lower the capacity of these NGOs to influence local environmental policy. Given mixed outcomes, this may be for the better or for the worse for the environment. It means, however, that these NGOs need to find effective ways to work with local peoples on environmental and natural resource issues. Decentralization creates opportunities for local governments to play a greater role in the management of their local natural resources. Decentralization with effective participation creates similar opportunities for local peoples. These opportunities can be used to enhance conservation or “sustainability” or to increase exploitation. Under a decentralized framework, increased exploitation is probably more likely to support local rather than outside capitalist interests, or it may even benefit poor local populations. Hence, promoting decentralization, local participation and natural resource management is at least a three-part process. The first part is the promotion of real local autonomy and decision-making authority over natural resources. In Nicaragua today, this process is limited by financial, legal and political constraints. The second involves improving effective participation, particularly of marginal groups, and government accountability to local peoples. 31 In Nicaragua, this would require, among other things, moving away from a tradition of caudillos and paternalism toward a new vision of government. The third involves promoting effective natural resource management, which requires local capacity-building, incentives and promoting an effective process of learning and negotiation with local peoples and local governments. It also means promoting longerterm visions among both.
31
This means increasing their political power and decision-making capacity by promoting local empowerment, local and broader-scale organization and solid institutional frameworks for participation (see Fox and Gershman (2000) Carroll and Bebbington 2000, Uphoff 1993).
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