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Why Participation? Enhancing our understanding of participatory approaches to NRM

Why Participation? Enhancing Our Understanding of Participatory Approaches to Natural Resource Management A Living Document for the MINGA Program Initiative Compiled by Bruce Currie-Alder [email protected] Version 4: December, 2003

This paper is an evolving document that will be modified with the input of team members as we continue to assess our learning regarding participatory approaches to natural resource management.

Please cite as: Currie-Alder, B. 2003 Why participation? Enhancing our understanding of participatory approaches to natural resource management. Living document for Minga Program Initiative. Draft December 2003. International Development Research Centre: Ottawa, ON, Canada. 1 of 31


Introduction Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. Shakespeare - MacBeth, V:5

All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, Shakespeare - As You Like It, II:7

Point of Departure Within the Minga Program Initiative we value participatory approaches to natural resource management (NRM). In non-participatory NRM -also referred to as managerial ecology (Bavington and Slocombe 2002)- decisions are made without negotiation or consensus building, and can result in inequitable action and conflict over resources. The alternative of participatory NRM involves multiple stakeholders negotiating multiple perspectives and interests in order to achieve more equitable outcomes. Participatory NRM is generally perceived to be inefficient since participation requires additional investments in time and energy on behalf of stakeholders to meet, dialogue and negotiate. However, nonparticipatory approaches can be hindered by a lack of legitimacy. If decisionmaking is considered the desired outcome, an efficient process will make decisions quickly and at low cost; but this process will be ineffective if these decisions are made without the support of all stakeholders. The variety of natural resources, environments, institutions, cultures and stakeholders potentially involved in participatory approaches to NRM can make it difficult to understand or compare different examples. Participation may be restricted to the terms or conditions of a powerful stakeholder, or be an open dialogue between stakeholders that questions and redefines the management process. And it is a key moment to reflect on participation and participatory approaches to NRM. Within Minga, we are approaching the end of a programming cycle and we question ourselves about what have we learned and where should we focus our efforts in the future. The purpose of this paper is to enrich such reflection. Beyond us, many countries throughout Latin America and the Caribbean are experimenting with participatory approaches to a variety of governance issues. For example, in Porto Alegre, Brazil with participatory budgeting of municipal government expenditure, in Bolivia with the Ley de Participación Popular, or in Mexico with the 2 of 31


adoption of participatory watershed councils. Both Minga and our partners can only benefit by enhancing our understanding of participation, including how to overcome frustration and how participation can change both the nature of management and the stakeholders involved. Without such understanding, those involved in may become disillusioned with participation, potentially losing a tremendous opportunity to partake in defining their own futures. There is a need for a greater understanding of the dynamics involved in participation. This paper presents insights gathered from a review of literature and IDRC-funded projects. Its purpose is to explore the validity of participatory approaches to natural resource management in order to facilitate team learning within the Minga Program Initiative, consulting both the literature and IDRC experience.

Hypotheses 1.

The validity of a participatory approach depends upon how well a management process addresses various stakeholder motivations as well as achieving progress towards value-added objectives of understanding, legitimacy, and capacity.

2.

The validity of participatory approaches depends upon internal evaluations based upon the participants’ view of the process rather than external evaluations based upon economic efficiency or environmental quality.

3.

Participatory approaches require mutually, compatible understandings among actors of each other’s rights, responsibilities and roles.

4.

Meaningful participation results in scale-forcing where management shifts in terms of its temporal and spatial scale or the scope of the resources, objectives and stakeholders considered.

5.

Participatory approaches create hybrid structures of management where hierarchies within organizations are embedded in networks between stakeholders.

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1.0 What is Participation? Participation: social interaction in a group especially as carried on through attendance at and contribution to group activities Participatory approaches encompass a wide range of strategies that in one way or another open opportunities for interested stakeholders to be involved in some activity. Which strategies are selected depends in part on what activity is being shared, the purpose of participation, and relationships between stakeholders. The projects supported by the Minga Program Initiative often apply participatory approaches to development research, to natural resource management, or to research towards establishing participatory NRM. This diversity of projects means participatory approaches can be adapted to various biophysical, political, and social contexts. This diversity of approaches, however, means that participation is interpreted in various ways by different stakeholders and in different contexts. Similar to discourse on sustainable development, participation is generally perceived to be worthy ideal yet it is conceptually malleable enough in practice to fit almost any circumstance. Participation is about sharing. In adopting a participatory approach there is the expectation that different stakeholders will share and be enriched by that sharing. Depending on the activity being shared and the purpose of participation, stakeholders can be expected to share their perspectives, interests, values, information, knowledge, or ultimately grant their acceptance to a research or management process. Through such sharing, the interaction of stakeholders is expected to achieve some synergy whereby the outcome or result is greater than the sum of the individual elements being shared. The purpose of this paper is to enhance our understanding within Minga of participatory approaches to NRM, in particular the dynamics of participation in multistakeholder fora. This section explores the theory and practice of participatory approaches to NRM. Sections two and three present key insights from this exploration that are intended to enrich our understanding of these management processes. Finally, section four suggests findings to share with our partners in order to enrich their understanding of these processes.

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1.1 Participation in Theory Theory on participation assumes that participation is a process through which a powerful stakeholder begins to share authority over natural resources with other interested stakeholders. The powerful stakeholder is often a governmental NRM agency that either seeks participation voluntarily to improve NRM performance or is forced through socio-political pressure accept the input of other stakeholders. As such, participation in NRM is conceived of as a spectrum of power relations amongst stakeholders where at one extreme control over natural resources is held by a single powerful stakeholder and at the other extreme this control is fully disbursed among other stakeholders (Figure 1).

Shared Control

Full Control by NRM Agency

Negotiating Actively Consulting

Full Control by Stakeholder(s)

Sharing Authority

Transferring Power

Seeking Consensus

Figure 1: Specturm of participation Adapted from Borrini-Feyerbend (1996), an applied version of Arnstein´s ladder of citizen participation (1969).

Participatory approaches to NRM lie between these two extremes and describe a number of situations in which other stakeholders participate by informing, influencing, or performing NRM. Towards the middle of the spectrum power is relatively balanced among stakeholders, so that stakeholders must negotiate management actions and decisions. In addition to political and legal means, stakeholders can gain a right to participate by fulfilling responsibilities for tasks associated with NRM. These roles can vary from providing labour or informing policy-making, to allocating harvests and planning resource use. Participation may occur formally or informally. Rather formal recognition on behalf of the powerful stakeholder, participatory approaches can create informal situations where other stakeholders fulfil responsibilities for performing tasks. This sets a precedent by custom for an informal right to participate, and with greater participation, there is tendency for the stakeholders’ expectations to increase (figure 1). Once these stakeholders enter into the management process, they can feel empowered to have a greater role and learn to take on new responsibilities; thus some participation can create positive feedback and inspire more participation. Since participation may occur informally, an apparently weak form of participation may be stronger than expected. For example, so-called “advisory” committees appear to be weak forms of participation, yet given the power to propose projects 5 of 31


and review park budgets, the advisory committee for the Laguna de Términos protected area in southern Mexico has significant influence over the governmentappointed protected area director (Currie-Alder and Day 2003). Participatory approaches can be promoted from the bottom-up, top-down, or a combination of both. In top-down approaches a powerful stakeholder seeks to share responsibilities, while in bottom-up approaches stakeholders pressure for a greater role in management or share responsibilities in the absence of an existing authority. Government convened advisory boards are top-down, while NGO-led initiatives and community-based NRM are often bottom-up approaches. There are also mixtures of top-down and bottom-up approaches such as co-management of protected areas (Weitzner and Fonesca 1999), forestry (Klooster 2000) or fisheries (King 1997, McGoodwin 1994, Miller 1989). Yet participatory approaches to NRM are context specific, making comparisons difficult. Different authors have proposed different typologies for participation (Borrini-Feyerabend 1996, Pretty 1995, Biggs and Farrington 1991, Arnstein 1969), yet these are more useful for conceptualizing participation rather than distinguishing between real-life examples. Indeed, the key to understanding participatory approaches lies in appreciating the details and nuances of relationships among stakeholders.

“An institutional actor is a community, a public entity, a group or an individual who organizes itself, takes action to gain social recognition of its own interests and concerns and is willing to assume some task and responsibility for a given NRM unit” -Borrini-Feyerabend et al. (2000)

Identifying Stakeholders Stakeholders are those individuals or groups who stand to loose or gain from the management process and thus possess some form of “stake”. Often the “stake” considered is a relationship with the resources to be managed, yet participation can vary as nature of people’ interests and positions are fluid and dynamic. Participants can switch “stakes” and stakeholders can change roles depending on changes in their understanding of each other and of natural resource dynamics. There is no simple distinction between who is in and who is out in participatory approaches to NRM. Chevalier suggests using a triad of criteria, such as power, interests, and legitimacy, to distinguish among varying degree of saliency among actors. He also suggests the power-interest-legitimacy triad can be substituted for another three, more cultural relevant criteria that may be defined in a participatory manner with stakeholders (Chevalier 2003). This method is useful for revealing the greater complexity of social reality, but falls short of capturing the potentially on and off nature of participation. Not all stakeholders are equal. Stakeholders can be powerful groups or individuals that have a great deal of influence on NRM, and may include wealthy landowners, industry, and government. As well stakeholders may be groups or individuals that have previously not had a recognized role, or have had a restricted role in the formal management process. Such stakeholders may include non-governmental organizations (NGOs), indigenous peoples, and civil society in general. The inclusion of these stakeholders may result from governmental NRM agencies opening spaces for participation, yet it often results from these stakeholders asserting themselves on the political stage as a social force to be reckoned with.

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1.2 Participation in Practice To order to understand what participation is in practice, an exploratory study was undertaken to review project files and available publications for IDRC funded projects in Latin America and Caribbean. Lessons on participation were not the focus of these projects, rather it was necessary to reconstruct a narrative of the project and then seek comparable variables. We use narratives tell a story, either through careful research or quick assessments while interacting with partners or writing up trip reports. Each project is a tale that involves real people and their interactions with each other and their environment. Narratives are richly detailed and can include important subtlety and nuance essential for understanding why stakeholders act the way they do.

Table 1: Summary of Case Studies Case Study Question

CNLV NGOs, government, academic, forestry and environmental representatives

Montevideo Government, farmers, fishers, and rural residents

Actum Chuleb Local fishing cooperatives and local government

Carchi Local people, local government and researchers

2. Who does not participate?

Indigenous groups, farmers, and local communities

Business and producer groups, urban residents

Non-local fisherfolk, women, youth, and federal government

Large landowners

3. What is the purpose of participation?

Protect bird habitat

Coordinate development plans

Protect fishing grounds

Integrated watershed management

4. Why do they participate?

Further personal agendas

Protect rural areas and livelihoods from urbanization

Defend local livelihoods

Potential to meet and resolve resource conflicts

5. How do they participate?

Lobby for change in legislation, nest monitoring, environmental education

Workshops to vision land use and appropriate rural development

Mutual monitoring among fisherfolk, cost sharing

Mesa de concertación, roundtable to discuss issues

6. Are there power imbalances?

Tension between conservation and forestry

Top-heavy with government representatives

Potential tension mitigated by kinship ties

Inequity among residents in access to water resources

7. Are there shifts in scale?

No

No

Move to consider broader conservation and development goals

Expansion of area considered to include Páramo wetlands

8. What are the barriers to participation?

Turnover in government reps, narrow focus on single species

Powerful and/or influential stakeholders not included

Tension with federal government programs

Transaction costs to attend meetings, need to engage large landowners

1. Who participates?

This exploratory study offered several insights in IDRC’s experience with participation. First, projects may be considered participatory either because they 7 of 31


utilize participatory research methods or because they actively support multistakeholder fora. Participatory approaches are used both for research and for NRM practice, resulting in variation among projects with respect to expected outcomes. Second, to assess these projects we can utilize a participatory lens by asking questions related to power inequities, the purpose of participation, and stakeholder involvement (Table 1). Other insights are treated later in this paper in sections 2 and 3.

Comisión Nacional de Lapa Verde, Costa Rica1 The Comisión Nacional de Lapa Verde (CNLV) was formed in 1996 to protect a charismatic bird species, known locally as lapa verde (Ara ambigua). CNLV lobbied for new legislation to protect the bird’s almond tree habitat (Dipterix panamensis) and has promoted various community projects including nest monitoring programs, environmental education, and promoting conservation values. CNLV is an umbrella organization that initially brought together 17 different groups (27 by 2000) including representatives from NGOs, government, forestry, environmental and academic representatives. The direct involvement of local communities has risen over time. Individual stakeholders are motivated to participate by their personal agendas: academics get an opportunity to conduct research, environmentalists to promote conservation, government to fulfill its mandate, and the forestry sector to maintain access to forests given the alternative of creating protected areas. Power imbalances exist between the interests represented on CNLV, such as conservation and forestry, and with the local communities subject to management actions. A high turnover rate of government representatives has forced stakeholders to repeatedly rebuild social capital. CNLV has attempted to foster participation by holding meetings in the communities and using consensus-based decision-making. CNLV is participatory approach to NRM that is strong among the involved sectors, but weak in the involvement of local communities. CNLV predefines the resource to be managed, but greater involvement of community stakeholders may encourage a shift away from the conservation of single resource towards community development based on sustainable livelihoods.

Rural Montevideo, Uruguay2 In comparison to the capital city, the rural part of Montevideo department has a distinct identity in agriculture, environment and culture. In 1996, the department government created the Comisión Especial Permanente de Montevideo Rural (CEPMR) to coordinate with adjacent departments and the national government on issues of land-use development plans and interventions, and to review development proposals, planning and regulations for the rural area. The Commission was officially composed of 13 members representing various parts of the Montevideo government, the national government and local community councils called consejos vecinales. The CEPMR was top-heavy with government representation, yet sought to involve other stakeholders in participatory mapping and planning workshops. Consulted stakeholders included family farmers, 8 of 31


wageworkers in agriculture, small-scale fishers, other rural residents and residents of the urban-rural fringe, especially those living in irregular or informal settlements. Those stakeholders were motivated by goals such as protecting rural livelihoods, obtaining access to funding, promoting acceptable development, halting urban sprawl and working against creation of protected areas. Their message was to keep rural areas rural by supporting agriculture and resisting the imposition of urban priorities. Apart from the restricted nature of participation through the workshops, CEPMR’s goal of land use planning could not address all of the goals of other stakeholders. Land use planning could restrict future urban sprawl and maintain opportunities for agriculture, but could not promote rural development more widely in the form of funding, credits, and attracting investment. There were power imbalances between CEPMR members and other stakeholders, and between both these groups and larger scale pressures beyond the region, such as urban sprawl, national economic crisis and increasing linkage to global markets for rural products. CEPMR was overly dependent on the energy of key individuals and was disrupted when certain members were unable to attend meetings due to illness. CEPMR progress was also hampered by changes in the municipal government that required it to rebuild social relationships with new representatives.

Actum Chuleb, Mexico3 Located off the northern coast of Yucatan state in Mexico, the Actum Chuleb Reserve is a community sponsored marine protected area created to protect local fisheries. Local fishing cooperatives negotiated with the municipal government of San Felipe to create the reserve in principle in 1995, then formally in 1997. The reserve is seen as a means of defending local livelihoods by protecting the viability of and access to the local fishery. The fishing cooperatives have agreed to restrict the type of fishing and fishing gear used within the reserve. Fisherfolk mutually monitor each others´ activities during the day, while two vigilantes monitor against poaching at night. The municipal government supports the reserve by providing it with legal recognition and financial support to purchase fuel for the vigilante boat. The reserve is managed through an informal network of community elders, known as the Fuerzas Vivas, or Living Forces. This network operates outside the municipal government, yet is not perceived as a challenge to government authority since the elders are members of, or have kinship ties to, both local government and fishing cooperatives. Non-local fisherfolk and federal government are not involved in managing the reserve, but the state government, NGOs, and universities have played a supporting role in management. Actum Chuleb is located within the Dzilam de Brazo Marine Reserve, created by the Yucatan state government, and is adjacent to the Ria Lagarto Biosphere Reserve, created by the federal government. This fact has created tension with state and federal governments, which have been mediated in part by the state government’s Secretaria de Ecología, by including Actum Chuleb in the management plan for the Dzilam de Brazo Reserve. This plan was reviewed and validated by the Fuerzas Vivas, however, male community members dominate this network and other decision-making roles, and thus women’s and youth voices appear to be absent from the management process.

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While the reserve was established as a practical measure to defend local livelihoods, given the proximity to other protected areas and the needs of community members, the reserve is facing pressure to consider broader goals for conservation and regional development. In addition to regulating fishing practices, the reserve is now faced with proposals to initiate urban planning for San Felipe, protect coastal mangrove vegetation, and promote ecotourism.

Carchi Consortium, Ecuador4 Located in northern Ecuador, the El Angel watershed in Carchi province was selected as one of the pilot sites by CONDESAN (Consorio para el Desarrollo Sostenible de la Ecoregión Andina) for attempting integrated sustainable development. Through the CONDESAN initiative, a Mesa de Concertación13 or roundtable was created to coordinate the efforts of multiple groups interested in development and research. The roundtable initially drew NGOs and university participants, interested in sharing information, reducing duplication in research, and accessing funding10. Yet as the roundtable became more visible, it began to draw interest from local residents and municipal governments. With the participation of these stakeholders and growing understanding of the region’s problems, the roundtable has became a multistakeholder forum, known as the Carchi Consortium, that is meeting place to address building conflicts over water use. The Consortium has become an open-ended process to foster learning among involved stakeholders. In part through improved understanding of social linkages, this forum has engaged adjacent municipalities, whose governments have also requested to be included. Improved understanding of biophysical linkages has inspired the Consortium to expand the area considered to include high-elevation Parámo wetlands that regulate regional water supply (Waldick 2003). This geographical expansion also requires the forum to include additional stakeholders, such as large landowners. The Consortium has move from researching the regional environment and coordinating projects, to promoting regional development through programs of multiple projects. This can give the impression that the forum’s agenda has become cluttered and its actions scattered, yet as a visioning process held with the involved researchers revealed, this shift in the process resulted from improved understanding and greater participation forcing a change in the nature of management (Poats et al. 2002).

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2.0 Why Participate? Based on the review of literature and IDRC-funded projects the following two sections present insights into participatory approaches. This section discusses the collective purpose of participation that is intended to benefit all stakeholders, the individual motivations that draw stakeholders to the table, and whether multistakeholder fora are enabling or distributional coalitions.

2.1 Purpose of Participation The interaction of multiple stakeholders involved in participatory approach to NRM is assumed to offer some essential additional value to the management process. Such objectives are perceived to be impossible without collaboration and are intended to be of mutual benefit to multiple stakeholders. Participation can be viewed as a means to deal with complexity, resolve or avoid conflict, and empower people to have more a stronger voice in designing their future. In general, the purpose of participation is to enrich management through greater understanding, legitimacy, or capacity.

Understanding Participatory approaches to NRM can be used to cope with complexity and share understanding among stakeholders. The current paradigm within ecological research views nature as panarchies, an interconnected collection of complex systems that function at different temporal and spatial scales (Holling 2001). These systems exhibit dynamic behaviour and possess multiple equilibria, attributes that are neither fully understood nor fully predictable. Ecological theory is shifting the objectives of NRM away from maximizing yields towards maintaining ecological resilience, or the ability to adapt to change. This shift in management paradigm moves beyond exclusive dependence on scientific knowledge and seeks to include multiple sources of knowledge, information, and values. Local communities and indigenous people have important perspectives based on the gradual accumulation of experiential knowledge gained by living within the landscape. Where scientific knowledge tends to be divorced from local context and is believed to be universally applicable, local and indigenous knowledge is context specific. Yet this specificity is precisely the strength of such knowledge, as it tends to have both a more detailed and more holistic appreciation of the environment and resources to be managed.

Legitimacy Participatory approaches seek to make a process more relevant to interested stakeholders and generate greater acceptance among these stakeholders of the process and its outputs. In open and democratic societies, multiple stakeholders claim a voice in NRM —small-scale farmers, wealthy landowners, industry representatives, and political institutions. These stakeholders desire that NRM decisions account for their views and are relevant to their needs. Participatory approaches are also advocated to resolve or avoid conflicts over natural resources where no organization may have adequate influence or support to effectively manage (Buckles et al. 1999). Such conflict can arise when natural resources -and peoples’ livelihoods and interests- are affected by projects ranging in scale from the local, such as the construction of a gas station, to the regional such as timber plantations or tourism corridors. Participation is seen as a means to mitigate adverse impacts and negotiate the distribution of costs and benefits among interested parties. Conflicts become much more difficult to manage, and there is 11 of 31


less room for negotiation, once significant investments are made and stakeholders become entrenched in their positions. By involving stakeholders in project planning tensions can be eased before they escalate. In seeking legitimacy, participatory approaches seek to implement a management process that would otherwise be deadlocked by distrust. “…an empowering process (is one) which enables local people to do their own analysis, to take command, to gain confidence, and make their own decisions.” -Robert Chambers (1995)

“(Participation is the) redistribution of power that enables the havenot citizens, presently excluded from the political and economic processes, to be deliberately included in the future.” -S. Arnstein (1969)

Capacity Participatory approaches to NRM also seek to improve the skills, knowledge and experience of those involved in the management process. Such capacity building may focus on opportunities for training and information sharing, or may seek to broadly empower stakeholders involved in the management process. Research has shown that a disproportionate share of the costs and impacts of NRM tend to be borne by disadvantaged groups such as the landless farmers, women, indigenous people, unskilled labour, and future generations (Sithole 2002). Including such disadvantaged groups in the process can be part of a wider strategy of empowerment whereby those affected by NRM are encouraged to become more aware of the processes that affect them and have a more active role in the defining their own future (Friere 1970). Empowerment goals are prominent in the NRM initiatives promoted by both grassroots organizations (Chambers 1995), international development agencies (Sithole 2002, Buckles et al. 1999), and are implicit in the Millennium Development Goals (DFID et al. 2003). Thus, in addition to balancing or redistributing power among stakeholders, empowerment is a process of fostering self-governance by increasing the skills of individuals, groups and communities to make better decisions for themselves (Allen et al 2002).

These value-added objectives may be explicitly stated within the management process or implicit in the decision to adopt a participatory approach. Nonetheless, as there may not be agreement among stakeholders as to the purpose of participation, the value-added objective being sought should through participation should be stated as explicitly as possible and revisited frequently. It is critical to ask what objectives are being sought through participation, how were these objectives defined, and whether there is buy-in from all parties as to the importance of pursuing these objectives. If stakeholders do not agree on the purpose of participation, they will experience frustration. And the management process will encounter problems if it does not have the flexibility to constructively treat the perspectives, interests, and values of others.

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2.2 Stakeholder Motivations Although participatory approaches seek to achieve value-added objectives understanding, legitimacy and capacity, stakeholders have their own reasons for participating in NRM. An interest in the common good is insufficient to sustain participation when there are powerful incentives against working together –such as inequalities in power, wealth, access and control over resources– or when stakeholders are unaware of their collective benefit or of the costs to society of their actions (Singleton 1999). In other words, it is important to ask what brings stakeholders to the table to work with others. Stakeholder motivations are context specific, and thus are not well addressed in the literature, yet to ignore what motivates stakeholders to participate creates misunderstanding and frustration. Some motivations to participate in NRM include prestige, training, livelihoods, and culture:

“Local Ownership, a goal of many participatory approaches to NRM can be both a collective goal and an actorbased goal. Local ownership is assumed to mean effective and sustainable outcomes, yet can also be desired by local actors as a means of achieving greater autonomy viv-avis the state.” -Philippa Wiens

Prestige Stakeholder may seek the recognition of others, in order to obtain legitimacy and leverage that can be transferred to other areas of social negotiation.

Training Stakeholders may seek opportunities to gain experience in a variety of technical and administrative skills ranging from ecological research to negotiation.

Livelihoods Stakeholders may be motivated to protect their livelihoods from resource degradation, expropriation by powerful interests, or adverse impacts of market integration. Culture Stakeholders perceive themselves as part of the landscape and view certain resources as intimately connected to their sense of identity.

This list is by no means exhaustive and in practice stakeholder motivations may overlap or change over time. “broader and more flexible definitions of participation are needed… resistance, conflict, and confrontation should be recognized as valuable planning tools that can be used for bringing about power redistribution and giving voice to groups that are marginalized in formal planning processes” –Lisa Henne (2002, 155)

These motivations to participate are balanced against incentives to undertake other forms of social negotiation. NRM is embedded in a social network where actors continuously renegotiate their relationships with each other and with natural resources (Berry 1997). Stakeholders may opt for alternate forms of social negotiation both constructive (protest, strike, resistance) and destructive (vandalism, violence, sabotage, poaching and theft). Despite their lack of formal power, disadvantaged groups utilize such strategies to express their views and assert their claim to resources (Sithole 2002). The mere existence of a participatory approach is insufficient to guarantee the involvement of all relevant stakeholders, and facilitators must strive to make participation sufficiently attractive so that stakeholders perceive the process as more valuable than alternate forms of social negotiation. Additionally, even when stakeholders are involved in a participatory approach to management, they may continue to pursue alternate forms of negotiation, especially to enhance their own position within management (Henne 2002, Singleton 1999, Haenn 1997). Yet an appreciation of stakeholder motivations and a dose of creativity can facilitate a participatory approach to NRM even under apparently adverse conditions.

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Understanding stakeholder motivations is essential in Latin America and the Caribbean given the region’s active civil society. As the complexity of management challenges surpasses the capacity of governmental NRM agencies, new niches have opened for non-governmental stakeholders to take a more active role in NRM. Yet if their motivations are ignored, these stakeholders can lose their incentive to participate.

2.3 Participation for Whom? Does participation lead to more equitable and effective outcomes in practice? In “The Rise and Decline of Nations”, Olson (1982) proposed that given stable economic conditions the influence of special interest groups would grow over time and that these groups would appropriate a larger share of society’s wealth. Olson assumes that decision-making influenced by interest groups representing a minority, favours those few members of society at the cost to the rest of society, leading to inefficient and inequitable outcomes. This is Olson’s dilemma: How can decisions be made in a society so that they are both efficient and equitable? To operationalize this question, Olson distinguishes between two types of organizations, or “coalitions”. Distributional coalitions are divisive special interest groups, seen over time to reduce efficiency and equity, while encompassing coalitions are interest groups with memberships that are representative of society and whose interests are representative of the collective interests of society (1982, 37). In other words, what factors determine whether a participatory approach to NRM benefits the collective good of many, or furthers the aspirations of the few?

Table 2: Indicators for Evaluating Participatory Approaches to NRM (Conley and Moote 2003) Process

Environmental outcome

Socio-economic outcome

--- Broadly shared vision --- Clear, feasible goals --- Diverse, inclusive participation --- Participation by local government --- Linkages to individuals and groups beyond primary participants --- Open, accessible, and transparent process --- Clear, written plan --- Consensus-based decision making --- Decisions regarded as just --- Consistent with existing laws and policies --- Improved habitat --- Land protected from development --- Improved water quality --- Changed land management practices --- Biological diversity preserved --- Soil and water resources conserved --- Relationships built or strengthened --- Increased trust --- Participants gained knowledge and understanding --- Increased employment --- Improved capacity for dispute resolution --- Changes in existing institutions or creation of new institutions

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Where Olson focuses on how decisions are made, Ostrom examines how collective action emerges. Research has shown that people can and do form institutions to limit individual resource use and promote collective action among individuals for managing natural resources held in common (Ostrom 1992, Singleton 1998). Ostrom developed a list of design principals for crafting effective, self-governing institutions (1995), giving rise to research validating and building upon this list (Allen et al 2002, Futemma et al 2002, Pinkerton 1994, 1993, 1991; Pretty and Frank 2000), and proposing indicators for evaluating participatory approaches to NRM (Table 2). Beyond simply documenting the mere existence of such institutions, Ostrom’s principles provide insight into how participants in institutions for collective management of natural resources define who are members, exclude outsiders from resource use, and monitor each other’s activities. One of Ostrom’s main principles is the distribution of costs and benefits among its membership, both to increase equity among the members and increase efficiency by eliminating free riding where certain individuals enjoy the benefits of collective actions, but rely on others to cover its costs.

3.0 Understanding Participation The variety of participatory approaches requires that their description or evaluation embrace a certain degree of complexity. As participatory approaches are promoted in order to achieve the value-added objectives stated above, one form of evaluating participation is by determining how well the management process achieves these objectives. Within Minga projects, and development research more generally, there is a bias towards process and social indicators in evaluating participatory approaches to NRM. As a consequence such projects are open to critiques regarding their economic and environmental performance, yet these weaknesses are partially due to the limited period for which projects are funded and the longer timeframe required for these outcomes to be emerge. Due to the diverse stakeholder motivations involved, evaluating participation cannot be a value-free and impartial. Instead such an evaluation should be conducted as a participatory process to promote reflection and learning. Participatory evaluations facilitate group discussion on key concepts. For example, outcome mapping seeks to build group consensus on team vision, mission, boundary partners, progress markers, and monitoring (Earl, Carden and Smutylo 2001). The literature and project review conducted for this paper suggest that we may enrich our understanding of participatory approaches, if we evaluate jointly with our partners the following groups of descriptors: (1) the efficiency, equity, and effectiveness of achieving outcomes; (2) stakeholders’ rights, responsibilities, and roles; and (3) the scale, scope, and structure of the management process. The next three sections briefly explore these terms, but the perspectives of those involved must inform their meaning in any given context.

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3.1 Achieving Outcomes In evaluating participatory approaches to NRM it is essential to understand that different stakeholders can have different notions of efficiency, equity and effectiveness. Fostering dialogue on the meaning of these descriptors can improve stakeholder understanding of participation and suggest criteria for monitoring the process.

Efficiency can be viewed as the ratio of management outcomes to the costs of achieving those outcomes. Yet measuring efficiency in practice is problematic, as it requires assumptions in the costs -including stakeholders’ time, energy, and financial expenses- and outcomes considered. Depending on the purpose of NRM, efficiency can consider any number of outcomes including the quantity of projects undertaken, the creation of management plans, the trust generated among stakeholders, the value of natural resources harvested or conserved, and the maintenance of ecological resilience. Additionally, considerations of efficiency depend upon the timeframe considered. In general, participatory approaches to NRM are assumed to require greater shorter-term costs to set up than nonparticipatory approaches, yet result in longer-term benefits.

Equity evaluates how fairly a management process distributes costs and benefits among the involved stakeholders. Equitable sharing of costs and benefits may mean all stakeholders pay and enjoy an equal share or in proportion to their abilities and needs. Equity is of great concern in a world marked by great gaps in wealth, power and opportunity. When NRM decisions are made without due consideration for people dependent upon the resource being managed, then management will be unsustainable and place an undue cost upon these people, such as loss of access to resources, poorer environmental quality, and greater financial expense. In the field of international development, we are concerned that NRM empower disadvantaged groups to achieve better control over their lives. Effectiveness determines whether a management process achieves its desired outcomes. A management process may appear to produce an efficient and equitable outcome when a decision is made at low cost and with due consideration to all involved; yet if this decision is never implemented or never results in a change in natural resource situation, then management is ineffective. While participatory approaches to NRM are generally perceived to be inefficient, they are argued to be more effective than non-participatory approaches. Even without impacting natural resource use or environmental quality, participatory approaches can be considered effective if they achieve progress towards the value-added objectives of understanding, legitimacy, and capacity.

3.2 Stakeholder Participation Different people have different perspectives and relationships to natural resources, resulting in a variety of motivations for stakeholders to participate in management. If these differences are poorly understood or ignored, a participatory approach can be burdened by polarization between differing perspectives. Successful

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participatory approaches foster dialogue among stakeholders towards understanding each other’s rights, responsibilities and roles.

Rights are the entitlements each stakeholder possesses -including property, cultural, and legal rights- that define their relationship to natural resources. Rights, or property rights, refer to the level of control each actor possesses over a particular natural resource. While confusing arrays of stakeholders claim a role in NRM, property rights provide a means of conceptualizing these claims as rights of access, management, exclusion, or alienation (Schlager and Ostrom 1993). For example, each member of the fishing cooperative in Actum Chuleb has a right to fish within the reserve, the Fuerzas Vivas elders’ network has a quasi-formal right to manage the reserve, but cannot sell or give away these fishing grounds. Property rights may be de jure, formally recognized in law or written agreements, or de facto, practiced by stakeholders without formal recognition of those rights by others (Ostrom 1992). For example, the Carchi Consortium collects data on water resources and prepares watershed management plans, but it is not recognized as part of the governmental NRM authority formally mandated with these responsibilities. Other cultural and legal rights may also spill over and influence the relationship between actors and natural resources. Indigenous groups have preserved or reinvented a cultural heritage and knowledge systems of living within the landscape. This heritage leads indigenous communities to grant a social licence to its members to interact with natural resources even in the absence of formal recognition to do so by government authorities and other actors. Alternatively, the right to manage natural resources may be embedded in wider treaty rights or rights to self-determination enjoyed or negotiated by indigenous groups (Singleton 1999). Stakeholder analysis is a process for identifying which individuals or groups have a valid interest in participating in management. Rights -whether property, cultural or legal- are one possible input for stakeholder analysis, yet others exist as well. Stakeholders may perceive themselves to be entitled to participate in management depending on their interests and needs related to natural resources (Chevalier 2003). Even in the absence of obvious rights, there are moral and ethical reasons for including disadvantaged groups as stakeholders (Sithole 2002). Discussion of formal and informal rights can enrich stakeholder analysis and assist in assessing whether key stakeholders are excluded from management or whether some stakeholders participate in a disproportionate or inappropriate manner. Rights can change over time. Access rights are routinely reassigned in each allocation cycle, such as assigning irrigation water permits or fishing quotas. Management rights may shift when a participatory approach is adopted and new stakeholders enter the management process. Exclusion rights shift as group membership changes or new user groups emerge. Alienation rights change through formal transfer of land or sale of natural resources, legal rights change with new or reformed legislation or policy; and cultural rights change through learning and the reinvention of social identity.

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Responsibilities describe how stakeholders participate, including the activites they perform and the support they give to the process. Responsibilities refer to how stakeholders contribute to the management process. Where rights describe what a stakeholder is entitled to do, responsibilities describe the activities a stakeholder performs. In weaker forms of participation, stakeholders are merely responsible for informing NRM authorities of their perspectives and interests, while in stronger forms of participation stakeholders take responsibility for tasks such as convening meetings, collecting and analyzing data, budgeting, planning, and/or allotting resource use. Sharing responsibilities among multiple stakeholders can improve relations and build capacity.

Roles are defined by a stakeholder’s responsibilities and describe his or her purpose in the process. Roles describe how stakeholders perceive their participation and are defined by the sum of the responsibilities they fulfil. While stakeholders can include local people, NGOs, producer groups, and government agencies, any of these groups may play a range of roles such as decision-maker, planner, data collector, enforcer, advisor, critic, etc. Roles imply both the degree to which a stakeholder participates in management and the relative influence he or she has in decision-making.

Roles and Responsibilities can change over time. Stakeholders may initially adopt a role of critic and take responsibility for identifying weaknesses in existing policies and practices. As participation matures, however, stakeholders can feel empowered to adopt a role of planner or data collector in order to pursue their motivations and build capacity within their membership. The dominant managerial role of NRM authorities is challenged with the inclusion of stakeholders. As participation matures, NRM authorities must adopt new roles such as coordinator, facilitating communication among others who fulfill management responsibilities. Over time with experience and learning, stakeholders can change their behaviour, swap responsibilities and adopt new roles.

3.3 Nature of Management As more stakeholders participate in NRM, the management process itself can be transformed. The diversity of perspectives and interests different stakeholders bring to the table reveals connections with other social and ecological processes. NRM may begin with a focus on a single resource within a defined geographic space, but meaningful participation will challenge these limits. Without understanding the potential consequences of adopting a participatory approach, stakeholders may feel like they have opened Pandora’s Box as the scale, 18 of 31


scope and structure of management shift. Such change can lead to confusion and frustration among stakeholders if the agenda becomes cluttered with multiple objectives. Stakeholders must be aware of potential changes within the management process with respect to its scale, scope and structure.

Scale is the spatial and temporal boundaries of management, or the expanse of management in time and space. The temporal and spatial limits of management are challenged both by greater understanding of ecological processes and the diversity of perceptions and interests brought to the table in a participatory approach. For example, Manrecur’s Carchi Consortium initially focused on one part of the watershed, yet through learning about local conflicts over water resources and the greater involvement of local people, the Consortium decided to expand its scale to consider the high elevation Páramo wetlands. Rather than an isolated event, we can expect such scale-forcing to continue as any single resource is embedded in multiple processes extending across time and geographic space (Holling 2001, Lovell et al. 2002). This scale-forcing potential for expanding NRM is particularly prominent with fugitive or mobile resources, such as wildlife and water, as these resources cut across political and administrative boundaries and increase the complexity of management. While scale-forcing can occur for other reasons, the integration of multiple stakeholders in a participatory approach to NRM, implicitly introduces scale according to the geographical extent of each stakeholder’ interests and his or her perspective as to the processes to be managed and the appropriate timeframe for action. The overlap of these stakeholder scales forces consideration of larger scales of time and space.

Scope is the conceptual and institutional boundary defining what and who is considered in management: the resources managed, the objectives of NRM, and the stakeholders involved.

Where scale describes management in time and space, scope describes what is to be managed and by whom. Scope expands when more stakeholders become involved. Additionally, the overlap of stakeholder perspectives can expand the scope of the NRM process to include additional resources, challenges and objectives. For example, while the Actum Chuleb Reserve was established to defend local livelihoods, community needs pressure the reserve to consider broader goals related to regional development. Scope and scale can combine to force a continually expanding management horizon. As more actors introduce more objectives and more resources into the management process, these objectives and resources force management to consider larger temporal and geographic scales. With the Carchi Consortium, the original objective of coordinating the activities of research groups and NGOs shifted towards resolving local conflicts over water resources. Such a shift in management scope requires the Consortium to consider adjacent watersheds and engage new 19 of 31


stakeholders such as large landowners, the provincial government and the municipal governments adjacent to, but initially excluded from the process (Carter 2003, Waldick 2003). “As scale and scope expand, the need to create new institutions becomes paramount. These are probably but not necessarilygoing to be formal, but they could be loose networks.” -Simon Carter

Expanding scale and scope will encounter a limit, however, as transaction and information costs increase. It takes time and energy for stakeholders to meet and decide how natural resources are to be managed, and these costs increases as more stakeholders enter the process and are spread over greater distances. Additionally, the understanding of natural processes over larger scales -or even the data to describe them- may simply not exist. Institutions or arbitrary decisions may also determine the limits to expanded management scope and scale. Scaling-up management to encompass larger geographic areas may depend upon the participation of a key stakeholder and a barrier is reached if they cannot be enticed into participating in the process. For example, it will be difficult to protect the Páramo wetland if large landowners who hold title over this land do not participate in the Carchi Consortium. The process will either have to remain at a smaller scale and scope, or invest time in building a relationship and courting the participation of the key stakeholder.

Structure describes the relationships between stakeholders, including the flows of information and decision-making. With participation, management processes undergo a structural shift away from hierarchies contained within a single stakeholder, towards networks between the multiple stakeholders. Non-participatory approaches to NRM concentrate responsibilities within a single stakeholder, such as a government NRM agency, that often have pronounced hierarchical structures within their organizations. With participation, the information flows and management responsibilities initially contained within the single stakeholder’s hierarchical structure are shared with others. These new stakeholder may have more horizontal internal structures -such as ejidal assemblies in Mexico or NGOs- or they may possess their own internal hierarchies -such as municipal governments, other governmental NRM agencies, or universities. Nonetheless, a participatory approach to management means that the relationship between stakeholders becomes more horizontal as the hierarchies within organizations become secondary to network relationships between organizations. “For larger resources, authority relations within a group should be organized in a nested fasion.” (Agrawal 2002, 65)

Such a network between stakeholders means that participatory approaches require that powerful stakeholders surrender some control over the management process. With greater sharing of responsibilities among multiple stakeholders, it is increasingly difficult for any one stakeholder to dominate the management process. As the network develops, stakeholders can question conventional assumptions and practices. Going participatory can be perceived as threatening to agency control as outcomes do not necessarily coincide with existing policy and programs. Ironically, this reduced control over the management process may cause such a powerful stakeholder to resist or withdraw from a participatory approach precisely at the moment when the participation is beginning to work. It is thus necessary to enter into a participatory approach with a degree of flexibility. Government NRM agencies must define a set of core values which they cannot negotiate, such as the

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framework of existing legislation, and accept that other conventionally controlled aspects of NRM may be transformed by the participatory approach.

(single scale)

Increasing Scope

Increasing Scale

Figure 3: Structural shifts as a spider web.

Figure 2: Scale and scope shifts as a spider web.

As multiple actors participate in NRM, each takes on a role and holds certain responsibilities for managing resources. Actors become embedded in the web, and the hierarchies within organizations become secondary to network relationships between organizations.

Radial strands represent a single resource to be managed, increasing in temporal and spatial scale with greater distance from the centre of the web. Lateral strands represent scope of management, or the connection between resources to be managed. The entry of multiple actors into NRM, forces management to consider larger sections of the web.

Whereas stakeholder analysis -reconstructing social reality based on the perspectives of the involved actors (Chevalier 2003)- is a static representation of that reality at a given moment, determining the shifts in the scale, scope, and structure of management is a matter of assessing how management changes over time due to participation. The difference is akin to determining the position of an electron or determining its momentum. The comparison to quantum physics is appropriate as the knowledge generated by workshops to explore either stakeholder analysis or shifts in management are likely to influence the behaviour of the stakeholders involved. As in quantum physics, the act of observation is not impartial; rather it is itself a factor that determines the state of the system under observation. It follows that research on participatory approaches, at least research conducted jointly with or communicated to the stakeholders involved, necessarily changes their social reality. As such, it is essential that the researcher places his or herself within the context and considers his or her own values, perspectives and interaction along with those of others.

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4.0 Sharing with Our Partners What are actors participating in? As the participation of stakeholders increases, each exerts an influence on the process. As stakeholders learn and take on greater responsibilities in the process, NRM is potentially transformed in scale, scope, or structure. Such transformation may be a source of frustration for some, especially conventional NRM authorities accustomed to controlling the process, yet such transformation can be positive. Assuming the sum of stakeholders involved is representative of society, NRM becomes a governance process that is a form of decentralized, active democracy. The citizen power described by Arnstein (1967) and the self-made citizens described by Robles and Soto (2003) come into existence. Distinguishing between coalitions depends on which stakeholders are included, whether there is empowerment of disadvantaged groups, and what is the distribution of power, benefits and costs among actors. Olson’s coalitions (1982) represent two extremes, the distributional coalition being the capture of NRM by an elite for private benefit, and the encompassing coalition includes all of society and benefits everyone. Reality is often somewhere in between as not everyone is necessarily a stakeholder, nor are all stakeholders necessarily interested in all aspects of NRM.

Table 3: Questions for Case Studies 1. Who participates?

Stakeholders involved in the process.

2. Who does not participate?

Stakeholders excluded from the process.

3. What is the purpose of participation?

The value-added objective sought by involving stakeholders in the process: understanding, legitimacy, and/or capacity.

4. Why do they participate?

The motivations of individual stakeholders to participate in the process and/or abstain from other forms of social negotiation: prestige, training, livelihoods, and/or culture.

5. How do they participate?

The activities shared through participation (i.e. collecting data, conducting research, making allocation decisions, planning, monitoring and evaluation, forming policy, etc.)

6. Are there power imbalances?

Differences in power, capacity and/or authority between stakeholders.

7. Is there scale-forcing?

Change in the scale or scope of management due to learning associated with participation. (i.e. expansion of area or in the natural resources to be managed).

8. What are the barriers to participation?

The obstacles to achieving participation and strategies used to overcome these obstacles (i.e. facilitating a visioning exercise, holding meetings in stakeholders’ communities, use of information generated by a neutral agent, etc.)

To facilitate the emergence of encompassing coalitions, participatory process must seek a mixture of stakeholders, perspectives and motivations within the NRM process that reflects wider society. Initially as each new stakeholder enters the process, there is a high marginal benefit from their participation since their 22 of 31


inclusion adds a significant proportion of perspectives and interests excluded from non-participatory NRM. Yet as the number of stakeholders increases, the marginal benefit towards achieving the value-added objectives is reduced. There may then be a point of diminishing returns after which additional involvement of new stakeholders no longer justifies the additional costs in logistics, communication, information, and negotiation (Cliche 2003). Forming encompassing coalitions, therefore, is a matter of finding a balance where the NRM process remains tractable, but has sufficient participation to enrich the management process. Determining the point of diminishing returns for participation will depend upon the costs and benefits considered, and the definitions used to evaluate the process. Participatory approaches can encounter barriers when stakeholder are unsure of, or disagree over, the purpose of their participation. Yet strategies for overcoming these barriers can improve the quality of participation in management; for example, dialogue leading to increased understanding of stakeholder motivations and the shifts that occur for management can reduce frustration among participants (Table 3). Efficiency is a problematic term for assessing participation since there may not be agreement among stakeholders as to the result desired, the inputs to be optimized, or the time frame considered. Indeed, meaningful participation tends to challenge any such assumptions. Rather than universal criteria, discussions on evaluation provide an entry point for enhancing our understanding of participatory approaches. The effectiveness of a participatory approach depends upon how well both value-added objectives and stakeholder motivations are addressed, how well it builds capacity among stakeholders to fulfill NRM responsibilities, and to what degree the organizations created are resilient and enable stakeholders to share. The validity of participatory approaches depends upon how the terms used to evaluate them are defined (table 4). Rather than an external measure of success, mutually agreed upon interpretations of these terms should be used internally by participating stakeholders to monitor and evaluate their process.

Table 4: Questions for Understanding Participatory Approaches to NRM

Achieving Outcomes Efficiency Equity Effectiveness

What is the ratio of management outcomes to the costs of achieving them? How fairly does the process distribute costs and benefits? How well does the process achieve its desired outcomes?

Stakeholder Participation Rights Responsibilities Roles

What are each stakeholder’s entitlements to natural resources? What tasks do stakeholders perform? What is the purpose of each stakeholder’s participation?

Nature of Management Scale Scope

What is the geographical area and timeframe considered in the process? What resources and stakeholders are considered in the process?

Structure

How is the process organized?

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Clarifying Actors’ Roles Stakeholders may have perspectives that differ significantly from those of conventional NRM authorities and meaningful participation can redefine conventional rights, responsibilities and roles. Participatory approaches can make for a shifting landscape of relations among stakeholders, however participatory approaches can overcome confusion and frustration by fostering dialogue among stakeholder as to their perceptions of each other’s rights, responsibilities and roles.

Rights + Responsibilities = Roles Roles are determined by stakeholder rights and responsibilities. Rights influence who is entitled to participate, while responsibilities define how stakeholders participate in managing a natural resource. Responsibilities describe the activities a stakeholder performs and are derived from their property, legal and cultural rights. Stakeholders may take on responsibilities without having formal rights, but in fulfilling those responsibilities they create an informal customary right to participate in NRM. Roles refer to a stakeholder’s perceived purpose for his or her participation, and their relation to others within management. While stakeholders can include local people, non-governmental organizations, private interests, and government agencies, any of these groups may play a range of roles such as decision-maker, planner, data collector, enforcer, advisor, critic, and so on. A stakeholder’s role implies both the degree to which they participate in management and the relative power he or she possess to influence decision-making.

Bridging the Gap There is no magic formula for getting participation “right”. The scale, scope, and structure of a participatory approach to management depends on context, such as the behaviour of natural resources, the legal framework for participation, the willingness of key stakeholders, and the interests of those involved. The appropriate scale, scope, and structure for management may shift as participation matures and rights, responsibilities, and roles are redistributed among stakeholders. In general, the integration of stakeholder motivations and interests will force NRM to consider larger scale and scope, and move from hierarchies to networks. Multiple interests and expanding scale and scope can create a cluttered agenda, however stakeholder frustration can be reduced if they seek to assess the scale, scope, and structure of management. Participatory approaches are not the exclusive domain of grassroots or government. For grassroots, engaging government and powerful stakeholders can enhance the effectiveness of participatory approaches initiated from the bottom-up. Governments can contribute legal support for grassroots-initiated NRM, thus institutionalizing participation and making participatory approaches less vulnerable to external disturbance. For government, adopting a participatory approach and involving other actors in the management process will challenge existing hierarchies and will tend to expand the scale and scope of issues considered. Yet participatory approaches to NRM can increase the legitimacy and effectiveness of government’s role in NRM. With learning, there is a tendency for the spatial and temporal scale of management to expand outwards, crossing boundaries and encompassing multiple stakeholders 24 of 31


“It is not necessary, desirable, or even possible to replace all hierarchies with networks in governments. Rather, the challenge will be to blend these two forms skillfully, while retaining enough core authority to encourage and enforce adherence to networked processes. By creating effective hybrids, governments may become better prepared to confront the new threats and challenges emerging in the information age...” - Arquilla and Ronfeldt 2001

each with their own jurisdiction and entitlements. This is scale-forcing is especially relevant in NRM as natural resources are interconnected and integrated into ever larger scales of ecological panarchies (Holling 2001). Bottom-up approaches will have difficulty engaging powerful stakeholders while top-down approaches based on the state logic of conventional actors will conflict with the local logics of communities (Solis 2002). As scale-forcing necessitates the inclusion of new actors into the management process, the structure of stakeholder relationships with management shifts. Topdown approaches operating with hierarchical structures must shift to a more horizontal hybrid network structure where responsibilities and roles are more freely shared with others (Arquilla and Ronfeldt 2001). The conventional NRM authorities surrender some degree of control over the management process to new actors who take on greater responsibility for management. Bottom-up approaches operating with small-scale egalitarian networks must adapt to larger-scale hybrid network structures where the internal hierarchies of conventional NRM authorities are embedded within the network.

Scale-down Top-down hierarchy to hybrid

Scale-out Repeat hybrid in new location

Scale-up Bottom-up network to hybrid

Figure 4: Envisioning Participation Top-down appraoches to NRM are structured as hierarchies while bottom-up appraoches are structured as networks. Bridging the gap between these structures through a participatory approach to NRM creates hybrid networks where hierarchies are embedded in networks. Scaling-down and scaling-up is the formation of such hybrid networks while scaling-out is the replication of these networks in new locations.

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Playwrights or Improvisation Are participatory approaches scripted plays or mere improvisation among actors? If we accept that those involved in participatory approaches to management are actors who can, and do, take on different roles and interact with each other in different ways, then we are left to wonder whether the social process of management is directed or spontaneous. Do actors just make it up as they go along, or does someone direct the action? Arguably both occur. Participatory approaches sometimes evolve spontaneously when stakeholders get involved in management with little planning or foresight. This is improvisation and can lead to confusion and frustration, since there is no mutual understanding of each other’s rights, responsibilities and roles. It is necessary to prepare the stage for participation. Non-participatory NRM has overly rigid scripts that stifle the creativity of other actors and do not allow them the opportunity to explore and define their own role in management. Participatory approaches require something between a script and improvisation; playwrights who create frameworks for participation that maintain opportunities for creativity and adaptability. A good play will keep participation focused on constructive communication and stakeholders will be aware and open to shifts that occur in management. A playwright will set the stage, describe the drama of the story, and introduce the participants. The stakeholders must then assign responsibilities, negotiate their roles, and lead the action. Experienced actors will define their role before the action and can adapt to changing conditions on stage, while less experienced actors may require some assistance to understand and work effectively with others. How effective the play is depends on how well it resolves the drama and how well it speaks to other issues. But who is the playwright? Economists and policy-makers are often the unintended playwrights of participatory approaches to management. Legislation, economic incentives, markets conditions, and a host of other factors define the framework within which participation can occur. Rather that tragedies focusing on fatal flaws in governments and markets, participatory NRM requires writing comedies; potentially humorous tales where a multitude of actors sort out their roles, perspectives and interests.

5.0 Afterword The arguments put forward in this paper are based on NRM in Latin America and the Caribbean, yet many of the key ideas may be more widely applicable. The purpose of this paper is to foster reflection and learning among the members of the Minga Program Initiative, whose expertise lie in NRM as practiced in Latin America and the Caribbean. It is left to others to determine how relevant these ideas are in understanding participation in other geographic regions and other areas of governance. If such comparisons are valid, we welcome constructive feedback on this paper.

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Discussion Questions Minga’s assumptions: What are Minga’s assumptions regarding the nature of participation and stakeholder motivations? Does Minga assume that the local control of natural resources is necessary for sustainable NRM? Participation in Minga projects: How do our partners and others participate in Minga-sponsored projects? How successful are these projects at including disadvantaged groups into NRM decision-making? Openness to change: Going participatory’ can be threatening to agency control as outcomes do not coincide with existing policy and programs. Are the Mingasponsored projects open to changes in management objectives? Are they open to shifts in the scale, scope and structure of participation? Tools and resources: What tools and resources does Minga use for assessing participation or designing participatory approaches? How do we assess whether participating representatives are truly accountable to the stakeholders they claim to represent?

During the Minga team meeting in October 2003, Bruce gave a powerpoint presentation describing his research on multistakeholder processes based on a review of literature and selected IDRC projects. This presentation introduced the term scale-forcing to refer to the potential widening of the geographic, temporal, institutional, or natural resource dimensions of NRM due to integration of diverse stakeholder views into NRM and participatory learning among stakeholders. The team was divided into four small groups which were given time to discuss key questions regarding Minga’s views on participatory approaches. Small group questions focused on Minga’s assumptions, the form of participation in Minga projects, the openness of Minga to changes in projects due to participatory learning, and Minga’s participatory tools and resources. Minga’s assumptions: The first group interpreted participation as an egalitarian strategy for mobilizing knowledge and achieving win-win solutions, based on a right to independent thought and expression. Participatory processes are assumed to occur in good faith, to require substantial time and energy to achieve in practice, and encounter resistance from powerful stakeholders. Participation in Minga projects: The second group stated that partner participation in Minga-sponsored projects varies from one-time events (e-conferences, workshops, etc) to ongoing roundtables. This participation can range from negotiating the distribution of costs and benefits, to coordinating among partners to share responsibilities. Over time, successful multistakeholder fora are expected to increase stakeholder participation, to broaden their memberships and agendas, and to define their own research needs. Openness to change: The outcomes of participatory approaches are somewhat unpredictable and can be threatening to agency control, yet the third group stated that Minga and IDRC are generally open to change within projects as a result of participatory learning. The success of participatory approaches is seen to be 27 of 31


dependent on windows of opportunity such as policy openness to issues and how well a project fits with external variables. This group stated that it is necessary to be cautious and build trust, recognizing differences both between stakeholders and in their relationships with each other. Tools and resources: The fourth group reported that Minga assesses participatory approaches using feedback from boundary partners, project reports and evaluations, and tools such as the Stakeholder Information System (SIS) and Outcome Mapping. For assessing stakeholder representation, Minga considers the level of satisfaction of represented groups and looks for increased support of field processes. Minga members continually dialogue with partners during project design, and identifying appropriate stakeholders and their level of involvement are seen as key components for designing participatory approaches. In subsequent discussion, participatory approaches were seen to be an accepted norm, or “motherhood” value, shared by team members. Daniel and Gisele described participation as a universal “good” attribute for increasingly local ownership and making research more relevant to local stakeholders. Merle stated that there is a need to be more critical of participatory approaches, as these benefits are counter-balanced by increasing transaction costs of reaching agreement or achieving progress as the number of stakeholders increases. There is a tension within Minga between pursuing participatory processes an end in itself, versus using participatory approaches as a means to improve the effectiveness of NRM. Minga accepts that particpatory approaches can contribute to capacity-building and increased equity, however, we need to be able to demonstrate their capacity to achieve change towards more sustainable NRM. While Minga team members agree that local multistakeholder fora for NRM are desirable process, future research can focus on how to scale-up to engage more stakeholders across regional and national levels. Simon suggested that scaling-up, or scale-forcing, of multistakeholder for a can be an indicator of successful processes.

Endnotes 1 2 3 4

Summary made using IDRC project file 100159 and Solis Rivera et al. 2002. Summary made using IDRC project file 100159 and Scarlato et al. 2001. Summary made using IDRC project file 4336 and Fraga et al. 2002. Summary made using IDRC project files 101188 and 50355.

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