Routes to Resilience: Chapter Three - Case Studies

This report presents community-based natural resource management that springs from community demand and its possibilities of nurturing enterprises that both generate income and improve the state of local ecosystems. Under the right conditions, according to this document, these enterprises can scale up, achieving a significant poverty reduction effect. The cases detail the governance conditions, principal actors, and enabling conditions that allowed these successes to go forward, as well as the challenges they have faced and must continue to deal with in order to sustain their success.

The cases are chosen to demonstrate that enterprises founded on a basis of good environmental governance can not only improve the livelihoods of the rural economically poor but increase their resilience to continuing challenges. They can become more economically resilient - better able to face economic risks; and they and their communities can become more socially resilient - better able to work together for mutual benefit. Also, the ecosystems in which they live can become more biologically resilient - more productive and stable. The cases are chosen to illustrate the power of self-interest and community ownership, the enabling value of intermediary organisations, and how communication and networks can provide new ideas and support.

The 3 cases are the following:

"Fisheries for the Future: Restoring Wetland Livelihoods in Bangladesh - The Management of Aquatic Ecosystems through Community Husbandry (MACH) Programme"

In this first case, the Management of Aquatic Ecosystems through Community Husbandry (MACH) programme’s objectives were to build environmental, economic, and social capital in a 3 wetlands of Bangladesh. Key elements that, according to the document,  "have wider resonance" are:

1. The programme was built on communities’ self-interests. Villagers were granted rights and powers to use natural resources and responsibilities to manage and protect them. If they failed, their livelihoods and investment (of user dues and time volunteered) were at stake.
2. Because of the co-management arrangement with local administrators, new institutions were not isolated; they worked well within the existing governance framework. 
3. The implementing non-governmental organisations (NGOs) worked effectively as intermediary organisations - acting as a bridge between villagers and local and national governments to develop democratic, equitable, and effective community-based institutions.
4. Effective networking, outreach, and organisational scale-up, including budget and fund-raising training as well as micro-finance, over the nine years of the programme prevented the project villages from being mere temporary islands of good practice. Instead, the new institutions, as stated here, were left on a good footing to prosper after donor funds and NGO expertise began to be withdrawn in 2007.
5.  Endowment funds for resource management organisations (RMOs) and revolving credit funds for resource user groups provided financial security once the project funding ended.

Wider learning from this initiative, as stated here, includes:

• Pilot projects can be scaled up, though a 10-year funding commitment with wetland leases for community resource management and sustained NGO commitment is important.
• Sustainably-managed resources have limits. Such resources can only provide so much economic benefit; the expanding needs of growing populations have to be accommodated. MACH developed an alternative livelihoods programme from the start to help create other options for economic growth for community members, thus avoiding the destructive consequences of overfishing. Villagers were exposed to a variety of potential livelihoods and offered appropriate training.
• Accommodate and include women. The alternative livelihoods programme was embraced by the women in the communities, traditionally excluded from male-dominated fishing. Engaging women in such enterprises can increase the social capital of a community and hasten its exit from extreme poverty. Microfinance efforts in these communities have also engaged and empowered women, by giving them a new role in family finances.
• Local government is important and should be mandated to step up support services for community institutions and ensure accountability to citizens, including best practice sharing. Training community organisation representatives in record-keeping, budget preparation, revenue-raising, and resource management plans is necessary.
• Include national policy-making agencies working with land management, fisheries, environment, agriculture, and water resources.

"Green Livelihoods: Community Forestry Enterprises in Guatemala"

 According to this document, deforestation had diminished biodiversity and threatened forest-based livelihoods in the Northern Peten region of Guatemala. However, it is now the setting for community-run forestry enterprises whose sustainably harvested wood and non-timber forest products (NTFPs) are attracting the attention of overseas buyers. "Under village management, biodiversity has flourished and forest fires, illegal logging, and hunting have declined dramatically, while continuing unabated in neighbouring national parks. This transformation of fragmented communities of farmers and illegal loggers into eco-entrepreneurs did not occur in a policy vacuum. Government decentralisation policies, which awarded communities tenure rights and resource management responsibilities, provided an enabling environment and motivation for communities to protect their forests. Substantial assistance from donors and intermediary support organisations provided the funds and the technical expertise to make the concession model work."

A national agency, the National Council of Protected Areas (CONAP), was established in 1989 to administer and regulate activity within Guatemala’s System of Protected Areas. When a punitive approach to illegal logging failed, management plans were developed, along with legal forestry management concession documents, for village management, giving member communities the capacity to sell products jointly and generally defend their interests. "As their skills and confidence grew, the community forestry enterprises added value to their product by diversifying into wood processing, using the proceeds from selling standing timber to buy chainsaws and later small sawmills. Ten enterprises took another step toward diversification and independence in 2003 by setting up FORESCOM, a collective forest products company. Initially funded by USAID [United States Agency for International Development], FORESCOM helped its concession members to make the leap from donor subsidy to profitability by providing affordable forest certification services and identifying new markets for timber and other products....By 2007, with some residual training from intermediaries and government agencies, a majority of enterprises were genuine, profit-making businesses."

Lessons learned include the following:

• Early programmes set up rivalry between enterprises and dependence on NGOs, which the establishment of the umbrella organisation was designed to address. "...the Rainforest Alliance and government agencies working with the enterprises have sought to foster independence with a ‘learning through doing’ approach. This provides on-the-job (rather than theoretical) training in the production, processing, packaging, and sale of new processed timber."
• Women were not considered in the early planning, structure, and training. Workshops, including daycare to facilitate attendance of women, have been conducted to address the inclusion of women.
• Care must be taken in structuring at start-up of granting concessions. Stewardship and enterprise (sales, marketing, and certification) require different skills, and both must be addressed.
• A critical mass willing to cooperate makes a difference. "These concessions could never, individually, hope to have all the contacts and skills necessary to successfully navigate that trade. Their willingness to fund the creation of FORESCOM has paid significant dividends."

"Turning Back the Desert: How Farmers Have Transformed Niger’s Landscapes and Livelihoods"

The process of regenerating native trees, coupled with progressive policy and institutional reforms, was the mechanism for leveraging transformational development in Niger. The focus was on sustainable farming practices along with reforestation.

Lessons learned from this project include:

1. Simple methods of communication can yield significant benefits. The programme used: simple word-of-mouth or “viral communication" based on neighbour observation of the results of those willing to participate. Planned farm visits spread practices. Five million hectares (ha) of land are now benefiting (as of 2008), including 250,000 ha once considered unusable.
2. Inclusion is important. The inclusion of all affected parties, not just land-owning farmers, but also women and nomadic herders, was critical for broad community acceptance of change and the effectiveness of the new rules.
3. Livelihood improvements can also improve community stability. Economic opportunity at home leads to less migration, particularly of men.
4. Tradition and fear are powerful forces that must be accommodated. Donors and NGOs need patience and perseverance.
5. Sometimes costly technology is less important than patience and persistence. No new technology was involved, and no special seeds or other agricultural inputs, simply the willingness of the NGOs to support the first adopters of the practice and to take advantage of every chance to demonstrate the impact of the project to other farmers.