The manual reflects the results of a 3-year participatory learning process that comprised many meetings, workshops, village case studies, a baseline survey of 20 poor villages, two monitoring trials in another 20 villages, and a full monitoring survey of all 223 villages in Kutai Barat. The principal purpose of this manual is to provide technical guidelines and background information to poverty assessors at district, subdistrict and village level in Kutai Barat. Therefore, the manual is structured in modules according to the tasks of the assessors. It describes the poverty monitoring system step by step, from the development of local poverty indicators to the final analysis and application of monitoring data.
Tag: decentralization
Forest tenure reform: new resource rights for forest-based communities?
The introduction of participatory forestry management (PFM) in Kenya has led to the formation of community forest associations (CFAs). Data collected from 12 forests over a decade indicate that most associations are confederating to manage shared forests through the Forests Act of 2005. Emerging findings indicate that associations are responsible for diverse management activities in forest protection, monitoring, and management, yet access to decision-making, revenue streams, and overall resource control rights are vested in the Kenya Forestry Service. Still, this is an improvement as CFAs perform most governance functions autonomously, including the crafting of resource harvesting rules, the choice of leadership, and conflict resolution. In order to balance community incentives with the burdens and responsibilities they bear, rights to revenue streams generated from forest resources must be shared with communities to ensure continued commitment to the PFM process. Furthermore, the viability of CFAs is threatened by power struggles, leadership wrangles, and the splintering of groups. Negotiation support to moderate conflicting interests, and strengthen internal conflict resolution and governance is necessary.
The role of collective action in determaining the benefits from IPPK logging concessions: a case study from Sekatak, East Kalimantan
Since the reform of Indonesia’s Forestry Law in 1999, newly empowered forest- dependent communities have been allowed to negotiate directly with logging companies for access to financial and social benefits. Fieldwork undertaken in May and June 2003 attempted to assess the impacts of this decentralization reform on communities in the subdistrict of Sekatak in Bulungan, East Kalimantan. Results suggest that the process of negotiations influenced the benefits that accrued to these communities. It seems that the most important factors were increased collective action and co-operation among the communities situated in and sharing forest areas, prior experience of dealing and conflicts with logging companies, plus strong and relatively transparent local leadership. Taken together these factors enabled communities to obtain benefits at the higher end of the scale for the area as a whole and provided a mechanism by which to deal with problems as they arose. These results suggest that in the absence of other means by which to protect the interests of local communities and to enforce the law, local capacities for collective action may be a potential and effective substitute for future development.
Collective action to secure property rights for the poor: A case study in Jambi Province, Indonesia
This study presents an approach to analyzing decentralized forestry and natural resource management and land property rights issues, and catalyzing collective action among villages and district governments. It focuses on understanding the current policies governing local people’s access to property rights and decision making processes, and learning how collective action among community groups and interaction among stakeholders can enhance local people’s rights over lands, resources, and policy processes for development. The authors applied participatory action research in two villages, one each in the Bungo and Tanjabbar districts of Jambi province (Sumatra), Indonesia, to facilitate identification of priorities through phases of planning, action, monitoring, and reflecting. This study finds that action research may be an effective strategy for fostering collective action and maintaining the learning process that leads groups to be more organized and cohesive, and district government officials to be more receptive to stakeholders. A higher level of collective action and support may be needed to avoid elite capture more effectively.
Introduction: background to a global exchange
New niches of community rights to forests in Cameroon: tenure reform, decentralization category or something else?
In a difficult political economy, marked notably by a multifaceted crisis, Cameroon, like many other African countries, launched the restructuring of the policy and legal framework that governed the management of forest until the mid-1990s. Given the deep conflict of discourse surrounding the issue of forest ownership and rights to forest in Central Africa, the allocation of new niches of community rights to forest is, in theory, meaningful of the emergence of a new type of relations between the ‘central’ and the ‘local’ and, therefore, a new configuration of issues like resource ‘politics’ and resource governance. Unlike West, East or Southern Africa, resource tenure is a not really an old research domain in Central Africa. While injecting information on the topic, the essay interrogates the nature of ongoing change in the structure of community rights to forest in Cameroon. In policy terms, what is really this change? Some call it tenure change, some others call it decentralization. Using conceptual, theoretical and empirical arguments, the essay conducts a policy analysis of both options and concludes that this is neither a strict decentralization process nor a strict tenure reform. It is a mixture of devolution and delegation of powers. Theorists, policy designers and professional must be informed about this dilemma.
Are community aspirations being accommodated in development plans?: a lesson from collective action in Jambi
The brief describes development planning consultations, locally known as musrenbang, conducted in stages through different levels of governance: village, sub-district and district. The brief then documents lessons from experience catalyzing collective action among local community goups (in particular women’s groups) to engage in this development process and to help articulate the women’s aspirations in such a way that they could be heard by district decision makers. While some progress was made, such as women’s improved presence in different forums and their capacity to speak and propose distinct proposals for development, some challenges such as elite capture remain.
Linking collective action to non-timber forest product market for improved local livelihoods: challenges and opportunities
The paper draws on findings from research in South Sulawesi and Jambi Provinces, Indonesia, looking at the role of collective action in helping two local community groups enhance their bargaining power vis a vis other market players (such as collectors, small- and large-scale industries) and promote an increased demand for non-timber forest products. The first group has traditionally collected rattan (Calamus sp) from surrounding forests and was struggling to sell their products at a better price amid market uncertainties and the lack of supportive government policies. The second one was involved in the propagation of another high-value rattan species, widely known as Dragon Blood (Daemonorops sp), in anticipation of an increased market demand for this product. The paper describes challenges and opportunities for the country’s forestry decentralization and marketing of forest products, and the role of collective action in improving groups’ access to government resources and markets. It also discusses the research team’s part in facilitating the groups and highlights the strengths of participatory action research approach in fostering collective action among local stakeholders.
Collective action for the poor: a case study in Jambi province, Indonesia
This study presents an approach to analyzing decentralized forestry and natural resource management and land property rights issues, and catalyzing collective action among villages and district governments. It focuses on understanding the current policies governing local people’s access to property rights and decision making processes, and learning how collective action among community groups and interaction among stakeholders can enhance local people’s rights over lands, resources, and policy processes for development. The authors applied participatory action research in two villages, one each in the Bungo and Tanjabbar districts of Jambi province (Sumatra), Indonesia, to facilitate identification of priorities through phases of planning, action, monitoring, and reflecting. This study finds that action research may be an effective strategy for fostering collective action and maintaining the learning process that leads groups to be more organized and cohesive, and district government officials to be more receptive to stakeholders. A higher level of collective action and support may be needed to avoid elite capture more effectively.
The impact of decentralised forest governance: a case study from Bolivia
The last decade has seen profound overhauls of governance in many tropical countries. Countries have adopted new economic policies, very much influenced by free-market thinking, and a reduced regulatory role of the state and its subsidiaries. This coincided with widespread decentralization of government, including natural resource governance. Bolivia is mostly known for its Andean uplands, but substantial parts of its territory are under tropical forest. Especially the economy of the northern part of the country relies for a large part on income from forest products like Brazil nuts and timber. In the middle the 1990s Bolivia enacted a set of new national laws that are affecting forest products based industries. The principal laws are several decentralization laws, a new land reform law, and a new forestry law. The new regulatory framework has resulted in a progressively larger ownership of forest land and forests by rural communities. The impact that this has on people’s livelihoods is still not entirely clear. In northern Bolivia, there is evidence that old unresolved conflicts over natural resources are erupting again. There is also evidence that some of the feudal dependency relations that existed until before the program of legal reform, are adapting themselves to the new legal framework, but not disappearing. In some places with more access to social infrastructure, a new type of forest tycoons replace the rubber and Brazil nut barons from earlier days. The local communities, new owners of forests, still have inadequate skills, knowledge and leverage that frees them from the patronage of these new rulers of the north. Political patronage by people seeking votes for public office dominates village level politics in many locations and hinders the true democratization of rural Bolivia. Despite these initial shortcomings the natural resource governance decentralization has recognizable positive outcomes. The expected positive impact, however, will need more time than initially expected.