7 Enabling Equitable Collective Action and
Policy Change for Poverty Reduction and
Improved Natural Resource Management
in the Eastern African Highlands
LAURA GERMAN, WAGA MAZENGIA,
WILBERFORCE TIRWOMWE, SHENKUT AYELE,
JOSEPH TANUI, SIMON NYANGAS,
LEULSEGED BEGASHAW, HAILEMICHAEL TAYE,
ZENEBE A. TEFERI, MESFIN T. GEBREMIKAEL,
SARAH CHARAMILA, FRANCIS ALINYO,
ASHENAFI MEKONNEN, KASSAHUN ABERRA,
AWADH CHEMANGENI, WILLIAM CHEPTEGEI,
TESSEMA TOLERA, ZEWDIE JOTTE,
AND KIFLU BEDANE
Spontaneously organized institutions of collective action and the institutional
effects of exogenous development interventions are both known to have a profound effect on development outcomes.1 Despite an in-depth academic understanding of the institutional foundations of development and natural resource
management (NRM), development interventions continue to have a strong technological bias. Development and conservation interventions continue to be
carried out with an uncritical view to equity and the possible negative repercussions of interventions on certain social groups and environmental sustainability,
while local institutions (rules and structures) remain largely invisible to outside
actors.2 Yet the shortcomings lie not only with practitioners but also with research.
Research on the institutional dimensions of development and NRM continues
to emphasize the characteristics of existing institutions of collective action or
institutional constraints on development rather than on ways to build stronger
institutions where these are absent to address local development priorities.
1. Collective action may be defined as action taken by a group (either directly or on its behalf
through an organization) in pursuit of members’ perceived shared interests (Marshall 1998, cited
by Meinzen-Dick, Di Gregorio, and McCarthy 2004).
2. Although the definition provided by North (1990, 3) has become prominent in academic
scholarship (“institutions are rules of the game in a society, or more formally, are the humanly devised
constraints that shape human interaction”), our emphasis on collective action makes the definition by
Ostrom (1994), which equates institutions with “decision structures,” equally appropriate. Thus,
“institutions” are here taken to encompass both structural dimensions of collective organizing and
collective choices that form the backbone of effective cooperation.
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Background
The research reported in this chapter sought to address these shortcomings by
integrating institutional analysis (for problem identification and targeting of
interventions) with action research (for pilot testing of institutional innovations to address identified problems). The institutional analysis sought to
understand forms and functions of existing institutions of collective action and
patterns of benefit capture induced by local and external institutions and to
identify the disconnects between local concerns and the institutions present to
address these. Building on collective action theory, we then designed and tested
institutional innovations in an action research mode to explore institutional
arrangements for addressing the NRM concerns of local residents of four locations in the eastern African highlands (two in Ethiopia, two in Uganda).3 Our
findings suggest that by bringing theory into the realm of development practice, action research may provide fertile ground for research in support of
practical development challenges.
With regard to the conceptual framework presented in Chapter 2, this study
illustrates the complexity of feedback relationships between different elements
of the conceptual framework. Contextual factors such as the initial endowments
of financial and physical assets limit the extent to which local actors can leverage social assets (such as groups and networks) to improve their well-being.
Similarly, low levels of collective action due to classical free-rider problems
and failures of supporting organizations undermine the ability of resource users
to access, manage, and draw benefits from natural assets such as forests, soils,
and agricultural lands. NRM comprises the action arena. Negotiation support
facilitated by external actors (the action arena) provides a platform for direct
engagement among resource users and between resource users and government
agencies. This results in the joint creation of new institutions such as bylaws
and organizational practices (that is, patterns of interaction) that curb free riding, provide mechanisms for cross-scale coordination among groups of spatially distinct though interconnected resource users, allow equitable access to
benefits, strengthen access to natural resources, and foster political commitment
for the enforcement of agreements sanctioned through bylaws. These patterns
of interaction have favorable implications for the welfare of local resource users
at the study sites.
This chapter highlights the institutional dimensions of natural resource
governance. It also focuses on how asymmetric power relations undermine
equitable outcomes in NRM. Resource governance and power relations are key
themes identified in Chapter 1. By implementing actions and processes that lead
to the emergence of new institutions and structures that enhance collective
action and equitable resource access and management, our study makes an important contribution to the broad literature of collective action, which continues to
3. Davis and North (1971, 6–7) define institutional arrangement as “an arrangement between
economic units that governs the ways in which these units can co-operate and/or compete.”
Enabling Equitable Collective Action in Eastern Africa 191
grapple with the problem of exclusion, especially that of marginal individuals
and groups with low status and wealth.
Literature Review
Collective Action in Natural Resource Management
The role of collective action in agricultural development and NRM is by now
well documented. Scholars have looked at the role of collective action in enhancing farmer participation and human capital (Coleman 1988; Heinrich 1993;
Uphoff and Mijayaratna 2000; Woolock and Narayan 2000); determinants and
operational principles of collective action (Ostrom 1990; Pandey and Yadama
1990; Wittayapak and Dearden 1999); and the conditions under which collective
action can be a vehicle for enhancing equity in natural resource management
(Kelly and Breinlinger 1995; Leach, Mearns, and Scoones 1999; Molyneux
2002). Yet the bulk of research on collective action has been in the context of
common property resources (Ostrom 1990; Munk Ravnborg and Ashby 1996;
Scott and Silva-Ochoa 2001; Gebremedhin, Pender, and Tesfay 2002).
Collective action is also a fundamental pillar of landscape- or watershedlevel natural resource management. In addition to regulating rights and responsibilities to common property resources and public goods (Ostrom 1990; Gaspart et al. 1998), collective action has a role to play in managing biophysical
processes that cut across farm boundaries (Munk Ravnborg et al. 2000). Collective action can also play a role in negotiating joint investments and technological innovations for enhanced productivity, regulating the distribution of
exogenous resources within local communities (Meinzen-Dick et al. 2002), and
negotiating solutions that optimize returns to diverse local interest groups (German, Charamila, and Tolera 2006; German et al. 2006a, 2006b). Given the sheer
number of users in watersheds, the transaction costs of organizing, and the
tendency for outside interventions to structure positions of privilege vis-à-vis
any given resource (Schroeder 1993; Munk Ravnborg and Ashby 1996), representative structures and mechanisms for organizing the interface of outside
actors with local communities are needed (German et al. 2006b). This is in
recognition of the inherently political nature of NRM (Schroeder 1993; Rocheleau and Edmunds 1997), which requires that the outcomes and distribution of
benefits of watershed management and related project interventions be transparently negotiated and monitored.
In addition to understanding what collective action can achieve, research
has highlighted some of the conditions under which institutions of collective
action for NRM emerge. These include the presence of clearly defined rules for
resource management and access (including sanctions), clearly defined user
groups and resource boundaries, adaptive management mechanisms (monitoring systems, the ability to modify rules as the need arises), conflict resolution
mechanisms, and a user group and resource of manageable size (Ostrom 1990;
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Pandey and Yadama 1990; Wittayapak and Dearden 1999). Each of these factors plays an important role in influencing levels of mutual trust as well as
expectations of what may be gained through cooperation (Blau 1964; Burns,
Baumgartner, and DeVille 1985). Yet there remain key gaps in our understanding of how to facilitate the evolution of institutions of collective action where
these are absent. More research is needed to understand how equitable, meaningful (well-designed and enforceable), yet flexible rules can be generated and
how to mobilize existing or new capacities for the participatory governance of
natural resources (Carney 1998; Scoones and Thompson 2003).
Collective Action, Institutions, and Equity
Through their role in structuring access to other forms of capital (natural,
financial, physical, human), local and external institutions alike play important
roles in structuring opportunities and in benefits capture. Research has shown
that collective action can contribute to asset accumulation or protect households
from loss of assets through their ability to mitigate risks. These functions may
play out directly, by improving people’s ability to work together to overcome
limitations of wealth, farm size, and bargaining power (di Gregorio et al. 2008)
and to access and control assets that could be difficult to access individually (de
Haan 2001; Knox, Meinzen-Dick, and Hazell 2002). For example, joint input
or output marketing can enhance market access or improve profits by minimizing transaction costs (Place and Swallow 2002). Collective action also plays an
indirect role by facilitating access to credit and microfinancing, information,
and technologies (Grootaert 2001; Grootaert and van Bastelear 2002; Knox,
Meinzen-Dick, and Hazell 2002). Each of these functions has implications for
asset creation. On the other hand, collective action can help to minimize loss of
assets during times of hardship by distributing risk among households—for
example, by mobilizing resources during times of illness or death (see the iddir
and Philippines case studies in this volume), helping individuals to better cope
with risk (de Haan 2001; Place et al. 2002).
In addition to contributing to financial capital, collective action has been
shown to underpin service delivery for infrastructure and social services (Nitti
and Jahiya 2004). Action research findings also point to the role of collective
action and diverse forms of social capital in enhancing human capital and spreading the transaction costs of improved NRM (Coleman 1988; Heinrich 1993; Wallis 1998; Uphoff and Mijayaratna 2000; Woolock and Narayan 2000; MeinzenDick et al. 2002). Yet despite the potential of collective action for enhancing
access to other important development resources, group composition, dynamics,
and governance are fundamental for these potentials to be realized (Davis et al.
2004). This is especially true for managing the distribution of benefits from such
interventions (Jassey 2000; Grootaert 2001; Molyneux 2002). Therefore, the relationship between collective action and equity depends in large part on the functions and capacities associated with these forms of social capital.
Enabling Equitable Collective Action in Eastern Africa 193
External institutions also have a fundamental role to play in agricultural
development and sustainable NRM. Yet uncritical development interventions by
government and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have led to a host of
unanticipated negative outcomes due to failure to understand existing institutions. Failure to recognize self-organizing local institutions in the management
of common property resources and the imposition of overly rigid property rights
regimes on traditional systems have proven to constrain rather than enable equitable, adaptive, and sustainable management of natural resources (Davison
1988; McDonald 1991; Bloch 1993; Munk Ravnborg and Ashby 1996; LastarriaCornhiel 1997; Kevane and Gray 1999; Ostrom 1999; Nemarundwe and Kozanayi 2003). Other authors document how outside interventions can increase risk
due to more delimited resource access (Turner 1999; Ngaido and Kirk 2001).
Finally, some interventions have proven to further entrench existing inequities
by creating the conditions for elite capture of program benefits or natural resources (Schroeder 1993; Rocheleau and Edmunds 1997).
Despite these deficiencies, if outside interventions can influence the distribution of power and voice, there is potential for realigning the distribution of
technologies, resources, and benefits (Knox, Meinzen-Dick, and Hazell 2002).
Such efforts could help to counter the tendency of extension benefits to go to
wealthier farmers (Grabowski 1990; Knox, Meinzen-Dick, and Hazell 2002) or
the causal role played by wealth in structuring resource access (Meinzen-Dick
et al. 2002). Given the context of decentralization and the devolution of policy
structures in Ethiopia, Uganda, and elsewhere (Raussen, Ebong, and Musiime
2001) and the evidence of “elite capture” from similar experiences at the local
level (Bachrach and Baratz 1970; Munk Ravnborg and Ashby 1996; Olsen
2001), lessons on how to engage and empower more vulnerable groups are
sorely needed. This is particularly true given the many, often discrete, ways in
which elite dominance can be asserted (Bachrach and Baratz 1970). These cases
point to the need for a better understanding of the ways in which external institutions facilitate wealth acquisition by different social groups and of strategies
to foster more equitable outcomes from external interventions.
Program Context
Our research was conducted under the rubric of the African Highlands Initiative
(AHI), an ecoregional program of the Consultative Group for International
Agricultural Research and the Association for Strengthening Agricultural
Research in East and Central Africa convened by the World Agroforestry Centre. Since 2002, AHI has worked to develop a participatory, integrated approach
to NRM at the landscape or watershed scale. Different from many other watershed management programs focusing primarily on soil and water conservation,
AHI is developing an approach to integrate all components of the production
system (crop, livestock, tree, soil) and the landscape (encompassing resources
such as water, communal grazing lands, and forests). This chapter reports on
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findings from the institutional research associated with integrated social, biophysical, and institutional interventions. The primary objective of this research
was to develop and document successful approaches to facilitating equitable
collective action processes and negotiated NRM solutions.
Research Questions and Hypotheses
Research Questions
Research questions are inherently distinct for empirical and action research,4
and therefore they are presented independently.
Empirical research questions include the following:
• What is the role of existing institutions (groups, rules and norms, property
rights, decentralization systems) in leveraging or constraining decisionmaking and resource access by diverse groups?
• What contextual factors (institutional, policy, historical, epistemological)
hinder collective action and exacerbate poverty through inequitable decisionmaking and access to natural resources at each site?
• What are the impacts of action research interventions on participation in
decisionmaking processes, identified watershed problems, policies, and
the resulting livelihoods or assets of diverse groups?
Action research questions are as follows:
• What conditions (social, technological, policy, economic) and facilitation
processes are required to enhance socially optimal voices (decisionmaking),
choices (technological, social, and income options), and benefits (poverty
alleviation, improved management and access to natural resources)?
• What policies, bylaws, and support from local governments are required
to bolster community actions and collective action toward more effective and equitable NRM and income generation? What are the most
effective approaches for engaging communities with local government
and service providers to achieve these policy reforms?
4. Empirical research questions emphasize understanding of the current situation, whereas
action research questions focus on the conditions for or elements of an effective change process.
In many action research cases, this change process does not yet exist in reality but will be created
through research. In action research, the research questions and hypotheses are necessarily broad,
given the difficulty of holding both the context and approach constant. Although a generic approach
to facilitating change was developed based on a review of collective action theory, the participatory
nature of action research means that both the participants and the circumstances (for example, the
specific problem to be addressed or resources available to address it) shape how it is applied.
Enabling Equitable Collective Action in Eastern Africa 195
Hypotheses
Research hypotheses were explicitly developed for the action research and
focus on conditions for effective change:
• Strategies to improve NRM at the farm and landscape levels will be more
effective if decisionmaking on technologies and natural resource governance is equitable, given the broad social support required to sustain collective action.
• Increased capacity to develop better-designed and more equitable bylaws
will improve livelihoods by enabling technology adoption, enhancing collective action in NRM, and reducing the need for bylaw enforcement.
Methodology
Site Selection
Four sites were chosen for this research, two in Ethiopia and two in Uganda.
All sites are highland microwatersheds characterized by smallholder farming
systems, high population density, and evidence of natural resource degradation. For 5–10 years each of these sites has served as a benchmark site for
AHI, where new approaches to integrated NRM are first developed and tested
and from which regional lessons are drawn from comparative research. Each
site is home to one or more ethnic groups with a long history of occupation
of the area and limited in-migration from other groups or areas. Despite some
similarities, each site has unique characteristics that merit attention in the
context of collective action and NRM. Details on each site are available in
German et al. (2008); however, all four sites face a broad range of NRM needs
such as:
• enhancing the productivity and returns from crop, livestock, and tree components without further exacerbating system nutrient decline;
• reversing water resource degradation by fostering positive synergies among
trees, soil conservation structures, and water in microcatchments;
• integrating technological innovation with improved natural resource governance to minimize the incidence of conflict emanating from small landholdings, limited economic opportunities, gender inequalities, and a tendency for land users to pursue individual over collective interests;
• enhancing equitable resource access, given the inhabitants’ histories of ethnic conflict (cattle raiding);
• managing resources sustainably in the buffer zone of national parks, given
histories of displacement and conflict; and
• increasing the quality of and access to support services.
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The methodology consisted of four primary steps.
Situation Analysis
The situation analysis used an empirical research approach to understand (1)
how resources are distributed within communities and (2) the role of internal and
external institutions in enhancing or constraining resource access and decisionmaking by diverse groups. The situation analysis consisted of two primary
methods. Focus group discussions were first used to identify local and external
institutions and the participants, beneficiaries, and nature of benefits derived
from each. The second step consisted of household interviews to quantify levels
of and variation in household assets (the five “capitals,” described later) by
gender and wealth, as well as participation in local and external institutions
(assessed as one component of social capital). At each site, at least 60 household
interviews were conducted. Households were purposely sampled by gender
(men, women from female-headed households, and women from male-headed
households) and wealth (based on local indicators and thresholds). The primary
local criteria for wealth ranking at all sites included landholdings, livestock
holdings, and the quality of housing.
Stakeholder Workshops
Following the situation analysis, site and national stakeholder workshops were
conducted to share findings and agree on action research priorities. Site-level
workshops consisted of (1) sharing of findings from the situation analysis;
(2) identification of NRM issues requiring collective action, changes in institutional practice, or bylaw reform; (3) prioritization of these issues based on a
set of “minimal criteria”; and (4) development of preliminary action plans for
prioritized topics. The screening criteria for action research themes included
• themes that involved change at multiple levels (local and outside institutions, policies);
• themes that involved current inequities or required close attention to diverse
local priorities; and
• themes that could bring some change within one and a half years.
Action Research
Following stakeholder prioritization of action research themes, site teams
developed action research protocols to clarify the research questions and strategies to be tested in facilitating local stakeholders’ efforts to address identified
problems. Each theme involved two levels of action research:
• local-level action research on how to foster collective action in NRM
through explicit consideration of diverse views when negotiating access
to benefits, NRM strategies, and policy proposals and
Enabling Equitable Collective Action in Eastern Africa 197
• higher-level (subcounty/peasant association or district/woreda) action
research on how to support equitable collective action processes at the local
level through changes in institutional practice, policies that reflect local
priorities, and negotiation support.5
A common strategy was tested to foster negotiated solutions to identified NRM
problems. This consisted of the following steps for each action research theme:
• identifying stakeholders, with an emphasis on local interest groups;
• meeting with the individual stakeholder groups (individuals who share
a common position in relation to the issue) to raise awareness and elicit
their views on the problem and solutions and their preferred approach to
engagement;
• conducting multistakeholder negotiations, including
1. providing feedback on the identified NRM issue and on earlier meetings with individual stakeholder groups;
2. engaging in open dialogue (for validation and clarification of issues and
interests);
3. negotiating socially optimal solutions that do not bring harm to any given
group and emphasize concessions on both sides, including agreed rules
for resource management (often formally endorsed bylaws) and technologies that provide alternatives to practices restricted in bylaws; and
4. development of action plans; and
• periodically conducting participatory monitoring and evaluation to evaluate progress, troubleshoot, and restrategize.
Participatory Assessment of Outcomes
The final step of the action research was to evaluate outcomes and impacts from
the action research intervention. Site teams conducted focus group discussions
to elicit individuals’ perceptions of the types of impacts and then asked farmers
to quantify the degree of change or the relative merits of different approaches
using matrix ranking exercises. Although the findings are somewhat subjective
and provisional, they nevertheless provide a sense of what variables matter to
farmers and whether any changes in these variables have been observed. In such
cases, caution should be used in deriving any quantitative conclusions from
these data. In the few cases in which field measurements were taken by farmers
5. Under Ethiopia’s system of ethnic federalism, there are three levels of local government:
zone, woreda, and kebele administration (Ayele 2009). The lowest administrative structure, the
kebele—often translated into English as “peasant association” (PA)—is a carryover from the Derg
period and generally includes ten thousand or more people. The woreda, roughly equivalent to a
district, is the second-lowest level of government and is the most important administrative unit in
the Ethiopian local government structure.
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or researchers (case studies 1 and 2, described later in this chapter), quantitative
measurements are more reliable. Nevertheless, in the absence of a control
group, the observed changes cannot be attributed with certainty solely to the
interventions, because there may have been other contributing factors.
The findings presented in the next section are grouped according to the
three phases of research: situation analysis, stakeholder workshops, and action
research.
Situation Analysis Findings
Household Assets and Investment Potential
The surveys measured households’ current levels of assets using the “five capitals”: human capital (age and education level of household members), social capital (access to social networks, participation in local forms of collective action),
natural capital (water, forest, land, and so on), financial capital (off-farm income,
savings), and physical capital (roads, structures, transport, communications). The
idea behind these was (1) to determine whether current assets determined households’ ability to acquire new assets and (2) to understand the role of both local
forms of collective action and outside institutions in asset accumulation.
Table 7.1 shows a two- to fifty-three-fold difference in land and livestock
holdings between lower- and higher-income households. To determine the extent
to which “wealth begets wealth,” we analyzed the annual level of investment in
productive activities by wealth category (Tables 7.2 and 7.3). This was used as an
indicator of the extent to which wealth determines the ability to acquire additional
wealth through investment. The data suggest a strong correlation between households’ current wealth status and their ability to invest in productive activities.
The Influence of Local and External Institutions on Assets and Livelihoods
Local collective action institutions were abundant at all research sites. They
included local savings and loan groups, merry-go-rounds (rotational savings
plans), religious associations, funeral associations and stretcher groups, laborsharing arrangements for private and communal works, traditional conflict resolution mechanisms, arrangements for saving or pooling resources for celebra-
TABLE 7.1 Land and livestock assets by wealth category in four sites in the eastern African
highlands, 2005
Areka
Ginchi
Kabale
Kapchorwa
Type of asset
High
Low
High
Low
High
Low
High
Low
Landholdings (hectares)
Head of cattle
0.74
3.7
0.26
0.6
3.4
6.4
1.2
3.2
2.91
0.13
0.81
0.06
2.10
8.22
0.04
0.49
SOURCE:
Authors.
Enabling Equitable Collective Action in Eastern Africa 199
TABLE 7.2 Annual agricultural investments (in birr) by wealth category at the two
Ethiopian sites, 2006
Ginchi
Areka
Investment
Low
Medium
High
Low
Medium
High
Seed
Pesticide
Fertilizer
Feed
Veterinary
Total
336.1
28.3
133.2
65.8
23.3
586.7
510.9
69.0
210.7
170.9
55.1
1,016.6
273.9
48.3
407.6
232.5
72.9
1,035.2
72.1
0.6
46.5
10.8
9.8
139.8
106.8
0.4
84.9
20.6
10.5
223.2
165.7
0.9
173.2
55.0
15.0
409.8
SOURCE:
German et al. (2008).
rate is 8.65 birr/US$1.00.
NOTE: Exchange
TABLE 7.3 Annual agricultural investments (in Ugandan shillings) by wealth
category at the two Ugandan sites, 2005
Kabale
Kapchorwa
Annual
investment
Low
Medium
High
Low
Medium
High
Seed
Pesticide
Fertilizer
Feed
Veterinary
Total
23,640
3,269
119
2,144
226
29,398
31,844
7,074
279
11,820
3,270
54,287
72,129
35,059
19,823
20,882
7,177
155,070
19,980
13,000
1,035
2,000
4,666
40,681
29,464
20,000
10,963
76,683
20,000
157,110
42,388
80,714
18,000
100,000
86,000
327,102
SOURCE:
Authors.
The exchange rate varied from 1,780 to 1,845 Ugandan shillings per US$1 during the data
collection period.
NOTE:
tions, commercial labor groups (in Kabale District), and land- and livestocksharing arrangements (at the Ethiopian sites) (German et al. 2008). The benefits
of these institutions are both social and economic. Social benefits include
strengthened social ties and networks and support during periods of hardship,
while the economic benefits include access to resources for agricultural and
domestic functions (labor, utensils, food, seed, and cash) and “safety-net” functions (for example, avoiding impoverishment following times of hardship). Due
to their voluntary nature, nearly all local institutions of collective action were
seen by focus group participants as benefiting all those who participate (see
German et al. 2008 for a detailed discussion of the Ethiopian sites). One exception was found in Ethiopia, where contracting out land to others was seen as
enriching some households (landowners) at the expense of others. Yet households continue to practice this activity when they have no alternative, generally
due to the shortage of inputs (primarily labor).
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Although all participants in collective action benefit in most institutions of
collective action, certain participants benefit more than others in some of these
institutions (German et al. 2008). For example, land- and livestock-sharing
arrangements in Ethiopia confer unequal benefits to participants. Landowners
benefit most in sharecropping because they receive the benefits from their land
with limited investment, but they benefit least in contracting because they are
paid poorly for the use of their land. Livestock-sharing arrangements are similarly imbalanced. In Areka, a livestock-sharing arrangement called hara benefits
cattle owners most because they acquire offspring with limited investment,
while the individuals rearing the cattle receive only livestock products. In Ginchi, on the other hand, a livestock-sharing arrangement called ribi most benefits
the poor, who acquire offspring as well as livestock products from cattle owned
by others.
Although local forms of collective action benefit all who participate, some
social groups cannot gain access to certain forms of collective action. Resourcepoor households, for example, generally cannot participate in savings and loan
groups, while commercial labor groups are male dominated. The sick, elderly, and
disabled seldom participate in local forms of collective action but often receive
some form of assistance from others. In Kabale, women are more active in local
forms of collective action, particularly those involving agricultural production.
Despite the caveats, communities generally agree that local institutions
of collective action play a strong positive role in livelihoods. This function
is achieved by enabling households to access resources and acquire assets
that otherwise would have been unachievable, buffering households during
shocks and crises, and expanding social networks for intrahousehold sharing
and support.
Collective Action in NRM
With the exception of labor-sharing arrangements, there was a notorious
absence of collective action for addressing shared NRM concerns (see German
et al. 2008). Many NRM problems requiring collective action, therefore, remain
unsolved. Through a detailed participatory diagnosis of landscape-level NRM
concerns and several years of action research to explore means to address these
concerns, reasons for the persistence of NRM problems requiring collective
action despite these problems’ negative effect on livelihoods were identified.
Two predominant scenarios may help to explain this disconnect. First,
NRM problems affecting agricultural productivity and requiring collective solutions are treated as individual problems by the community and by external organizations. Extension organizations continue to work with individual households
when promoting soil and water conservation technologies, despite the need to
foster common drainage ways. No household wishes to have common drainage
ways pass through their farms because they take up agricultural land and excess
water can damage crops. The costs and benefits of soil and water conservation
for farmers residing in upper and lower parts of the landscape also differ. Those
Enabling Equitable Collective Action in Eastern Africa 201
residing in lower parts of the landscape may benefit from the deposition of
fertile soil from the upper slopes or be negatively affected by excess runoff or
deposition of infertile soil. Those residing on upper slopes have less incentive
to invest because their farms are less affected by upslope cultivation activities.
Soil and water conservation activities clearly require the negotiation of solutions to such problems to ensure that solutions are not overly harmful to any
given land user and to enable the investments of any given household to align
with the perceived benefits.
Another example of a situation that can be improved through collective
action is the control of pests, disease, weeds, and wild animals. Although traditional forms of collective action for pest and disease control were found in
Ethiopia, most contemporary approaches to pest and disease control emphasize
control by individual households. Yet the effort that one household must expend
to control these problems grossly exceeds the benefits of such effort, given the
tendency of farm plots and livestock to be contaminated by adjacent farms and
livestock.
A second reason for the disconnect between the need for collective action
and the failure to engage in it is that land users emphasize individual economic
returns over collective goods or collective impacts. One example is the cultivation of fast-growing tree species on farm boundaries. This practice benefits landowners economically but adversely affects the livelihoods of adjacent households given the competition of these trees with crops for light, nutrients, and
water, as well as the allelopathic affects associated with some tree species.
Similarly, some land management practices—such as the pollution of
springs and waterways with detergents, human waste, and pesticides; the cultivation of “thirsty” trees; and the consumption of high levels of irrigation
water—achieve livelihood improvements for some land users at the expense of
others. Such scenarios clearly require a governance solution in which harmful
land-use practices are regulated according to collective choice arrangements.
Institutional Practice
Contrary to local institutions, which were generally seen as equitable and supportive to most households, a number of external institutions were seen by
participants in focus groups as highly biased in terms of the groups benefiting.
Institutional practice at times unknowingly favors some groups at the expense
of others (Schroeder 1993; Rocheleau and Edmunds 1997; German et al. 2010),
whereas local institutions have not stepped in to fill the gap and to govern
development interventions and resources more equitably. At times this has led
to increased social differentiation and loss of social cohesion in rural communities (Schroeder 1993; Thébaud and Batterbury 2001). Some government agencies are also seen as corrupt, undermining policies that they themselves are
supposed to enforce—and the commitment of stakeholders at all levels to these
policies (see, for example, the literature on decentralization: Bigombé Logo
2003; Colfer and Capistrano 2005; Oyono, Ribot, and Larson 2006). Table 7.4
TABLE 7.4 Perceived unequal benefits of formal institutions to local residents at four sites in Ethiopia and Uganda, 2005
Type of
collective action
Site 1 (Ethiopia)
Site 2 (Ethiopia)
Site 3 (Uganda)
Site 4 (Uganda)
Agricultural research
Agricultural research
favors farmers with
previous exposure to
technologies and
information who live
near roads and have
some education.
Agricultural research
benefits the few farmers
who have enough land
and labor.
Agricultural extension
Educated farmers benefit
most; extension has
poor coverage of the
area.
Farmers with a lot of
land and labor benefit,
especially male farmers.
On-farm experiments are
Only those who can
conducted with few
afford or access inputs
farmers, and the results
value the research
or varieties are not
initiatives.
shared with the community. There is little
follow-through on
experiments or technical
follow-up.
The continuity of National NAADS allegedly favors
Agricultural Advisory
the relatively well off
Services (NAADS) is
(who can co-fund),
affected by funding
kinsfolk of leaders, and
availability; support
prominent members of
goes only to farmer
society.
groups that pay the
annual fee of 10,000
Ugandan shillings. More
support is available to
the elite farmers who
easily adopt technologies.
Local administration
Cooperatives
National conservation
authority
SOURCE:
Authors.
Those living near the seat
of the district government benefit most; some
exhibit a bias toward
their friends and
relatives.
All members benefit
equally from inputs;
those who cannot make
down payments do not
benefit.
National conservation
authority was not
mentioned by farmers.
Local administration
was not mentioned by
farmers.
Local administration is
biased toward the
“politically correct.”
Those related to or
favored by staff of the
local administration are
given special attention.
The poorest farmers
benefit least.
Involved in marketing
barley, coffee, and
maize to the World
Food Programme and
serve mainly largescale farmers or farmer
associations.
Local employees of the
national conservation
authority (park rangers)
favor community members who engage in
illegal extraction that
is condoned by and
benefits these officials.
This is seen as a more
exclusionary savings
and loan mechanism
that mainly serves
the more resourceendowed farmers, who
are able to save.
The National
Environmental
Management Authority
tends to pamper some
communities, paying
farmers to ferry
planting materials and
dig water trenches on
their own land.
National conservation
authority was not
mentioned by farmers.
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Laura German et al.
summarizes local institutions seen to confer unequal benefits on local residents
at the four sites. Clearly, institutional biases—mostly unintentional—are widespread, and urgent action is needed to avoid the elite capture of benefits from
these interventions.
Stakeholder Workshop Outcomes
Site-level stakeholder workshops were the most instrumental in generating concrete strategies for addressing identified problems and are the focus of this
section. Following feedback of findings from the situation analysis, participants
were asked to identify NRM issues requiring collective action at their respective sites. A long list was derived and subjected to a prioritization process. At
some sites where participant farmers were few in number, this involved
reflecting on findings from household surveys in which individuals had prioritized those issues around which they would readily engage in collective action.
At other sites where large numbers of farmers were present, workshop participants engaged in the prioritization process themselves. At each site, two to four
issues given priority rankings were selected for intervention and joint learning
through action research. These are summarized in Table 7.5.
Participants were asked to highlight forms of institutional intervention
required for each of the prioritized action research themes. These are grouped
into three categories: (1) negotiation support, (2) bylaw reforms, and (3) changes
in institutional practice (Table 7.6).
Problems stemming from limited stakeholder collaboration at the local
level (horizontal stakeholder engagement), as well as from poorly structured
linkages with external organizations (vertical stakeholder engagement), were
prioritized in action research. Table 7.7 summarizes how the case studies presented in the next section relate to these two levels of intervention. Although a
few case studies may be clearly defined around horizontal or vertical stakeholder
engagement, a few others clearly combine both strategies in the identification
of solutions.
Action Research: Lessons from Implementation
of Prioritized Actions
Although many of the interventions were at early stages of implementation
at the time of writing, early successes suggested the promise of building on
negotiation support in enhancing collective action in NRM at the local level
and in improving institutional practice to enhance equitable benefits capture
from development interventions. The results are presented in the form of case
studies by action research theme. The first three of the four case studies illustrate horizontal stakeholder engagement processes, while all illustrate some
degree of vertical stakeholder engagement involving outside institutions.
TABLE 7.5 Natural resource management (NRM) issues prioritized by stakeholders for action research at each benchmark site in the
eastern African highlands, 2005
Areka
Ginchi
Kabale
Kapchorwa
Spring development (appropriate
tree species and spring
maintenance)
Equitable approaches to technology dissemination
Boundary tree management
Collective action for the
control of pests, diseases, and
wild animals
Spring management (appropriate
trees, ensuring long-term
water supply, maintenance
of structures)
Soil and water conservation
(gulley stabilization, common
drainage, collective action for
labor-intensive activities)
Harmonization of bylaws
between conservation zones
and adjacent areas (with an
emphasis on free grazing)
Soil erosion control, emphasizing
steep slopes and impacts on
valley-bottom plots
Minimization of harmful agroforestry practices, especially
on land boundaries
Collective action in enterprise
development and making
land investments
Co-management of resources of
protected-area buffer zone
and benefit sharing
Collective action to mitigate
conflicts in NRM accruing
from diverse or unclear
property regimes (land, trees,
water, grazing rights) and
sharing of benefit streams
SOURCE:
Authors.
TABLE 7.6 Interventions proposed during national stakeholder meeting held in 2005 to enhance collective action in national resource
management (NRM) for the four benchmark sites in the eastern African highlands
Intervention
Areka
Ginchi
Kabale
Kapchorwa
Negotiation support
Negotiating access to
technologies by groups
facing barriers (women,
the poor)
Mobilizing widespread
support for porcupine
control with the
involvement of elders
and local authorities and
research on different
“treatments” in different
villages
Involving peasant association and religious
leaders to facilitate
negotiations for farm
boundary management
by gender, wealth, and
divergent interests (cultivating farmers versus
neighboring farmers
negatively affected by
boundary trees) to identify appropriate niches
Negotiating regulations on
livestock movement in
outfields to facilitate soil
conservation and agroforestry investments
Negotiating trees compatible with springs
(among spring owners
and users) and farm
boundaries (among farm
owners and affected
farmers)
Negotiating equitable
contributions to spring
maintenance
Negotiating soil and water
conservation structures
(common drainage
channels and balanced
investments by upslope
and downslope farmers)
Negotiating the sharing of
benefits of introduced
technologies
Supporting local negotiations for increased
cooperation within and
among villages
Lobbying for the political
and technical leadership
at the subcounty level to
support ongoing project
initiatives
Negotiating access to
water points for all
community members
(in particular for
livestock)
Negotiating access to
and control of
communal grazing
lands
Negotiating access to
or custodianship of
natural resources in
Mount Elgon National
Park by indigenous
people
Negotiating compatible
technologies
Mobilizing for the
adoption of ecofriendly practices for
landscape conservation
Negotiating equitable
benefits from ecoenterprises
Bylaw reforms
for eucalyptus and
appropriate substitute
species
Fostering negotiations on
spring management by
gender, wealth, and
divergent interests (land
owners and spring users),
involving government
and religious leaders, to
minimize the effect of
eucalyptus on water
and ensure equitable
contributions to spring
maintenance
Negotiating soil conservation activities among
adjacent farms and
administrative units,
adapting technologies to
land size and farming
systems
Boundary trees: Writing
a bylaw to replace
eucalyptus with a
profitable tree species
that does not have
Springs: Writing a bylaw
specifying which trees
may be planted within
a specific distance of
springs (100 meters
Reviewing existing NRM
bylaws or writing new
bylaws to limit free
grazing, establishing
soil erosion control
Forming agreements
between the Uganda
Wildlife Authority and
the Benet on use rights
and responsibilities of
(continued )
TABLE 7.6 Continued
Intervention
Areka
Ginchi
Kabale
Kapchorwa
negative impacts on
cropland (such as
gravelia)
Springs and waterways:
Writing a bylaw to
replace eucalyptus with
a profitable tree species
that does not have
negative impacts on
springs (such as
gravelia)
Soil and water conservation:
Writing a bylaw to
ensure 100 percent
participation (one
nonconserving farmer
jeopardizes all)
Porcupine control: Considering the need for
bylaws to ensure widespread collective action
in porcupine control
upslope, 25 meters
downslope)
Farm boundaries: Writing
bylaws on (1) a minimum (10-meter) barrier
between eucalyptus and
cultivated land; (2) payment of reparations if
policy is ignored;
(3) acceptable locations
for eucalyptus
Outfield management: To
be determined following
further negotiations
Soil conservation: Writing
bylaws (1) specifying
that nonconserving
farmers will compensate
for losses to downslope
farmers and (2) governing drainage and gulley
management
structures (individually
and collectively), and
controlling bush burning
and the planting of trees
on farm boundaries
Trees and grass: Merging
or harmonizing community bylaws and later
scaling them up to the
subcounty level
Sensitizing the community
and wider subcounty
residents on the
harmonized bylaws and
lobbying for the subcounty leadership to
endorse and support
implementation and
enforcement of NRM
bylaws
the Benet with regard
to co-management
Writing bylaws for
resolving conflicts in
watershed areas
Changes in
institutional
practice
SOURCE:
Authors.
Technology dissemination: Spring maintenance:
Writing bylaws to reguWriting bylaws to
late how technologies
balance benefits with
should be governed at
contributions to
the peasant association
maintenance
level (for example, through
which social units and with
which rules for access)
Encouraging agricultural
Countering the “road bias”
researchers and the
in agricultural research
Ministry of Agriculture
Mobilizing for improved
to work together to
extension coverage
research the institutional Fostering linkages
practices, negotiations,
between the peasant
and bylaw reforms
association and
required to enhance
traditional law enforceequitable access
ment mechanisms
Fostering negotiations
among different support
organizations at the
woreda level (research,
extension, development)
to manage the “dependency syndrome”
Encouraging local government and subcounty
technical staff to work
with project staff to
sensitize the community
and foster the implementation of NRM bylaws
Enhancing support to the
negotiation process,
especially at community
and watershed levels
Encouraging multistakeholder commitment to addressing
prioritized issues
Community visioning
and priority setting
involving communitybased organizations
Encouraging the Uganda
Wildlife Authority to
give greater attention
to the Benet on comanagement
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Laura German et al.
TABLE 7.7 Forms of stakeholder engagement promoted through different action
research themes at various sites in the eastern African highlands following stakeholder
planning meetings in 2005
Form of stakeholder
engagement
Horizontal
Horizontal and vertical
Vertical
SOURCE:
Subjects of case studies
Porcupine control in Areka, Ethiopia
Enabling outfield conservation investments in the Galessa
highlands (Ginchi site), Ethiopia
Participatory governance of natural resources in Kabale
District, Uganda
Facilitation of equitable technology dissemination in
Areka, Ethiopia
Facilitation of co-management of the Mount Elgon
National Park in Kapchorwa District, Uganda
Authors.
Case Study 1: Porcupine Control in Areka, Southern Ethiopia
BACKGROUND. The crested porcupine is the most important vertebrate pest
in Gununo watershed, as identified by farmers during a stakeholder workshop
held in Soddo in 2004. Application of known control methods on an individual
basis was ineffective in controlling the pest, given that porcupines travel more
than 14 km in a single night and infestation rates from neighboring farms and
villages were high. Collective action was therefore seen as essential to control
this problem.
APPROACH. The approach used to foster collective action in porcupine
control consisted of the following main steps:
• identification of indigenous and chemical pest control methods and the
landscape niches in which each is best applied through interviews with key
informants, and design of “treatments” to test different control methods;
• discussion facilitated by scientists from Areka Agricultural Research Center (AARC) of the most appropriate forms of collective action for coordinating the porcupine control campaign and bylaw reforms;
• stakeholder identification through consultations with randomly selected
households;
• AARC-facilitated negotiation among different local stakeholder groups to
generate solutions acceptable to all;
• the conduct of village-level meetings by AHI-CAPRi community facilitators to formulate bylaws on porcupine control with the full participation
of each village, based on agreements reached in the previous step;
• the delivery of short training sessions for farmers by expert farmers and
AARC scientists on the application of indigenous and chemical methods
Enabling Equitable Collective Action in Eastern Africa 211
of porcupine control, emphasizing strategies previously unknown to participant farmers (namely, the wire trap method), and for local leaders on
the collection of data on numbers of porcupines killed or caught, the methods used, and so on, using prepared data collection forms;
• mass mobilization by community members for application of the agreed
“treatments”; and
• data collection, monitoring, and evaluation by local leaders and farmers.
OUTCOMES. Farmers presented many traditional methods for the control
of porcupines but prioritized three methods considered most effective: the use
of deeply dug pits at the outlets of porcupine caves, circular ditches around
graveyards, and a wire trap system. A fourth treatment, use of the chemical zinc
phosphide, was also combined with the first two methods as two additional
treatments. In this fourth treatment, farmers modified the first method, deep
digging to 3–4 meters’ depth, to create shallower pits (1–1.5 meters deep) that
were used in combination with zinc phosphide (RATOL®). Methods were
selected based on their suitability to different landscape niches. These would
be applied during the season when porcupines were most harmful to crops.
The large size of the kebele or peasant association (PA) meant that collective action had to be mobilized at a lower level. The de facto institutional
structure for organizing community development actions in the study area is
the sub-PA, or “developmental unit” (DU). Farmers selected DUs to coordinate
collective action because they have the ability to enforce local bylaws and, with
only 25–30 households, may easily mobilize collective action and monitor
activities during implementation. During the campaign, each DU designated
one to two “development days” per week to carry out collective efforts for
porcupine control. It was further decided that the PA-level magistrate court and
local leaders would follow up on bylaw enforcement during the collective action
period.
Negotiations were then supported between farmers whose crops were frequently affected and the least affected households, as well as between farmers
participating and not participating in the Safety-Net Program.6 Bylaws were
then formulated with the participation of each group of farmers and distributed
to all PA and sub-PA leaders. Negotiations with farmers found to be particularly
knowledgeable about certain porcupine control methods were also needed to
enable agreements to be reached on knowledge sharing. This highly specialized
6. The Safety-Net Program is a government program designed to help low-income farmers
by paying them to carry out development activities (construction of schools, offices, and health
centers; road maintenance; and so on) for the PA. Some nonparticipating farmers are uncooperative
in collective activities, arguing that Safety-Net farmers alone have the responsibility because they
are paid for these activities by the government. However, negotiations led to the joint conclusion
that porcupines are a problem to both parties and affect each group equally, requiring joint efforts
by both groups.
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Laura German et al.
knowledge had been coveted by these knowledgeable individuals because it
could provide them with periodic income from other farmers, who hired them
to control porcupines in their fields.
Once the control methods, administrative units, and bylaws for operationalizing collective action were established and the relevant individuals trained
on control methods and data collection procedures, the campaign was launched.
Farmers went out on foot and in vehicles with megaphones and local music to
publicize the campaign across all DUs, villages, and PAs. Following the campaign, records were made by DU leaders on the number of porcupines caught
or killed by different farmers and villages in various niches and using each
control method.
The final numbers indicated that close to 1,000 porcupines were killed
or caught through collective action in the watershed in a single growing season. In Gununo watershed, Offa village ranked first in the control of porcupines. This may be attributed to the high levels of collective action sustained
by all households and to the higher levels of porcupine infestation in this village than in other villages in the watershed, as evidenced by the high number
of porcupine niches known in the village (more than 100). The use of rodenticide in combination with the modified deep digging technique (digging
to 1.5 meters depth) at the outlets of porcupine holes proved to be the most
effective control method (Table 7.8). However, farmers were generally reluctant to use chemical control methods due to their cost and found deep digging
and the use of wire traps reasonably effective.
Most important to households, however, were the livelihood impacts of
porcupine control, as evaluated through the monitoring of local indicators (Fig-
TABLE 7.8 Methods to control porcupines in Areka, southern Ethiopia, by niche, and
their effectiveness
Method of control
Niche where applied
Method 1: Rodenticide alone
Method 2: Circular ditch + rodenticide
Graveyards
Porcupine caves located
near graveyards
All porcupine caves located
away from graveyards
All porcupine caves located
away from graveyards
All porcupine caves
Method 3: 3-meter hole at the outlet of
a porcupine cave
Method 4: 1.5-meter hole at the outlet
of a porcupine cave + rodenticide
Method 5: Wire body trap at the outlet
of a porcupine cave
SOURCE:
Begashaw et al. (2007).
Numbers of
porcupines killed
or trapped
197
126
88
455
92
Enabling Equitable Collective Action in Eastern Africa 213
FIGURE 7.1 Observed impacts of collective action in porcupine control at the Offa
village, Areka benchmark site, Ethiopia, 2007
Change observed
25
Before
After
20
15
10
5
0
Sweet potato
damage (kg)
Yam
damage (kg)
Time spent
Number of
Number of
policing
family members visits to health
(hours per night) involved per night center per year
Begashaw, Mazengia, and German (2007)
© World Agroforestry Centre.
source:
ure 7.1). Households reported a sharp reduction in crop damage, a reduction
in the amount of time spent or the number of household members policing
fields at night, and a reduction in visits to the health center because of weatherinduced illness. Interestingly, the latter two were felt to have contributed the
most to improving local livelihoods relative to the reduced crop loss.
lessons learned. A number of important lessons may be distilled from
this case study. The first is that collective approaches to pest control can yield
much higher returns per effort expended than can individualized approaches,
provided that the free-rider problem can be controlled through governance
innovations. Here the challenge was to ensure that porcupine controls were
applied on all farms irrespective of the level of damage, lest these farms harbor
pests that would later attack neighboring farms. This raises the challenge of
effectively balancing the costs and benefits of collective action for the most and
least affected households, a well-known collective action principle (Ostrom
1990). Facilitating explicit negotiations between households that stand to gain
more and less from the activity, with agreements backed up by locally negotiated (and thus socially legitimate) rules or bylaws, can help to substantially
advance collective action by addressing the free-rider problem (defined, in this
case, as household nonparticipation, which can easily undermine the returns
from collective action initiatives). The second lesson is that the integration of
local knowledge, introduced technologies, and collective action within a single
strategy allowed for synergies in problem solving that would have been unattainable using piecemeal approaches.
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Laura German et al.
Case Study 2: Participatory Governance of Natural Resources
in Kabale District, Uganda
BACKGROUND. In Rubaya Subcounty, as in many other areas in the Kigezi
highlands of southwestern Uganda, land degradation is a critical challenge. Soil
conservation has mainly taken the form of scattered individualized efforts. Yet
much of the damage caused by unconserved farmland comes from excess runoff from upslope farms—a more immediate concern of most farmers than the
medium-term costs of soil loss. This creates a disconnect between the benefits
and costs of soil conservation activities, with upslope farmers bearing the costs
and those farther downslope reaping the benefits. Furthermore, most NGOs
working in NRM in the region tend to emphasize the technological dimensions of NRM, often neglecting community perceptions and interests and the
social and psychological dynamics underlying human behavior. Government
organizations such as the National Environmental Management Authority had,
for example, paid farmers to adopt soil conservation technologies (for example,
digging water trenches on their own land), thereby undermining sustainability.
Because development agencies supporting NRM through farmer groups often
end up supporting few households and emphasize individualized decisions
on land management, many problems that are collective in nature remain unaddressed. Examples of NRM challenges requiring collective action at the
Rubaya site include land conflicts, the planting of incompatible trees on farm
boundaries, destruction of crops from free grazing and bush burning, and acute
land degradation (that is, from the formation of gullies and landslides).
Finally, poor leadership and nonenforcement of NRM bylaws had led to
a situation in which rules were left unenforced. Local environmental committees (LECs) were established by local governments to coordinate and oversee
environmental concerns at the parish and subcounty levels. These committees
were perceived by farmers as dysfunctional due to financial and capacity constraints and lack of downward accountability. Other local institutional structures for NRM had also been established through research and development
interventions. An earlier project by AHI and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture had established policy task forces (PTFs) in four pilot villages
to address NRM conflicts through participatory bylaw reforms. Although collective action in NRM has been much stronger in these villages, the effectiveness of the bylaws in these villages is still undermined by inadequate enforcement, lack of political will, and inadequate support of technological options that
would substitute for land-use practices curtailed through bylaws.
APPROACH. AHI facilitated multistakeholder efforts to improve NRM in
three subcounties of Kabale District. From the outset, AHI set out to build on
existing institutional foundations—namely, LECs and PTFs. Earlier work on
bylaws provided a strong foundation for early successes in Rubaya Subcounty.
In each of the villages where these activities were carried out, AHI followed a
Enabling Equitable Collective Action in Eastern Africa 215
series of eight steps to engage stakeholders to develop collective solutions to
shared NRM problems. These included
• the holding of community forums by subcounty and village leadership representatives and volunteer community-based NRM facilitators and the
sensitization of communities by leading them through an analysis of the
role of collective action in NRM and livelihoods;
• the conduct of meetings facilitated by the AHI community facilitator (CF)
at the subcounty level with representatives from pilot villages and local
leaders (elected officials and opinion leaders) to identify or develop organizational structures for spearheading NRM at the subcounty and village
levels;
• the capacity building of existing or new structures by the CF and local
government on their roles and responsibilities in NRM;
• the provision of support to NRM structures to lead a participatory review
of existing bylaws in the four villages with longstanding involvement in
AHI and formulation of new bylaws in the two new villages to strengthen
natural resource governance;
• cross-site visits organized by the CF to take members of villages new to
participatory bylaw reforms and the subcounty leadership to communities
that had successfully implemented model NRM bylaws and technologies;
• the conduct of a multistakeholder workshop to harmonize bylaws emanating from the six villages at the subcounty level with representatives of
subcounty and village NRM structures, each village (representatives of the
Local Council 1, the lowest tier of local government, and male and female
farmer representatives), local government (the subcounty chief, subcounty
chairperson, and secretary for production), and the National Agricultural
Advisory Services coordinator;
• the provision of technical support by the CF to subcounty NRM structures
to plan and facilitate parish and village meetings for the purpose of sensitizing community members and eliciting their feedback on newly revised
or formulated bylaws at the subcounty, parish, and village levels; and
• the lobbying of the leadership to endorse bylaws that will apply at the
subcounty level.
OUTCOMES. The subcounty leadership and community representatives resolved that new organizational structures be established to supersede both
PTFs and LECs but incorporate their functions. Farmers and other stakeholders
observed that some PTFs were not fully functional, and new pilot communities
lacked these structures. LECs, on the other hand, were said to exist only in
name. They were constituted via appointments by the subcounty leadership and
were of limited effectiveness due to inadequate financial resources and ambiguity in their roles and responsibilities. Thus, natural resource protection commit-
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Laura German et al.
tees (NRPCs) were constituted at the subcounty and village levels to spearhead
NRM initiatives; they were comprised of subcounty and village leadership (exofficio members) and elected committee members. NRPCs were seen as more
representative than previous structures, extending to the village level through
the involvement of LC1 leaders, farmer representatives, and community-based
NRM facilitators. Furthermore, at the subcounty level they were composed
of all representatives of LCs from pilot villages, village NRPCs, communitybased facilitators, and ex-officio members at the subcounty level. PTFs included
only two members at the parish level drawn from the pilot villages.
In villages where bylaw reforms were ongoing under AHI, participatory
review of bylaws was carried out to address the deficiencies of existing bylaws.
Some of the existing bylaws lacked punitive measures, such as fines. Other
bylaws were too general in nature, failing to specify how they would be operationalized. In villages new to participatory governance, new bylaws were established. Most of these were adapted from the bylaws of other villages with previous experience in participatory bylaw reforms, taking into account the unique
circumstances and land management challenges in a particular community or
landscape or felt NRM needs. Following the formulation of bylaws on free
grazing and soil and water conservation, technologies were seen as necessary
for bylaw implementation. For example, prohibitions against free grazing require alternative sources of fodder, and soil and water conservation would
require the planting of trees and grasses to stabilize conservation structures.
Collective action emerged around communal tree nurseries for this purpose.
Cross-site visits proved instrumental in motivating additional interest in
improved natural resource governance in villages new to the approach due to
the concrete benefits observed. Community members were motivated by both
the social cohesiveness for collective action and the effectiveness of technologies (check dams, water trenches). Cross-site visits catalyzed farmers’ interest
in immediately returning to their villages and implementing observed methods
of controlling soil erosion. Pickaxes, spades, and forked hoes were provided on
request as an incentive to farmers. Bylaws helped to mobilize collective action
in constructing check dams across upper slopes to reduce runoff to farms below,
while individually dug water trenches were used to capture excess water.
Following the construction of soil erosion control structures, seedlings from
previously established nurseries were transplanted to protect the conservation
structures. This mobilization of collective action in four villages led to the
establishment of 1,503 meters of check dams (where none had existed prior to
the intervention), the establishment of 5,444 meters of water trenches (representing increases of between 47 and 2,080 percent for different villages), and a
sharp reduction in soil erosion and flooding in some locations.
The meeting at the subcounty level to harmonize bylaws led to the development of one final set of bylaws for adoption at the wider subcounty level (Box
7.1). Several different criteria were used in this harmonization process. The
Enabling Equitable Collective Action in Eastern Africa 217
BOX 7.1 Reformulated and harmonized
bylaws in Rubaya Subcounty
Soil and water conservation:
• Everyone shall dig water trenches (soil erosion structures), especially on
hillsides, in their own land prior to any cultivation. Anyone who violates
the above bylaw will be liable to a fine, which will be decided by the subcounty (LC 3) council, in collaboration with representatives of Policy Task
Forces (PTFs).
• Napier/elephant grass and other grasses (and/or trees) shall be planted in
landscapes where water trenches are not feasible, such as in very rocky or
rugged terrain.
• Every farmer should consult neighboring land owners prior to breaking down
the terrace or contour bund along common land demarcations or borders.
• No one shall cultivate their land without digging water trenches or planting
trees and grasses to conserve soil and water in their own land.
• Prior to cultivating, everyone should excavate trenches, steps, and A frames.
Those who violate these bylaws shall be fined Sh. 5,000 or else they will be forwarded to the LC 3 council authorities for punishment.
Grazing:
• No one shall graze in the valley, whether or not the land in the valley is one’s
own.
• Everyone shall graze in their own land and if not, seek permission to graze
in others’ land. Any abandoned land—including hilltop land—should be
utilized for growing agro-forestry species.
• No one is allowed to come from another country and graze in Uganda. [This
bylaw is specifically in reference to neighboring Rwanda.]
Those who violate these bylaws will be fined Sh. 10,000.
Water:
• Everyone who draws water from a communal water source or well shall
cooperate with others in its cleaning or maintenance.
• Anyone utilizing land near a communal well, road, footpath, or water trench
should reserve a stretch of 1–2 meters of uncultivated land between their
land and the said communal structures.
• No one is allowed to graze or cultivate land near, or wash clothes in, communal water sources.
Those who violate these bylaws will be fined Sh. 5,000.
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Other:
• Burning of grasses, hillsides, weeds, and trees is strictly prohibited. (Those
who violate this bylaw will be fined Sh. 10,000.)
• When cultivating, leave some reserve narrow strips of land along boundaries, the road side, livestock tracks, etc. (Those who violate this bylaw will
be fined Sh. 5,000.)
• Whoever cuts down trees should plant more. (Those who violate this bylaw
will be fined Sh. 5,000.)
• Every household should cultivate fruits, such as avocados. (Those who violate this bylaw will be fined Sh. 5,000.)
• Anyone who owns or rents land in another village should abide by the
natural resource management bylaws obtaining in that village.
• Village PTFs should have representatives at the LC 3 (subcounty) level.
SOURCE:
NOTE:
Meetings between authors and residents of Rubaya Subcounty
Sh. means Ugandan shilling.
subcounty chief assumed veto power to ensure that locally formulated bylaws
adhere to the national laws on maximum fines and are feasible under existing
financial and land-use scenarios. Although fines were conflicting but not considered too high by the chief, participants selected a single figure through consensusbased decisionmaking. The levels of fines selected by participants depended on
their determination of the balance between feasibility and fairness; they wanted
fines that were not so harsh as to be unfair but at the same time high enough to
ensure that the bylaws are followed. This supports the observation by Ostrom
(1990) on the need for sanctions to be “graduated” or matched to the level of
the offense. Farmers also strongly felt that local leaders should be exemplary
in NRM. If they do not follow the bylaws, everyone else will feel that they too
have no reason to respect the law. Elected leaders were often reluctant to support the enforcement of NRM bylaws for fear of alienating the electorate, in
effect jeopardizing their source of votes. Accordingly, one of the key roles of
NRPCs was to lobby the leadership structures to buy into the concept of supporting the establishment and enforcement of NRM bylaws.
Following this harmonization process, the NRPC assumed responsibility
for calling NRM bylaw stakeholder meetings at the parish and village levels to
increase the awareness of the harmonized bylaws and elicit feedback from
farmers. Each bylaw was discussed in a plenary session. After this process was
finished, amendments were made to the harmonized bylaws. The bylaw on bush
burning, for example, was amended to include damage to property caused by
wildfires in addition to the imposition of a fine of 10,000 shillings for those
starting such fires. Farmers similarly requested an additional bylaw amendment
Enabling Equitable Collective Action in Eastern Africa 219
on free grazing, requiring the culprits to compensate households for the value
of crops lost, soil conservation structures damaged, and other damages incurred.
The NRPCs at the village and subcounty levels lobbied the subcounty
leadership for bylaw endorsement. As a result of persistent lobbying, the bylaws
were finally endorsed by the Rubaya Subcounty Local Council on January 17,
2007. Copies of the endorsed bylaws were distributed to local leaders in each
village and to the village information centers. To bolster political support of
bylaw enforcement, a publicity campaign at the village, parish, and subcounty
levels and district endorsement of the bylaws were scheduled.
LESSONS LEARNED. Several lessons may be learned from this case study.
First, sustainable land management, often treated as the responsibility of individual households by farmers and development agencies alike, requires collective effort in the form of collective rules, regulations, and implementation of
agreements. This experience also puts into question the way in which soil erosion has been perceived by development agents worldwide: namely, that the
key challenge is loss of soil from one’s plot. Yet for farmers, the more immediate concern is the economic damage caused by excess water from upslope
runoff washing away seed, fertilizer, and property. Understanding this dynamic
is essential to mobilize collective action, given the need to understand that the
primary benefits of soil conservation activities flow to downslope rather than
upslope farmers (which is commonly misperceived given the greater degree of
erosion on upper slopes).
Second, the sensitization of farmers to the potential benefits of the intervention through the cross-site visit was essential in catalyzing interest in and
commitment to collective action. Political commitment also plays a vital role
in mobilization, sensitization, and ensuring commitment to collective choice
rules (in the form of formal endorsement of local bylaws). The failure of local
leaders to be exemplary in abiding by the bylaws on their own farms as well as
to respect the bylaws through their enforcement is an important disincentive to
others.
Effective collective action and natural resource governance also takes time,
as illustrated by the greater responsiveness of farmers in the subcounty where
bylaw reforms had a longer history. A final lesson is derived from the apparent
synergy of bylaws (rules), technologies (the new knowledge acquired on check
dams and on vegetation to protect newly formed soil conservation structures), and
capital (in the form of tools) in addressing local NRM challenges.
Case Study 3: Equitable Technology Dissemination in Areka
BACKGROUND. Gununo watershed is located in the highlands of southern
Ethiopia, where land is scarce due to intense population pressure. The productivity of crops is very low due to several factors, one of which is poor genetic
potential. Food shortage is common for at least three months per year, even in
years of good rainfall. The government has tried to disseminate improved seeds
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to farmers on credit. However, repayment rates were very low, and the government has shifted to disseminating seeds in exchange for cash payments. Because most farmers in the watershed are resource poor, especially women, it has
become difficult for them to access improved seeds through this system. During
preliminary focus group discussions, women complained of an extreme gender
bias in agricultural extension. Farmers in some villages stated that no femaleheaded households in their villages had ever accessed improved seeds through
the formal extension system. Participatory action research was conducted to
explore ways to enhance equitable technology access in the watershed.
APPROACH. Following identification of gender inequities in agricultural
extension during gender-disaggregated focus group discussions (situation analysis), community meetings were called by AARC scientists and AHI community facilitators to discuss the way forward. The meetings were held at the
village level (in five villages of Gununo watershed) to identify and prioritize
local problems and possible solutions. These solutions, involving bylaw formulation and technology multiplication and dissemination following the specifications laid out in the bylaws, were then reviewed and approved at a watershedwide forum facilitated by the AARC site team. Innovative farmers were selected
by the watershed community, and five farmer research groups (FRGs) were
formed (one per village) in two PAs to evaluate crop varieties and identify those
with high levels of acceptance by farmers. As varieties were being evaluated,
draft bylaws specifying rules and procedures for equitable technology multiplication and dissemination were developed at the village level through genderdisaggregated focus group discussions with farmers. Following PA-level harmonization of collective choice rules emanating from different social groups,
draft bylaws were authenticated by local PA leaders for subsequent enforcement. Seeds of tested crop varieties (Boloso-I for taro, Simba for wheat) were
given to farmers according to rules established in the bylaws, through a system of in-kind credit and following training on management practices. These
farmers agreed, in turn, to multiply the seed and transfer the same amount of
seed they had been given to other selected farmers according to agreed bylaws.
Follow-up monitoring to ensure compliance with agreed bylaws was done by
FRG leaders, FRG members, and other male and female watershed residents at
various stages of the process. FRG leaders were charged with the responsibility
of reporting offenders to members of the local administration, who would, in
turn, take action through the PA courts. Data were collected on the repayment
process and farmers’ perceptions of the effectiveness of the approach.
OUTCOMES. The outcomes were as follows.
FRG establishment. To implement the proposed community plan of participatory seed technology evaluation, multiplication, and dissemination, FRGs
were established to enable a greater number of farmers to participate in research
and extension activities in the watershed. FRG members were selected by the
community and included farmers from different social categories (women and
men, poorer and wealthier farmers). A total of five FRGs were established in
Enabling Equitable Collective Action in Eastern Africa 221
the five zones of the watershed. Each was established according to location
(village) rather than technology. This was done to reduce the difficulty in management and thus facilitate greater coverage.
Bylaw formulation. To enhance crop production and address challenges
of technology access, farmers felt it necessary to identify local seed multiplication and dissemination channels that would give equal consideration to different categories of farmers, independent of gender or wealth. Thus, local bylaws were established. A number of meetings were held with key informants
and focus groups to develop draft bylaws. Finally, agreement was reached on
one bylaw that it was believed would equally benefit all social categories
throughout the watershed. This bylaw was authorized by two PA leaders and
by social court judges. The bylaw required that women farmers be included
among beneficiaries and outlined mechanisms of seed transfer and sanctions
for offenders (Box 7.2).
Seed multiplication and dissemination. Planting material for selected
varieties of taro and wheat was distributed to farmers as starter seed through
FRG leaders. Farmers were given planting material on credit so that they would
pay back an equal amount of planting material to be transferred to other selected
farmers until all farmers in the watershed gained access. Five kilograms of
improved wheat seed (varieties Wabe and Abola) were given to each of 160
BOX 7.2 Articles in the bylaw for equitable
technology dissemination, Areka, Ethiopia
• One-third of the beneficiaries must be women when selecting beneficiary
farmers.
• A farmer has to manage the new starter seed given to him/her better than or
equivalent to his/her own private seed. He/she has to transfer amounts of
improved seed equal to what he/she was given initially to another farmer
selected by farmer research group (FRG) leaders immediately after harvest.
• If he/she needs to sell the surplus product, he/she has to sell it to farmers
within the watershed at a free market price until all the watershed community gets access to the improved seed. If there is no one who wants to buy
the seed within the watershed, the seed owner can sell his/her product outside the watershed after informing FRG leaders.
• If a farmer disobeys the bylaw, he/she will be reported by FRG leaders to
the peasant association (PA) court. The PA court will make the judgment,
and the PA leaders will take action based on the ruling of the judge.
• If a farmer partially loses his/her seed through natural disasters, he/she will
repay a smaller amount determined by the FRG leaders.
SOURCE:
Meetings between authors and residents of Gununo watershed, Areka, Ethiopia.
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farmers from five villages. Similarly, corms of an improved taro variety called
Boloso-I were distributed as planting material to more than 120 farmers. The
FRG leaders monitored seed multiplication from sowing to harvest. The yield
of the new variety of taro was higher than that of the local cultivars. The high
yield was attributed to the high number of tillers (up to 40) and corms per hill,
coupled with the new variety’s relative tolerance to low-moisture stress.
Credit repayment and bylaw implementation. The available evidence
suggests that the bylaws contributed to a substantial improvement in credit
repayment rates, with 100.0 percent of farmers successfully repaying taro and
from 43.3 to 97.0 percent of farmers repaying wheat (Figure 7.2). Yet even in
the villages with the lowest repayment rates, rates of default still fell dramatically relative to those seen under previous credit systems (shown in the first two
columns), indicating the improved effectiveness of the new credit system supported by bylaws. Farmers who did not repay their loans were taken to local
courts by FRG leaders. Although most of them admitted to being aware of the
bylaw, they had expected exemption from repayment, in line with their previous experience. Following moral persuasion by their colleagues, the farmers in
most villages paid voluntarily. In Gegecho and Ofa, where the lowest repayment rates were recorded, this informal follow-up led 25 percent of participants
to repay their loans. However, a few households said that their wheat yield was
poor and they were unable to repay.
Livelihood benefits. Farmers said that the new taro variety had enhanced
food security in the watershed due to its high productivity, short growing season, and resistance to decay when stored in the fields for long periods. These
features have extended the season in which food is readily available in farmers’
fields to three to four months per year. The variety is also becoming a cash crop.
Some farmers said that they had never received so much income from any other
crop, even coffee (Ethiopia’s primary cash crop). Some farmers declared a 225
percent increase in income relative to the local variety on the same amount of
land. One farmer received more than 2,000 birr (US$230) from taro in 2006,
and several households are expanding their area under taro cultivation. As a
result of these successes, the new taro variety is being disseminated very quickly
—primarily through purchase. Farmers also claimed that the new variety saved
on fuelwood and that they had gone from three bundles of fuelwood to one to
cook a pot of taro. The Ministry of Agriculture at the district level is now trying
to use this variety of taro as part of its food security program. The performance
of new wheat varieties was similar to that of the local variety and variable across
farms and villages due to differences in fertilizer application and weeding, and
therefore of less interest to farmers.
The benefits of the approach used go beyond the technologies. According
to focus group–based evaluations of the approach, it has brought more equitable
benefits to women and poor farmers relative to the formal extension service
(Table 7.9). In-kind credit was also seen as more favorable to farmers than loans
FIGURE 7.2 Credit repayment rates associated with bylaws, by village, compared
to earlier credit systems at the African Highlands Initiative–Areka benchmark site,
Ethiopia, as evaluated in 2006
Repayment rate (percent)
100
Wheat
Taro
80
60
40
20
0
Pre-2005
MOA,
Gegecho
Pre-2005
AHI,
Gegecho
Gegecho,
2006
Chare,
2006
Ofa,
2006
Tach
Busha,
2006
Lay
Busha,
2006
Villages
SOURCE:
Mazengia (2006).
TABLE 7.9 Farmers’ perceptions of the equitability and benefits of the African
Highlands Initiative (AHI) / Areka Agricultural Research Center (AARC) approach
as an alternative to the approach used by the extension service, Gununo watershed,
southern Ethiopia, 2006
Indicator
Equitable access by women farmers
Equitable access by poor farmers
Form of credit (repayment in kind,
as opposed to cash)
Awareness of technology prior to
wider dissemination
Quality and frequency of technical
support
SOURCE:
Formal extension service
(average rank)
AHI/AARC
(average rank)
13.4
26.6
86.6
73.4
17.6
82.4
14.4
85.6
23.6
76.4
Mazengia (2006).
NOTE: Results were derived from group-based matrix ranking of the two approaches, with 100 seeds
divided among the two approaches for each indicator (and more seeds representing better performance) and the results averaged across the five villages.
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to be repaid in cash, as was the ability of farmers to learn about new technologies prior to adoption through prior testing of technologies within FRGs. Unlike
under the previous credit system, in which farmers consumed or sold all of their
produce to escape repayment, most farmers have maintained improved seed for
the next planting season. Surprisingly, some farmers claimed to prefer the new
approach over the then-current Safety-Net Program, which gave seed to resourcepoor farmers at no cost. That approach, which required them to submit to on-farm
screening prior to taking loans, was also instrumental in improving varietal performance and farmers’ ability to repay at harvest, although the benefit was attributable to the variety. Farmers outside of the pilot site have begun requesting that
local government agencies adopt a similar system of in-kind loans.
Given their previous experience, farmers were reluctant to work with
researchers at the beginning. The relationship between researchers and farmers
has improved due to the active participation of farmers and greater consideration of their interests by researchers.
LESSONS LEARNED. A number of lessons may be learned from this case
study about collective action in general and about approaches to enhance
equitable technology access in particular. First, farmers were found to respect
collective-choice rules much more than government-imposed rules for credit
repayment, suggesting that locally negotiated bylaws have great promise for
enhancing collective action and local governance. Second, a higher number
of farmers who had failed to pay their loans on time were found to pay following informal persuasion as opposed to formal prosecution, which tends to
breed resentment and resistance. The effectiveness of informal persuasion
was strongly grounded in the group decisionmaking process during which the
bylaws were negotiated, because all farmers present had agreed to the terms.
Because social pressure often makes it difficult for local leaders to enforce
bylaws with harmful consequences for others (such as fines), informal enforcement efforts such as moral persuasion may be an important tool that complements formal bylaw endorsement and enforcement. In this case, however,
restricting offenders from taking new loans remained a crucial complement to moral persuasion in enhancing credibility in the system and also in
controlling free riders. Third, loan repayment rates were higher when FRG
leaders performed their roles and responsibilities as agreed, pointing to the
crucial importance of good leadership and bylaw enforcement in enhancing
collective action. In this case, the absence of an article in the local bylaws to
hold FRG members and local administrative leaders accountable to agreements undermined repayment rates. The lesson is that the roles and responsibilities of all parties, including leaders and enforcement agents, must be clearly
articulated.
Case Study 4: Co-Management of Mount Elgon National Park
BACKGROUND. In the 1930s, the British colonial government declared the
Mount Elgon area a Crown forest and gazetted it as a forest reserve, officially
Enabling Equitable Collective Action in Eastern Africa 225
excluding people from the area. Up until the 1970s, cultivation in the forest was
forbidden, and the forest was largely intact. Through an informal understanding, the Benet (Ndorobo) were allowed to continue hunting and gathering in
the forest and cultivating in the moorlands. At that time the forest was overseen
jointly by the Forest Department and community leaders. The Benet continued
to occupy the area until 1983, when the Government of Uganda changed the
official designation of the area to Mount Elgon Forest Park, forcing all people
still residing within the park’s boundaries to leave the protected area. This,
in effect, cut the Benet off from their traditional resource base and livelihood
system. Prolonged pressure from the Benet community (a group of elders) and
district leaders caused part of the forest reserve to be degazetted for use by the
Benet. However, some of the Benet were not resettled and remained landless.
Livelihood changes induced by resettlement and growth in the human and livestock populations have increased the pressure on park resources, compromising
both livelihood and conservation objectives.
In 1993, the Government of Uganda again changed the designation of the
protected area to Mount Elgon National Park, shifting management from the
Forest Department to the Uganda Wildlife Authority. This led to tighter restrictions on protected-area access by local people, further souring relations between
communities and park staff and intensifying the illegal harvesting of park
resources by local residents—a practice tacitly accepted by park rangers. Harsh
enforcement of exclusionary policies resulted in rapid deterioration of the relations between the Benet and the government. Livestock grazing and cultivation
of Irish potatoes in the moorlands were prohibited, and any Benet homes found
inside the protected area were burned. Benet elders, with the support of Action
Aid and Land Alliance, formed a legal entity called the Benet Lobby Group.
The Benet Lobby Group and Benet Settlers Association worked at the local and
national levels to increase the awareness of immediate risks to their livelihoods.
They initiated and sustained a court case against the Government of Uganda
until its resolution in favor of the Benet in 2005. Exclusionary policies had a
number of other negative spin-offs; for instance, protected-area officials encouraged bribes from local elites (mostly non-Benet) for access to forest resources.
Also, women and children who entered the park to collect forest products without paying bribes were physically abused. Communication between local communities and the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) had largely broken down.
In 1995 a new co-management policy was implemented for all protected
areas in Uganda. This policy was designed to improve relations with local
people through the sharing of the benefits of and responsibilities for park management and conservation. Participatory action research was conducted in two
communities neighboring the national park to explore approaches to reducing
conflict and enhancing the benefits flowing to customary rights holders.
APPROACH. The Kapchorwa District Landcare Chapter (KADLACC), with
support from AHI, has worked to end this impasse between the Benet and UWA.
The intervention strategy included the following steps:
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• Participatory stakeholder mapping with district stakeholders to identify
relevant stakeholders for co-management and benefit sharing.
• Focus group discussions facilitated by KADLACC with each of the identified stakeholder groups: four Benet villages located in the degazetted
zone, UWA (community rangers with their sector head), and the Benet
living outside the resettlement zone.
• Stakeholder meeting facilitated by district champions to initiate dialogue
on co-management among relevant government departments, communitybased organizations, farmer groups, and NGOs. A consensus was reached
on key issues from the community’s point of view, and community members presented requests for technologies that could address their livelihood
and conservation needs.
• A visit by KADLACC to the UWA sector warden’s office to communicate
the Benet’s interest in acquiring technologies found at the UWA field
office. UWA obliged by providing tree and fodder planting materials.
• A district-level meeting facilitated by KADLACC involving community
representatives, subcounty council members, the UWA sector head, district leaders, and local government departments. The following were
discussed: (1) the livelihood consequences of conservation and (2) possibilities for co-management of the park despite an ongoing court case
between the Benet and UWA. The dialogue resulted in the development
of an action plan, including specified days when the Benet can collect
honey and bamboo shoots, in exchange for community contributions to
the control of illegal activities within park boundaries.7
• Informal discussions between community members and KADLACC on
the types of activities that could be negotiated to further build the relationship with UWA while posing no significant threat to the conservation
objectives of the protected area.
• Multistakeholder meetings facilitated by KADLACC at the parish level
with community representatives, an UWA official, and representatives of
subcounty government to elicit community views on protected-area management and negotiate rights and responsibilities in co-management.
OUTCOMES. The reconciliation process was jump-started by UWA efforts
to share technologies with the Benet and to initiate collaboration around mutual
interests. Representatives were identified for each stakeholder group, and a
trust-building process was initiated at different levels of organization. Through
informal lobbying, the parties were sensitized to each other’s points of view,
and agreements were reached on how to facilitate the development of a shared
understanding among the stakeholders. During the negotiation process, UWA
7. Such activities include nonpermitted activities for the involved villages, as well as all
activities by others (those without customary rights or negotiated access agreements).
Enabling Equitable Collective Action in Eastern Africa 227
representatives and the Benet were encouraged to consider the interests of the
other party, with the conservation of biodiversity forming an agreed “bottom
line” objective based on conditions set by UWA for engagement in dialogue.
This enabled them to move beyond the former positioning around particular
outcomes (for instance, total exclusion versus restoration of the Benet’s historical tenure and use rights) to dialogue around resource use options that would
not compromise the bottom line while ensuring that the needs of both parties
would be better met. This led the Benet to expand their expectations beyond
land rights to include access to resources within park boundaries. The two parties were then able to reach a mutual agreement on shared custodianship of the
park. This was associated with strengthened access rights for customary users
of resources within park boundaries (Figure 7.3) in exchange for their assistance in regulating access by outsiders and led to a reduction in the number of
arrests per week. Only time will tell whether this innovation can be sustained
and whether it will produce any improvements in the resource base.
LESSONS LEARNED. A number of lessons may be derived from this early
stage of co-management. First, the role of a neutral facilitator cannot be overemphasized. KADLACC provided a forum for both parties to engage positively
despite their history of conflict and an ongoing court case that had kept enmities
strong. Given the negative social and economic costs of conflict, in the most
serious conflicts there may be opportunities for reconciliation with appropriate
mediation. A first gesture of reconciliation (in this case, UWA’s sharing the
FIGURE 7.3 Changes observed in local indicators in 2006 following methodological
innovations for co-management in Kapchorwa District, Uganda
Change observed
100
1,500
Before
After
80
60
40
20
0
Head loads
Number of
of bamboo
households
products harvested collecting park
per week
resources
per week
SOURCE:
Tanui (2006).
Heads of
livestock
illegally grazed
in park
Number of days
livestock are
allowed into
park per
week
Number of
arrests or fines
per week
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Laura German et al.
requested technologies with farmers) can also go a long way toward thawing
tense relations. A second lesson for engaging in negotiations involving prior
conflict is the need to respect stakeholders’ “bottom lines” (in this case, biodiversity conservation for UWA) while fostering shared sacrifices (here, the
granting of increased access rights to neighboring communities in exchange for
their assistance in policing against the entry of those without customary rights).
If only one party is seen to compromise for an outcome beneficial to the other
party, the party bearing most of the costs with the least benefit will quickly
withdraw from dialogue. This supports the observation in the collective action
literature that the perceived benefits of collective action must be equal to or
greater than the costs (Ostrom 1990). Finally, parallel multistakeholder dialogues at diverse levels may help to bridge the gap between policy intent (in
this case, co-management of protected areas) and action on the ground. In this
case, UWA representatives at higher levels within the administrative hierarchy
were found to have more favorable attitudes toward co-management than park
guards, attitudes which could be leveraged to support behavioral changes
among park guards and increase the chances of a more equitable solution.
Discussion and Conclusions
Local communities were found to have a rich array of collective action institutions, which in turn provide a variety of economic and social support functions.
Although some of these were seen to support some groups more than others, most
forms of collective action were found to have a positive effect on local livelihoods. The practices of several external agencies were found to be biased by
wealth, gender, or levels of political influence, and greater attention must be given
to methods for fostering more equitable forms of development assistance.
Despite the apparent benefits derived from local forms of collective action,
they were seldom found to foster solutions to priority NRM problems other than
the provision of inputs (land, labor, capital). Action research findings illustrate
the potential for improving livelihoods and fostering more sustainable use of
natural resources by catalyzing collective action on NRM where it is absent.
Effective collective action seems to require the use of both informal negotiation
support processes and formal bylaw reform and enforcement. Participatory bylaw
reform creates stakeholder buy-in, which reduces ambiguity and makes people
feel more accountable to other parties for their actions. A combination of formal
and informal mechanisms is needed to revitalize natural resource governance and
related livelihood and environmental service outcomes. NGOs, community-based
organizations, or local governments can play an important role in reducing the
transaction costs of organizing through information provision, community mobilization, facilitation, advocacy, monitoring, and negotiation support.
Our findings support the two research hypotheses. Strategies to improve
NRM at the farm and landscape levels were more effective when more equi-
Enabling Equitable Collective Action in Eastern Africa 229
table decisionmaking processes were used that explicitly acknowledged diverse
“stakes.” Bylaws helped in holding each party accountable for following the
resolutions reached through negotiations. Adapting bylaws to local conditions
and to stakeholder priorities also induced livelihood improvements by enabling
collective action and technology adoption. But bylaws need enforcement. Our
study suggests that participation in bylaw formulation increases the likelihood
of rule compliance and of offenders’ adherence to sanctions, provided that these
rules are backed by formal or informal means of enforcement. Improved governance of natural resources is a process that involves overcoming past expectations and behaviors, such as individualized solutions, nonpayment of loans, and
nonenforcement of bylaws, and gradually learning the value of collective solutions built on trust.
Implications for Practitioners and Policymakers
There are three particular implications of our findings for NRM practitioners and
policymakers. First, collective action serves critical development and social support functions in local communities. Development organizations should seek
ways to build on local institutions that are highly valued or seen to contribute most
to local livelihood goals, in particular for women and poorer households.
Second, by failing to serve the needs of disadvantaged groups, any development intervention can result in winners and losers or simply exacerbate existing socioeconomic inequalities. Extension and development organizations must
make greater efforts to understand their clientele and their diverse circumstances prior to development interventions and to identify different political or
economic interests within a community that could be fostered or undermined
through a particular intervention (as well as socially optimal solutions8). They
must then learn to work explicitly with these diverse groups and divergent
political interests to foster more equitable solutions to development and NRM
challenges through stakeholder identification and negotiation support. More
effort must also be given to monitoring the outcomes for different social groups.
Third, fostering equitable collective action where it is absent requires an
understanding of local interest groups, informal negotiation of solutions among
these groups, and a means to formally endorse collective-choice rules (whether
through local government, customary leaders, or another moral authority seen
as legitimate by all parties). A well-facilitated process of participatory bylaw
reform may create stakeholder buy-in, thereby reducing the cost of enforcement
and ambiguity. However, bylaw enforcement by communities themselves is a
challenge, because it involves sanctioning friends and relatives. In many cases,
there may be complementary roles for moral persuasion (as a first option) and
8. These may be defined by their ability to benefit all social actors and to ensure that no harm
is done to any given group or individual.
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for local government or another form of authority to assist in the enforcement
of collective-choice rules (as a second option). In many situations, neither formal nor informal mechanisms for rule formulation and enforcement would be
fully effective without the other.
Local forms of collective action emphasize enhancing incomes and “safetynet” functions, leaving many common NRM problems unaddressed. Many
individualized efforts at NRM are undermined by the effort that must be expended
relative to the returns, as seen in the case studies on controlling excess run-off
and pests. External support for “horizontal” negotiations among local resource
users combined with technological inputs can go a long way in supporting collective solutions to NRM problems. There is also an urgent need for NGOs,
local governments, and other development actors to facilitate the evolution of
democratic governance through the development of collective-choice rules at
the local level as a means to address environmental concerns while operationalizing (largely ignored) national environmental policies.
Mechanisms and incentives for institutional cooperation toward more
equitable and negotiated solutions to NRM are sorely needed. The partitioning
of mandates among research, extension, and law enforcement agencies causes
these issues to be treated separately and important synergies to be lost. Rural
development and law enforcement agencies need to forge partnerships and synergies to revitalize natural resource governance at the local level. Managers of
research and development organizations must also seek ways to bridge the gap
between knowledge generation and development practice. This may include
providing increased support to action research (with appropriate support from
social theory) or enhanced efforts by those engaged in research to go further
downstream in supporting development practitioners—building knowledge on
social theory and increasing their efforts to integrate this understanding into
everyday extension and facilitation practices.
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