Local Policies and Institutions

on this page: Phase 1—Social Capital, Byelaw Reforms and Technology Adoption in Kabale, Uganda
Phase 2—Byelaw Reforms in Ethiopia, Uganda and Tanzania

In the absence of regulations on natural resource management behaviour, the actions of some individuals may have negative consequences on other land users. Technology adoption may also be hindered through failure to harmonize interactions between neighbouring land users through agreed upon regulations. Local policies ("byelaws") provide one mechanism for motivating individual land users to think about the consequences of their actions on others, and therefore for minimizing conflict. Informal rules and norms are also a defining element of local institutions that enable them to regulate individual behaviour (i.e. rates of resource extraction) to sustain shared resources like water, grazing land or community forests. AHI has developed and piloted approaches for integrating technological innovation with stakeholder negotiations and innovations in local institutions and byelaws.

AHI's work on local policies and institutions has been operationalized in two distinct phases of action-based research. The approach was first spearheaded through the project "Strengthening Social Capital for Improving Policies and Decision-Making in NRM," funded by DfID and implemented in Kabale District, Uganda from 2001 to 2004. The second and more recent approach is being piloted through a project funded by the system-wide programme on Collective Action and Property Rights (CAPRi) entitled, "Whose Voices? Whose Choices? Enabling Equitable Collective Action & Policy Change for Natural Resources Management." This project has been implemented in AHI watershed sites of Ethiopia (Areka and Ginchi) and Uganda (Kabale and Kapchorwa) since 2004. Similar work has been conducted simultaneously in Lushoto District, Tanzania, with support from SDC and the Rockefeller Foundation.

PHASE 1—SOCIAL CAPITAL, BYELAW REFORMS AND TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION IN KABALE, UGANDA

The purpose of this project was to strengthen social capital, improve local institutions and policies, and to integrate participatory approaches to policy formulation and implementation with dissemination of NRM technologies in the highlands of Kabale District. The project explicitly addressed three key aspects of sustainable livelihoods: social capital, natural capital, and policy and institutions.

The approach integrated case studies to analyze social capital and livelihood strategies; participatory assessment of land degradation; action research for participatory policy reforms; and participatory NRM. The participatory policy reforms concentrated on four key steps:

  1. Facilitating community visioning and planning of desired future conditions;
  2. Participatory policy analysis;
  3. Linking bottom-up processes to higher level policy processes through policy dialogue and policy learning events, and
  4. Supporting policy action at different levels.
The project stimulated and facilitated social learning processes to increase skills and knowledge of communities, their leadership capacity and their motivation to act and create conditions for the formulation and implementation of community byelaws and local policies for improved natural resources management. Research on the different dimensions of social capital increased understanding of how social capital is activated in the pursuit of livelihood goals, particularly how access to or exclusion from social capital influences access to other forms of capital, and hence livelihood choices and outcomes. Results confirmed that social capital alone does not enable broad-based and sustainable NRM. Rather, complementarities and synergies between social capital and local policies are required to improve NRM.

The application of the After Action Review (AAR) tool was found useful to facilitate farmers to reflect on the achievements, lessons and challenges of the process of formulating and implementing byelaws, community action plans and functioning policy task forces. A community-based participatory monitoring and evaluation system was used to track indicators and for process documentation in pilot communities, including outcomes mapping, social network analysis and participatory land degradation tools. These were used to assess the outcomes, uptake, preliminary impacts and conditions for sustainability of village policy task forces and selected byelaws.

Village byelaw committees and policy taskforces were initiated and supported at different levels, and their capacities to review, initiate, formulate and implement byelaws and other local policies strengthened. Byelaws on soil conservation, tree planting, controlled animal grazing, alcohol consumption, wetland management and bush burning have been implemented with different levels of success in the pilot communities. Specifically the project addressed the challenge of linking field level findings with policy making, and developing ways of accelerating and scaling up the adoption of NRM innovations.

The project has generated interest from local institutions and local government in three key areas:

  • Participatory processes for developing indicators and tracking changes with farmers, especially indicators related to behavioural changes and outcomes rather than impacts;
  • Training and capacity building of local leaders on important skills and knowledge, of particular interest to the sub-county local government; and
  • A process and mechanisms for developing an exit strategy and involving farmers in designing such a strategy, to ensure continuity in the project's achievements and byelaw reform processes.

PHASE 2—BYELAW REFORMS IN ETHIOPIA, UGANDA AND TANZANIA

The primary objective of the CAPRi-funded project is to develop and document successful approaches for facilitating equitable collective action processes and negotiated natural resource management solutions, including:

  1. Increased dialogue between researchers, policy makers, service providers and local communities in improving the livelihoods of vulnerable groups ("voices"),
  2. Increased involvement of vulnerable groups (the poor, women, others) and relevant local stakeholders in natural resource decision-making and policy formulation ("choices"), and
  3. Monitoring of outcomes to diverse social groups ("benefits").

Several hypotheses guide this work. The first is that strategies to improve natural resource management at farm and landscape levels will be more effective if decision-making on technologies and natural resource governance is equitable, given the broad social support required to sustain collective action. The second hypothesis is that increased capacity to develop better designed and more equitable by-laws will improve livelihoods by enabling technology adoption, enhancing collective action in natural resource management, and reducing the need for by-law enforcement. These hypotheses are being tested through four discrete stages: a situation analysis enabling the identification to key barriers to livelihoods and collective action and establishment of a baseline; stakeholder workshops to share findings and agree on themes and strategies for action research; action research to improve collective action and equity in natural resource management; and an impact assessment. Prioritization of action research issues was based on whether the topic: required change at multiple levels (at local level and within outside institutions or policies); involved existing inequities or required close attention to diverse local priorities when fostering change; and was likely to bring change over the life of the project. Topics prioritized by stakeholders in each site are highlighted in Table 1.

TABLE 1. NRM ISSUES REQUIRING NEGOTIATIONS AND LOCAL BYELAWS IN ETHIOPIAN SITES
Site Action Research Priorities
Areka, Ethiopia 1. Spring development (appropriate tree species, spring maintenance)
2. Technology dissemination for equity
3. Boundary tree management
4. Collective action for control of pests, disease and wild animals
Ginchi, Ethiopia 1. Soil and water conservation (gulley stabilization, common drainage, CA)
2. Spring management and use (trees, long-term supply, maintenance)
3. Niche-compatible agroforestry (negotiating compatible trees near springs and cropland)
Kabale, Uganda 1. Collective action on soil conservation between communities in upper and lower parts of the catchment
2. Harmonizing policies between conservation zones and adjacent communities
3. Reducing land boundary conflicts
4. Enhancing women's decision-making over land tenure and use
5. Enhancing effectiveness of existing byelaws on livestock grazing
Kapchorwa, Uganda 1. Collective action on enterprise development
2. Negotiating inclusion in protected area management and benefits sharing
3. Negotiation and conflict resolution in watershed management
Lushoto, Tanzania 1. Protection of springs, waterways and irrigation canals
2. Management of farm, estate and mission boundaries
3. Free grazing and fodder cultivation

The action research phase was initiated in 2005, making it premature to distil lessons and findings. It has become clear, however, that regulations on the behaviour of individual land owners are crucial to livelihoods, equity and sustainability. While national policies on water protection and free grazing are widespread, these are often poorly implemented due to ineffective enforcement mechanisms and/or failure to adjust them to local conditions and constraints. National policies on riparian protection, for example, fail to consider the crucial role of valley bottoms in Lushoto, Tanzania, in local livelihoods—making policies impossible to implement unless the specifications (i.e. width of protected areas) are loosened. National policies prohibiting free grazing in Ethiopia fail to acknowledge the critical importance of livestock in rural incomes and risk aversion, or specify how livestock will be fed. Yet despite limited enforcement of national policies, local people do value the need for rules and regulations on land management and suffer from the consequences of poor governance. Byelaw negotiations are lively events that easily sustain the interest of participants. Local residents can easily identify issues requiring improved governance as well as appropriate policy specifications, illustrating the importance of natural resource governance to local livelihoods and sustainable NRM.