Collaborative Management in Mount Elgon National Park,
Uganda
Marte Sletten 2004
Noragric. University of Environment and Bioscience
ABSTRACT
In 1993 Mt. Elgon was de-regulated to a national park. The change in conservation status had tremendous negative impact for the Bagisu and the Sabiny people, since they for generations have relied on the forest for livelihood, income generation and cultural activities. As a result of the raising conflicts between local people and park authorities concerning resources, UWA, facilitated by IUCN, has implemented collaborative management at MENP, where rights to resources are traded with duty to manage. The new management strategy aims at implementing Collaborative Resource Management Agreement in all forest-adjacent parishes. As collaborative management is in its initial phase in Uganda, little is known about management measures, degree of participation, efficiency and legitimacy, and I have therefore conducted a research in Kapkwai and Tangwen parishes in Kapchorwa district based on household interviews and key informant interviews in order to discuss these four aspects concerning the collaborative Management.
The findings suggest that the Collaborative Resource Management Agreements as documents are constructed by the use of administrative, pedagogic, economic and legal management instrument, which represent increasing degree of powers (normative, remunerative and coercive). When analyzing the construction of the collaborative management findings show that participation is viewed as a means to reach management goals. People are involved late in the process, meet predetermined goals given by UWA and a few local people form a committee with predetermined mandate to monitor and implement sanctions to prevent illegal resource collection. Some resources are non-negotiable due to conservation goals, and negotiations are not between equal parts. The analysis of the agreements as effective long-endurable institutions include properties of the resource, the user group, the relation between resource and user group, institutional arrangements, relationships between the resource and the institution and the external environment. The results indicate that several of the aspects acknowledged by common-pool institution scholars to be crucial in such institutions are not fulfilled.
However, some of these are of a kind possible to improve in future agreements, and the results provide a list of possible areas of improvement. Finally, the findings confirm that the relationship between the local people and the park authorities have considerable improved as a result of the collaborative management. This is also the situation for people from parishes in the initial state of negotiating an agreement. The findings moreover suggest that the agreements introduce tensions between agreement- holders and their neighbors without agreements.
1
1 Introduction ... 7
1.1 Background ... 7
1.2 Problem Statement ... 9
1.3 Objectives ... 10
1.4 Justification ... 11
1.5 Thesis Structure ... 12
2 Literature Review ... 13
2.1 Mt.Elgon: Context and History ... 13
2.2 Decentralization, Collaboration and Community Conservation ... 15
2.3 Power Use and Responses ... 17
2.4 Local participation ... 18
2.5 Forest Resource-based Conflicts ... 23
2.6 Common-pool Resources and Property Rights Regimes ... 27
3 Study Area ... 31
3.1 Physical description of the Environment ... 31
3.2 Local People in the Past ... 33
3.3 Administrative and Economic Data of Today ... 37
3.4 Forest Resource Use of Today ... 39
4 Methodology ... 45
4.1 Sample ... 45
4.2 Representativity ... 46
4.3 Methods ... 47
4.4 Analysis ... 51
4.5 Critique of Methodology ... 52
5 Collaborative Resource Management Agreements ... 53
5.1 The Agreements ... 53
5.2 Local Participation ... 60
5.3 Durable Social Institutions ... 80
5.4 Conflicts - Local people and park authorities ... 166
6 Conclusion and Recommendations ... 189
6.1 The Collaborative Resource Management Agreement as Documents ... 189
6.2 The Local Participation present in the Construction of the Collaborative Management ... 189
6.3 The Collaborative Resource Management Agreements as Durable Local Management Institutions ... 190
6.4 The Collaborative Management‟s Impact on Relationships between Local People and Park Authorities as well as Among Local people ... 191
6.5 Recommendations ... 192 2
3
Figure 1 Continuum of participation. Modification from Borrini-Feyerabend 1996 (Beck, 2000) ... 22 Figure 2 Attendance in meetings. Mt.Elgon, Uganda, 2002. ... 76 Figure 3 The respondents‟ roles in the meetings. Mt.Elgon, Uganda, 2002. ... 77 Figure 4 Perception of the effect of sensitizing about conservation measures. Mt.Elgon, Uganda, 2002. ... 95 Figure 5 Opinions about illegal forest resource use. Mt. Elgon, Uganda, 2002. ... 97 Figure 6 Opinions about the RUC Chairmen, Kapkwai and Tangwen. Mt. Elgon, Uganda, 2002. ... 145 Figure 7: Opinions about RUC and about the chairman. Kapkwai, Mt.Egon, Uganda, 2002.
... 146 Figure 8: Opinions about RUC and about the Chairman. Tangwen, Mt. Elgon, Uganda, 2002.
... 146 Figure 9 Percentages of males and females collecting various resources, Kapkwai and Tangwen parishes. ... 150 Figure 10 Percentages of Sabiny and Bagisu collecting different resources, Kapkwai and Tangwen parishes. ... 150 Figure 11 Lorentz curves for land ownersship in Kapkwai and Tangwen. ... 154 Figure 12 People‟s perception of relationship to park authorities before collaborative management, Kapkwai and Tangwen. Source: Mt.Elgon, Uganda 2002... 168 Figure 13 People‟s perception of relationship to park authorities after collaborative management, Kapkwai and Tangwen. Source: Mt.Elgon, Uganda 2002... 173 4
5
Table 1 A functional framework for community conservation in Africa (from Barrow et al.,
2000) ... 16
Table 2 Typology of participation, based on Pretty, 1995. ... 21
Table 3 Classification of conflicts, based on Amtziz 1995, Thieba et al. 1995, Chandrasekharan 1996, Traoré et al. 1996, Villarreal 1996. Adapted from Desloges et al. 1998:39. ... 24
Table 4 Factors imposing forest-resource based conflicts in Uganda, adapted from Gombya- Ssembajjwe et al, 2000:58-59. ... 24
Table 5 UWA conservation strategy plan, Chhetri et. al, 2003... 26
Table 6 Property right regimes, based on Bromley et. al, 1989: ... 27
Table 7 Conditions for long-enduring management institutions. Adopted from National Research Council (2001:62-63). RW=Wade, EO=Ostrom, B&P=Baland & Platteau. Other principles added by Agrawal. ... 29
Table 8 Mt. Elgon‟s conservation values. Extracted from Hoefslott, 1997. ... 33
Table 9 The most important resource collected and their use (Scott, 1994). ... 40
Table 10 Type of information collected for preparing the collaborative management agreements at Mt Elgon NP. Barrow et al, 1999. ... 61
Table 11 Summary of the process described by UWA and by local people in Kapkwai and Tangwen. ... 71
Table 12 Pretty's typology of participation (Pretty, 1995), combined with findings from Mt.Elgon NP, Uganda, 2002. ... 72
Table 13 Participation in relation to forest resource collection. Mt. Elgon, Uganda, 2002. .... 74
Table 14 Participation in relation to sex, tribe age and education. Mt. Elgon Uganda, 2002. . 75
Table 15 Individual resource collection. Kapkwai and Tangwen and total. Numbers in percentages. Mt.Elgon Uganda, 2002. ... 87
Table 16 Resources missed in agreement, pr person, for Kapkwai and Tangwen. ... 96
Table 17 Land owned by local people in Kapkwai and Tangwen. Mt.Elgon, Uganda, 2002. . 99
Table 18 Number of animals possessed by local people in Kapkwai and Tangwen. Mt.Elgon, Uganda 2002. ... 99
Table 19 Resources used pr household in Kapkwai and Tangwen, in percents. Mt.Elgon, Uganda, 2002. ... 102
Table 20 The percentage of households buying resources for consumption in Kapkwai and Tangwen. Mt.Elgon, Uganda, 2002. ... 104
Table 21 Roles and responsibilities given to the Resource Use Committee and UWA. Mt.Elgon, Uganda 2002. ... 109
Table 22 Rules and regulations provided in the CM agreements, extracted from the collaborative Resource Management Agreements, Mt.Elgon, Uganda, 2002. Appendix 1. ... 115
Table 23 Market prices for forest resources before and after the collaborative management. Mt. Elgon, Uganda, 2002. ... 133
Table 24 Illegal activities classified, adapted from draft operational manual (LER 2002). .. 135
Table 25 Revenue sharing with local communities around Mt. Elgon NP. Chhetri et al. 2003) ... 138
Table 26 Tribal composition in Kapkwai and Tangwen. Mt. Elgon, Uganda, 2002. ... 147
Table 27:Tribal composition in Kapkwai parish. Source Mt.Elgon, Uganda, 2002. ... 147
Table 28 Tribal composition of Tangwen parish. Source Mt.Elgon, Uganda, 2002. ... 148
Table 29: Self-collection of resources by gender and tribe, Kapkwai and Tangwen parishes.
... 148
Table 30 Mean number of resources collected, by gender and by tribe, Kapkwai and Tangwen. Mt. Elgon, Uganda, 2002. ... 151
Table 31 Mean self-collection of resources combined for Kapkwai and Tangwen. ... 152
Table 32 Years of education, Kapkwai and Tangwen... 153
Table 33 Number of people in households, Kapkwai and Tangwen. ... 153
Table 34 Plot size, Kapkwai and Tangwen. ... 154
Table 35 Tribal differences in animals held. Include cattle, goat, sheep, pig and donkey. ... 155
Table 36 Tribal differences in animals held in the NP before the collaborative management. ... 156
Table 36 Relationship between ethnicity and inclusion of outsiders. Source: Mt.Elgon, Uganda, 2002. ... 177
Table 37 Relationship between gender and inclusion of outsiders. Source: Mt.Elgon, Uganda, 2002. ... 177
Table 38 Changes in conflicts before and after the collaborative management at Mt. Elgon. Kapkwai, Tegeres, Chemosong, Tangwen, Gamatui, Kabeywa parishes, Uganda, 2002. ... 186
1. Introduction
1.1 Background
The last hundred years, the „Fortress Management Approach‟ has been the leading policy in Sub Saharan African natural resource management. With focus on conservation of environment, wildlife and biodiversity, the local people has been excluded from the areas and denied consumptive use of the natural resources, and the state has had the total control of the management (Hulme & Murphree, 2001). However, this approach has not been successful due to several factors: expansion of both populations and protected areas and thus less agricultural land, lack of legitimacy for confiscating usufruct rights of natural resources, and thereby evolving conflicts between rangers of the regulated area and local people. The policies have not been respected, and the vulnerable natural resources heavy utilized. (Vedeld, 2002).
Unsuccessful management has led to the ‟Community Conservation Approach‟. The new approach legitimizes sustainable use in order to achieve both development and conservation in an area, and local people participate in the management (Hulme & Murphree, 2001, Pretty, 1995). The approach leads to new sets of problems, namely how to combine conservation and development successfully, and how to achieve a long lasting and fruitful participatory management (Hulme & Murphree, 2001).
The study site Mt. Elgon is located on the border between Uganda and Kenya 100 km north of Lake Victoria. The mountain represents the eastern limit of various species of flora characteristic for tropical forests of West and Central Africa, and the western limit of various Afro-Alpine species, which makes the area biologically significant on a global scale. The Ugandan part of the ecosystem is mainly regulated as national park. In 1994 there was conducted a resource use assessment (Scott, 1994) in 6 parishes bordering the national park on the Ugandan side. The results suggest an extensive forest dependency in terms of number of resources used and people involved, as well as intensive forest use based on frequency and time spent in the forest. The most important resources collected are firewood, bamboo shoots and stems, medicinal plants, polewood, crop stakes, wild vegetables, mushrooms, honey, circumcision sticks, crafts, timber and ropes. In addition to being means of subsistence, the resource use is also partly culturally linked, connected with ancestors and ceremonies. Scott
finds that dependency is unlikely to decrease in the nearest future because it represents a substantial economic value for the local people (Scott, 1994).
Historically, all over Uganda this kind of resource use has been managed through customary regulations. In 1938 Mt.Elgon was gazetted as Forest Reserve (Ditiro, 2003), and from that time access to resources was provided through systems of permits (Barrow et.al, 2000). The Forest Act of 1964 allowed local people to use commercially less important forest products and non-timber products in „reasonable‟ quantities for domestic use, while permissions were required for residing, cultivating and grazing inside the forest reserve (Ditiro, 2003).
However, the regulation was easy to abuse, since few responsibilities were attached to the permissions (Barrow et al., 2000).
In 1993 a deregulation from forest reserve to national park imposed tremendous negative impact on local people‟s livelihoods, since any resource extraction became illegal. People were denied access to for them valuable resources that had always been there for free, and conflicts arose between conservation rangers and the locals. After a period of unsuccessful preservation policy, Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) has introduced various Collaborative Resource Management Agreements to the local people in a few parishes adjacent the national park border in order to legalize some degree of forest resource use. The agreements are results of negotiations with local people, and give both rights and duties to the locals. The aims of the agreements are to achieve biodiversity conservation, promote development and ease the relationship between local people and management authorities. Various pilot agreements have evolved over the last few years, and the initial agreements gave people limited access to just a few forest resources. The last and most comprehensive are the Collaborative Resource Management Agreements, which gives local people the right to enter the national park on several fixed weekdays in order to collect specified forest resources. Variations over Collaborative Resource Management Agreements are currently introduced in the five national parks Bwindi, Rwenzori, Kibale, Semliki and Mt.Elgon, in addition to Buto-Buwuma, Budongo and Mabira forest reserves. Collaborative management is now in the process of establishment in several parishes in all three districts around Mt.Elgon. These Collaborative Resource Management Agreements are the object of my study.
1.2 Problem Statement
The balance between meeting basic human needs and securing the earth‟s biodiversity is difficult. Extensive use has degraded many ecosystems all over the world, in spite of attempts to manage the resources well. It is important to establish a management approach that takes care of both natural resources and people. Local people‟s dependency on the forest is likely to continue. In addition agricultural land is reduced in size when conservation areas are established, combined with rapid population growth. Thus the forest use is maybe even more crucial to people now than 10 years ago. It is therefore important to know more about how the agreements interfere with local communities, park rangers and the natural resources.
There are many different ways that conservation authorities can choose to handle the problems present at Mt. Elgon. Hulme and Murphree‟s definition of community conservation illustrate that a great variety of management arrangements are covered: „Ideas, policies, practices and behaviors that seek to give those who live in rural environments greater involvement in managing the natural resources (…) that exists in an areas in which they reside (…) and/or greater access to benefits derived from those resources.‟ (Hulme & Murphree, 2001:4). What does the Collaborative Resource Management Agreements at Mt. Elgon imply and introduce? The Community conservation represents many difficulties, and the specific collaborative management at Mt.Elgon expressed in the agreements is supposed to both secure biodiversity conservation, promote development and improve relationships between local people and park authorities.
I have thus chosen to look deeper into four key aspects of the collaborative management at Mt.Elgon.
What do the agreements represent in terms of management measures and participation?
Do the collaborative management represent participation?
Do the agreements contribute to sustainable management of the ecosystem?
Do the agreements ease tensions between stakeholders?
1.3 Objectives
1.3.1 Objective 1
What do the Collaborative Resource Management Agreements represent as collaborative management?
1. The degree of power and kinds of management measures used in the Collaborative Resource Management Agreements.
2. Do the agreements as documents display local participation?
1.3.2 Objective 2
Are the Collaborative Resource Management Agreements products of local participation?
Research questions:
1. How was the process of constructing the agreements, e.g. the resource use survey and the negotiation?
2. In what way were local people included in the construction of the agreements?
1.3.3 Objective 3
Are the Collaborative Resource Management Agreements durable local management institutions according to common pool resource theory?
1. To identify key constraints for the collaborative management institution at Mt.Elgon National Park.
1.3.4 Objective 4
Do the Collaborative Resource Management Agreements improve relationships between local people and park authority and among local people?
1. How has the interaction between actors changed after Collaborative Resource Management Agreements have been implemented?
2. Have the relationships between actors in a parish with Collaborative Resource Management Agreements changed?
3. Have the interaction between actors from parishes with and without Collaborative Resource Management Agreements changed?
1.1 Justification
The management of an ecosystem has been changed, and it is important to assess the results and see what has been achieved so far. Any policy should be evaluated in order to ensure that the wanted and needed output occurs, and evaluation is even more important when the policy is representing a new approach in a field. Community conservation and participation has become an abundant management strategy, but so far little research is done on the achievements (Hulme and Murphree, 2001). More research on outputs is necessary to do vice adjustments and improvements. This study will hopefully give future appraisals some guidance of where to set the focus.
In Uganda there are currently 5 National Parks, namely Mgahinga, Semliki, Kibale, Bwindi and Rwenzori, where similar Resource Access Agreements are being, or have already been, implemented. Also in other states similar agreements are put into practice. Experiences from one place might throw light on a problem occurring in an area far away.
When institutions like these agreements are put into practice, they impose a tremendous impact on ecosystem, local communities, as well as the park authority. It is therefore not only important to look into present status of the management to ensure that they lead to a successful output, but it is just as important to ensure that the new management actually is durable. Little is achieved if the agreements are likely to collapse after a relatively short time span, since management of ecosystems require continuity.
Local participation is expensive because of high administrative cost due to the need of high quality staff with local knowledge (Hulme and Murphree, 2001). Since the management of Mt.Elgon National Park is currently economically unsustainable, the National Park relies on donor funding. Both in order to receive funding and ensure beneficial use of development aid, it is important to verify that the management strategy has a successful outcome.
It is difficult to establish local collaboration, and Mt. Elgon National Park is not any exception. By this research I want to assess what is successful and what might be problematic with the Resource Access Agreements. I hope to contribute to a better understanding of the relevant mechanisms in the local communities, so that management institutions and local
people will be able to learn from earlier experiences in order to achieve a better management of the ecosystem.
1.2 Thesis Structure
The thesis consists of 5 chapters. Chapter 2 gives a presentation and discussion of literature relevant for the field of study, as well as the context and history of Mt. Elgon National Park.
Chapter 3 provides a description of the study area and presents the methodology. In chapter 4 the results are presented and the findings are discussed. The four objectives are treated separately. Chapter 5 contains conclusions and recommendations.
2 Literature Review
2.1 Mt.Elgon: Context and History
2.1.1 The Colonial Period
Uganda was colonised by Great Britain in the period 1890-1962, and the then called Elgon District of British East Africa were during „the times of discovering‟ in the scope of various wildlife researches. Emphasis was put on both flora and fauna, new species were found, hunting was carried out in the name of science (Jankulovska, 2003), and also a social anthropology research on the local tribes was conducted in 1919 (Roscoe, 1924).
Between 1921 and 1930 the first organised timber exploitation was licensed by and to Englishmen, and timber was sold in Kenya (Synott, 1968). In 1929-1930 and again in 1936- 1937 there were attempts by the colonial power to establish borders of the forest, and in 1938 Mt.Elgon was gazetted as forest reserve under the Forest Department. Subsequently, there were 20 excisions of local people from the reserve and issued about 70 inheritable licences for living and cultivating in the southern part of the forest reserve late 1930s and early 1940s. In the northern part people were allowed to stay in the forest reserve without individual licence, since the low number of pastorals was causing little damage (Synott, 1968).
A policy review in 1948 both prepared for agriculture vis-à-vis forests as result of population pressure and forest resource exploitation for economic growth. This started the transformation of strict conservation to include human needs (Ditiro, 2003). The Forest Act of 1964 allowed local people to use commercially less important forest products and non-timber products in
„reasonable‟ quantities for domestic use, while permissions were required for residing, cultivating and grazing inside the forest reserve (Ditiro, 2003, Synott, 1968). However, the regulation was easy to abuse, since few responsibilities were attached to the permissions (Barrow et al., 2000), and more weight was put on economic growth compared with conservation (Ditiro, 2003).
The first Working Plan for the Forest Reserve of 1954-1968 put emphasis on preservation and improvement of the vegetation, prepared for exploitation of timber and catered for necessary re-growth. In the northern Kapchorwa District, people were allowed to stay in glades in the forest 2700-3300m a.s.l without individual licence, regardless the forest reserve. The Sabiny people in the area were then grazing cattle and sheep, collecting honey and hunting, and agriculture was limited. Total estimate was 1000-1100 people, 4000 cattle and 3000 sheep in the period 1948-54, all in all causing little damage (Synott, 1968). In 1957-58 there were conducted 47 new evictions in the southern Mbale District, and attempts were made to survey the 20 excisions from 1940, but this failed due to local opposition by the Bagisu people living there. An aerial photography survey and a boundary inspection were carried out in 1959, and it became evident that there was severe encroachment in some areas of the forest reserve. In the 1960s there were attempts to replant in encroachments and reestablishment of forest reserve borders, and conflict level rose between park staff and local people including violent opposition and police prosecution. By 1968, all encroachments had been individually inspected and plots restricted to 6 acres, all with licence (Synott, 1968).
2.1.2 Civil Wars
As a result of Idi Amin‟s coup d‟état in 1970 and the following Civil Wars 1972-1978, the code-of-conduct in the state bureaucracy diminished and the Double Production Campaign occurred. Forests were seen as possible refuges for guerrillas, and thus especially forest reserves were in the scope of timber production. The objectives in the 1968-78 Mt.Elgon working plan was for this reason to replace natural forest with plantation forest and the Double Production Campaign made encroachment acceptable, since the forest should be cleared according to the policy (Hoefsloot, 1997). In the severe encroachment that occurred in the mid 1970s and 1980s at Mt.Elgon, 20 900 ha of afromontane forest and rainforest were completely destroyed, and another 3600 ha damaged (van Heist, 1994, in Hoofsloet, 1997).
In 1978 the Karamojo living on the plains obtained guns with the fall of Amin, and hence forced the Sabiny people further up the mountain slopes. This resulted in the war of land, when the Sabiny fought the Bagisu and forced them back to Mbale district in 1979. In 1983 resettlement by the Sabiny still living inside the Forest reserve was carried out, since the people had converted more and more to agriculture. 6000 ha were excised to be the Benet resettlement area, and according to Hoefsloot, the decision was taken just as much to get some land to the displaced people after the war in 1979, than management measures due to encroachment (Hoofsloet, 1997).
2.1.3 Shifts in Management
The Mt. Elgon Conservation and Development Project MECDP started to operate in 1989, technically facilitated by IUCN, and long-term objectives were conservation of biodiversity, to meet human needs, and to safeguard the water catchments (Scott, 1994).
In 1993 the Forest Reserve was re-regulated to National Park under the jurisdiction of Uganda National Parks and their harsh management approach (Ditiro, 2003). Severe conflicts arose between local people and park rangers (Chhetri et al., 2003, White, 2002), and various moves were made to soften the management approaches, like transfer of rangers from paramilitary style to extension workers, allowing sustainable use of limited resources, including local people in management etc. (Ditiro, 2003).
By 1993 it was recognised that MECDP was too biased towards conservation due to a fortress approach management style and moreover the rural development program was not adequate to sustainable forest resource management. To link sustainable development and conservation more successfully, a collaborative management approach was attempted in 1995. Two parish pilot agreements were established with the effort to trade „right to use for duty to manage‟ to the local people, connecting dependency and maintenance. The Memorandum of Understanding were signed between the local people and the Park Authorities in 1996 (Hinchley et al, 2000).
Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) was established in 1996, receiving authority over the national parks of Uganda (Ditiro, 2003). There has been a further shift towards local participation in the legislation, but still UWA‟s use of employees was in 1997 as low as 4%
on community conservation staff and 69% on security staff and undesignated junior staff (Barrow et al, 2000). By 2003, there were 57 Law Enforcement rangers and 9 Community Conservation rangers at MENP (Chhetri et. al, 2003).
Originally, the entire Mt.Elgon was included in Uganda, but in 1902 the British drawn an inter-territorial boundary dividing Mt.Elgon between Uganda and Kenya (then the East Africa Protectorate) (Synott, 1968). Today, the Ugandan part of the ecosystem is mainly regulated as national park, an area of 1,145 square km and a 211 km long boundary (Hinchley et al, 2000), while the entire Mt.Elgon ecosystem includes two national parks, one national reserve, several forest reserves, open areas and other categories without conservation status.
2.2 Decentralization, Collaboration and Community Conservation
2.2.1 State Policy and Legal Framework
To cater for participation, there is need for a political environment in favour of decentralization. Further on, the concrete transfer of management authority from state to community as well as how community conservation can actual be arranged depends on state policy and legal framework.
2.2.2 Local Council System
When Museveni and the National Resistant Movement (NRM) took the power in 1986, Uganda had experienced a range of centralized policy systems under the British colonialism, Obote I, Idi Amin and Obote II. With NRM, the most excessive decentralization advancement of Uganda‟s history started. Today, there is a hieratically system of local councils (LCs) and attached committees like finance, education, gender, local security etc. embedded in the Resistance Council Statute of 1993. The five levels are village (LC1), parish (LC2), sub- county (LC3), county (LC4) and district (LC5) level. The decentralization is introduced to reduce workload at centre, to give control over decisions to the people that receive the impact of the political solutions, to link local taxes and local services and to improve the LC‟s capacity in relation to the constituencies (Kayizzi-Mugerwa, 2003).
2.2.3 Collaborative Management and Participation
Borrini-Feyerabend defines collaborative management as “a partnership in which various stakeholders agree on sharing the management functions, rights and responsibilities for an area or set of resources” (Borrini-Feyerabend 1996 in Hoefsloot, 1997: 8). The management authority with jurisdiction over a protected area negotiates roles, responsibilities and rights with other stakeholders.
The National Parks Act of 1993, the legislation for Uganda National Parks, banned local people‟s use of park resources. The term collaborative management is not mentioned in the current Uganda Wildlife Authority Statute of 1996, and according to the statute it is still illegal to use natural resources of a national park (Barrow et al., 2000). However, the report on collaborative management for the UWA commissioned by the Ministry of Tourism, Wildlife and Antiquities in 1996 states that collaborative management could be interpreted in the provision regulating the Executive Director‟s possibility to be part of collaborative arrangements in „management of a protected area or a portion of the protected area‟. The same report also provides a definition on collaborative management as „a process whereby the Protected Area Authority genuinely shares with locally resident people, benefits, decision- making authority and responsibility in the effective and sustainable management of the natural resources of the protected areas. The details of this shared management are arrived at through meaningful negotiation and expressed in written agreement.‟ (Hinchley et al, 2000).
Anyhow, there is a clause in the Statute of 1996 to permit „otherwise illegal activities‟ which makes it possible for UWA to start collaborative management of a national park (Barrow et al, 2000).
According to the Wildlife Statute, conservation shall involve local communities and benefit rural economies, there shall be held public meetings for management plans, 20% of protected areas entry fees shall go to local community development, and the Statute ensure user rights of wildlife on local communities land (Barrow et al, 2000).
2.2.4 Community Conservation and Land Tenure
Community conservation includes various management regimes. Barrow et al. (2000) have developed a functional framework for community conservation in Africa with land tenure in focus, and thereby given the opportunity to categorize types of community conservation according to participation, access, benefits and objectives, see Table 1. The framework includes protected area outreach, collaborative management and community-based natural resource management. The different legal ownerships determine use, beneficiaries, rights and responsibilities. The state is the ultimate owner, while individuals get access through various arrangements. In addition to tenure, other variables like values and goals, policy and decentralisation, benefit and incentives, institutions and local organisations, process and implementation influence to different extent as well (Barrow et al, 2000).
Table 1 A functional framework for community conservation in Africa (from Barrow et al., 2000) Protected Area Outreach State-owned
land
Has focus on biological integrity with emphasis on educating and benefiting local people, where the state determines regulation via legislation.
Collaborative Management State-owned land
Gives access to resources, and regulation is determined by negotiations between authority and the local people.
Community-based Natural Resource Management
Private land Gives responsibility of resources to the local people, and regulation is determined by land use plans and rural economics.
2.3 Power Use and Responses
There is no clear answer to what kind of institutional arrangements and policy instruments that can provide adequate incentives to all stakeholders in order to achieve the goals of biodiversity conservation. The present trend of declining biodiversity that affects the different ecosystems can be intervened through different policy means.
2.3.1 Power Use and Instruments
The state has monopoly on the use of power, and can use sanctions if laws are violated.
Etzioni divides power in three classifications, namely coercive power, remunerative power and normative power, a useful distinction when discussing the relationship between state authorities and citizens. The coercive power is the threatening of, or factual use of physical sanction to make the citizens obey the laws made by the state. The remunerative power is the state‟s control of the material resources, and the state‟s distribution of these functions as incentives for the citizens to act the way the authority wishes. Normative power is used when the state wants to persuade the citizens to behave a certain way by giving information (Bemelmans-Vivec et. al., 1998). The degree of power the state is prepared to use makes the distinction between the different instruments. Vedung argues for a threefold division of instruments based on Etzioni‟s classification of power, namely regulation, economic means and information. Regulations are more constraining than economic means, and economic means more constraining than information (Bemelmans-Vivec et. al., 1998).
In the past governments have relied on direct regulation, the coercive power, in the Fortress Management Approach. However, the sanctions of violators may not achieve significant results because the socio-economic situation forces people to utilize the natural resources in order to satisfy their basic needs. Further on the sanctions rarely include the rehabilitation of actual environmental degradation. In such situations other instruments are needed to secure a better management. Moreover, the regulations tend to be inflexible and impose high costs on the community (Hufschmidt et. al., 1983). Therefore legal instrument is not adequate in itself, and there is a need to reinforce the management with other measures in order to achieve a higher level of efficiency.
2.3.2 Calculative, Moral and Strategic Responses
People respond to instruments in various ways. Etzioni divides responses in three: calculative, moral and strategic (Bemelmans-Vivec et. al., 1998). The calculative response is when people consider their gain or loss by obeying or disobeying. Moral response is when the person considers the state‟s policy itself as right or wrong. Strategic response is when the person doesn‟t consider the policy, but acts according to own interests (Vedeld, 2002). The various policy instruments the state chooses to use can provoke all the different responses, and the authorities can never be sure how the local people will react on the policy. The collaborative Resource Access Agreements in the scope of this study are instruments to regulate resource off-take to what is regarded to be a sustainable level. People could react on the agreements calculative, by comparing the output of the restricted access with the probability and cost of being caught in illegal resource collecting. Or they could react morally, considering the agreement as a fair or unfair regulation, necessary or unnecessary. Or they could respond strategically, simply enter the national park and collect whatever resource they felt like.
2.3.3 Instruments and National Parks
IUCN has drawn up six management categories determined by the degree of management interference, to achieve an international common terminology of protected areas. Mt Elgon National Park belongs to II Ecosystem conservation and recreation, and a national park is defined as a „Natural area of land and/or sea, designated to (a) protect the ecological integrity of one or more ecosystems for present and future generations, (b) exclude exploitation or occupation inimical to the purposes of designation of the area and (c) provide a foundation for spiritual, scientific, educational, recreational and visitor opportunities, all of which must be environmentally and culturally compatible.‟ Moreover, the IUCN policy states that primary management objectives of a national park are preservation of species and genetic diversity, maintenance of environmental services, and tourism and recreation. Secondary objectives are scientific research, wilderness protection, protection of specific natural/cultural features and education. Sustainable use of resources from natural ecosystems is only termed a „potentially applicable objective‟, and maintenance of cultural/traditional attributes is regarded not applicable at all (IUCN, 1994).
Also the Uganda Wildlife Statute of 1996 states that it is illegal to use natural resources of a national park, and thus follows the IUCN policy. But the same Statute also makes collaborative management possible. It thereby opens up for resource use, mainly subsistence but also culturally linked, which is quite contradicting with the IUCN definition of a national park management regime in the originally strict sense. In this respect there is a different perception of what should be proper use of power and choice of management instruments (See section 2.4.4). UWA is one of the few protected area authorities that has approved resource utilization in Category II Protected Areas (IUCN 1994 in Chhetri et. al, 2003)
2.4 Local participation
2.4.1 Means or Goal
The last decades there has been a growing emphasis on local people‟s participation in projects and management, and the old fashion top-down projects has been deemed a failure (Oakley, 1991, Pretty, 1995). This popularity has lead to a misuse of the term, and to justify settings not including participation at all (Pretty, 1995). The term participation is used in various ways, and different scholars use dissimilar interpretations (Pretty, 1995, Oakley, 1991, Hulme
& Murphree, 2001), ranging from poor people that struggle actively for change to policy interests including productivity, efficiency etc. (Cooke & Kothari, 2001). Typically, in development projects participation has been seen as contribution by local people to predetermined goals, were local people are not given any sort of control. Alternatively, participation is viewed as tool in the organisation, either introduced externally or emerged from within the local community. A third view is where participation is interpreted as transfer of power and empowerment (Oakley, 1991). These different interpretations are not discrete, but still participation as contribution is characteristically different from participation as organisation and as empowering.
This implies that participation also can be divided in just two categories, since contributing seldom is regarded as genuine participation. Participation can thus be seen as means to efficiency, and the essence is that „if people are involved, then they are more likely to agree with and support the new development or service‟ (Pretty, 1995:168), hence today participatory planning processes are incorporated in management routines. Or participation can be seen as a right in itself focusing on a moral aspect, and then „the main aim is to initiate mobilisation for collective action, empowerment and institution building‟ (Pretty, 1995:168).
The empowerment can for instance be clear, e.g. individuals gain through cash transactions, or just blurred, for instance assumed benefits to individuals in management committees (Cooke & Kothari, 2001)
Cleaver states that it has turned out to be difficult to prove that participation necessarily is improving local people‟s materially standard or social life, or leading to efficiency, empowerment or sustainability, but still participation has become “an act of faith in development, something we believe in and rarely questions” (Cooke & Kothari, 36:2001).
2.4.2 Participation as Process
Cleaver points to a various problematic aspects in participation and common property management institutions.
The differentiation into means or ends: Difficult to know who should be empowered : women, poor, community etc. Often dome in committees, which then assumes to effectively lead to development, include the necessary characteristics
RUC represent a body that shall deliver proper management, and include proper persons with certain characteristics, and thus empowerment.
Many interactions of daily life may be more important in shaping cooperation than public negotiations. (Cooke & Kothari, 42:2001).
Focus on committee-like institutions associated with participation through democratic representation and a concentration on the election\selection of committee members.
Assumption that participation in public meetings is evidences by individual verbal contributions. Such principles are not necessarily in congruence with local norms and practices.
To just specify membership when constructing a formal organization does not decessarily overcome exclusion, subordination and vulnerability, as wider structural factors that shape such conditions and relations are often left untouched. Need far more wide-reaching measures than oral and committees.
Committees represent „community‟. Participatory approaches stress solidarity within the community. Processes of conflict, and negotiation, inclusion an dexclusion are occacionally acknowledged. Overlapping interactions: extended family, physical locality, wider cultural ans resource-using locality, development-defined groups, church, clan. Government reformed old adm. structures, political groups.
“Even where a community appears well motivated, dynamic and well organized, severe limitations are presented by an inadequacy of material resources, by the very real structural constraints that impede the functioning of community-based institutions.” (Cooke & Kothari, 46:2001).
Why should people be motivated to participate? 1Economic rationality: Rational interest due to assurance of benefit and socially responsible and in the interest of community development as a whole. 2Social norms. 3Reality Tangwen the needs of individuals for recognition, respect or other immaterial benefits. 4 Some individuals find it easier, more beneficial and habitually
familiar not to participate, a rational strategy and an unconscious practice embedded in routine, social norms and the status quo.
Participation has often been regarded as yet another project input where the conventional project approach has not been changed notably. Another option is to view participation as a process; with a series of activities that over a time period leads to the objectives, where participation itself should be valued as an important outcome of the project, a goal.
„Participation as a process is contrary to the notion of participation as manageable input and sees the whole project outcome as directly related to strengthening the basis for and the abilities of rural people to continue to play a part‟ (Oakley, 1991:173). Different activities conducted to develop participation are seen as tools to reach conditions where continuing participation takes place. Cleaver argue that there is a need to understand “the complex livelihood interlinkages that make an impact in one area likely to be felt in others and the potential for unintended consequences arising from any intended intervention” (Cooke &
Kothari, 38:2001).
Vedeld has established a process-oriented approach where local participation and institution building are viewed as a process of social change (Vedeld, 2002). It is not sufficient to just consider the static institution, since the participation aspect implies redistribution of powers, resources, rights and duties. Vedeld has defined five aspects with the local setting that ought to be taken into consideration when a project or a new management regime is implemented.
The physical characteristics of the resource decide the potential for local participation and the use of local institutions in biodiversity management. The process requires detailed knowledge about the local society‟s heterogeneity, current power structures and current social institutions. There is distribution of power and authority between groups of actors, like economic, legal and organizational rights and duties. This includes balance between cost and benefits, the systems of rights, organizational responsibility for management etc. Public and private institutions should be taken into account, as well as the management structure. The changes that occur create a new setting for the actors involved, both people in the community and between stakeholders in a broader context. The new scene gives both new possibilities and challenges.
2.4.3 Degree of Participation
Pretty has developed a typology by distinguishing 7 types of participation occurring in soil and water conservation projects, based on Uphoff, 1992. (Pretty, 1995). I will use this typology to determine the degree of participation present in the construction of the agreement.
Table 2 Typology of participation, based on Pretty, 1995.
1
Passive participation:
People participate by being told what is going to happen or has already happened. This is a unilateral announcement by an administration without listening to people‟s responses.
Information is not beyond the external professionals.
2 Participation in information giving:
People participate by answering questions posed in questionnaire surveys etc. People have no opportunity to influence proceedings, and findings are not shared or checked for accuracy.
3 Participation by consultation:
People participate by being consulted and external agents listen to views. The external agents define problems and solutions, maybe modified by people‟s responses. Does not concede any share in decision making, and external agents are not obliged to listen to local people‟s input.
4 Participation for material
incentives
People participate by providing resources in return for food, cash or other material incentives. This is often called participation, yet people have no stake in prolonging activities when the incentives end.
5 Functional participation:
People participate by forming groups to meet predetermined objectives related to the project, which can involve the development or promotion of externally initiated social organisation. Such involvement does not tend to be at early stages of project cycles or planning, but rather after major decisions have been made. These institutions tend to be dependent on external indicators and facilitators, but may become self-dependent.
6 Interactive participation:
People participate in joint analysis, which leads to action plans and the formation of new local institutions or the strengthening of existing ones. It tends to involve interdisciplinary methodologies that seek multiple perspectives and make use of systematic and structured learning processes. These groups take control over local decisions and so people have a stake in maintaining structures or practices.
7 Self- mobilisation:
People participate by taking initiatives independent of external institutions to change systems. They develop contact with external institutions for resources and technical advice they need, but retain control of how resources are used. Such self-initiated mobilisation and collective action may or may not challenge existing inequitable distributions of wealth and power.
The focus in the typology is mostly on the meetings occurring in the planning and implementation phase of a project. Pretty is concerned about local people‟s roles in the interaction with the authorities or external agencies. Important aspects are when local people are included in the process, in what way they are included, and how the relationship is between the stakeholders. 1-4 is similar in the way that the achievements do not have durable impacts on people‟s life, since the participation stops when the project is finished. 5-7 includes local institutions that organize the local people, either created by external or by local people.
For a successful participatory outcome, local people must be both capable and willing to carry on the changes that have been introduced to them. To what extent people have been parts in local projects or agents in establishments of new management institutions is crucial for the continuity in the project or institution, since the support, influence and authority from outside is gone, and the responsibility lies on the community alone. When talking about participation, the community with its local people has to be in focus.
Borrini-Feyerabend has constructed a collaborative management continuum of complete government control to complete local control. From left to right in Figure 1, the degree of local rights and responsibilities increases. Local conditions as management needs, conservation objectives and socio-political setting vary, thus factual collaborative management differ from area to area (Borrini-Feyerabend 1996 in Hoefsloot, 1997), and no
specific point along the continuum can be determined as collaborative management. Hence collaborative management can be viewed as a process, not a static situation.
Full control by agency in charge
Shared control by agency in charge and stakeholder
Full control by stakeholders Actively
Consulting
Seeking consensus
Negotiating an developing
specific agreements
Sharing authority and responsibility
Transferring authority and responsibility No interference or
contribution from stakeholder
No interference or contribution from agency in charge Figure 1 Continuum of participation. Modification from Borrini-Feyerabend 1996 (Beck, 2000)
2.4.4 Participation in Protected Area Management
The second World Conservation Strategy lists three conditions for successful outcome from local participation: local people need control over own affairs and access to own resources, right of co-determination as well as education and training; the local community must achieve sustainable use and conservation of the environment; the local people must be empowered to take their role in the environmental management.
The IUCN policy has today attention on local participation in decision making, both to achieve development and conservation, which partly conflicts with the original definitions on protected areas (See section 2.3.3). Hoefsloot brings some of the arguments in the debate on why local participation should be included in Protected Area Management: The previous attempts on centralized control have often been ineffective and lack of resources combined with population growth make collaborative management one of the few possible options. The demand for structural adjustment and democratization make collaborative management attractive. The concept Protected Area has evolved and allows acceptable utilization and forest managers have realized the need to include local people‟s resource demand and biodiversity conservation in addition to industrial production. Also the conservationists have recognized that forests cannot be reserved for biodiversity conservation alone. There is also confusion among managers and conservationists about the concept of community involvement. Lastly, in the East African region community involvement is included in the Protected Areas‟ Management Authorities of East Africa (Hoefsloot, 1997).
2.4.5 Definition of Community
The dichotomy Gemeinschaft (community) and Gesellschaft (society) represent the core of sociology debate, and has over time gone from pro state control to the recognition of communities‟ role in management in the 1980‟s (Hulme & Murphree, 2001). Early sociology and social anthropology saw the community structurally, as one static entity with common
interest and joint dependence, and people were viewed as gathered into „moral communities‟
by culture (Leach et al, 1999). Attempts to define community have led to the construction of various static models, e.g. IIED has used spatial, socio-cultural and economic parameters, and hereby constructed a so-called „archetypical notion of the African village‟ (Hulme &
Murphree, 2001).
However, the social differences like age, gender, wealth etc. break up the community interpreted as a static entity. The local people may not have a common identity or be equally concerned about the same problems, and there are often major differences that make the community full of contrasts and in imbalance regarding power structures (Vedeld 2002). The people should therefore be viewed as active agents, who comprehend, examine and form their surroundings (Leach et al., 1999).
Hulme and Murphree (2001) have made a functional actor-oriented approach to „community‟, which is useful when discussing community conservation and participation as a process. They have defined four characteristics that a community should have to successfully carry out collaboration.
Cohesion determines the membership in a community. It is the shared identity and interests that differentiate the community members from other people and make them willing to and able to collaborate in joint action for a common goal. This cohesion is a result of common history, culture, political or economic factors etc.
Demarcation is the boundaries of the community‟s jurisdiction, which gives authority and responsibility, usually defined spatially based on a fixed area and its resources. Demarcation is crucial for efficient organization.
Legitimacy is the power and authority internally based on socio-cultural and socio-economic criteria. An external recognition by the state is often necessary but not sufficient.
Resilience is the capacity to adapt to changes in cohesion, demarcation and legitimacy that evolve in a society over time, and can ensure durability to organizations and institutions.
The functional definition of a community is thus „a principle manifest in social groupings with the actual or potential cohesion, incentive, demarcation, legitimacy and resilience to organise themselves for effective common pool natural resource management at levels below and beyond the reach of state bureaucratic management.‟ (Hulme & Murphree, 2001:27)
2.5 Forest Resource-based Conflicts
Policies regulating forest use have significant impact on the local people dependent on forest resources, since a new situation can diminish, create or intensify conflicts between authorities and the communities. These impacts are most often not considered when implementing new instruments, and thus local people subsisting on forest resources are even more marginalized (Gombya-Ssembajjwe et al., 2000).
2.5.1 Types of Conflicts
Conflicts take place locally among people in a community, regionally between communities, between communities and the state etc., and the most vulnerable actors are poor people, indigenous groups, and women (FAO, 1998:2). Different scholars have made classifications of conflicts as a means to better understand the conflicts‟ nature and thus develop approaches and tools to handle them adequately. The classifications for community forestry conflicts consist of different but complementary perspectives.
Table 3 Classification of conflicts, based on Amtziz 1995, Thieba et al. 1995, Chandrasekharan 1996, Traoré et al. 1996, Villarreal 1996. Adapted from Desloges et al. 1998:39.
Space Where conflicts occur according to different property regimes (private, state, common) or lack of such (open access), or to the various perceptions of the same land, e.g. land officially classified as forest land but traditionally used for agriculture.
Actors Who is involved in the conflicts and the levels of conflict: (a) within communities, (b) between communities, (c) between community and government, (d) between NGO and government, (e) between entrepreneur and community, (f) between government agencies at the same or different levels.
Issue Issues at stake can be of different natures: subsistence, economic, social, and cultural.
The classification can be used to identify conflicts in diverse places, concerning various stakeholders, in relation to different issues.
2.5.2 Sources of conflicts
Generally, population increase, degrading physical environment, artificial political boundaries between states, heterogeneity of resource users, war and displacement, political, institutional and legal context, economic policies as well as infrastructure are factors occurring all over the world that contribute to conflicts over resources (Desloges et al., 1998)
There are a variety of local reasons for forest-resource based conflicts to occur. For Uganda, Kabogozza (in Gombya-Ssembajjwe et al. 2000) finds these factors (Table 4).
Table 4 Factors imposing forest-resource based conflicts in Uganda, adapted from Gombya-Ssembajjwe et al, 2000:58-59.
1 Access, ownership, use
Forests provide people illegally with „free‟ land and resources.
2 Changes in policy Poor consultation with stakeholders before or during policy implementations.
3 Lack of alternatives The authorities fail to consider alternatives for affected parties, e.g. not providing land as alternative to forest.
4 Increase in population Need for survival is forcing the increasing populations into fertile forest land.
5 Poverty Communities legally or illegally rely on forests for livelihood and economic income due to poverty. Possibly the single most important cause of conflict.
6 Ignorance Authorities and local people do not understand each other‟s perspective.
7 Political influence Political influence intensifies conflicts, related to factors like elections and corruption.
2.5.3 Power
As we see, distribution of political, economic or social power is central to the emergence of conflicts. Additional, participatory approaches in forest management often transfer very little power, responsibilities and benefits to the community involved, thus not solving, but contrary contributing to conflicts. Marginalized groups are ranked lowest in power hierarchies, due to poor community institutions (Desloges et al., 1998).
In the 1990s conflict management was adopted into community forestry1. Conflicts in this sense includes „any relationship between opposing forces, whether marked by violence or not.‟ (Desloges et al., 1998:34), and so conflicts span from the manifest disputes to underlying tension between stakeholders. The tool used in conflict management is agreements between the stakeholders about sustainable use and income generation. This also implies making choices with great effects for future generations. Aspects of continuity and unity of present generations with both ancestors and future generations are in many societies the basis of people‟s identity, and the cultural identity relies heavily on the connection to nature, to the land and the forest resources (Desloges et al., 1998). A serious problem with agreements and negotiations is that the marginalized forest-dependent communities are very weak negotiators due to ignorance, poor information, and poor leadership (Gombya-Ssembajjwe et al. 2000).
2.5.4 Conflict-handling Mechanisms in Uganda
In Uganda as elsewhere, the „fine and fence- policy‟ has proved not to be suitable, due to lack of legitimacy, costly court proceedings and poor management results. According to Kabogozza, absences of various institutional arrangements contribute to make conflicts hard to avoid or solve. There are no conflict-handling mechanisms within the government structures, and further on the lack of proper communication channels between stakeholders accelerates the conflicts, in addition to erase possibilities for proper monitoring and evaluation. Moreover, civil wars and insecurity complicates the situation.
There are some institutional arrangements present, but these are either not utilized or have their weaknesses. The decentralized system of Local Chancellors could take part in conflict management in resource-based conflicts, but natural resources are considered „national‟, and thus the LCs are denied the possibility to contribute in these kinds of conflicts. Traditional institutions that could play a role in conflict resolution are not recognized as stakeholders, due to marginalization during colonialism, dictatorship and civil war, and some of these traditional institutions need restoration after years of non-existence. Conclusively, authorities in Uganda now mainly use negotiations, both to solve and to prevent conflicts over forest resources (Gombya-Ssembajjwe et al. 2000). In the case of Mt. Elgon National Park, UWA
1 Community forestry is a term that covers various activities linking rural people with the local forest, its forest products and benefits. The forest resources are part of complex resource use and social systems, like basic needs as nutrition, food security, energy, and off-farm employment. Issues concerned in community forestry are equity, participation, integration of all parties etc.
