Resources

This report presents preliminary findings and recommendations from research on natural resources in decentralisation efforts around the world. The findings derive from WRI's (World Resources Institute) Accountability, Decentralisation, and Environment Comparative Research Project in Africa, and cases presented at the WRI-organised Conference on Decentralisation and Environment in Bellagio, Italy in February 2002. The Africa-wide research project conducted field studies in Cameroon, Mali, South Africa, Uganda and Zimbabwe in 2000 and 2001. The papers presented were based on WRI's African research project, WRI's Resources Policy Support Initiative in South East Asia, plus case studies from Bolivia, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Mongolia, Nicaragua and Thailand. This report evaluates the degree to which natural resource decentralisations have taken place and their measurable social and environmental outcomes. Most of the cases focus on forestry, while a few explore wildlife and water management. The report highlights key issues within natural resource management and democratic decentralisation. The main recommendations from the report are: work with democratic local institutions as a first priority; transfer sufficient and appropriate powers; transfer powers as secure rights; support equity and justice; establish minimum environmental standards; establish fair and accessible adjudication; support local civic education; give decentralisation time; and develop indicators for monitoring and evaluating decentralisation and its outcomes.

This special edition of the æcorruption fighter's toolkit presents a diverse collection of youth education experiences mainly from civil society organisations. The common goal of all of the activities described is to strengthen young people's attitudes and demands for accountability, and ultimately to build trust in the government and public sector. Education is central to preventing corruption even clear laws and regulations and well-designed institutions will not be able to prevent corruption unless citizens actively demand accountability from government and institutions. This publication builds on Transparency International's work and looks at how ethics education can be part of broader efforts to improve governance and reduce corruption. The authors argue that within this framework, children must have an appropriate and conducive learning environment that values integrity. This collection of experiences provides ideas for possible approaches to strengthening young people's attitudes and capacity to resist corruption. Its main purpose is to inspire and encourage civil society, helping generate new ideas for anti-corruption education practitioners.

This is the report from a meeting of 49 people engaged in advocacy and citizen participation efforts in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, North America and Europe. The purpose of the meeting was to bring together activists, researchers, trainers and other practitioners to discuss the challenges and successes of citizen-centred advocacy in different country contexts. This report aims to capture key lessons and recommendations to help donors and international NGOs refine their support strategies for training and action in participatory advocacy. The report is structured around the key themes of engagement in advocacy: when is a policy space strategic and when is it just window dressing?; issue-based struggle or struggle-based issues: linking social transformation and policy advocacy; whoÆs who in advocacy: identity, representation and legitimacy; and how to assess success: evaluation for learning.

National Agricultural Extension Services are often criticised for not doing enough, not doing what they do well enough, or not being relevant. Participatory approaches can improve them by making them more demand driven and accountable. In this paper the author describes how management and field staff of the Department of Extension and Engineering Servicesin Ohangwena, a region of Namibia, have improved the efficiency and responsiveness of the services they offer by making them more participatory. The paper begins by looking at OhangwenaÆs organisational culture, examining the changes in approaches and how staff have reacted to them, with younger staff generally being more willing and able to take new ways of working on board. It then goes on to describe management innovations such as: planning and budgeting whereby farmers groups are involved in the process, and monitoring and evaluation for which the management team decided, with the help of technicians and farmers, to monitor themselves. It also looks at training, interaction with stakeholders and publicity. The paper concludes that although these types of services are seen as highly bureaucratic, they can change their managerial style to be more participatory, flexible, effective and responsive thereby empowering farmers and assisting rural communities in sustaining their livelihoods.

While change accelerates in rural conditions in the South, professionalism and bureaucracy are buffered against change. In their top-down mode they produce and promote standard programmes, packages and technologies. Rural development programmes in India for agriculture, canal irrigation, watershed development, and poverty alleviation illustrate how there is a mismatch between such standardisation and diverse needs and conditions. This mismatch is underperceived, and status at the cores is sustained, by misleading positive feedback from the peripheries. Falsely favourable impressions and information have five sources: misreporting; selected perception; misleading methods; diplomacy and prudence; and defences against dissonance. Error and myth among the development professions further aggravate the misfit between belief and reality. The costs of the resulting psychosis of the state are colossal. Therapy can be sought through policies and practices which empower poor people: reversals for local diversity; clarifying and communicating peopleÆs rights; and personal choices by the powerful.

This paper examines the challenges and proposes an approach for monitoring and evaluating participatory research (PR) for community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) projects. It outlines some of the key issues and constraints facing PR, and to provide guidance to researchers, programme and project managers interested in monitoring and evaluating PR projects. The focus is on using monitoring and evaluation (M&E) as a tool for adaptive learning and project improvement, for integrating social theory into participatory methods, and for understanding the links between participatory processes and outcomes. The paper also explores the importance of using participatory M&E methods for bringing in the perspectives of local people whose lives are being influenced by the research. The first part of the paper provides a background for understanding PR in CBNRM projects. The paper goes on to describe the rationale and present a framework for M&E PR within the context of supporting quality and relevant applied development research while at the same time strengthening institutional and individual research capacity. Key considerations are highlighted for developing an appropriate and learning-based approach to M&E of PR projects, and options for integrating M&E into the different stages of a project cycle are proposed. The paper concludes by presenting the issues and questions to be considered in M&E of the process and outcomes of PR for natural resource management. This is based on characteristics indicating validity and quality of the PR process and methods, as well as the potential of the methods used to contribute to reaching the general goals of CBNRM. The ideas are geared both for the programme level and the project level, to be used by researchers during the project to help inform the research project, and provide guidance for interim or post project assessments.