The World Bank/WBI’s CBNRM Initiative

Case Received: February 12, 1998

Authors: Ronnie Vernooy and Jacqueline A. Ashby

Corresponding author: j.ashby@cgnet.com

The area of research is the Calico river watershed, located in the southern part of the department of Matagalpa, Nicaragua. The Calico river is a tributary of the Great Matagalpa river and covers an extension of about 170 km2. The watershed forms part of the central hillsides range of the country and is characterized by a semi-arid climate (1,100-1,600 mm of rainfall per year), altitudes ranging from 450 to 1,250 mts, and mainly small farmer production systems based on a combination of corn-beans, dual purpose livestock, and coffee in the higher altitude zones. Land tenure is very uneven, with an important number of landless households. Poverty, lack of health and educational facilities, poor housing conditions, dependence on corn and beans (no or few production alternativs), soil degradation, scarcity of water and deforestation are the major problems people are confronted with. According to a 1996 poverty study, 76% of the population in the San Dionisio municipality is estimated to be poor ; and the municipality is among the group of poorest municipalities nation-wide. Our own findings confirm a high percentage of people living under poverty conditions, characterized by the people themselves as a scarcity of land (forced to rent land) and animals, a proper and decent house and income (forced to work as a day labourer).

As analysed by a group of 30 watershed inhabitants during an participatory workshop on watershed management (September 1997), key problems affecting the landscape and the livelihood of the population at various levels (community, micro-watershed and watershed) were: land degradation, deforestation, and water-scarcity and pollution.

The organizational situation encountered at the start of the project activities, could be characterized by the mutually non-coordinated presence and interventions of a number of non-government organizations (Programa Campesino a Campesino, CARE, PRODESSA/UCOSD, ODESAR, Indigenous Association of Matagalpa). Each NGO operates in one or more of the 17 communities in the Calico river watershed providing technical support (eg soil conservation techniques, reforestation, diversification, post-harvest treatment), credit, marketing support and training, sometimes serving simultaneously but independently the same rural households. There is also a dormant Municipal Development Board integrated by representatives of the ministries at the municipal level (i.e. Health, Education, Water, Social Action until 1996), the municipal council and the Campesino a Campesino Program, mainly dedicating itself to infrastructural works and meetings. Present at the community level, are Drinking Water Committees in charge of maintaining the drinking water system, as well as Parent Committees (attached to rural primary schools) and a variety of church groups. Complementary to the above was the scarce or almost non-presence of the ministries of Agriculture and Livestock, Natural Resources and the Environment, and Agrarian Reform.

We defined this situation above all in terms of an opportunity for action: a space to make a contribution to improved participation (by people from rural areas) and coordination (increase impact of efforts and avoid duplication) and facilitate concertation - the resolution of conflicts and development of an integrated management plan (Vernooy, Baltodano and Tijerino, 1997). In meetings and conversations with staff of NGOs and members of the Municipal Development Council, we learned that they were aware of the lack of coordination, duplication of efforts and the opportunities for more concertated actions, but no initiatives were undertaken to do anything about this situation. However, a couple of months after our arrival in the zone we proposed to revive one of the local ideas (the reforestation of the Calico river) coordination was achieved without major obstacles and a proposal and planning process were outlined with the input from most actors.

Part of the Hillsides research methodology is a comparative study of innovative watershed development projects, aimed in particular to gain insights into organizational principles for natural resource management at the watershed level. We are expecting that the lessons learned from other experiences can guide us in the action-research process in the Hillsides project sites in Honduras and Nicaragua. In a way, these lessons could be considered as what might be possible in the San Dionisio region. In summary form, some of these organizational principles are:

1. Transboundary effects (and related assymetrical externalities) along the scales that characterize watersheds mean that sustainable management requires collective action in some form. Hence, the logic for building and involving local organizations as a means to change the ways in which local groups interact with each other as well as with the broader society. The goal here is greater and more equitable control over resources, amplifying the range of options the less privileged people have (eg women, ethnic minorities, the landless), enhancing their involvement in policy making processes at the regional or national levels (providing space for more people to make their voices heard), as well as of improving the quality of their involvement.
2. Watershed resources, in particular in highly agro-ecologically diverse hillsides environments such as can be found in Central America (with generally high population densities) are used by a variety of direct and indirect users with different and sometimes opposing or conflicting interests, or stakes (hence the concept of stakeholders). Organizing for sustainable management at the watershed level therefore requires the identification of these stakeholders (recognizing that stakes could change over time which requires a continuous analysis of the configuration of stakeholders and stakes).
3. In order to allow the stakeholders to participate it is important to provide a forum for analysis, discussion and negotiation in which ideas can be exchanged and initiatives planned. The establishment of (interest) groups, however, is not an easy process. Collective action does not emerge automatically, even when (from the outsider’s point of view) gains to be made seem obvious. Building trust is key, but may take time and patience. Recognizing the strengths and weakneses (comparative advantages) of different players is also a key principle, which helps to build the required trust.
4. The process of organizing needs to focus on defining (new) rules and norms for equitable resource use. This will require informed communities (user groups, stakeholders) with the capacity to engage in dialogue and to undertake particular tasks. This, in turn, requires an appropriate level of community or grassroots organization, based on managerial capacity at the local level involving both rural institutions (rules and regulations) and rural organizations.
5. Local-level monitoring of resource use is required to ensure compliance and regulation. In order to achieve better resource management practices through cooperative actions, rules and sanctions, it is important that local people (and those cooperating with them) have a good understanding of the resource dynamics (for example, soil dynamics, nutrient flows, water cycles). Resource assessment and resource use monitoring are therefore key activities in any effort to improve management practices and regulatory arrangements. Monitoring will help to raise awareness among local decision-makers about the interdependencies of resources and, if carried out collectively, can easily create ownership, skills, confidence and credibility.
6. Building linkages between local communities and the level of national institutions and policy-makers assists local actors to exert demand for services and influence policy agendas. This includes: the integration of government into the local planning process so that interests and concerns are taken into account; and the sourcing of technical assistance and know-how transfer.
7. Integration and concertation are important objectives of the organizing process. The integration of planning efforts, from the farm to the micro-watershed to the watershed level, is the ultimate goal of developing more sustainable management practices. This requires bringing together the direct users of the resources who are living and/or working in the watershed. However, there may also be outside or external users of the resources and efforts will need to be made to also involve these users in planning efforts. These outsiders may have different interests as to compared to the users living in the area; this would require bridging or negotiating internal versus external interests in the watershed.
8. To achieve the above, researchers need to assume a new role: to operate as facilitators for analysis and action, building bridges between local knowledge, local initiatives and forms of organization and external sources of information and resources (local people are often very interested in new knowledge but they frequently lack the channels to get access to it). Flexibility in technology development and organizational development is required. This new role requires the art of skillful listening, asking the right questions, fostering group synergy, and assisting in problem diagnosis and mission definition.

In terms of strengthening organizational processes in the area (one of the objectives of the Hillsides project), the CIAT Hillsides team came to an agreement with the Campesino a Campesino Program in San Dionisio to form a number of so-called local agricultural research committees (known by their Spanish acronym CIAL). The idea behind these committees is to provide local communities with a methodology to carry out a participatory research process focussing on and solving a locally felt natural resource management problem (to be identified in a participatory problem analysis); and as such enhancing local organizational capacity. Simultaneously, CIALs are seen as parts of rural communities that are potential building blocks for an organizational process and structure at the watershed level dealing with cross-boundary natural resource management problems and opportunities. Four CIALs have been formed so far and are functioning relatively well: involvement of a considerable number of people in the different stages of the research process (represented by an escalera or ladder), experiments carried out that were seen as successful by CIALs and community members (identification of promising, unknown varieties of corn and beans), commitment to continue experimenting in 1998 (on a larger scale), a number of new farmer-leaders emerging (men and women, involvement of CIAL-s in watershed level initiatives, CIALs linked to each other (exchange of ideas and results within the watershed), and CIALs linked with other research and technology entities such as the Nicaraguan Institute for Agricultural Technology (INTA).

As referred to above, the revival of a dormant local initiative and the formation of an inter-institutional committee to reforest the Calico river was a second activity employed/facilitated by the CIAT team. Members of this committee were selected from the Municipal Development Council; a CIAL member as well as a farmer with land along the Calico river were integrated upon suggestion from the CIAT team. Based on a diagnostic study coordinated by CIAT, the committee prepared a project proposal and is currently looking for (additional) funding for the project. The establishment of a tree-nursery has been initiated.

A third initiative concerned the establishment of a small grants fund for the financing of small natural resource management projects in the rural communities to be managed by a multi-stakeholder based association of rural community organizations (representing a variety of interest or user-groups) with the support of one CIAT team-member (basically as an adviser, without a formal function). This association (still in its early organizational steps) will, as one of its first functions, support local-level group or community-based initiatives to improve water, soil and tree management. At the same time, it is expected that the association will provide the space for a more demand driven process of technology development and development assistance as well as for management/managerial capacity building. Members of the association have expressed interest to create chapters of the association at the community level as well.

Currently, we are carrying out a series of micro-watershed analysis with the involvement of 2-4 local key informants in each micro-watershed (farmers and/or tecnicos or promotores who know the area well) looking at land use (agro-ecological zones), the state of forests, water-resources, crops, wildlife, domesticated animals, pastures and soils and identifying limitations as well as opportunities for agricultural production in the area. The aim is to present the results of these analyses to the recently created association of community organizations (which we consider a forum in the making of watershed stakeholders (in a workshop planned for April 1998), and define priority zones for action (because natural resources are already in bad shape or may become in critical shape very soon or offer opportunities for alternatives).

A fifth initiative planned for (the first half) of 1998 is the organization of a multi-stakeholder, participatory planning workshop about organizational/institutional aspects and policy-making at the watershed level. The intention is to look at what organizational activities and structures exist right now (community based, NGO-based, government-based), where they operate, what they do and do not and if and how an organizational process and structure at the watershed level could be built upon these which would facilitate more participatory, effective and efficient natural resource planning and management.

It is still early to measure the impact of these new organizational forms that are emerging in the Calico watershed, but so far people have taken on the ideas with enthusiasm and considerable efforts. New paths are being explored to deal with issues that affect people’s livelihoods and a sense of "a watershed that unites" (i.e. the social construction of the watershed) is emerging. The participatory action research process gives local people the opportunity to collectively analyse and reflect upon their own situation and discover linkages among various levels of the ecological and socio-economic organization within the watershed. It also provides space to formulate alternatives for problems they are facing and to test these alternatives in practice, at the community, micro-watershed and watershed level.

The preliminary lessons learned so far could be divided into methodological ones and organizational ones both which we believe have a wider applicability. In terms of methodology:

1. Combination of "diagnostic" research (eg agroecological zonification of the watershed, identification of critical areas for intervention) with participatory action-oriented research (eg the CIAL-s, the formation of multi-stakeholder based committees and association of local groups) enables focus on providing information about the state of the resource base at various levels and involvement of users of these resources in problem (and opportunity) analysis to facilitate actions that can be developed quickly.
2. NRM research requires an inter-disciplinary perspective; eg soils and micro-watershed analyses need to be placed within the socio-economic context of user-groups and multiple interests. It also requires the understanding of the interconnectedness of different levels (plot, farm, community, micro-watershed and watershed).
3. To "get things going" it is useful to deal with different organizational levels at once (through an iterative process) to decipher interdependencies between community, micro-watershed, and watershed levels (water flow, soil erosion).
4. The need to develop methodological tools that local people can use themselves to analyze and organize.

In terms of organizational process :

1. The CIALs have shown to be one good starting point. They are a means for local people to organize themselve around a specific topic (research) and solve a locally felt problem. There is a need for more (support to) these kind of local initiatives, and to use these local organizational forms to build a more meaningful involvement of local people in municipality and watershed affairs.
2. It is useful to make an early start by getting activities going to bring people together and to learn by doing (working together, planning, monitoring), have them discuss about problems and solutions and take responsibilities for new initiatives (eg the reforestation project).
3. There is a need to strengthen "horizontal" and "vertical" linkages simultaneously and thus fill the institutional gap ; eg links among CIALs and between CIALs and the national research and technology transfer centres; links between organizations operating at the community level and between them and NGOs, ministries and municipality.