Updated December 1997
| Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations | United Nations Capital Development Fund | International Fund for Agricultural Development | German Agency for Technical Cooperation | Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation | World Bank |
Rome
16-18 December 1997
Technical Consultation on Decentralization
Documentation
Evidence increasingly indicates that, when the institutional framework is right, participatory community based programs actually cost less and are also quicker to implement. In Bank funded projects, the typical pattern has been a slow build up period, while time is invested in community organization and setting the rules for interaction, followed by speedy disbursements.
Once the participatory process is established, the benefits of community based development include increased efficiency and cost effectiveness. Furthermore, when the success of projects depends heavily on changes in behavior at the community level, promoting participation in community based programs may be the only means of meeting objectives. The examples in Box 1 indicate the potential benefits of a community based approach in three broad areas: managing natural resources, providing basic infrastructure and ensuring primary social services.
Experience also points to a series of common elements in the design of successful programs. The first ingredients are knowledge and understanding of local needs, and of the existing network of social interaction at the household, group and community level; this knowledge provides the basis for defining the changes needed, both in existing local organizations and in external agencies, to meet specified objectives.
What may seem an obvious point but is often neglected is that a group functions only because it is addressing a need felt by its members. A fundamental design flaw in a natural resource management project in the Philippines, for example, was the assumption that upland farmers were interested in forest management. In contrast, the need to solve what is perceived as an urgent problem may bring different class and power groups together, as documented in South India for example, where the entire village manages community based irrigation systems and has developed a monitoring system to discourage water theft. Groups continue to function so long as the benefits of participation to their members continue to outweigh the costs. Hence project design must be based on knowledge of community demand and must ensure that incentives to participation are in place.
In any community, inherited networks of organized reciprocity and solidarity form the basis on which individuals trust and cooperate with one another. New community based programs need to use and build on this existing stock of social capital and, wherever possible, to work through existing organizations. In Nepal, for example, when government policy prescribed the creation of farmers associations, assistant overseers found many informal groups of farmers organized around irrigation systems. Rather than creating new organizations, these existing groups were encouraged to register themselves as official farmers associations.
Sometimes, notably when existing social organization is highly inequitable, creating new groups is the only means of promoting the participation of disadvantaged people. Many successful projects that specifically target women or the poor have formed special organizations of the poor, such as the Grameen Bank, the Self Employed Women's Association of India, and women's farmer groups in Nigeria and Gambia. These new organizations are the creation of their members, drawing as much as possible on what is already in place. Attempts to speed up a community development process by bypassing existing institutions and investing in new, externally designed organizations have frequently failed in their aims. They also carry the danger of undermining existing institutions, diminishing the capacity of community members to cooperate and organize effectively for other purposes.
An important reason for building on indigenous principles of organization is that, to be effective, a group must own and enforce its own rules defining membership criteria, the allocation of responsibilities, contributions and benefits, and the mechanisms for ensuring accountability and resolving conflicts. If these rules are dictated from outside, people do not feel obliged to follow them, free riding becomes common, conflicts escalate, and the group becomes ineffective.
Depending on the tasks the group is designed to manage, and the existing capacity of the group, investment in training may be needed over a period of several years to build the necessary management and technical skills. Groups have failed because too much was expected of them too soon without supportive training.
An alternative to restructuring existing agencies is to contract out the needed services to NGOs (as in rural water supply in Kenya), the private sector (in agriculture in Malaysia), other government agencies (public health workers for a water and sanitation project in Brazil), or multi or bilateral agencies (UNICEF in low income housing in Guatemala). In Mexico, the National Water Authority has an in-house group of senior social scientists and communication specialists who design the strategy for community outreach, applied research and communications. This is then subcontracted to the private sector.
The choice of outreach approach needs to match the goals of the program. The extension approach, in which the field agent acts primarily as a channel of information and inputs, and remains accountable to the agency rather than the community group, is not appropriate when the objective is community initiative and responsibility for management. When the success of a program hinges on participation through strong local groups, an empowerment approach is called for, where the field agent is a community organizer acting in liaison with technical agencies. It may be essential to introduce female agents to ensure the participation of women.
The role of the agency and its relationship with community groups needs to be supported by appropriate changes in legislation. Key issues include the mandate of agencies, funding mechanisms, accountability systems, the registration requirements and legal status of community groups, and use and tenure rights over assets (particularly natural resources). Many rules and regulations may also need to be changed, from the required qualifications for community workers, teachers or health educators to procurement rules.
Implementing the institutional and legislative changes necessary to support large scale community based programs inevitably meets resistance from powerful vested interests and needs strong political support to see it through. Many Bank projects that implement institutional reform are led by reform minded senior civil servants with access to the country's top political leaders.
From time immemorial, societies have organized themselves to take care of collective and individual needs. Why then have so many attempts at getting people to participate and take responsibility for community based development failed in the last fifty years? One reason is that never before in the history of humankind has there been such a massive experiment at inducing change through the infusion of external ideas, management, funds and technology, all controlled from places far distant from the site of development.
One of these options is community based development. The experience in community based development is substantial, both about what works and what does not. From this experience it is clear that there is no single model appropriate for all places and times. Supporting community based development on a large scale requires new institutions which support:
Community based development is concerned with the involvement of local stakeholders in decisionmaking. If people in communities are to take initiative, be creative, learn, and assume responsibility for their own development, they must be actively encouraged to participate. This requires building into policies and projects features which enable people's participation.
In order to encourage community based development on a large scale, it is important to first understand the dynamics at the household, group, or community levels. Based on this understanding, what needs to happen to support community action can be defined at successively higher and more distant levels.
Community based development requires reversing control and accountability from central authorities to individuals, groups, and communities. Success is dependent on tapping into local needs and creating local ownership, management (rules, control, authority, and responsibility), and organizational capacity. The challenge facing agencies is to "reinvent" themselves so that they can support community involvement, participation, and capacity building for sustained change. Community based management on a large scale requires fundamental changes in the policies, incentives, and structures of agencies. This has costs, but when done properly, the benefits are considerable.
Significant costs are incurred only when community level organizations have been so eroded that capacity building has to begin from scratch. Even where overall costs are the same for participatory processes as for a conventional approach, what is different is the activities and components that are funded and executed. Evaluations of the El Salvador Fundación Salvadoreña de Vivienda Mínima (FUNDASAL) housing projects for the poor have found that the unit cost of houses was less than half that of the least expensive standard government dwelling. The FUNDASAL housing unit also had a superior benefit-to-cost ratio compared to any other housing program in either the formal or informal housing sector. (Bamberger et al, 1982).
Once the participatory process for a project is established, total project preparation time is not necessarily longer than it would be in a conventional project. In Egypt, the Matruh Natural Resources Management Project, which used a very participatory and consultative process with Bedouin communities and government personnel to create ownership and develop a project which matched felt needs, made up time invested earlier with a smooth negotiation process. Participatory workshops for stakeholder involvement were used in the preparation of an Urban Works Pilot Project in Madagascar, and subsequently built into the design of the project. The workshops created ownership and shaped the project design, but project preparation was not delayed.
Demand based approaches, with the right institutional framework, also need not take longer. For example, in Nicaragua's municipal development fund, which was based on beneficiary participation in barrio upgrading, the planned five-year project was completed in three and a half years. The rates of return at project completion were 50 percent higher than at appraisal. In Nepal, the deep tubewell irrigation project based on demand and farmer management moved so quickly that additional money was quickly found to increase the project size to $20 million. The project continued to move quickly and effectively despite problems in the technical support ministries (Meinzen-Dick et al, 1995).
A survey of Bank projects revealed few delays in disbursements resulting from participatory processes. The typical pattern was a slow build up period (during which time is invested in community organization and setting the rules for interaction), followed by speedy disbursements.
People must also be able to identify the boundaries of the resources. This is particularly important with common margin property resources such as rangeland, watersheds, fisheries, and woodlots. If people do not know what resources they are responsible for, they cannot be expected to manage those resources rationally.
If the resource does not lend itself to quick, visible and localized benefits, community based development should not be attempted unless strategies can be developed that provide quick, visible benefits without violating a demand orientation (Uphoff, 1986). When results are induced artificially by agency initiated short cuts, they may be counter productive to collective action. Communities may justifiably ask themselves why they should do the difficult work of organization, negotiation, and resource mobilization themselves, when there are easier ways of getting the same results.
Task specificity (a clear beginning and end) is important so that communities can understand what it is that they are committing to undertake. Most successful examples of induced collective action are based on clear agreements negotiated with communities on the specific tasks they will perform. The Balochistan Primary Education Program in Pakistan initiated community based schools for girls by being very specific on the tasks to be performed by the education committees. These tasks included identifying a female teacher from the village, checking on teacher attendance, providing temporary shelter for the school, and guaranteeing that all girls were in school.
Task continuity is also important. Some tasks can be completed over a short period of time and are basically one-shot activities. When tasks have to be performed on a recurrent basis for an extended period of time (such as operation and maintenance of drinking water and irrigation systems, community health services, community schools, credit, forest management, range management) an organization needs to be sustained to manage the task. However, the organization needed to undertake activities on a recurrent basis is much more complex than one needed to undertake short-term specific projects (such as building a school, dispensary or water point; labor sharing for house construction for one day; labor exchanges for harvesting or beer brewing).
Task coordination is needed between groups in network systems (roads, sewerage, irrigation, pipe water systems) or when the physical area of action is spread out (range management, forest management, water sheds). For example, the social organization needed to initiate and manage the secondary and tertiary networks of pipe water systems, irrigation canals or sewerage systems requires greater coordination and negotiation than when planning a community specific water system, health clinic, primary school or nutrition center. If the task is simple, community organization and agency support is easier to institute. For example, the Nylon project in Douala city, Cameroon which provides urban infrastructure, started with small spontaneous community self help groups. As the project expanded, the groups took on additional tasks; as more people joined, the entire area was divided into thirteen units, and self help groups federated upward, culminating with each unit having its own Comité d'Animation. Since 1971, these committees have been united by a Commission Central d'Animation, which is the main group that interacts with external support agencies (Schubeler, 1993).
Enabling stakeholders to control decisions requires that new rules and mechanisms be put in place. For agencies, this means creating an enabling environment for thousands of different communities. Emphasizing user involvement at the community level requires going beyond technological factors to understand the social fabric in which the project will be embedded. These human dimensions are particularly important when the goal is to reach the poor.
Successful community based development is determined by a variety of factors. These include the use of appropriate strategies for encouraging participation, the existence of viable community groups, the appropriate fit of technology to the project and community needs, effective agency outreach strategies, client responsive agencies, and enabling policies.
Alternatively, the initial year of a project can be conceptualized as a pilot, with funds flexibly structured to allow trial of different strategies as well as to support training of agency staff. The scale of the project can then be gradually expanded, as will be done in the Matruh Natural Resource Management Project.
The Indonesia WSSPLIC project has used a structured learning approach. During project preparation, rather than preparing detailed engineering designs, the focus has been on trying a community based approach responsive to demand in sixty-two "starter" villages. A limited number of engineering designs were prepared for different technology options in different hydrogeological zones and settlement patterns. Poverty levels will be used as a screening device, but once an area is selected, inclusion in the project will depend on the community buying into the project by completing a set of tasks. The initial work has been facilitated by community workers who provide communities with information about technology options, their cost, and organizational implications. Through this process, approval of community plans has been devolved to lower levels. Procedures have been simplified to facilitate community procurement and monitoring and evaluation; the focus is on community capacity building and organization to sustain management of technology after construction is completed.
Viable community groups are often key to the success of community based development. No matter what the activity, experience indicates that the following five features characterize well functioning groups:
Many programs have assumed that geographic community is synonymous with "community of interest." This is not necessarily the case and is a common source of problems in mobilizing collective action. The community woodlots movement in India, for example, largely failed in its early days because it was assumed that the community was the appropriate unit of "common interest" to manage woodlots (Cernea, 1989). Communities are rarely homogenous entities. In irrigation associations, the interests of those at the tail-end invariably clash with those at the head-end; formal village councils, such as the Panchayats of India, may have different interests than the poor in the community.
However, the need to solve urgent priority problems may bring different class and power groups together. In South India, Robert Wade (1994) has documented how the entire village manages community based irrigation systems and has developed a monitoring system to discourage water theft. Among the poor, men may join women's informal credit or collective work undertakings despite pervasive gender segregation marking most interactions.
Nonetheless, as groups grow or spread over large areas, the influence of social cohesion begins to break down and it becomes more difficult to control and monitor the behavior of individuals. For this reason, as groups become larger they either formalize regulations and delegate decisionmaking to smaller working groups, or they join in a federated structure which leaves decisionmaking at the local level.
The benefits to the group of working together outweigh the costs. For community action to take place, the perceived benefits must be greater than the perceived costs, otherwise there is no incentive to organize, attend meetings, and make cash and in kind contributions. Calculations of benefits are affected by clarity and security of ownership, tenure or use rights. Renters in poor urban neighborhoods have little incentive to upgrade in-house sanitation facilities; people have little incentive to invest in wood lots or trees, if they have no secure harvesting rights. Benefits may be economic (cash savings, increased production, income, time savings); instrumental (ability to collectively solve problems, increased capacity in terms of knowledge and skills); psychological (sense of belonging, enhanced confidence); or political (greater access to authority, greater authority, reduced conflict). The benefit stream does not remain constant but changes over time. Benefits are not the same for everyone, and the most important benefits to individuals within groups may be different than those conceived by planners. But the bottom line remains constant: if individuals in groups do not see benefits outweighing costs, they will not participate.
The group is embedded in the local social organization. Experience demonstrates the importance of nurturing institutions at the local level that have their roots in the local community. The Balochistan Primary Education Project in Pakistan shows how quickly community action spreads when it is embedded in the local social organization, when tasks are clearly defined, and when time is spent in developing the local organization.
The problem with existing social organization is that it is generally invisible and often excludes women and the poor from the most important production and decisionmaking networks and associations. While building on existing organizations does not always work, there is a need to understand them so as to draw on their strengths and make changes based on what is already in place.
In Nepal, for example, when a government policy was promulgated to create farmers associations, assistant overseers found many informal groups of farmers organized around irrigation systems. Rather than creating new organizations, these already existing groups were encouraged to register themselves as official farmers irrigation associations. In a Livestock Development Project in Mauritania, pastoral associations based partly on traditional organization and partly on new organizations, were created on a pilot basis, using environmental and socioeconomic data. The average association covered fifty villages, 2,500 sq. km and a population of 14,000 people. These groups proved too large to work effectively and were quickly subdivided (Shanmugaratnam et al, 1992).
The group has the necessary capacity, leadership, knowledge, and skills. The capacity of groups to organize themselves to undertake coordinated action is important to their success. Local elites often take leadership roles, and although this is not necessarily bad, care must be taken to prevent any hijacking of resources. For example, in community based rural water projects in Indonesia and Pakistan, success in community organizing was closely linked to the presence of strong leaders interested in changing the water supply situation. However, in Zimbabwe, when local leaders implemented the policy regarding communal grazing schemes, they often grabbed the external resources for themselves, or actively obstructed the formation of grazing groups (Scoones and Matose, 1993).
When collective action is induced from the outside, the focus is often on creating the structure of committees, without matching the task to the capacity, knowledge, or technical skills of groups. Groups have also failed because too much was expected of them too soon without any supportive training in management or specific skills. Getting local groups and organizations to become self managing organizations can extend over several years and does not happen without investment in capacity building.
The group owns and enforces its rules and regulations. All successful groups and associations are characterized by internalized rules and regulations that are known by its members. For this reason, building on existing groups or indigenous principles of organization becomes particularly important. If people do not trust each other and are not equitable in allocating work, contributions and benefits, conflicts escalate, and the group becomes ineffective.
Participation of group members in decisionmaking regarding rules and regulations, and having the authority and control to change the rules to fit their needs, is critical in effective group functioning. When rules are imposed from the outside without any discussion, they are not locally owned, nor do people feel compelled to follow them, especially when enforcement mechanisms are weak. Free riding then becomes common. If members do not know the group rules, it is generally a sign of their lack of involvement in the rule formulation or acceptance process.
Analysis of the Zimbabwe's Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE) experience shows that co-management of wildlife worked well in those cases where the ground rules were specified, negotiated, and accepted by all parties. Another key to success was providing sufficient incentives so that all parties kept their part of the agreement.
However, in the Zambia Social Recovery Fund, a series of community level meetings and contact with more than 1,000 people established that a lack of transparency and accountability affected 50 percent of community projects. In these cases, a few individuals were dominant and community people often did not know the basic information regarding project funding, purpose, and conditions of partnership. Projects in these communities floundered (Milimo and Njobru, 1993).
The Grameen Bank peer monitoring system is an important part of why the group lending system works. If the individual defaults on a loan, the whole group is accountable. This creates incentives among members to monitor and support one another.
Nor do community based programs necessarily reach the poor. Work with Pastoral Associations revealed that as many as 80 percent of the herd in Mali and 40 percent in Niger belong to absentee herd owners. The problem of capture of benefits and resources by the rich and powerful is ever present when the poor are bound to the rich in client/patron relationships and the resource under consideration is scarce or has great economic value (Shanmugaratnam et al, 1992).
Thus, in Pakistan, the village elite play a positive role in the northern provinces in initiating simple drinking water supply schemes, but in the southern provinces, particularly Sind, elites capture irrigation water, often blatantly and disproportionately (Byrnes, 1992). In Kenya, where community leaders are sympathetic to the plight of the poor, communities have instituted a sliding scale of fees for the poor. In Tanzania, sliding fees based on poverty appear universal in community managed systems. In other countries and settings, however, the poor are excluded when communities impose user charges to achieve financial viability.
The poor are most easily reached when program services are specifically targeted to them. Benefits flow to the poor when projects do not attract the rich, either because of the nature of the service or because of the transaction costs involved. Such projects include participation in public works programs, short-term credit, working capital loans, and organizing for housing construction.
In the FUNDASAL project in El Salvador, because the poor participated in each other's house construction, mutual help eliminated the need for a 10 percent down payment. Families were required to work in construction teams for thirty weekends and participate in meetings and training in organizational techniques (Bamberger et al, 1982).
In the drinking water sector, poor maintenance led to the search for VLOM (Village Level Operation and Maintenance) technologies including handpumps (Arlosoroff et al, 1990). While cost is important, the least cost option is not necessarily the best. Experience has established that people desire house connections and are often willing to pay more for pipe water than for communally managed handpumps which are less convenient and reliable.
In urban sanitation, technological innovations have enabled new forms of community and agency collaboration to emerge. This includes the shallow sewers in Orangi, Pakistan and the condominial sewerage system in Brazil, in which technological innovation and social organization have gone hand in hand.
In natural resource management and agricultural projects, technological considerations are important when considering what to plant, how to harvest, and how to monitor. Experience shows that community response is greatest when projects adopt approaches that provide a continuous benefit flow, especially where indigenous people or women are dependent on nontimber products, fodder or thatch grass, agricultural intercrops, and seed.
In Nepal, where indigenous farmers organizations manage the majority of irrigated land, agency-led and donor-financed construction of permanent headworks based on efficiency concerns has worked less than satisfactorily (Ostrom, 1993). The Kamala Irrigation Project meant to serve 25,000 hectares has never reached that goal. The system includes a large, permanent, concrete headworks and a fully lined canal. No fees have ever been imposed or collected and agency staff spend most of their time operating and maintaining the huge concrete headworks and very little time maintaining the rest of the system. No farmer organization was created at construction nor was there any farmer involvement in decisionmaking. Since the headworks increased the control that nearby farmers had over water, these farmers had little incentive to bargain with the tail-end farmers. As a result, farmers located at a distance from the headworks have broken through the branch canals to obtain water, and armed conflict for water often occurs between the tail-enders and head-enders.
By contrast, in the nearby Pithuwas Irrigation Project, which is not dominated by permanent headworks, the need to pool labor every year for construction of the intakes and maintenance of the canal, results in incentives for head-end farmers to collaborate and negotiate water distribution. In sharp contrast to the Kamala project, in the Pithuwas project, farmers have managed to irrigate 1,300 hectares using a system designed to serve 600 hectares. Although no farmer groups were created at construction, a branch committee was later formed; this model has spread through the entire system (Laitos et al, 1986).
If the tasks to be performed by the community level actors are complex and on a recurrent basis, such as long-term O&M, then the investment needed in capacity building is generally higher, modified by the existing capacity of local organizations.
This can be done either by restructuring agencies to add client outreach personnel (NIA in the Philippines); by contracting out the needed services with NGOs (Kenya Water and Health Organization-KWAHO), the private sector (in agriculture in Malaysia), other government agencies, or other bilateral agencies (UNICEF in low income housing in Guatemala); or by using existing local groups.
Since community level workers are often the first contact through which community people find out about agency programs, they are of critical importance. Unfortunately, the design of community outreach systems is usually not given careful thought, often with disastrous consequences. It does not help that community level workers themselves have little voice within their own agencies. Merely adding more community workers without changing the overall incentive environment to encourage higher level staff to support community level workers makes no difference.
Outreach mechanisms can be broadly classified into two basic approaches, the extension approach and the empowerment approach. Problems arise when there is a mismatch between the outcomes desired at the community level and the type of community outreach system put in place.
The empowerment approach is essential when community groups are to be involved in decisionmaking, takes responsibility for monitoring long-term management, or when the tasks involve coordination at different levels.
To manage natural resources, in the Department of Agricultural, Technical and Extension Services (AGRITEX) system of extension in Zimbabwe, the extension worker promotes a fixed and limited technical package through a range of T&V group approaches, demonstration plots, master farmer certificate trainings, and field days. Participation of farmers in decisionmaking is limited by the structure of the extension approach which emphasizes technical instruction (Scoones et al, 1993).
In contrast, in Mali the role of agricultural extension agents working in a Natural Resources Management Project has been to enhance the capacity of village groups to manage natural resources. The extension agents support communities in carrying out their own needs analysis, in developing a plan of action, and in liaising with external support agencies.
It is important to achieve a match between the tasks to be performed and the role, skills, and acceptability of the agents. This is essential for performance and to ensure that the system is affordable in the long run.
The difference in the performance and characteristics of irrigation patrollers, the lowest level worker involved in canal operation, in India and Korea provides a graphic illustration (Robert Wade, 1994). The Indian system with its hierarchical organizational system based on centralized control and public works orientation, has rules which minimize identification between the patroller and the local farmers and maximizes orientation and accountability to the Irrigation Department. Thus in the Indian context, the patroller is a full time employee of the agency, hence is only marginally involved in farming himself; he is selected by the agency engineer, becomes a permanent employee after a period of probation; he is not posted near his own village and must move within six years to another area. The relationship is one of institutionalized mistrust and control by superiors.
The incentives, skills and rules in the Korean system are almost the inverse, and maximize identification of patrollers with the existing social network of other farmers and village chiefs. The patrollers are paid part-time, the rest of the time they are farmers; they are selected by the village chiefs and approved by the irrigation hierarchy; they must be renominated every year by the village chiefs; they must have land and reside in their area of work; and they are not posted from one place to another. In the Korean system, if the irrigation system does not work well the irrigation patroller himself suffers together with other farmers with whom he has an ongoing relationship.
Another important example is from the Tamil Nadu Nutrition project, where the selection process of community level health workers has repeatedly been cited as an important contributor to success. Preference is given to poor, married women from within the village, of scheduled caste with primary level education and two healthy children. They are hired as part time workers. Since the women have deep roots within the community, are poor but have thriving children themselves, they become credible nutrition workers to families with malnourished children. The health workers have a limited number of specific tasks and work with a local women's group to whom they are accountable (Heaver, 1989).
By contrast, in the Integrated Child Development Services Project in India, the Anganwadi (child development) workers are without clear priorities and overloaded with a wide range of tasks including feeding pre-school children, home visits, and attention to pregnant and lactating mothers. Studies have found that almost half of the women are not recruited from the village in which they work and are often of high caste. In the Indian context, it is very unlikely that these women would try and reach needy children from scheduled castes (Subbarao, 1989; Heaver, 1989).
Hiring women, becomes particularly important in reaching women. In Pakistan (Balochistan Primary Education Program) and Yemen (Basic Education Project), female teachers had to be hired before parents were willing to send female children to school. In Nigeria, hiring of female agricultural extension workers led to a tripling of the number of female farmers who were in contact with extension workers.
In Zimbabwe, locally managed grazing schemes have been promoted by AGRITEX and heavily supported by donors. The planning system, which is centrally developed and applied to the local level, stipulates a particular technical design for grazing schemes, particularly paddocked dryland grazing. The technical option is not debated nor is account taken of existing management patterns which rely on a complex set of social contracts, conventions, and rules between individuals and groups. As a result, there is often tension and conflict with the traditional leaders and others who feel that the traditional system of deferred grazing in the low lying dambo area is the most appropriate.
In water and other natural resource projects using the empowerment approach, field workers offer a menu of options from which the community chooses those which best fit its needs, and financial and management capacity. The agency defines the rules for partnership (for example, the amount of financial assistance available).
In the empowerment approach, mass media is used as a complement to interpersonal approach to publicize the availability of the program and to establish transparency. As local organizations are strengthened, it is used more extensively. In the forestry project in Gujarat, forest officers organized walks in which more than 1,000 volunteers participated from village to village to publicize the new co-management approach and hold community meetings. In Mexico, effective use was made of intensive mass media campaigns to create user readiness to take over irrigation management from government agencies.
Even in extension approaches, where the primary purpose is to get families to accept the changes being advocated, dramatic changes have been achieved at relatively low cost by making agents accountable to communities. This can be done without burdening agents with community organization activities.
For example, in the Tamil Nadu Nutrition Project, two simple aspects of record keeping became central in public involvement in monitoring performance. First, child growth cards were stored not in registers but on shelves, with a pigeonhole for each grade of malnutrition. Thus it was possible to pull out immediately all records for severely malnourished children and to keep track of grade shifts simply by transferring records from one pigeonhole to another. Second, the monthly performance of each health worker was publicly displayed on a standard chart on the wall. At a glance, everyone could see how the key nutrition indicators for the village were moving and how well the health worker was doing in getting services to the scheduled castes as opposed to the general population.
In the Ceara community health worker program in Brazil, accountability was induced through the interview process when 100 applications were received for each community health worker job. The interview process emphasized what would be expected of candidates if they were selected. Everyone is encouraged to become monitors of health agents and to report agents who are not performing well. While the field workers are paid by the state, they receive no contract, no benefits, no tenure, and can be easily replaced. They are provided supportive supervision and training by nurse supervisors, and often become the pivot for community action in other areas as well (Freedheim, 1988).
In the Colombia Community Childcare and Nutrition Project, parent associations are responsible for hiring the community childcare mother and have decisionmaking authority over the government's investment in child care. In China, in agriculture and increasingly in veterinary services, villages hire agents who receive a bonus linked to increased productivity as a result of the interventions they recommend. This provides an incentive for agricultural agents to become specialists in local subject matter.
The critical question is how to bring about government commitment to change. Task managers have used two main strategies to generate interest and commitment. First, they have used pilot projects as instruments to demonstrate alternative strategies. Second, they have used a variety of participatory techniques, including field visits, to generate interest and a commitment to new ideas and action strategies.
Indicators of success send important signals to staff about program priorities. If community involvement, reaching women or the poor, and numbers of functioning systems are not reflected in indicators of success, there is little incentive for staff to change their way of doing things to reach these goals.
Almost all projects that adjust as they implement, invest in numerous small studies which provide feedback on how different approaches are working. The Women in Development (WID) project in Gambia created a monitoring and evaluation unit during project preparation which honed its skills by carrying out several small studies. The Indonesia rural water project has developed a national system of monitoring key process and output indicators focusing on changes at the community level.
Incentives for performance are easier to institute when agencies are required to be financially viable, have autonomy to manage themselves, and have control over staff hiring and firing.
There is usually a reluctance to hand over control to local groups because the assumption is that they will mishandle or hijack resources, and the resulting chaos will undo the hard work of the technical agencies. There is compelling evidence, however, especially from the irrigation sector, that the benefits of supporting local control and capacity building are high. The changes instituted in agency mandate, structure, staffing, and indicators of success supported by policy reform in the Mexican irrigation and agriculture sector are a case in point.
The most graphic examples of the importance of defining the parameters while supporting the evolution of local rules have emerged from the water and natural resource management sectors. Projects with standardized participation forms and universal applicability of the same agency formulated rules have not worked and have become agency led rather than user led programs. Programs that have created the overall framework of rules of interaction between user groups and agencies, while also allowing the community to decide how to manage resources, have emerged with numerous variations in local rules that are managed, monitored, and enforced by local people.
Elinor Ostrom highlights this fact in comparing irrigation systems across and within countries (1990). For example, a study of a farmer led Karjahi irrigation system in Nepal found a diversity of rules even within one small self organized system; yet the system functioned well (Hilton, 1994). In contrast, Frances Cleaver (1990) in a national sample survey of more than 400 handpumps in Zimbabwe found that applying microscopic rules (such as how deep the community was required to dig) was a deterrent to community participation, local initiative, and problem solving. Similarly, uniform application of rules in grazing schemes, tree plantations, and woodlot management has proven counterproductive.
Understanding the social organization involves more than the decision about what sort of committees should be formed. It includes understanding local leadership and power systems; who has control and access to resources; who are the key social actors; what are the local land ownership, tenure patterns, and use rights; the number, structure and functioning of existing informal and formal groups. In the NIA experience, baseline sociocultural profiles and process documentation played important roles in pointing the direction for institutional change. In Mexico, the National Water Authority has an in-house group of senior social scientists and communication specialists who design the strategy for community outreach, applied research, and communications. This is then subcontracted to the private sector.
The best technical plans can go astray when existing social organization, indigenous knowledge systems, local norms and mores are ignored, the best technical plans can go astray. In Bali, efforts to improve rice production were ineffective until the role of the temple priests and the already existing management system was understood and incorporated into plans.
It should not be assumed that centralized agency managed user fee collection is always the most effective way to proceed. One of the key problems to be addressed in the Bank supported NIA participatory irrigation projects in the Philippines was poor maintenance of irrigation canals. At the outset, it was assumed that the best way to solve the problem was to impose targeted increases both in the annual funding levels of O&M expenses NIA had to incur and in the total amount of irrigation fees it had to collect annually. However, this to the undermining of farmer managed irrigation, including fee collection, which was more efficient than NIA fee collection. Eventually NIA changed its rules and gave control to farmers. Farmer-managed irrigation schemes worked so well that NIA subsidies were eliminated in two years (NIACONSULT, 1993).
Judith Tendler (1993) highlights the positive and important roles played by "godfathers." Behind many successful stories of implementation stood a "good governor" or state secretary. The good governors provided protection from the pressure to hire mediocre staff or to fire excellent staff on political grounds; to make technically undesirable choices; and to delay in transferring funds from the central government. They have pressured agencies to produce results, and chosen one or two components of projects as their "signature activities" with which to leave their mark. Thus in Sergipe, the governor fashioned the project around rural water supply; in Piaui, the governor supported the land purchase component; and in Ceara, the small-scale riverine irrigation component won the governor's support. They have also mobilized their own resources, sometimes as much as three times the amount provided in the Bank loan, to support their favorite component within the time period of their tenure in office.
In Nepal, when the government decided in 1987 to promote farmer associations in irrigation management through radical policy changes, the Bank responded with a $20 million Irrigation Line of Credit (ILC) with technical assistance to support the project through the UNDP. The policy changes devolved power from a large central bureaucracy to lower levels, including farmers. These changes were made possible because of support at the highest levels, including the King, the Minister of Finance, the Minister of Water Resources, and the Director General of the Water Directorate. In Mexico, the solidaridad program which devolves fiscal power to the municipalities has the blessing of the President.
The Gambia WID project survived the preparation process because of the strong interest of the President. At later stages, when it appeared that the project might not proceed, the President flew to Washington, D.C. to meet with the then-president of the World Bank, Barber Conable, to persuade him of the importance of the project to his country. Since then, the project has been designated one of the Bank's most successful, and strategies developed to reach women in agriculture have been incorporated in mainstream agricultural projects (Schmidt, 1993).
Godmothers play important roles as well. In Indonesia, wives of governors often play important roles in getting service delivery agencies to take on gender issues in a serious way. In Colombia, the community based day care program movement was actively supported by the wife of the President.
Many Bank projects that implement institutional reform, are led by reform minded senior civil servants with access to the country's top political leaders.
Establishing the priority of objectives is particularly important in community based development because as the pressure to produce tangible results builds, short cuts are taken, resulting in "build first, listen-dialogue-and-organize later." This is most likely to happen when there are no god fathers, when technical agencies are in charge, or when success is based on construction completed and inputs distributed, rather than services functioning, being maintained, and effectively used.
Project experience establishes that women and the poor are not automatically reached through community based projects. If this is a goal, it must be reflected in the objectives, strategies, and indicators of success. In such projects, targeting strategies that have low transaction costs becomes very important. Gender and poverty analysis tools are particularly useful.
Early in project preparation, task managers have found it useful to be open minded about overriding objectives. These become increasingly clear as project preparation proceeds. They may change radically, as happened in the Matruh Natural Resource Management Project, where objectives shifted from livestock to natural resource management. To avoid designing complex projects with multiple and competing objectives, a hierarchy of objectives that can change in importance over time can be developed, thus making the project manageable. In the Nepal Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Project, the main objective is focused on institutional reform through creation of a fund mechanism.
Social assessment is an important tool in identifying key actors and their interests, the social organization which is in operation, and what aspects need to be strengthened or changed. At the community level, data from social analysis are helpful in identifying local laws, rules, and regulations governing interaction and access to resources. At the agency level, social assessment becomes an institutional tool to identify the interest and capacity of various service delivery agencies to support community based development. Based on this analysis, either other agencies are drawn in or fundamental reform initiated. This may encompass redefining agency functions, restructuring funding mechanisms, or adding a new cadre of staff to the organization.
Task managers find it useful to include national and international expertise in teams. Social scientists, including NGO or community development specialists, have been particularly helpful in identifying and sketching the workings of existing indigenous organization from which much can be learned about what does and does not work in a particular context. A range of participatory and nonparticipatory techniques and tools is now available. Guidelines for social assessment have been developed by the World Bank's Environment Department, Social Policy and Resettlement Division (ENVSP).
Many problems have arisen because programs have been developed on need assumed by planners rather than felt need or effective demand of communities. The review of 121 rural water supply projects showed that demand, as measured by commitment before construction and substantial financial investment up front in capital cost, was a significant contributor toward both project effectiveness and overall beneficiary participation in decisionmaking.
Assessing demand or felt need can be done using a variety of methodologies: participatory techniques (community self diagnosis, ranking of priority problems); beneficiary assessment or "listening to the people" techniques (informal interviews, community meetings, participant observation); or contingency valuation techniques which gauge what people are willing to pay for different service levels. In assessing demand, data should be disaggregated by gender, wealth level, and other relevant characteristics.
Contrary to expectation, experience shows that willingness to pay can be greater for higher service levels, even though it may be nonexistent for lower levels of service. Demand is also influenced by the trust or confidence people have in the service provider; it is often low when government is perceived to be the provider. In the drinking water sector, people are often unwilling to pay small amounts for public standposts or community handpumps but are willing to pay high amounts for yard connections. People are not willing to pay if the money has to be handed over to government extension workers, but are willing to contribute large amounts if they manage the finances and retain control over the resources.
Projects often identify a set of eligibility criteria for project inclusion. Thus projects that target the poor include poverty criteria such as "landless or less than 0.5 acres" or "only women can apply." These criteria function as a screening device. However, after screening, a process of self-selection must be put in place to maintain a demand orientation. Tasks also may be stipulated that community groups must perform before receiving project assistance. These may include mobilization of local resources and cash, formation of committees, demonstration of consultation with everyone in the community, and submission of a proposal. Some projects require legal registration, an important factor if laws require legally constituted bodies before governments or banks can transfer assets to the group or involve the groups in decisionmaking.
The single most important self selection strategy is to institute a significant financial contribution up front before any project outputs are delivered. Many projects now require communities to enter contracts and sign documents which detail mutual responsibility. These are useful only to the extent that people understand what they are signing and when there are enforcement mechanisms on both sides (community and agency) to keep the other party accountable.
Five approaches to structuring subsidies are common:
One approach is to decentralize the programming of funds closer to where they will be used. In Indonesia rural water supply, programming of funds has been devolved to different levels. The higher the cost, the further the project has to travel for approval. However authorities cannot tamper with the basic design of the water system. The Mexico National Solidarity Program devolved funds to municipalities which solicit proposals from communities.
Another strategy is to create new funding mechanisms inside or outside the formal government structure. The structure and management of social funds falls in this category. Some have been established with independent boards (managed with a majority of NGO and private sector representatives) outside a particular ministry; others are semi-autonomous, but with high level protection, often under the wing of the President or Prime Minister. The Nepal rural water project under preparation is creating a fund through an act of Parliament for the rural water sector which bypasses the Public Works Ministry and opens the sector to competition. Another type of fund in this category are "indigenous funds" that support the development of indigenous groups.
Funding may also be channeled through intermediaries, NGOs, banks, and other multilaterals, particularly UNICEF and the International Fund for Agriculture and Development (IFAD). The Social Action Program in Pakistan is providing $10 million in financing to NGOs to organize communities and to support community based development.
Hence, it is important for the basic planning assumption to be one of learning embedded in local knowledge systems. The project must be seen as like to evolve, adjust, and change over time as needs change and as local organizations mature. This in turn means that project objectives and components may change over time in order to maintain a fit with community needs.
It is also important not to search for one universal answer or model for all times and all places, but to plan for multiplicity of implementation models. This is particularly important for projects that require communities to perform complex long-range tasks.
An increasing number of infrastructure (Tanzania, Brazil, Indonesia) and natural resource management (Burkina Faso, Mali, Egypt) projects are adopting structured learning as a specific strategy. These large-scale projects are based on a learning process approach rather than on a blueprint design. The focus is on a framework of principles and processes rather than implementation blueprints. Planning is on a yearly basis, with plans for the subsequent years dependant on previous performance. This allows for the evolution of plans based on experience, and fine tuning with time. Thus procurement of most materials is done on a yearly basis, budgets are indicative and flexible, and the project is conceptualized as a series of sub-projects that are not implemented in a uniform way.
Perhaps the most important lesson that emerges is that there are no short cuts to strengthening local social organization for collective action. All short cuts for speedy implementation that circumvent local involvement in decisionmaking backfire sooner or later.
The Gambia project used a very simple method to involve village women in identifying priority indicators for monitoring and evaluation. A consultant was hired to develop a list of indicators. These were taken to the villages and well publicized consultative meetings were held with women's groups who identified the key indicators from their perspective. These were then monitored by the project monitoring and evaluation unit.
Three strategies have been found to be useful. First, setting maximum unit costs, as in the Bolivia Social Fund. As long as the costs of local procurement did not exceed the maximum unit cost, local procurement was allowed with a system put into place for ensuring completion of quality work. Second, setting a cost threshold, below which communities procure goods locally based on market principles and above which procurement follows standard local bidding or international bidding as appropriate. Third, as in India, community projects are clustered to allow for economies of scale and to attract a larger pool of local contractors and NGOs.
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