Participatory Land Use Development in Bosnia and Herzegovina (PLUD)
The Guidelines on “Participatory Land Use Development in Bosnia and Herzegovina” offer a case study of how experiences, gained in the specific local context of post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina, in the former Yugoslavia, led to a methodology for participatory land use development (PLUD) that can be applied in other settings.
FAO has formulated seven key factors essential for successful participatory land use development: (1) a clear formulation of the objectives and problems to be solved, (2) recognition of all of the stakeholders and their differing objectives, (3) an adequate enabling environment and regulatory policy, (4) effective institutions, (5) a platform for negotiations, (6) an accessible and efficient knowledge base, and (7) a set of planning procedures. The guidelines explain how these principles were acted upon in pilot municipalities of Bosnia-Herzegovina and translated into an outscalable methodology.
The PLUD process is initiated by external or internal actors, which could be individuals, projects, government institutions or civil society groups, and are termed ‘Land Use Development Practitioners’ (hereafter shortened as ‘the Practitioner’) in the guidelines. The responsibility of the Practitioner is widespread, with tasks that include (1) identifying the stakeholders, (2) collecting the baseline information needed to get the process started, (3) sensitizing the participants to the nature of the process, (4) facilitating the negotiations, (5) providing logistical support, (6) coordinating the activities of the various institutions, and (7) attending to a myriad of other details as they arise. For this reason the Practitioner is expected to possess a wide range of interdisciplinary technical, social, communication and management skills.
The first step in the Practitioner’s activities is to build a negotiation platform, which involves learning about the stakeholders characteristics, informing the stakeholders about the process, and contacting potential service providers (such as research and academic institutions, private consultancy firms, government agencies, international organizations and NGOs). Their role will mainly consist in providing the technical expertise that the stakeholders will need or find useful as they work their way through the process.
In the context of Bosnia-Herzegovina the main stakeholder is the Municipality Administration. Hence all further activities of the practitioner must be undertaken in partnership with key personnel of the municipality administration, keeping the ultimate goal in mind of empowering the municipality administration to assume the practitioner’s role in its future activities. Additional stakeholders need to be identified as well and included in the process. An important step at this stage is stakeholder analysis, a technique for collecting information on stakeholder characteristics, relationships with each other, and influence in/ motivation towards decision-making. As the participatory process proceeds, stakeholders may change, in numbers, identity, attitudes and interests. For this reason this step must be carefully monitored and documented
Keeping the identified stakeholders involved in the process requires that they see benefit in doing so and can be achieved through a variety of established partipatory appraisal, learning and action methods.
At a technical level PLUD relies on subdividing a municipality into “Initial Economic-Ecological Zones” (IEEZ), which are basically zones of similar economic-ecological characteristics, drawn without requiring great accuracy, as the main purpose is to stimulate discussion. The guidelines give examples of the types of information and techniques useful for delineating the IEEZ.
The desired outcome of this preparatory phase in the process is a group of stakeholders (the ‘Stakeholder Complex’) who understand the task that is before them and are equipped with the tools that are needed to perform that task (the ‘Negotiation Platform’), as well as the motivation needed to undertake it.
Once this outcome is achieved, the practitioner can turn attention to the heart of the process: stakeholder consensus building. This phase of the process has two main goals: (1) reaching a common agreement concerning the nature of the municipality, a.k.a. the Territorial Pact, and (2) achieving stakeholder consensus regarding the direction for the municipality to move in the future, setting the development portfolio.
The first step in this phase of the process is a plenary workshop of all stakeholders, to get to know each other, to introduce the IEEZ, to conduct a SWOT Analysis, and create working groups based on the stakeholders’ main interests. An important objective of the plenary workshop is to prepare the stakeholders to develop their own version of the Economic-Ecological Zones. The guidelines contain a listing of standard datasets useful for this purpose, as well as tips on facilitation and setting up the working groups.
The overall objective of each working group is to formulate a comprehensive image of the reality of the municipality as it relates to the group’s land use theme or spatial zone (‘Community Asset Mapping’). Community Asset Mapping is a comprehensive mapping exercise that, besides physical assets, also includes social, cultural, religious characteristics of the community, markets and legal frameworks. The community asset mapping exercise is the start of the negotiations that will ultimately produce the territorial pact and the consensus EEZ. Once the working group has developed a conception of the assets of the municipality as they relate to the particular land use theme or spatial zone, the next step is to use that information to formulate a consensus vision statement about desirable developments and outcomes.
After all working groups have reached a consensus vision for each of their land use themes or spatial zones the results of their efforts must be combined into an overall vision of the municipality, in a negotiation process conducted in a plenary workshop. The consensus reached in this workshop is referred to as the Territorial Pact.
The next step in the process is to translate the aspirations, emerging from the Territorial Pact, into a concrete action plan with prioritized project proposals for implementation (the ‘Development Portfolio’). Also this step starts with working groups, who have the main responsibility for developing the proposals, and is formalized in a general assessment workshop, which has to prioritize the workgroup proposals and develop and ratify a draft outline of the development portfolio documentation. The latter is used as the master plan for the implementation phase of the process. Success in implementation depends critically on the designation of project focal points as well as technical support for individual projects. To ensure internal consistency the guidelines recommend the use of Logical Framework Analysis.
Possibly the most critical aspect of the project implementation phase is the monitoring and evaluation process. This is the mechanism that the stakeholders use to maintain control over the project activities and outcomes, even if the actual work is being done by experts or contractors. Attaining this goal of continued stakeholder involvement entails the use of the participatory monitoring and evaluation (pm&e) methodology.
The final step in the process is the monitoring and evaluation at the level of the entire program. It is recommended that this step takes place once a year.