Another one of the fascinating case studies dug up by Sophie King for my recent UN paper on ‘The Role of the State in Empowering Poor and Excluded Groups and Individuals’. This one looks at two examples of devolution that seem to work
Devolving forest management to local people, Dak Lak, Vietnam
This is from an FAO case study and an OECD paper
By the mid-1990s the lack of effective provincial forest management in Dak Lak province had resulted in extensive deforestation, as indigenous and
migrant groups cleared land for subsistence and commercial production. In 1997, the central government called on the provincial government to curb deforestation and uncontrolled migration. From 1997 the official German development agency GTZ worked in partnership with the provincial department of agriculture and rural development to introduce participatory and sustainable forest management. The programme involved technical assistance to the local government, developing capacity for land-use planning at the commune-level; and land distribution to ethnic minority households. Local people were engaged in developing village-level regulations for land use. Local households were given the rights to forest resources as well as long-term land titles, and families involved in managing the forests were granted a quota of timber and 6% of after-tax value of the timber logged once the forest matures.
Results:
- Deforestation slowed down in devolved areas
- Between 1999 (the year before devolution was introduced) and 2001/2, the total value of goods harvested from the forest grew by 170%
- This harvest accounted for on average 67.6% of non-farm income for participating households
- Indigenous groups’ land rights were strengthened
- The programme was effectively extended to other forested provinces
Challenges:
- The programme did not incorporate aspects of the customary forest governance structure of the local ethnic group
- Local people had little or no access to justice in order to defend their new rights – farmers therefore struggled to protect their timber from illegal logging
- Tensions remained with local state forestry authorities who experienced a loss of control and associated benefits
Drivers of success:
- There was an urgent need for change because of the serious decline in forest resources under state management
- Despite tension with the local forestry authority, there was political support for the reforms within the provincial government and strong political commitment from central government, including investment of financial resources
- Availability of technical support from GTZ. This was particularly helpful as forest devolution was unprecedented in Vietnam.
- The initial emphasis on training and capacity-building of provincial administration.
Responding to civil society initiatives – co-production of sanitation in Karachi
This comes from a 2008 study by Diana Mitlin
Orangi is a large informal settlement in Karachi, Pakistan. In 1982, residents suffered from high child mortality rates linked to appalling local living conditions. A local NGO called the Orangi Pilot Project (OPP) developed an alternative model for sanitation: ‘the residents of a lane or street paid for the lane investment in sanitation while the municipality took on responsibility for the sewer network into which this fed, and also the waste treatment plants’. After initial reluctance, the municipality eventually agreed to this co-management arrangement and the idea of community-installed and managed sanitation spread rapidly through the settlement.
Results:
- The process has strengthened local organisations and made them more likely to engage with formal political structures, rather than operating through clientelist networks
- In Orangi, 96,994 houses built their neighbourhood sanitation systems, by investing Rs. 94.29 million (US$ 1.57 million)
- 20 years after the work began in Orangi, the city of Karachi decided that the strategy should be supported throughout the city