Three seeds of CoRe
Dialogue is difficult. Listening deeply to people with radically different perspectives, searching for solutions that go beyond convention, taking responsibility for change rather than passing it off to others—none of these are easy. Because our work is inherently tough, CoRe tends to attract people whose experiences working with communities facing deep inequalities give them reason to persevere.
“Where does CoRe come from?” is a question I’m asked frequently now. Implicit is the understanding that our stories reveal a great deal about who we are, what we do, and why. And although CoRe is a young organization, its roots go back decades. My view of that journey centers around three formative insights that underpin our work today.
1. The “commons” are created and sustained through shared purpose.
When I heard news of the fall of the Berlin Wall, it arrived through the sputtering whine of a short-wave radio as I angled for reception on the hillsides of Lake Atitlán in highland Guatemala. As this momentous symbol of Cold War division yielded to people eager to reunite their families and cast aside the restrictions of rigid ideology, the valley that I had called home for the last half-year remained under the shadow of a long civil war. At eighteen, I’d been fortunate to find work with the anthropologist and social entrepreneur Alberto Rivera Gutiérrez, who was endeavoring against the odds to build a biosphere reserve, reforest degraded hillsides and support a mosaic of sustainable agricultural landscapes in partnership with local communities.
The Mayan village where I lived, San Jorge de la Laguna, owed its continued existence to deep traditions of civic engagement, continually reaffirming and rebuilding the “commons” on which collective life depends. The commons included communal forests to harvest firewood, hillsides for maize cultivation, intricate waterways to irrigate terraced vegetable plots, as well as the precision stonework that lined the village square. It also included the Kakchikel language, and the shared identity of a people enduring despite centuries of attack, reinventing themselves in a globalizing, market economy. The notion of community, I learned, cannot be taken for granted. Indeed, the choice to value something in common, and to commit effort to protect, sustain and restore it together, is the heart of community building.
2. The roots of conflict and collaboration are intertwined.
Two years later, I was living in the Palestinian West Bank, working for a human rights organization in the town of Ramallah. Amidst the long uprising or “Intifadah” against Israeli occupation, I witnessed peaceful demonstrators risk their lives to slip olive branches into the raised rifle barrels of Israeli soldiers on patrol. For youth who had grown up under occupation, it was a rare—and ultimately fleeting—moment of hope. But it left a lasting impression. Even amidst seemingly irreconcilable conflict, individuals are faced with daily choices. We can raise the stakes with violence, we can turn away, or we can confront injustice to search for a peaceful way forward that respects the dignity of all.
I had the opportunity to test this principle working many years later with WorldFish in Cambodia, a country that had suffered one of the most violent and destructive social revolutions of the last half century. Fisherfolk around the Tonle Sap Lake, an exceptionally productive freshwater fishery and the heart of the country’s agricultural economy, were under attack. A corrupt system of commercial concessions denied communities access to valuable fishing grounds, hired guards shot at passing boats with impunity, and outside investors profited from clearing the mangroves that provided essential fish refuge and spawning habitats.
Action research to address the roots of this resource conflict also nurtured the search for collaborative solutions, through an initiative managed jointly by the principle actors. This included the civil society movement advocating for community fishers’ rights, the central authorities responsible for enforcing the laws, and the leading domestic policy research institute. Ultimately, the practices of collaborative dialogue contributed to regulatory and policy reforms that erased the commercial lot system in favor of a network of community fisheries, the broadest such reform effort in Southeast Asia and a significant boon for livelihood resilience.
3. Dialogue by design can nurture systems change.
Emboldened by this experience, the next phase of the journey aimed to distill the principles of multi-stakeholder dialogue to address the roots of natural resource conflict and test these in diverse settings. With communities, civil society organizations and government partners in Zambia and Uganda, alongside those in Cambodia, this new partnership worked to develop, field-test, and refine a modular approach to identify the potential for collaboration; design and implement dialogue processes; then evaluate, learn and adapt efforts on the basis of early outcomes.
This purposive learning cycle found shape in Collaborating for Resilience: A Practitioner’s Guide, developed jointly with the pioneering organizational systems analyst, William E. Smith. By addressing power dynamics directly and creating space for collaborative action, our partners achieved impressive results, often more quickly and at far lower cost than traditional development programs. In Zambia, historically marginalized lakeshore communities successfully negotiated with commercial aquaculture investors to maintain fishing grounds and access routes, and secure new jobs. In Uganda, community-driven efforts linking environmental protection to public health and sanitation attracted the support of district leaders, then the national Ministry of Water and Environment and U.N. agencies looking for cost-effective solutions. In these countries and beyond, we discovered a strong appetite among development agencies, civil society leaders, and innovative government officials for a sustained network to advance the practice of effective multi-stakeholder dialogue and spur innovation for inclusive natural resource governance.
CoRe today
Collaborating for Resilience launched in 2014 as an initiative within the CGIAR, the global science partnership working to enhance food and nutrition security, reduce poverty and sustain natural resources. Today, as an independent non-profit venture with team members on five continents, we continue to partner with CGIAR to build evidence on the obstacles that undermine collaborative, multi-stakeholder platforms for inclusive governance of resilient landscapes, and the conditions that make them succeed.
We’re also extending the principles of collaborative dialogue within ambitious systems change initiatives at increasing scales of complexity. With support from the Skoll Foundation, we’re aiding the Promise of Commons initiative in India to catalyze a movement that aligns national policies, public support, and local action engaging 30 million of the country’s rural poor to restore degraded forests and pasturelands, resources that are essential to their life and livelihoods. With the International Land Coalition, we’ve launched a global community of practice known as LandCollaborative to build capacity, share experience, and strengthen alliances among innovators working to achieve equitable, people-centered, land and natural resource governance in over 30 countries.
I’m consistently inspired by the creativity and dedication of the partners and team members who choose to devote their efforts to co-create the next chapters in this unfolding story, confronting powerful obstacles to build a more collaborative, equitable and resilient future. More than a mission statement or strategy, it’s the quality of those connections that defines what we can achieve and how we learn and adapt—together.