Tools for transformation
Policy Briefs
Investing in collaboration to manage environmental resource conflict
Investing in conflict management capacity helps support rural livelihoods and equitable governance. This brief summarizes the outcomes of dialogue in three ecoregions and makes recommendations for policy implementation.
Engaging the private sector to address conflict in natural resource management
International investments in agroindustry present a growing source of tension for people who rely on land, forests, water and fisheries. This brief presents guidance on engaging the private sector to identify joint solutions.
Supporting gender-inclusive dialogue over natural resource management
Poor rural women often face institutionalized barriers to effective participation in resource management. The brief discusses how inclusive dialogue can help address those barriers and achieve more equitable outcomes.
Collaborative dialogue to support local institutions in natural resource co-management
Conflicting stakeholder interests and disparities in power and capacity make co-management difficult to implement. This brief shows how dialogue processes can support local institutions to participate more effectively.
Program Reports
Dialogue to address the roots of resource competition: Lessons for policy and practice
An action research initiative in Cambodia, Zambia and Uganda explored how multistakeholder dialogue can address the roots of environmental resource competition and conflict. This synthesis report presents outcomes and lessons.
Strengthening collective action to address resource conflict in Lake Kariba, Zambia
Lakeshore residents face competition over fishing, tourism, and commercial aquaculture. This report details how dialogue produced agreements with investors and increased accountability of state agencies and traditional leaders.
Innovations to strengthen aquatic resource governance on Cambodia’s Tonle Sap Lake
Fishery reforms have provided new opportunities for co-management. This report summarizes the context of the reforms, challenges and local institutional innovations to improve resource conservation and local livelihoods.
Strengthening community roles in aquatic resource governance in Uganda
Villagers around Lake Victoria face declining resources and a failure of government services. This report shows how dialogue can spur community-led actions linking public health, sanitation and environmental conservation.
Manuals
Multi-Actor Platform Design Guide
The Multi-Actor Platform Design Guide outlines a multi-stakeholder approach to address challenges related to local governance facing communities, government officials, civil society members and a range of other stakeholders. While the examples in this guide are drawn from experiences in natural resource governance and rural development, its principles and the approach can be extended to other contexts and at different scales. It is written to be used by practitioners (whether from civil society, government or other implementing agencies) seeking to facilitate the design, implementation, and strengthening of a multi-actor platform at the landscape level.
Engaging Government for Policy Influence Through Multi-Stakeholder Platforms: A Guidance Note
Securing land rights for rural people through reform and better implementation of land tenure policies and practices relies primarily on successful engagement at the national level. This Guidance Note discusses design choices for national engagement strategies, focusing particularly on how their evolving relationship with government actors can help achieve policy reform and improve people-centered land governance.
Collaborating for Resilience : A Practitioner’s Guide
Collaborating for Resilience aims to catalyze institutional change to address shared challenges of natural resource management. This manual details an approach to oganize dialogue, joint actions and to sustain collaboration.
From conflict to collaboration in natural resource management: A handbook and toolkit for practitioners working in aquatic resource systems
Managing natural resources means reconciling diverging interests that often lead to conflict. This manual provides an orientation to the issues and a suite of practical exercises and tools to support participatory processes.
Guide pratique pour la collaboration au service de la résilience
Collaborating for Resilience a pour mission de catalyser le changement institutionnel dans le but de résoudre les défis communs posés par la gestion des ressources naturelles. Le présent manuel fournit une approche détaillée visant à organiser le dialogue, mener des actions conjointes et maintenir la collaboration.
Colaboración para la creación de resiliencia: una guía para profesionales
Colaborating for Resilience tiene como objetivo catalizar el cambio institucional a fin de abordar desafíos comunes en la gestión de los recursos naturales. En este manual se presenta un método para organizar el diálogo, emprender acciones conjuntas y mantener la colaboración.
Journal articles
Multistakeholder platforms for natural resource governance: lessons from eight landscape-level cases
Multistakeholder platforms (MSPs) are the subject of increasing attention and investment in the domain of collaborative natural resource governance, yet evidence-based guidance remains slim on policy and investment priorities to leverage the MSP approach. We draw on a comparative analysis of eight landscape-level MSPs that span seven countries and represent a diversity of resource systems including forests, rangelands, and multiuse agricultural landscapes. Applying an adapted social-ecological systems framework, our synthesis distills lessons addressing: (1) how to design an MSP in relation to the governance context; (2) how to implement inclusive processes that address power inequities; and (3) how to support adaptive learning to expand the MSP’s influence over time.
Investing in multi-stakeholder dialogue to address natural resource competition and conflict
How can multi-stakeholder dialogue help assess and address the roots of environmental resource competition and conflict? This article summarises the outcomes and lessons from action research in large lake systems in Uganda, Zambia, and Cambodia. Dialogues linking community groups, NGOs and government agencies have reduced local conflict, produced agreements with private investors, and influenced government priorities in ways that respond to the needs of marginalized fishing communities. The article details policy guidance in four areas: building stakeholder commitment, understanding the institutional and governance context, involving local groups in the policy reform process, and embracing adaptability in program implementation.
Increasing social-ecological resilience within small-scale agriculture in conflict-affected Guatemala
The challenge of increasing social-ecological resilience in small-scale agriculture is particularly acute in the socioeconomically and agroecologically marginalized Western Highlands of Guatemala. Not only is climate change a threat to agriculture in this region, but adaptation strategies are challenged by the context of a society torn apart by decades of violent conflict. We use the example of the Buena Milpa agricultural development project to demonstrate how grassroots approaches to collective action, conflict prevention, and social-ecological resilience, linking local stakeholder dynamics to the broader institutional and governance context, can bear fruit amidst postconflict development challenges. Examples of microwatershed management and conservation of local maize varieties illustrate opportunities to foster community-level climate adaptation strategies within small-scale farming systems even in deeply divided societies.
Facilitating multi-stakeholder dialogue to manage natural resource competition: A synthesis of lessons from Uganda, Zambia, and Cambodia
Rural development or natural resource management program planning and implementation frequently confront challenges of environmental resource competition and conflict, particularly where common pool resources are a major component of rural livelihoods. This paper reports on an approach to multistakeholder dialogue, supported by participatory action research, to address the roots of such competition and conflict. Working in partnership with government, community and civil society actors, the approach was developed and refined through applications in large lake systems in Uganda, Zambia, and Cambodia. This paper presents a synthesis of lessons addressing practitioners in government, nongovernmental development organizations, and international development agencies. These lessons include guidance on the context of multistakeholder dialogue processes, addressing gender equity, building stakeholder relationships and accountability across scales, and encouraging learning and innovation over time.
Addressing conflict through collective action in natural resource management
The food security crisis and international “land grabs” have drawn renewed attention to the role of natural resource competition in the livelihoods of the rural poor. While significant empirical research has focused on diagnosing the links between natural resource competition and (violent) conflict, much less has focused on the dynamics of whether and how resource competition can be transformed to strengthen social-ecological resilience and mitigate conflict. Focusing on this latter theme, this review synthesizes evidence from cases in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Building on an analytical framework designed to enable such comparative analysis, we present several propositions about the dynamics of conflict and collective action in natural resource management, and a series of recommendations for action.
Collaborating for resilience: conflict, collective action, and transformation on Cambodia’s Tonle Sap Lake
We report on outcomes and lessons learned from a 15-month initiative in Cambodia’s Tonle Sap Lake. Employing the appreciation-influence-control (AIC) model of participatory stakeholder engagement, the initiative built shared understanding of the sources of vulnerability in fisheries livelihoods and catalyzed collective action to support resilience in this valuable and productive social-ecological system. The AIC approach, we argue, provides an effective route to enable collective action in ways that strengthen dialogue and collaboration across scales, fostering the conditions for local-level transformations that can contribute to improvement in governance. We conclude with a discussion of the broader implications for resilience practice.
Resource conflict, collective action, and resilience: an analytical framework
Where access to renewable natural resources essential to rural livelihoods is highly contested, improving cooperation in resource management is an important element in strategies for peacebuilding and conflict prevention. We present a framework on collective action, conflict prevention, and social-ecological resilience, linking local stakeholder dynamics to the broader institutional and governance context. Accounting for both formal and informal relationships of power and influence, as well as values and stakeholder perceptions alongside material interests, the framework aims to provide insight into the problem of (re)building legitimacy of common-pool resource management institutions in conflict-sensitive environments. We outline its application in stakeholder-based problem assessment and planning, participatory monitoring and evaluation, and multi-case comparative analysis.