Browsing by Author "Suich, Helen"

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Access and Benefits in Payments for Environmental Services, Forest Conservation and Climate Change: Lessons from A Global Review
(2011) Mahanty, Sanghamitra; Suich, Helen; Tacconi, Luca
"This paper presents findings from a recent global study that assessed the impacts of Payments for Environmental Service (PES) schemes on livelihoods, and implications for the design of incentive mechanisms for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD). It focuses particularly on two key areas that are important to the local impacts of PES and REDD schemes: (i) whether tenure and wealth filter access to schemes by local resource users and managers and (ii) how the design of contracts and the configuration of payments and other benefits impact local livelihoods and the sustainability of schemes. In terms of access, the PES schemes reviewed occurred on land falling under diverse tenure arrangements, and full ownership rights were not a prerequisite for PES agreements, but the criteria for selecting the location and participants for schemes were important access determinants. The schemes did provide some benefitsto participants, for instance a small amount of additional income to participating households, and investments in community infrastructure and services where payments were made to community bodies. Payments were often well below the opportunity costs faced by participants over the life of the scheme, however, which could diminish positive impacts on local livelihoods and ultimately undermine the sustainability of such schemes. Passing on transaction and monitoring costs to participants also reduced the flow of benefits to local actors, and payment schedules often did not cover the full duration of the PES contract, which diminished the likely sustainability and conditionality of the schemes. Such factors will have to be clearly addressed in the design of REDD schemes."
Basket Cases: Individual Returns from Common Property Resources
(2004) Murphy, Carol; Suich, Helen
"What happens when craft items that use common property resources as raw materials, change from domestic items to commercially marketed art products in an area where there are common property resource institutions? Prior to the implementation of the craft programme in Caprivi(Namibia), palm baskets were made by women for winnowing grain and had little commercial value. The craft programme, which is part of the national community based natural resource management programme focuses on product development, marketing and sustainable use of palm and dye raw materials and there is now a thriving craft industry in Caprivi. "This commercialisation process has generated craft sales income for individual producers and heralded the formation of local, producer cooperatives to handle the demands of commercial production and marketing. Most producers are poor, rural women in remote villages and craft production is a very marginal activity when taking into account the time and effort required. As a result, the craft income is very modest most producers earn less than US$50 per year but still provides a significant contribution to household livelihoods where opportunities for rural women to generate cash are extremely limited. "With palm resources now having a higher value than previously, people's perception of this common property resource has changed. Indigenous common property resource institutions (i.e. traditional authorities) extract a modest fee for use of these plant resources by producer groups in return for protection of the resource from outsiders. Modern common property resources institutions (conservancies) that commonly generate funds collectively for collective benefit (i.e. from trophy hunting and tourism) have questioned the use of common property resources for individual gain by the crafters. Confusion regarding common property theory by some senior government and conservancy members (usually men), has meant that producers (usually women) have had to defend their right to retain individual cash income from craft sales against suggestions that the craft sales revenue should be distributed collectively. "Challenges to both common property resource institutions and crafters in this context, is that any funds used for common property management or collective marketing (i.e. commission taking by marketing institutions) increase the marginality of craft as a livelihood activity. In addition, globalisation and the mass production of woven items in Asia, means that handcrafted, traditional baskets made of indigenous and sustainably harvested raw plant materials have to compete with very cheap products on the international market. "Despite these challenges, craft marketing in Caprivi is characterized by a very successful dual existence of collective marketing and resource monitoring together with individual cash benefit, making craft sales an important contributor to the household incomes of the producers. The success of collective marketing is based on strong NGO support driven by donors agendas for poverty alleviation and sustainable development. Conservancy institutions have been beneficial in bringing a strong focus on sustainable use of the raw materials by the producers."
'Big Can Be Beautiful': Ensuring Regional Transboundary Conservation Supports Local Community Resource Management in the Proposed Okavango/Upper Zambezi TFCA, Southern Africa
(2004) Murphy, Carol; Suich, Helen; Slater-Jones, Sandra; Diggle, Richard
"There is global recognition that political boundaries can hinder conservation objectives, particularly in areas where wildlife is highly migratory, as these boundaries often split river basins, watersheds and other ecosystems between countries, as well as dividing human populations. Transboundary conservation initiatives are being heralded as an opportunity to promote biodiversity conservation, bring local socio- economic development and facilitate peace and co-operation. In southern Africa, potential transboundary conservation areas are being given increasing support from a wide range of stakeholders including governments, non government organisations and donors. The Okavango/Upper Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (OUZTFCA) is one such area that encompasses parts of five countries (Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe) and is of global conservation significance as being, amongst other things, the home to the largest remaining concentration of free-ranging elephants. "However, risks associated with the present practice of transboundary conservation include top-down approaches aimed at securing wildlife habitat, lack of co-ordination of activities, and a negotiation scale that is mainly government-to-government or regional. These risks can prohibit meaningful and lasting local community participation. The challenge to successful transboundary conservation is to ensure that successful local conservation initiatives play a key role. "By reflecting on the development of two Namibian community conservation areas on the Chobe Floodplain within the OUZTFCA, the paper documents the way a field-based NGO has used the opportunity to shape the delivery of transboundary conservation interventions to suit the needs of existing local community based natural resource management. Activities to achieve this included: focusing international, transboundary funding at a community-scale and ensuring strong local participation in wildlife management and tourism planning. By doing this, the risks associated with international resource management and planning will hopefully be minimised, and a stable foundation on which to build future transboundary activities will be built, to ensure that big really is beautiful."
Evaluating the Household Level Outcomes of Community Based Natural Resource Management: The Tchuma Tchato Project and Kwandu Conservancy
(2013) Suich, Helen
"Community based natural resource management (CBNRM) programs aim to link the achievement of conservation objectives with those of rural development and poverty alleviation. However, after more than a decade of implementation in southern Africa, there is remarkably little rigorous analysis of their achievements with respect to these goals. An evaluation of two CBNRM interventions, the Tchuma Tchato Project in Mozambique and the Kwandu Conservancy in Namibia, measured the impacts at the household level using multidimensional poverty indices. The analysis found no positive impacts on the multiple dimensions of poverty arising from the Tchuma Tchato initiative in Mozambique. In Kwandu Conservancy in Namibia, positive impacts were felt only on household financial capital on a disappointingly narrow scale. These results have important implications for policy makers and program designers and demonstrate the necessity of developing targeted strategies if poverty alleviation outcomes are to be achieved. Further, if the assumption that the provision of incentives is key to encouraging and maintaining participation in CBNRM is correct, the delivery of appropriate benefits that have a sufficient impact at the household level will be crucial for the long run sustainability of these initiatives."
Poverty Alleviation and Community Based Natural Resource Management in Southern Africa
(2008) Suich, Helen
"Community based natural resource management (CBNRM) can refer to a range of different interventions, and can imply different meanings in different countries. In most southern African countries, CBNRM programmes are typically designed to devolve rights over wildlife and/or forestry (and sometimes other resources) on communal lands to local institutions. The basis of the devolution of management responsibility over these resources is that, if the benefits that can be derived from the use of the resources can outweigh their management costs, communities will have the incentive to sustainably manage the resources. "Naturally, programmes evolve differently in each country according to different social, political and economic influences. However, they do have common central objectives, which typically relate primarily to the conservation of biodiversity and secondarily to contributing to rural economic development, poverty alleviation and/or the improvement of rural livelihoods."