6. INTEGRATING COMMUNITY PERSPECTIVES IN THE UCCHALI MANAGEMENT PLAN
6.1 Lessons from the participatory planning process
- A central objective of this participatory process was to
initiate local level planning exercises that take full account
of local needs, perspectives, capacities and aspirations. The
use of Participatory Rural Appraisal methods highlighted the following:
1. The PRAs were conducted to build up pictures of natural resource
endowments, the means by which they are managed, and the socio-economic
make up of three villages in the Ucchali complex.The quality and
depth of information generated on local livelihoods and their
relationships with natural resources were much richer than that
generated by more conventional survey and questionnaire based
studies. Moreover, this information was obtained in a relatively
short period (one week) and at a lower financial cost than conventional
management plan formulation by outside experts..
2. The boundary conditions and inclusiveness of the villagers'
analysis were wider than those of the natural scientists hitherto
involved in the wetland management planning. The scientists tended
to focus on species of special concern for international conservation
and the wetland habitat per se. In contrast, the villagers
explored the connections between forests in the watershed, land
use history, livelihoods and the White headed Duck's only overwintering
site in Pakistan.The villagers' analysis was untrammelled by disciplinary
specialisation and, as such, revealed new information to outsiders
who were ready to sit down and listen.
3. Many villagers had a very good understanding of the wetlands'
ecology and of how watershed management practices (e.g forest
clearing) impacted on the lakes. Complex issues such as patterns
of migratory bird activity, changes in water quality, rates of
sedimentation, relationship between ground water levels and wetland
presence were locally monitored and often well understood. Villagers
established causal links between recent outside interventions
and their detrimental effects on avian species of international
importance e.g. negative impacts of introduction of exotic fish
species (carp and tilapia) on White headed Duck populations; strong
lights of a newly opened military base which interfere with the
orientation and landing behaviour of immigrating bird species
on Ucchali lake.
4. The interactive dialogues with the members of the three different
villages revealed many contrasts between the social make up of
each village and between the lakes' ecologies.This local level
diversity suggests that standard and undifferentiated approaches
to wetland management planning and implementation are inappropriate.There
is a need to combine the general validity of the ecological principles
on which management plans rest with the site specific knowledge
and innovations of local communities.
5. Although the villagers' emphasised the obvious negative externalities
and the high economic costs associated with the presence of the
wetlands, no rigorous economic analysis was carried out. One methodological
frontier for conservation and natural resource management planning
is to combine ecological methods and PRA methods with local
level economic valuations ( Table 6 ). The complementary nature
of different traditions of knowledge and methodologies can provide
a sounder basis for conservation planning and conflict
resolution.
6. The profound mismatch between locally lived experiences of
wetland histories and the perceptions of outsiders. External
organisations and professionnals have either assumed that lakes
Ucchali and Khabbaki are natural features of the landscape
or have not internalised evidence invalidating this belief. Conservationists'
failure to understand the relatively recent social and ecological
history of the wetlands has led to the neglect of the prior land
rights of local people and has thus created conditions for conflicts
between the state and local communities.
7. Declaring the Ucchali wetlands as "internationally
important"conservation sites is meaningless for local resource
users as long as the issues that emerge out of such declarations
have not been discussed and resolved to the satisfaction of local
communities. Farmers who had lost land and/or traditional rights
over resources could not appreciate the value of vague "long
term" conservation benefits for society or humanity. In their
view, conservation benefits should be immediate and quantifiable,
with villagers getting a fair share of the benefits accruing from
the successful management of the wetlands or a fair compensation
for loss of productive resources.
8. Rebuilding the relationship between local people and conservation
organisations (Government and NGOs) after a history of policing
and exclusion is difficult. The use of coercive methods that
are assumed to be valid for all people, all times and all places
is counterproductive. These measures most often disempower local
communities and directly or indirectly impose more restrictions,
from total exclusion to the denial of access to resources (see
Box 16 ).Top down approaches to wetland management in situations
where local people directly depend on natural resources for their
livelihoods usually result in high management costs for governments,
with the majority of benefits accruing to national and international
external interests.
9. Wetland management is likely to be sustainable ecologically,
economically and socially only if the overall management scheme
can be made sufficiently attractive to local people for them to
adopt it as a long term livelihood strategy. From the outset,
the formulation of wetland management plans should be based on
interactive dialogue to understand peoples' priorities, needs
and knowledge.
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