rather than only in the testing of technologies
CASE 6: Partnership with Local Communities: The Mashreq and Maghreb Community Approach for the Dry Areas
Abstract
Rural producers and communities in the dry areas of West Asia and North Africa are coping with rapidly changing socioeconomic, political and environmental conditions. In the past research and intervention efforts have focused on individual farmers to transfer technology or manage externalities associated with resource use. Such government approaches had very little success in achieving targeted goals or improving the welfare of communities in dry areas. It also resulted in the passivity of rural producers and communities, who saw their problems identified and solutions proposed with very little input regarding their priorities or indigenous knowledge. The community approach in the dry areas, coordinated by ICARDA and IFPRI with the collaboration of 8 national research programs in Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Syria, and Tunisia and funded by IFAD, AFESD, and IDRC, attempts to empower national programs and communities of the dry areas.
The national teams were responsible for research implementation while communities were involved in all aspects of the research process. Working mechanisms ranging from integrated community teams, community workshops, to field days and national and regional workshops were developed to ensure a continuing dialogue between farmers, researchers, government technicians, and policymakers. The approach facilitates: (1) identification of community problems and potential policy, institutional and technical options; (2) collective action; (3) transfer of technologies and NRM practices; and (4) procurement of funding from financial sources to help implement community priority issues.
Conclusions:
The community approach is bringing hope as it empowers communities, provides tools for addressing household and community livelihood strategies, and promotes the coordination of investment efforts by different stakeholders. A substantial amount of knowledge has been accumulated from the different communities in the region that will assist in guiding future research and development efforts. The coordinated regional approach of the project has facilitated exchanges of knowledge and experiences between national teams. Individual countries have taken the lead in developing specific methodologies, technologies or institutional options that have then been rapidly transferred to the other national teams in the project. In addition, the joint collaboration between ICARDA and IFPRI in developing the community approach and training NARS in using different participatory approaches has generated a wide array of decision making tools that will help focus and improve the formulation of future technical, institutional and policy options. The project has also contributed to further integration and enhancement of the research continuum between headquarters research and national research systems.
The impacts of the project have been outstanding. Few of them are mentioned below:
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1-
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Institutionalizing these types of research at the
NARS level (scaling up and scaling out); the project contributed
in advancing the development of this type of research among NARS.
Some of the countries have initiated a pilot phase for institutionalizing
the community approach. For example, Algeria is using the approach
as the framework within its land reclamation program and its National
Program for Agricultural Development (PNDA); in Jordan, the community
approach is being integrated into the government agricultural strategies
for the dry areas; in Tunisia, the community approach is being used
for the development of the IFAD rangeland project in southern Tunisia;
and in Morocco, the process of decentralization and the recognition
of communities' rights over their resources provide opportunities
for mainstreaming the approach in the dry areas.
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2-
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Contributing to the establishment of an integrated
development framework for the dry areas; the community approach
and its different components contributed in changing the paradigm
of research and development in the dry areas. This approach includes
different methodologies that take individual as well as collective
behaviors of community members into consideration and puts communities
and their institutions at the center of the policy design and technology
transfer.
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3-
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Developing a range of tools and methodologies
that are being widely used by government institutions and other projects
operating in the dry areas. The project has provided information on
the effects of different policies and institutional changes and is
contributing to policy reform in the rural areas. Moreover, the project
has evaluated potential policy and institutional options using community
modeling and econometric analyses to evaluate differing scenarios
with a view to identifying "best-bet" technical, policy
and institutional options (TIPOs). Researchers see a value of having
tools to provide policy guidance to policy makers by allowing them
to:
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4-
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Getting policymakers at the local and national level to realize that policy, technical, and institutional options are not and cannot be dissociated from each other if one seeks to foster rural development. | ||||||||||
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5-
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Networking and regional integration; the project served as a bridge between communities, government services and NGOs to promote the development of the selected communities. National teams worked with their communities to develop proposals and get funding for priority actions. The linkages with new partners provided an important social capital that facilitated the implementation of the negotiated action plans and the elaboration of community development plans. |
