Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
●
If co-management is to work there is the inevitable need for another
layer of
bureaucracy
with joint committees and structures for consultation. This is an
additional expense and may also add inertia to management. The quality of
the facilitation and leadership from both sides is vital for success.
●
The community is working alongside a much more powerful institution. It is
vital that the community is able to hold its own, which requires substantial
capacity building
, and a commitment to full participation from those repre-
senting the state. In particular the community may find it hard to get hold of
information except via the state partner (for example, if there is technical
expertise or infrastructure needed to get information about the status of the
resource or patterns of use, see Box 7.4).
●
The legislative position may be complex, and the
institutional structures
underlying co-management need to be well thought-through, so that each
side has the intended level of control over management.
●
As in all community-based conservation, there is the need to remember that a
'community' is made up of
individuals
and user groups with different, poten-
tially conflicting, interests in the resource, all of whom need to be represented
in the management structure.
When we make decisions, there are a number of steps that we go through, whether
consciously or not.
1.
Frame the problem
. What is the issue we are addressing? What are our meas-
ures of the success with which we have addressed it? What are all the pos-
sible options for action?
2.
Gather evidence
. What information do we have about the system?
3.
Model system dynamics
. Can we predict how the system will react to different
management interventions? What is the uncertainty surrounding this pre-
diction?
4.
Weigh up the options
. For each of our possible actions, how well do our pre-
dicted outcomes perform against the measures of success? This includes con-
sidering both our best guess at what the outcome will be and a measure of the
range of possible outcomes and their likelihood under each action.
5.
Make the decision
. Based on the likely outcomes from each option, which is
the best option to choose?
6.
Monitor and review
. The performance of the system once the decision is
made gives us new evidence about system dynamics, and may also make us
consider whether we need to reframe the problem. So we continue to gather
evidence once the decision is made, and periodically go through the deci-
sion-making process again, armed with our new information.
This process is used subconsciously for our most banal decisions, such as the
contents of the weekly shop, but it can also be formalised into
decision analysis
.
Decision analysis is the process of quantitatively evaluating options under
