Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Broad-based support and a broad level of community leadership
The professional support given to the Makuleke community has most definitely
empowered the community positively. The strong effort that has been put into
developing a broad-based leadership has also reaped its fruits as there were always
strong leaders and figures in place to follow up on the process and take the devel-
opments further. Experiences from other cases have shown that often the falling
out of one key leader has meant the end or slacking off of the whole process.
Institutional development for good governance and benefit sharing
One of the key advisory services given to the Makuleke Community has been to
design a set of institutions that create a transparent, democratic and effective way
of accounting for and distributing income from the land. A broad based institu-
tional set up was created by the Makuleke community in order to allow for an
equitable representation of the community at large and to strive for a broad
consensus on prioritizing how and where to distribute the generated income. At
the overarching level, the Makuleke CPA represents around 18,000 members of
the community. Nine elected CPA members constitute the CPA executive
committee that is responsible for the day to day running of the CPA. The execu-
tive committee is re-elected every two years.The CPA executive committee has, in
the past, received donor grants to cover the honorarium costs for the nine
members, but in due time the generated income should cover these internal costs.
About half of the executive committee are village representatives and the other
half are elected by the general meeting of the CPA. There are an additional two
full-time staff members who work with the executive committee, an administra-
tor/receptionist and a facilitator whose function is to interact with donors,
government and the private sector as well as community-based organizations.The
constitution calls for regular feedback meetings between the executive committee
and the full CPA membership, but in practice this seems difficult to effectuate.
The Makuleke have devised two approaches to bridge this gap and involve a
larger representation of the community leadership to interact with the executive
committee, share information and build consensus on decision making. First a
Development Forum was created which allows community leadership from civic
organizations such as women's and youth groups, churches, sports clubs, farmers'
associations and policing forums to give input into where money should be spent
in the villages. Unfortunately plans for additional communication between the
CPA executive and the CPA did not work out, as it was not seen as a priority by
the Executive who now use the Development Forum and the Annual General
Meetings as their main feedback mechanisms. These extra forms of communica-
tion included local youth who were trained as journalists for a newsletter, notice
boards and community radio transmissions.
In terms of financial integrity and accountability, the Makuleke Development
Trust is the repository of all lease fees and income from hunting. The Makuleke
Development Trust is constituted by four elected community members and three
members from outside the community. The outsiders are the Makuleke CPA's
legal advisor, a professional trust administrator and a representative from the
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