[GREENING DEMOCRACY AND GOVERNING THE ENVIRONMENT]{.underline}

***USAID EXPERIENCES FROM THE FIELD***

## 

## TABLE OF CONTENTS

[PART I:]{.underline} PAGE NUMBERS

Nancy K. Diamond.

*Exploring Linkages Between Governance, Democracy-Building and
Environment.* 3-8

[PART II:]{.underline}

# Countries and Missions

1.  *Dominican Republic*

Ronald Glass USAID/DR 11-13

2.  *Guinea*

Aaron Chassy USAID/Guinea DG Officer 14-16

3.  *Haiti*

Michele Schimpp USAID/HAITI DG Officer 17-18

4.  *Indonesia*

Janis Alcorn BSP 19-23

Danielle Arigoni USAID/G/ENV/UP 24-25

5.  *Mexico*

Jill Pike USAID/Mexico DG Officer 26-29

6.  *Philippines*

Mike Calavan USAID/Philippines DG Officer 30-32

7.  *United States*

Michaela Meehan USAID/G/DG (Department of Labor) 33-34

# Regions and Bureaus 

8.  *Africa and Asia*

Owen Lynch CIEL 35-36

9.  *Africa*

Laurent Some BSP 37-40

Peter Veit 41-42

Jesse Ribot WRI 43-44

Carl Bruch ELI 45-46

10. *Europe-Eurasia*

Eliza Klose ISAR 47-49

Brian Rohan ABA/CEELI 50-54

11. *Latin America and the Caribbean*

Marsha McKay Partners of the Americas 55-56

12. *South Asia*

Danielle Arigoni USAID/G/ENV/UP 57-58

**PART I**

##### [Exploring Linkages Between Governance, Democracy-Building and Environment]{.underline}[^1]

**By: Nancy K. Diamond, Ph.D.**[^2]

*I. Incentives for Forging Environment-Democracy/Governance Linkages*

Both environment (ENV) and democracy/governance (DG) donor programs
share a common interest in supporting changes in the rules of the game,
new roles for the under-represented and new or improved relationships
among civil society organizations and between civil society and
government.

For the DG community, there are three main advantages to ENV-DG
linkages:

• To build up a greater constituency for DG work and encourage the
development of civil society-government relationships, the DG community
can benefit from closer association with the substantial networks and
constituencies of the ENV community.

• To encourage citizens to take on new roles in governance and
democracy-building, the DG donor and NGO community can capitalize upon
the "mom-and-apple-pie" nature of ENV issues and the value of the ENV
sector to incubate responsive politicians.

• To demonstrate the concrete benefits of democratic governance and rule
of law reforms, the DG community can draw examples from ENV activities
where rules have been changed or enforced through a democratic process.

For the ENV community, there are three main advantages to ENV-DG
linkages:

• To help citizens and policy makers link biodiversity conservation
issues with broader development concerns, the ENV community can benefit
from closer association with DG networks.

• To help train ENV partners to play more effective roles in
environmental governance and have greater systemic impacts on
governance, the ENV community can rely on the expertise and political
skills of the DG community.

• To better understand how environmental governance is influenced by the
overall governance and political situation , the ENV community can
capitalize upon DG expertise in local and national political
sensitivities.

II. ***USAID ENV-DG Experiences and Results***

For USAID-funded activities, there have been different types of
collaboration and synergy development related to ENV-DG linkages.

• There are number of examples of collaboration by mission ENV and DG
teams (i.e., Philippines).

• Sometimes, in small missions, a single team manages both ENV and DG
strategic objectives (i.e., Namibia).

• In some missions, both the ENV and DG teams can support some of the
same partners, at the same time or sequentially (i.e., Indonesia).

• At times, there has been good collaboration among ENV and DG field
project implementers, including both international and host country
partners (i.e., Haiti), and this collaboration was fostered by senior
mission management, the compatibility of project managers and objectives
and geographic overlap.

• When the same USAID partner has managed both an ENV and DG partner in
the same country, there have been opportunities for ENV-DG project
synergies via cross-site visits, etc. (i.e., Bolivia).

Most often, USAID units capitalize on synergies rather than co-fund
joint activities. The most common linkages occur in work related to a
single ENV or DG project.

• Linkage activities occur more commonly in projects related natural
resource management, biodiversity conservation, urban/municipal
management, renewable energy/energy conservation, civil society,
governance and rule of law. ENV-DG linkages appear to be less common
within programs related to civic education, political parties and
elections, energy utility privatization and pollution issues.

• USAID DG projects, with limited or no involvement of ENV teams, have
worked with environmental NGOs under civil society society programs.
They have focused on environmental issues (i.e., urban environmental
services) in local governance activities and looked at rule of law
questions related to enforcement of environmental regulations.

• USAID ENV projects, with limited or no involvement by USAID DG teams,
have worked on developing civil society, improving local governance and
strengthening enforcement of environmental rule of law and human rights.
Although ENV projects have had successes at incorporating DG approaches
and achieving DG results, much of their work has been invisible to the
DG community because it is not typically framed in DG terminology.

As a result of ENV-DG linkages, the following types of results have been
achieved:

• Civil society organizations now play more effective and diverse
governance [roles]{.underline} (e.g., decision-makers, advocates,
watchdogs, resource managers, monitors, fund managers).

• The rule of law, including human rights, have been strengthened as a
result of ENV and DG programs that strengthen environmental policy and
regulation and build the capacity and expertise of lawyers and judges.
New [rules]{.underline} have institutionalized more pluralistic
environmental decision-making, improved civil society access to
environmental governance and improved the administration of the rule of
law in favor of disadvantaged groups. These rule-related changes have
led to more accountable and transparent government institutions and
procedures and improved consensus over environmental priorities and
strategies.

• New [relationships]{.underline} have been forged for environmental
governance, among civil society institutions and between civil society
and government at different levels. Programs have built the capacity of
local government to work with others to provide services and regulate
resource management through local rules and enforcement of national
policy.

## Key Questions for ENV-DG Linkages

There are three over-arching questions for ENV-DGE collaborative and
synergistic efforts:

• When is it appropriate for ENV activities to address systemic DG
changes?

• What strategies should be pursued to convert ENV sectoral changes into
systemic DG changes?

• What mechanisms can we put in place to ensure that systemic DG changes
will be synergistic with sound environmental governance and management?

USAID experience with ENV-DG linkages suggests a number of specific
questions that can form a basis for on-going dialogue and collaborative
efforts by ENV and DG sectors:

[Civil Society]{.underline}:

• When are ENV partners and networks more appropriate partners for DG
activities than traditional DG partners (e.g., labor unions, media,
civil society advocacy groups)?

• When should ENV projects work with local partners and networks with a
broader development agenda?

• When are ENV issues an effective focus for DG objectives?

• How involved should ENV projects become in working directly on
development of the civil society sector?

(e.g., NGO registration, NGO organizational development and
self-determination)

• What are the limits to support for advocacy by civil society
organizations?

• What alternative strategies could be pursued by ENV international
partners for working with repressive governments on biodiversity
conservation objectives?

• How can ENV projects improve the democratic functioning of local
environmental governance groups (e.g., representation and participation
by women, minorities and youth)?

• How can ENV and DG projects help civil society partners to become more
accountable to regional and community partners?

• Are ENV and DG capacity building grant programs for NGOs substantially
different and what can be learned from cross-fertilization?

[Governance]{.underline}:

• What have been the systemic spill-over impacts of governance reforms
in the ENV sector?

• Under what circumstances are environmental issues an appropriate focus
for governance activities?

• How can anti-corruption efforts by DG be better coordinated with
related work in the ENV sector?

• How can systemic reforms related to decentralization be solidified by
focusing on community-based natural resource management and urban
environmental management activities?

[Rule of Law/Human Rights]{.underline}:

• When is it appropriated for DG projects to support specialized
training in environmental and indigenous rights for judges & lawyers?

• How can human rights work by DG be coordinated with ENV work with
indigenous people in areas of high biodiversity?

• How can ENV and DG cooperate to move beyond a government focus for
environmental enforcement activities and help to create space and
improve the effectiveness of different civil society organizations?

• What role does civil society norm development play in establishing and
enforcing environmental policies,

laws and regulations?

## Collaboration Opportunities and Overcoming Barriers

ENV and DG staff and partners can take greater advantage of
opportunities within individual projects, across projects and across
strategic objective teams. In general, early and regular consultation is
best but the management costs need to be recognized. An agency calendar
is needed to identify both near-term and long-term collaboration
possibilities related to TDYs and other activities. When planning new
ENV and DG activities or doing country DG or ENV assessments, both ENV
and DG experts should be included on teams to identify potential
synergies. Wherever possible, at least some of the activities of
separate ENV and DG projects should be located in the same geographic
areas. In missions, senior management can play a critical role in
fostering routine collaboration and communication and insisting on
pursuit of cross-sectoral synergies. It is also helpful to have
cross-representation on mission strategic objective teams for ENV and
DG. While it is important not to underestimate how collaboration is
facilitated by compatible personal and professional relationships, it is
quite important that we find more systemic and transferable means to
promote cross-sectoral linkages.

While the collaboration/synergy options listed above can be pursued at
relatively low cost, there is also a need to address some
financially-related structural barriers and attitudinal barriers. There
has been limited co-funding of ENV-DG activities. Both sectors have, at
times, gotten stuck in a "fixed pie," "stove-piped" mentality. USAID
should consider experimenting with a special pool of funds for
cross-sectoral initiatives. Either USAID units or partners could compete
for these funds. When partners with ENV-DG linkage work have received
funding from both ENV and DG, they are sometimes vulnerable in periods
of funding cuts when neither sector feels full ownership of the
activities. Other barriers include the reporting demands related to
earmarked funds (a greater concern for ENV than DG) and resistance to
"outside the box" efforts to report cross-sectoral results. For example,
at times, USAID/Washington staff have rejected the innovative
cross-sectoral initiatives and indicators submitted by missions.
Sometimes, innovative efforts have been squelched by the contract
specialists. It would also be useful to have a systematic review of
cross-sectoral ENV-DG indicators, intermediate results and strategic
objectives.

**Table 1: An Initial Survey of USAID Bureau-Supported ENV-DG Linkages**

+-----------------+----------------------------------------------------+
| **BUREAU**      | **ACTIVITIES**                                     |
+-----------------+----------------------------------------------------+
| **GLOBAL        | DG approaches are incorporated into a number of    |
| CENTER**        | global projects, primarily via Strategic Support   |
|                 | Objective 1 (natural resources, principally        |
| **FOR           | forests, biodiversity, freshwater & coastal        |
| ENVIRONMENT**   | ecosystems & agricultural lands) and Strategic     |
|                 | Support Objective 2 (municipal services). Several  |
| **(G/ENV)**     | projects are incorporating DG approaches,          |
|                 | influencing environmental governance (with         |
|                 | possible spill-over governance impacts) & building |
|                 | democracy: the Biodiversity Support Program (BSP), |
|                 | the Coastal Resource Management Project, the       |
|                 | GreenCOM Environmental Education and Communication |
|                 | Project, Environmental Policy IQC, Sustainable     |
|                 | Urban Management IQC, Resource Cities Project and  |
|                 | work by the Regional Urban Development Offices.    |
|                 | BSP has initiated studies and workshops on ENV-DG  |
|                 | linkages and is the primary organizer for the July |
|                 | 2000 workshop, "Greening Democracy and Governing   |
|                 | the Environment: Managing for Cross-Sectoral       |
|                 | Results" (co-sponsored with the Implementing       |
|                 | Policy Change Project of G/DG).                    |
+-----------------+----------------------------------------------------+
| **GLOBAL        | Field partners for G/DG's Civil Society Program    |
| CENTER**        | have included environmental NGOS. G/DG has devoted |
|                 | staff time to the cross---sectoral studies         |
| **FOR**         | undertaken by PPC/CDIE/POA and Africa Bureaus and  |
|                 | to the July 2000 workshop, "Greening Democracy and |
| **DEMOCRACY &** | Governing the Environment: Managing for            |
|                 | Cross-Sectoral Results" (sponsored by the          |
| **GOVERNANCE**  | Biodiversity Support Program and the Implementing  |
|                 | Policy Change Project).                            |
| **(G/DG)**      |                                                    |
+-----------------+----------------------------------------------------+
| **AFRICA**      | AFR is the only Bureau with a DG Strategic         |
|                 | Objective for cross-sectoral linkages (SO 1). They |
| **BUREAU        | are co-sponsoring studies on cross-sectoral        |
| (AFR)**         | linkages at the missions with PPC/CDIE/POA.        |
|                 | USAID/Guinea & USAID/Madagascar studies review     |
|                 | ENV-DG linkages. Under ENV Strategic Objective 5,  |
|                 | AFR support DG approaches and results through      |
|                 | numerous projects (e.g., CARPE and others),        |
|                 | including those in community-based resource        |
|                 | management.                                        |
+-----------------+----------------------------------------------------+
| **ASIA-NEAR     | Both ENV and DG units in ANE support mission       |
| EAST**          | linkage activities via direct staff technical      |
|                 | assistance and through Global Bureau ENV and DG    |
| **BUREAU        | projects.                                          |
| (ANE)**         |                                                    |
+-----------------+----------------------------------------------------+
| **LATIN         | Regional ENV & DG staff collaborated to add ENV    |
| AMERICA/**      | issues to the agenda of hemispheric summits and    |
|                 | supported environmental NGO involvement. Most ENV  |
| **CARIBBEAN**   | programs stress NGO strengthening & NGO            |
|                 | participation in policy making. DG programs        |
| **BUREAU        | support ENV NGO involvement in Inter-American      |
| (LAC)**         | Network for Deliberative Democracy and training    |
|                 | for ENV lawyers to assist indigenous rights        |
|                 | groups. ENV NGOs have been supported in Brazil and |
|                 | elsewhere.                                         |
+-----------------+----------------------------------------------------+
| **E             | NGO participation is supported by ENV Strategic    |
| UROPE/EURASIA** | Objective. The regional urban unit recently moved  |
|                 | from the Energy & Environment Division to the      |
| **BUREAU (EE)** | regional DG Office. DG civil society funds have    |
|                 | supported environmental NGOs due to their historic |
|                 | role in transition to democracy. ENV regional      |
|                 | funds support NGO network activities for capacity  |
|                 | building in the Caspian Region. Some environmental |
|                 | NGOs are supported by DG civil society funds in EE |
|                 | countries without an ENV program (e.g., Georgia)   |
+-----------------+----------------------------------------------------+
| **BUREAU OF     | The Private Voluntary Cooperation (PVC) Office     |
| HUMANITARIAN    | supports NGO capacity building for both ENV and DG |
| RESPONSE        | international groups and their local partners.     |
| (BHR)**         | They want to see improvements in financial         |
|                 | sustainability for local partners. ACVA, an NGO    |
|                 | lobbying group, is talking with PVC and other      |
|                 | offices, to have a Civil Society Office at USAID   |
|                 | (rather than in G/DG). The Office of Foreign       |
|                 | Disaster Assistance links ENV and DG by working to |
|                 | set up or support viable local organizations in    |
|                 | disaster situations.                               |
+-----------------+----------------------------------------------------+
| **BUREAU FOR    | PPC recently sponsored a Workshop on Conflict      |
| POLICY AND      | Management (June 2000).                            |
| PROGRAMS        |                                                    |
| (PPC)**         |                                                    |
+-----------------+----------------------------------------------------+

**Table 1:** An Initial Survey of Mission-Supported ENV-DG Linkages
(continued)

  --------------------- ------------------------------------------------------
  **MISSION**           **ACTIVITIES**

  **USAID/BOLIVIA**     ENV aims to involve previously disenfranchised local
                        stakeholders into NRM governance processes. Under the
                        new Forestry Law, local social groups are now
                        permitted to formally manage and gain use rights to
                        municipal forest reserves. BOLFOR (Bolivia Sustainable
                        Forestry Program) and the mission DG office (DDCP)
                        work with municipalities to improve their capacity for
                        democratic and sustainable resource management.
                        Protected area management is becoming more
                        participatory, transparent & democratic. Improved
                        access to forestry information has reduced corruption.

  **USAID/DOM.REP.**    The mission's DG/Rule of Law Team and the
                        environmental component of the Policy Development Team
                        have worked together on rule of law and civil society
                        activities. They have co-funded the development of a
                        new GODR Environmental Protection Prosecution Unit &
                        have included civil society organizations in
                        environmental enforcement efforts.

  **USAID/ECUADOR**     The ENV SUBIR project in Esmeraldas Province is
                        helping to formalize and improve the legal status and
                        functioning of local government to formally designate
                        land titles. SUBIR has held public administration and
                        ENV workshops to help local officials adapt to
                        decentralized and accountable natural resource
                        management.

  **USAID/EL SALVADOR** Water has been a unifying theme for the mission's
                        Strategic Objective Teams. The ENV team works on
                        watersheds & the DG team is looking at municipal water
                        service delivery by municipalities. ENV communication
                        activities have helped to put water on the radar
                        screen for national and local politicians.

  **USAID/HAITI**       As a result of strong partner collaboration, a civil
                        society project (ASOSYE), local government project
                        (PACTE) and a natural resource management project
                        (ASSET) have co-funded a social capital study. They
                        have also created civil society/local
                        government/private sector forums to discuss and move
                        forward the National Environmental Action Plan,
                        protect/manage a waterfall tourist attraction near
                        Port au Prince and forge an unlikely anti-erosion
                        alliance among large coastal hotel owners, small
                        fishermen and upstream farmers.

  **USAID/HONDURAS**    A DG Rule of Law activity created a top-notch
                        full-time environmental crime prosecution within the
                        Public Ministry.

  **USAID/MEXICO**      Starting in 2000, the mission ENV and DG SO Teams and
                        partners have identified a number of linkage/synergy
                        possibilities within existing programs for municipal
                        governance, civil society strengthening, coastal
                        resource management, energy efficiency, environmental
                        management systems (EMS) and renewable energy and
                        global climate change. Many different types of
                        information sharing are used among the SO teams and
                        partners: conference invitations, debriefings, joint
                        site visits, document exchange. Via international
                        partner collaboration and proposed co-funding, they
                        will be fostering NGO-government collaboration in the
                        Chetumal Bay. There has been ENV and DG SO team and
                        partner collaboration for an upcoming EMS
                        demonstration project and other collaborative plans in
                        municipalities where both ENV and DG projects are
                        working.

  **USAID/PARAGUAY**    ENV work under a Special Objective is linked to the
                        mission's only strategic objective in DG. The DG
                        Strategic Objective 1 focuses on improved
                        responsiveness & accountability of key democratic
                        institutions. The ENV Special Objective 1 seeks to
                        improve management of expanded protected area system.
                        ENV RUDO/South America participated in this mission's
                        DG sector assessment & follow-up.

  **USAID/BOTSWANA**    Both the Natural Resource Management Project and a DG
                        civil society activity worked to build the capacity of
                        environmental NGOs.

  **USAID/GUINEA**      ENV objectives for participatory co-management of
                        forests linked to DG objectives for improved local and
                        national governance through active citizen
                        participation and civil society development. The two
                        projects used different approaches to civil society
                        development and scaling-up plans have located the two
                        activities in similar geographic areas in the future.

  **USAID/NAMIBIA**     The ENV Strategic Objective 3 supports increased
                        benefits to historically disadvantaged Namibians from
                        sustainable local management of natural resources and
                        the DG Strategic Objective focuses on increased
                        accountability of Parliament to all Namibian citizens.
                        Women involved in ENV field activities are benefiting
                        most income-generating activities related to
                        community-based natural resource management.
                        Enterprise skills for women are translating to more
                        confidence and public voice about NRM issues. More
                        representative bodies have now managing natural
                        resources conservancies.

  **USAID/INDIA**       The RUDO works with municipalities to develop bond
                        mechanisms and promote privatization related to more
                        efficient and effective environmental and energy
                        services. Work includes efforts to create and
                        implement municipal environment regulations, under a
                        new national decentralization amendment and other work
                        on municipal, state and national disaster mitigation
                        plans.

  **USAID/INDONESIA**   After mission budget reprogramming induced by
                        Indonesia's political and economic crisis, the mission
                        created a Special Objective for strengthening
                        Indonesia's democratic transition and the ENV
                        Strategic Objective became a Special Objective for
                        decentralized and strengthened natural resource
                        management. ENV staff for natural resource management
                        (Special Objective) successfully reframed their
                        activities in DG terms. Future foci for the NRM
                        program include: new roles, responsibilities and
                        relationships between government & civil society &
                        accountability issues; NRM broad-based constituency
                        creation; transparent, accountable, inclusive &
                        empirically based local planning processes for NRM;
                        information synthesis & dissemination. OTI funds
                        supported some ENV NGOs for pre-election civic
                        education.
  --------------------- ------------------------------------------------------

Table 1: **An Initial Survey of Mission-Supported ENV-DG Linkages
(continued)**

+----------------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| **MISSION**    | **ACTIVITIES**                                      |
+----------------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| *              | ENV work has focused on capacity development for,   |
| *USAID/NEPAL** | and broad-based participation in community-level    |
|                | forestry user groups and their federation. Through  |
|                | environmental education and communication           |
|                | activities, villagers have been linked to NRM       |
|                | decision-makers via participatory video and have    |
|                | presented their perspective at the national level.  |
|                | Economic participation of rural women (under SO 3   |
|                | -- women's empowerment) has relied on ENV           |
|                | enterprises. The mission strategy is being redone   |
|                | in July/August 2000 and will include ENV-DG         |
|                | linkages for NRM and energy.                        |
+----------------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| **USAID        | ENV objectives for enhanced natural resource        |
| /PHILIPPINES** | management and brown issues are linked to DG        |
|                | objectives for broadened participation in public    |
|                | policy formation. The Coastal Resource Management   |
|                | Project and the GOLD DG Project have linked efforts |
|                | in the field for coastal municipal management       |
|                | around local codes. There has been process-related  |
|                | and technical support to the work of the provincial |
|                | environmental management office in Bohol and new    |
|                | Coastal Management Councils. GOLD facilitation      |
|                | methods have been applied for both coastal and      |
|                | brown issue activities (e.g., utility               |
|                | privatization, ISO certification, EMS). Future      |
|                | plans may address municipal responses to global     |
|                | climate change.                                     |
+----------------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| **U            | Under a Target of Opportunity, the Albania Private  |
| SAID/ALBANIA** | Forestry Development Project has supported more     |
|                | pluralistic environmental decision-making and an    |
|                | informed citizenry.                                 |
+----------------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| **U            | DG Rule of Law funds were used to support an        |
| SAID/ARMENIA** | Environmental Policy Advocacy Center with           |
|                | interested environmental lawyers who wanted to      |
|                | create an NGO devoted to environmental law and      |
|                | advocacy. This center counsels citizens and local   |
|                | NGOs, brings high-profile lawsuits to uphold        |
|                | environmental rights, publishes materials on basic  |
|                | environment rights for citizens, conducts           |
|                | environmental stakeholder seminars and leads        |
|                | trainings for law students.                         |
+----------------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| **US           | Because of their critical role in Bulgaria's        |
| AID/BULGARIA** | transition to democracy, DG civil society funds     |
|                | support ENV organizations via the regional          |
|                | Democracy Network Project. Some of the same ENV     |
|                | groups are also involved in mission ENV activities  |
|                | related to participatory management of protected    |
|                | areas and biodiversity conservation (Target of      |
|                | Opportunity).                                       |
+----------------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| #              | DG support has helped to establish the Horizonti    |
|  USAID/GEORGIA | Foundation as Georgia's first third sector umbrella |
|                | organization and they provide significant capacity  |
|                | building for environmental NGOs. In addition, one   |
|                | small grant helped environmental NGOs to mobilize   |
|                | against military maneuvers that would destroy       |
|                | biodiversity and cultural resources and resulted in |
|                | NGO participation in a related government           |
|                | commission.                                         |
+----------------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| **USAI         | ENV funds were used to provide small grants         |
| D/KAZAKHSTAN** | (\$500-10,000), technical support and training to   |
|                | community-based environmental NGOs. NGOs used seed  |
|                | grants to conduct environmental monitoring and      |
|                | research and use this information for advocacy      |
|                | purposes.                                           |
+----------------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| **U            | ENV funds were used by a Moldovan journalist group  |
| SAID/MOLDOVA** | to establish their own newspaper to provide         |
|                | environmental information, create a public watchdog |
|                | mindset and mobilize citizen action. DG Rule of Law |
|                | funds were used to support an Environmental Policy  |
|                | Advocacy Center with interested environmental       |
|                | lawyers who wanted to create an NGO devoted to      |
|                | environmental law and advocacy. This center         |
|                | counsels citizens and local NGOs, brings            |
|                | high-profile lawsuits to uphold environmental       |
|                | rights, publishes materials on basic environment    |
|                | rights for citizens, conducts environmental         |
|                | stakeholder seminars, and leads trainings for law   |
|                | students.                                           |
+----------------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| **             | Through ENV activities in the Russian Far East on   |
| USAID/RUSSIA** | forestry and protected areas, USAID has been major  |
|                | player in the development of the Far East           |
|                | environmental NGO movement & has helped Far East    |
|                | green NGOs to become sustainable. In Kostroma, an   |
|                | NGO grant was used to organize a city-wide          |
|                | referendum on nuclear power plant construction.     |
+----------------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| **U            | DG Rule of Law funds were used to support three     |
| SAID/UKRAINE** | Environmental Policy Advocacy Centers (Lviv,        |
|                | Kharkiv and Kyiv) with pre-existing local NGOs.     |
|                | These centers counsel citizens and local NGOs,      |
|                | bring high-profile lawsuits to uphold environmental |
|                | rights, publish materials on basic environment      |
|                | rights for citizens, conduct environmental          |
|                | stakeholder seminars, lead trainings for law        |
|                | students and organize public hearings. The three    |
|                | Ukrainian EPACs spearheaded Ukraine's first open    |
|                | parliament meeting and focused it on the new        |
|                | national Draft Waste Law. ENV funds were used for   |
|                | the information-gathering stage of a local          |
|                | environmental action project for Ukraine and        |
|                | provide small grants, technical support and         |
|                | training to environmental NGOs.                     |
+----------------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| **USAID/       | ENV funds supported community action by teachers,   |
| TURKMENISTAN** | students and parents and the enforcement of illegal |
|                | dumping regulations and site-cleanup.               |
+----------------+-----------------------------------------------------+

PART II

The Experience of USAID/Dominican Republic

***Author: Ronald Glass, DG Officer, USAID/DR***[^3]

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| # MISSION: Dominican Republic                                         |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| **STRATEGIC OBJECTIVE & PROJECT INFO**                                |
|                                                                       |
| DG SO: More Representative, Participatory and Better Functioning      |
| Democracy                                                             |
|                                                                       |
| *Sub-Objective (Rule of Law -- ROL):* Strengthened Rule of Law and    |
| Respect for Human Rights                                              |
|                                                                       |
| The Mission's DG/Rule of Law Team and the Policy Development Team     |
| (environment component) worked together to help create an             |
| operationally effective Public Ministry (a national prosecutor        |
| organization), a specialized Environment Protection Prosecution Unit  |
| and provided opportunities for NGOs and civil society organizations   |
| to be involved in activities focused on the local enforcement of the  |
| national rule of law.                                                 |
|                                                                       |
| Life of Project: 1997-2001                                            |
|                                                                       |
| Funding: \$10.8 million for 5 years (Strengthened Rule of Law         |
| project)                                                              |
|                                                                       |
| \$80,000 (Environmental Prosecution/Adjudication component)           |
|                                                                       |
| Mechanism: Indefinite Quantity Contract                               |
|                                                                       |
| # Partners:                                                           |
|                                                                       |
| *Principal organizers:* Public Ministry of the Dominican Republic     |
| (national prosecutor organization), Florida International             |
| University-Center for Administration of Justice (FIU-CAJ was the ROL  |
| IQC contractor), Environmental International, Inc. (sub-contractor to |
| ROL IQC prime contractor -- FIU-CAJ)                                  |
|                                                                       |
| *Other contributing partners:* 100 + NGOs \[the most directly         |
| involved were Pro Naturaleza (PRONATURA);Fundación PROGRESSIO,        |
| Inc.;FUNDEJUR;Green Caribe; Grupo Ambiental Hábitat; INTEC-           |
| Ecológico; Plan Sierra, Inc.; Unión Dominicana de Voluntarios         |
| (UNIDOS); Departamento de Recursos Naturales, University UNPHU;       |
| Facultad de Ciencias/Departamento de Química. National Autonomous     |
| University Santo Domingo (UASD); Instituto Tecnológico de Santo       |
| Domingo (INTEC)\].                                                    |
|                                                                       |
| *Other Government Organizations:* National District Mayors office --  |
| Environment Department; ONAPLAN. Proyecto Capacidad 21; INPRA; State  |
| Secretariat for Agriculture; - Natural Resources Unit; INDHRI --      |
| Natural Resources Project; National Directorate of **Parks;** INAPA;  |
| National Committee on Natural Resources; National Forestry            |
| Directorate; National Technical Committee on Forestry (CONATEF)       |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+

**LINKING ENV AND DG ISSUES**

• The Mission's DG/Rule of Law (ROL) Team and the Policy Development
Team (environment component) worked together on rule of law and civil
society activities. The objectives were to support the development of a
new governmental Environmental Protection Prosecution Unit and to have
NGO/civil society involvement in local enforcement of national
environmental regulations.

**Specific env-dg linkage activities & results**

• In 1999, the USAID/DR Rule of Law program, in cooperation with the
local USAID environmental program brought a variety of government and
non-governmental actors together to study the problems of documenting
and prosecuting industrial pollution cases within the justice system.
These participants included environmental watchdog NGOs, government
health and environmental protection officials, doctors and prosecutors
together.

To educate government and civil society members, USAID sponsored a
series of training workshops. International environmental experts
explained the science behind pollution and identified the most prevalent
and damaging types of contamination to Dominican society.

In addition, technical assistance was provided to compile and index all
Dominican laws related to environment and health standards enforcement.

Workshop participants reviewed the existing Dominican laws that can be
used to seek damages or criminal liability, addressed strategies for
prioritizing and pursuing environmental cases, and developed tactics for
seeking redress on behalf of affected communities.

As a result, a "Manual for Environmental Prosecution" for prosecutors
and judges was prepared and published.

• The USAID sub-contractor, Environmental International, was able to
encourage and build enforcement working groups. These groups were
multi-disciplinary and comprised of Dominican government health and
enforcement officials, university environmental experts, judges,
prosecutors and public defense lawyers.

Prosecutors and judges were trained in the science behind and handling
of environmental cases.

A Manual on Environmental Cases was developed and published in a
collaborative effort with judges, prosecutors and other government
officials. Beginning with a few well-known cases identified by the
working group, environmental protection enforcement strategies were
developed and implemented by the justice sector actors.

> USAID, in collaboration with the U.S. Mission Public Affairs Office
> (former USIS), succeeded in having a prosecutor included in the
> Environmental issues Invitational Visitors Program (IVP) in the U.S.
> Upon his return, he was named Chief of the new Environmental
> Prosecution Unit.
>
> For the first time ever, a National Prosecutors Office/Environmental
> Crime Unit was created.

-   The attention that the USAID Rule of Law program has brought to this
    issue has already made a difference in children\'s lives. As an
    immediate result of this inter-sectoral training, a horrendous
    contamination case was identified. A lead acid battery factory in
    Haina, a Dominican port on the outskirts of Santo Domingo, was
    identified as a significant contamination source.

In fact, seven-year old Juanita Valdez \[not her real name\] was one of
the victims. Juanita lives outside of the battery factory, where her
mother works. Juanita who attends a local public school has been having
difficulties with her schoolwork and has recently been identified as
learning-disabled. However, she is not a rare case; many of the
school-aged children in this contaminated area were documented as
suffering disproportional learning and health disabilities.
Concentrations of lead in their blood and bones grossly exceeded
international standards. Contamination levels were so severe that lead
nodules on bones were visible on Juanita\'s and other children\'s
X-rays. Thanks to USAID-initiated synergy between Dominican law
enforcement and health/environmental watchdog groups, thousands of
Dominican children have been saved from lead poisoning. The Dominican
government has notified the lead battery factory that it must stop
damaging emissions immediately and that it faces civil and potentially,
criminal liability.

• In addition to the Haina lead poisoning case, other major cases (e.g.
river contamination, industrial induced erosion, etc) have already been
identified by NGOs and referred to government prosecutors. Prosecutors
have also become involved in investigating government inspectors who
apparently failed to properly report and act on major contamination
(there is suspicion of graft). Prosecutors have issued warnings to major
industrial polluters and when non-compliance continued, followed in some
cases with criminal prosecution*. Since its creation one year ago and
after the training provided by USAID which finished last November, this
Department has handled 14 cases. Seven have been resolved either by
convictions or compliance with warnings and 7 cases are still pending.*

**ENV-DG Linkage opportunities**

• The Mission was recognized the potential for synergy at a very early
stage and pursued this goal in the design, planning and implementation
stages. Promising local conditions for achieving concrete results
included:

1.  A USAID Rule of Law program design that explicitly included
    environmental prosecutions as a sub-result.

2.  A rich collection of local NGOs active in Dominican environmental
    issues.

3.  An IQC sub-contractor that had been identified with previous
    successful experience in forging operational links between civil
    society NGOs and government enforcement officials and also teaching
    prosecutors and judges how to assess, manage and adjudicate these
    specialized cases based on local law and science.

4.  The willingness of all actors to come together at the same table was
    a key element in the cooperation experienced to date.

    **env-dg linkage Obstacles**

• To the degree these criminal or civil cases touch on powerful economic
interests, it can be expected that pressure will be brought to bear on
prosecutors and judges so that they will back off. Therefore, the Rule
of Law program objective of "independent" prosecutors and judges is a
critical element for the sustainable success of
enforcement/prosecution/convictions in major environmental cases.

**LESSONS LEARNED**

• *Investing in Decentralized Monitoring and Enforcement.* In a perfect
world where more funding could have been made available (but it wasn't),
we would have invested more in the implementation of a series of
regional forums. These forums could have deepened and decentralized the
environment monitoring/enforcement linkages. In addition, we could have
invited regional NGOs, prosecutors, government health and environmental
officials to participate in forums that were more focused on regional
and municipal issues.

• *The Importance of Good Publicity.* With more funding, we would have
invested more effort in a complementary communications (media) strategy.
The District Attorney's Office did get tremendous coverage when local
media focused on three environmental cases. Media must be part of the
overall environmental impact education effort. The value of
[enforcement]{.underline} as an "Education Tool" should never be
underestimated*. A few major criminal and or civil suit convictions can
be worth more than scores of theoretical forums ....and thousands of
environmental posters!*

• *Keeping up with Changes of Government.* In August, a new government
coming on board in the Dominican Republic. We will need to ensure that
we reinvigorate the relationship between civil society and government,
once the new senior officials are in place.

The Experience of USAID/Guinea

***Author: Aaron Chassy***[^4]***, former USAID/Guinea DG Officer***[^5]

+------------------------------------+----------------------------------+
| # MISSION: Guinea                  |                                  |
+------------------------------------+----------------------------------+
| **DG STRATEGIC OBJECTIVE & PROJECT | # ENV ST                         |
| INFO**                             | RATEGIC OBJECTIVE & PROJECT INFO |
|                                    |                                  |
| DG SO: Improved local and national | #                                |
| governance through more active     |                                  |
| citizen participation.             | ENV SO: Increased use of         |
|                                    | sustainable natural resource     |
| The Guinea Civil Society           | management practices.            |
| Strengthening Program (GCSSP)      |                                  |
| worked with Rural Group            | The Natural Resource Management  |
| Enterprises (RGE's) and local      | Activity (NRMA) applied a        |
| government unit (LGU) councils to  | community-based natural resource |
| manage their affairs in a more     | management methodology to        |
| transparent and democratic manner. | strengthen both village          |
|                                    | committees and the               |
| Life of Project: 1995-2000         | deconcentrated technical         |
|                                    | extension service providers      |
| Funding: \$3.8 million             | engaged in protected area        |
|                                    | management.                      |
| Mechanism: Grant                   |                                  |
|                                    | Life of Project: 1993-present,   |
| # Partners:                        |                                  |
|                                    | Funding: \$2.9 million (FY 1998) |
| Cooperative League of the USA      |                                  |
| (CLUSA) with cooperative efforts   | Mechanism: Contract              |
| of Guinean RGE's, Local officials  |                                  |
| from Government Unit (LGU) elected | Partners:                        |
| councils, local representatives of |                                  |
| the National Agricultural          | Winrock International &          |
| Extension Service, community-based | Chemonics, Intl.                 |
| organizations such as village      |                                  |
| natural resource management        | National Direction of Forests &  |
| committees, PTA's and health       | Fauna (DNFF)                     |
| clinic management committees       |                                  |
|                                    | # Villag                         |
|                                    | e natural resource management co |
|                                    | mmittees, inter-village resource |
|                                    |  management committees and RGE's |
+------------------------------------+----------------------------------+

# LINKING ENV AND DG ISSUES

• CLUSA worked closely with elected officials from the RGE and the LGU
to build civil society and improve governance of natural resources. The
RGEs brought issues of land tenure and resource use to the LGU councils,
who in turn resolved these issues in a way that mitigated conflict.
These activities were part of a participatory and democratic process of
community development planning and management.

• Under the NRMA, the National Forestry Service has been working on
resource management governance issues with village level committees and
inter-village forestry co-management committees. The objective is to
develop more local responsibility and involvement in the management of
forestry resources.

• Both the DG and ENV projects aimed to help Guinean Government
officials realize that they need to work as partners with local
organizations rather than seeing themselves as the sole managers and
implementers of national policies.

**Specific env-dg linkage activities and results**

• Both the NRM and CLUSA activities informed participants from local
organizations about their legal rights and responsibilities and helped
them understand how they could hold public officials more accountable
and influence the decision-making process.

• Group members have attempted, and in some instances, succeeded in
influencing decisions about the allocation of resources.

• Through their oversight, local groups, RGE and inter-village resource
management committees, improved the efficiency and effectiveness of
deconcentrated technical services and local government. In the GCSSP,
because some RGE members were also LGU council members, they transferred
their newly acquired knowledge and skills from the RGEs to their posts
in local government. The net result was a rise in tax collection, an
increased tax base, and more investment of these monies into local
infrastructure -- i.e., improved local governance.

• Under the GCSSP, the synergy resulting from the collaboration of the
state and the market was also clear. It was impossible for rural group
enterprises in Guinea to succeed in raising their incomes without
working with the technical extension services of the public bureaucracy,
or with local government. Indeed, local governments and RGEs co-produced
infrastructure and services such as village wood lots, water source
management, schools, health clinics, and mosques through their
synergistic partnerships.

• Under the NRMA, Chemonics International and now Winrock International
and USAID staff have been working directly with the National Forestry
Service to encourage acceptance of the forest management contracts that
are negotiated between the inter-village co-management committee and
prefect level forestry service authorities. However, the inter-village
co-management committees have not been directly involved in these
negotiations.

**ENV-DG Linkage opportunities**

• The Mission director made the best of an adverse Guinean political
climate and severe funding cuts by

embracing cross-sectoral approaches to local democratic governance.
Guinea had just had two rounds of

flawed elections (1993 and 1995) and it was put on USAID's "watch list."
Subsequent termination of non-

project assistance to the Government of Guinea resulted in a more than
50 percent reduction of the

Mission's operating year budget. However, the Director salvaged the
program and successfully

transformed the DG program from macro-economic policy and structural
adjustment to the development of

civil society. He linked DG objectives to the existing programs for
economic growth and ***environmental***

***protection***.

• The core of the cross-sectoral integration combined economic growth
and DG activities. These efforts aimed to help rural groups form
sustainable, member-owned, and democratically operated cooperative
businesses. The Mission added DG training for local governments when
they expressed their desire for it and when it became evident that more
local government capacity was vital to the success of the intervention.

• As a result of these efforts, USAID/Guinea was designated as a leading
edge mission for the New Partnership Initiative. As the Mission director
explained, USAID did not reward risk-taking, but adverse circumstances
encouraged innovation.

**env-dg linkage Obstacles**

• ENV-DG linkages, as well as political and economic advances, are
constrained by weak support for decentralization and civil society in
Guinea. USAID projects are constrained by Guinean laws related to
registration of NGOs and rural group enterprises, as well as the
division of power and resources between national and local government
(e.g., centralized financial and tax authority).

• In late 1998/early 1999, a team from USAID/PPC/CDIE conducted a
cross-sectoral study of USAID/Guinea activities. They concluded that
without improvements in the enabling environment (decentralized
government and associational life), local level DG approaches could only
make small initial gains but would be unable to build upon or sustain
the progress made.

**LESSONS LEARNED**

• *No Shortcuts to Development (revisiting Goran Hyden).* There are no
shortcuts to development. Under the NRMA, the international partners
favor direct work with government on policy dialogue because they
believe that this approach is more efficient than investing in
policy-related capacity building for a broader range of civil society
groups, such as the inter-village co-management committees. This
approach also allows the international partner to have more control over
the direction of the policy dialogue. However, in Guinea, the
appropriate policy is not yet in place. Only a few of the NRMA-assisted
contracts have entered into force legally; contracts negotiated with the
assistance of the University of Wisconsin's Land Tenure Center also
appear to have no legal standing.

• *Who Gets Represented?* It is essential to take a hard look at the
representativeness of local

> committees support by ENV and DG projects. Two selection approaches
> resulted in different results. The NRMA adopted a system of quotas,
> used first by UNDP activities in Guinea, and told the inter-village
> committees and the smaller management committees how to select
> representatives. Under this system, more marginal or low status actors
> do not tend to be better represented than they would be without the
> criteria. Traditional elites, who are also usually the local elders,
> continue to assert their dominance and demand respect for their
> customary role and power, while the other groups, especially women,
> feel pressure to assume their more subservient, often powerless roles.
> Inadvertently, the NRMA validated the traditional patter of role-based
> behavior and allow it to continue, more or less unchallenged. Under
> the GCSSP, RGE and LGU council members were encouraged by CLUSA, to
> redefine the traditional criteria that have been used for electing
> committee members and leaders. As the members make a group decision
> about the required attributes for committee members and leaders based
> on their roles and responsibilities (performance-based criteria) and
> then they decide upon their desirable personal attributes (e.g.,
> personality characteristics, technical capabilities, professional
> experience, etc.). These first phase interventions by CLUSA with RGEs
> and LGUs laid an essential foundation for democratic decision-making
> in particular, and governance in general.

• *Collaborate Early, Collaborate Often*. In l999, both the DG and the
ENV strategic objective teams in the mission undertook a process by
which they scaled up the activities of the GCSSP and NRMA. It would have
been helpful if each team had asked for input before the new activity
designs were finalized. But the two teams had never seen eye-to-eye on
*which* democratic governance approaches to apply (i.e., the relative
role of civil society versus local and national government actors,
investment in capacity building for policy change) and the *extent* to
which these approaches should be integrated in the overall activities.
As a result, they could not reconcile their approaches to working with
local groups and neither project fully benefited from the lessons
learned in the two projects. The DG team chose to look at other mission
activities for its cross-sectoral collaboration but ended up proposing
to expand their activity in the very same geographic areas where the
environment team had chosen to expand its NRMA. This redoubling
expansion of similar activities in the same geographic areas would be
wasteful, especially given the limited financial resources available to
the DG program. As present, the ENV team has already fielded its
expanded NRMA project team but the DG team has not yet to received front
office approval.

• *Leadership and Vision*. Strong leadership, a well-articulated country
plan and clear signals from the front office are sometimes the only
thing that can help ENV and DG technical teams to overcome bureaucratic
"turf wars" and work more effectively in a synergistic way. Intervention
from the front office can help teams "hear" the technical advice and
recommendations of others. ENV projects do not always have the right
technical expertise with regard to work related to civil society and
governance. Cross-team dialogue needs to take place before projects are
allowed to move forward to procurement.

The Experience of USAID/Haiti

***Author: Michele Schimpp, Former USAID/Haiti DG Officer***[^6]

+------------------------------------+---------------------------------+
| **DG STRATEGIC OBJECTIVE & PROJECT | **ENV STRATEGIC OBJECTIVE &     |
| INFO**                             | PROJECT INFO**                  |
|                                    |                                 |
| DG SO: More genuinely inclusive    | ENV SO: Environmental           |
| democratic governance.             | degradation slowed.             |
|                                    |                                 |
| ASOSYE was the civil society       | The environmental protection    |
| project.                           | project was ASSET               |
|                                    | (Agriculturally Sustainable     |
| PACTE was the local government     | Systems and Environmental       |
| project.                           | Transformation Program).        |
|                                    |                                 |
| Life of Project: N/A               | Life of Project: N/A            |
|                                    |                                 |
| Funding: N/A                       | Funding: N/A                    |
|                                    |                                 |
| Mechanism: Contracts               | Mechanism: Contract             |
|                                    |                                 |
| # Partners:                        | Partners:                       |
|                                    |                                 |
| ASOSYE: America\'s Development     | ASSET: Winrock International    |
| Foundation with local NGOs.        | with other international and    |
|                                    | local NGOs.                     |
| PACTE: Associates in Rural         |                                 |
| Development with other local       |                                 |
| governments.                       |                                 |
+------------------------------------+---------------------------------+

**linking env-dg issues**

• USAID/Haiti and its partners were able to make strong linkages between
environmental protection, local government and civil society activities.

**Specific env-dg linkage activities and results**

-   [Joint Support for a Social Capital Study]{.underline}. All three
    projects noted that they had an inadequate understanding of the
    sources of social capital in Haiti and how their projects might work
    to build upon or create the levels of social trust and collaboration
    that were necessary for each project to succeed. They jointly
    organized and funded a study. Each contractor hired one consultant.
    This team carried out field work, prepared a report, and even
    organized a workshop for the entire USAID mission and our partners
    on how to identify and support sources of social capital that exist
    in Haiti.

-   [Environmental Action Plan]{.underline}. A GOH Environmental Action
    Plan had been developed but was languishing within the Ministry of
    Environment and not being approved. The environment project wished
    to help move the Action Plan forward, and a reform-oriented
    counterpart in the Ministry of Environment shared their interests.
    They decided to replicate an approach developed by the civil society
    project and held a series of dialogues on the Environmental Action
    Plan throughout the country. The civil society project organized and
    facilitated these dialogues. The environment project helped the
    Ministry to manage the technical content and to invite the key
    groups concerned with environment. The local government project got
    local officials involved. The result benefited all projects. The
    Environmental Action Plan was approved and was one of the few policy
    actions undertaken by the GOH that year. Civil society
    organizations, particularly environment groups, got to provide input
    to the national plan and local government officials learned about
    and understood their roles in the implementation and enforcement of
    the plan.

-   [Protecting a Natural Resource]{.underline}. The three projects
    worked together to engage local officials and civic organizations in
    effectively managing/protecting a waterfall that served as a tourist
    attraction in a small city outside the capital. Together, the three
    projects worked out a management plan and resolved conflicts between
    the two communities/two local governments with joint responsibility
    for the site.

-   [Strengthening a Civil Society Alliance]{.underline}. The three
    projects helped strengthen an emerging alliance between three
    unlikely allies: large hotel owners, small fishermen, and upstream
    farmers. Erosion from upstream mountain farming was silting up the
    downstream coast and was driving fish further from the coast. The
    siltation was also posing a problem for the large hotel/resort
    owners reliant on tourism. The hotel owners and the fisherman
    realized their common interest in preventing erosion and approached
    the small farmers to join in a mutually beneficial endeavor to
    prevent erosion. An interesting alliance was forged that crossed
    traditional class boundaries.

    **ENV-DG linkage opportunities**

    A number of factors converged from 1997-99 to foster strong and
    active collaboration among three USAID projects (two DG and one
    ENV):

    • There was agreement within the Mission and among our three
    contractors that these programs were inter-linked. The environment
    program would only be successful if there were strong civil society
    groups with which to engage and capable local government officials
    with whom to work. The civil society project recognized that
    environmental concerns were important to many community groups. And
    the local government project recognized that natural resources
    provided an excellent opportunity for local officials to apply newly
    acquired management and constituent relations skills.

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-   The Mission put all of these three partners on the same extended
    results package and SO teams. The environment chief of party was
    part of the democracy team and the civil society and local
    government chiefs of party were on the economic growth team.

-   The three chiefs-of-party all had links to one another\'s projects.
    The environment contract chief of party had worked on DG issues in
    the past. The local government chief of party, before taking his
    current job, had conducted a consultancy with the environment
    project. The civil society chief of party was interested and
    intrigued by environmental issues.

-   The chiefs-of-party instituted regular meetings. They would meet
    once a week over lunch and discuss areas of collaboration. It was
    essential that none of these individuals saw their work in terms of
    the strict parameters of their contracts but instead focused on
    their development results and the interrelatedness of their
    objectives.

-   The Mission Director also encouraged collaboration among
    chiefs-of-party by organizing regular meetings.

**LESSONS LEARNED**

• *Support from Mission Leadership and ENV and DG Teams.* Mission staff
recognized the importance of these linkages and allowed the contractors
to move forward with collaboration.

• *Building on Prior Positive Relationships and Cross-Sectoral
Expertise/Interest.* The chiefs-of-party were

> predisposed to collaborate because of either prior professional
> relationships and/or cross-sectoral experience and interest. The
> regular meetings and joint activities cemented these relationships and
> synergies.

• *Geographic or Task Overlap*. The three projects were able to work
together on activities that were national in scope and also in one
locality where all three were working.

The Experience of the Biodiversity Support Program

***Author: Janis Alcorn, Director Asia, BSP***[^7]

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| # MISSION: Indonesia                                                  |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| **STRATEGIC OBJECTIVE & PROJECT INFO**                                |
|                                                                       |
| ENV SO: Decentralized and strengthened natural resources management.  |
|                                                                       |
| KEMALA is one component of USAID/Indonesia's NRM Program (see         |
| Mission's R4 for details). KEMALA goals are:                          |
|                                                                       |
| (a) to build coalitions of well-informed, technically competent,      |
|     creative, politically-active NGOs concerned with community-based  |
|     natural resources management across Indonesia, and                |
|                                                                       |
| (b) to support decentralized structures within which they can         |
|     participate in political life and decision-making in future       |
|     decades.                                                          |
|                                                                       |
| .                                                                     |
|                                                                       |
| Life of Project: 1996-2001                                            |
|                                                                       |
| Funding: \$10.5 million                                               |
|                                                                       |
| Mechanism: Cooperative Agreement                                      |
|                                                                       |
| # Partners:                                                           |
|                                                                       |
| Biodiversity Support Program invited 30 selected Indonesian NGO       |
| partners (including individual NGOs and NGO networks) to join KEMALA  |
| in a non-competitive process. They were invited on the basis of their |
| track records for results, evidence of accountability to their        |
| constituents, and potential complementary contributions to a network  |
| primarily comprised of grassroots based NGOs from different ethnic    |
| minorities concerned with NR-related issues but linked to a few       |
| capital-city based, policy NGOs. Support includes: (a) 3-5 year       |
| grants \[in \$20,000 - \$400,000 ave range\] to achieve NGOs'         |
| self-determined objectives; (b) networking through face-to-face       |
| visits, apprenticeships, workshop fora, and internet; and (c)         |
| targetted technical assistance in institutional development and       |
| strategic planning, community organizing, gender concerns, conflict   |
| resolution, mapping, information systems, policy analysis, and        |
| advocacy. Training is tailored to individual NGO needs and usually    |
| provided by another NGO in the network. KEMALA's successful results   |
| are based on two strategic tactics: (1) rely on indigenous            |
| self-organization; and (2) back leaders who recognize and know how to |
| use existing political space for making progress toward democracy. By |
| applying these tactics, donors can leverage greater results at local  |
| and national levels \-- achieving an exponential, automatic           |
| replication of grassroots successes and creating a national social    |
| movement linking rights, responsibilities, and natural resources.     |
|                                                                       |
| #                                                                     |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+

**LINKING ENV AND DG ISSUES**

-   **Natural resources are a core political issue for civil society and
    government.** Effective NGO advocacy to bring rural voices into
    public democratic discourse requires technical skills and knowledge
    beyond NGOs' ability to do advocacy campaigns. KEMALA was initiated
    under a brittle military dictatorship with conditions of crony
    capitalism, extreme political repression (no more than a few people
    could meet without a police permit), human rights abuses, and
    rampant corruption in a country with many mineral and natural
    resources exploited by the elite. Midway the dictator was removed by
    a "reformasi" movement, creating a fragile transitional democracy.
    Regardless of the transition, natural resource issues remain hotly
    political and tightly associated with governance issues, because the
    majority of people depend (directly or indirectly) on forests,
    rivers and coasts for livelihoods.

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```
-   **Poor rule of law and human rights undermine both NRM and nascent
    democracy**. Failure of rule of law, lack of due process, and
    insecure tenure mean that people have no reliable recourse when
    their lands and waters are degraded by mining companies or logged by
    logging companies. Conflicts are negotiated on ad hoc basis locally.
    Armed resistance draws strength from conflict over natural resource
    rights in several mineral-rich provinces.

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```
-   **Ethnically diverse, sustainable local NRM systems under
    community-based governance are being dismantled by centralized
    administration.** Indigenous peoples from multiple ethnic groups
    have traditional (adat) claims to the seventy percent of Indonesia
    officially called state property, including national parks and
    protected areas. Despite forced transmigration and assimilation
    policies, and degradation of resources by distant elites, many areas
    continue to be governed by adat institutions.

    **Specific env-dg linkage activities & results**

KEMALA supported NGOs' work in self-organized partnerships to achieve
broad shared objectives. For example, field-level mapping undertaken by
one partner with communities is supported with technical training from
training network NGOs, and by legal analysis and policy advocacy
undertaken by a national-level partners. Partners work to engage and
involve government and public in positive ways at multiple levels. NGO
fieldwork is ongoing in over 100 sites in eight selected provinces, and
over 40 specific policy initiatives are underway (many others have been
achieved -- see R4). The direction for KEMALA's overall annual workplan
is determined at an annual forum of the partners. The following
activities are illustrative examples:

-   Reforms in decentralization, land use planning, coastal policy,
    forestry regulatory framework, and district & local-level
    regulations by linking NGO accountability to community interests
    with NGO collaboration with bureaucrats and advocacy at local,
    district, provincial & national levels. For example, provincial and
    district governments recognized rules created by groups of
    communities. In some cases, these are rules created by upstream and
    downstream communities to protect water and fisheries in a shared
    river and watershed. In other cases, these are inter-island
    agreements controlling fishing in shared seawaters. As a result,
    citizens are experiencing a new relationship with government \-- a
    relationship where they take the initiative to get their government
    to accept rules that local communities have made among themselves.

-   Policy studies suggesting economic reforms such as: removal of legal
    constraints on community-based forest production and trade; and
    community rights to control access to local fisheries.

-   Monitoring of illegal logging operations linked to public awareness
    campaigns

-   Facilitating creation of new representative legislature and new
    clan-based institutions for governance in newly created Mentawai
    district, West Sumatra.

-   NGOs training Parliaments in Regional Autonomy Law; MOUs for
    collaboration with district governments on implementation.

-   Initiative to match legal and policy development for land reform at
    national level with strong and organized local movements, and build
    groundswell of public interest in agrarian reform.

-   Over one million hectares of forest and reefs under improved
    management (a process initiated by mapping). Spontaneous spread of
    mapping network across Indonesia bringing thousands of villages
    (beyond KEMALA project areas) a new means to communicate their
    rights to provincial governments.

-   Training regional facilitators for assessing land/resource disputes
    and improving local conflict resolution skills, handbook for others.

-   Facilitating conflict resolution between Muslims and Christian
    communities after the militia-driven violence in Malukus, but
    recurrence of violence has forced suspension of those activities
    (funding now being used for evacuation).

-   Secured new decentralization policies by supporting implementation
    of new regulations (once they were won) and local capacity building
    in conservation management in parks and forest reserves in Sulawesi,
    Kalimantan, Sumatra and West Papua. MOUs between local governments
    and communities, etc.

-   Local government relationship with the national government in other
    sectors is changed; as local government carries out its
    environmental management responsibilities, its capacity to assume
    new roles in other sectors is enhanced.

-   Registration of adat lands (traditional indigenous territories)
    under Agrarian Ministry Decree 5/1999 for and Regional Autonomy Law
    \-- reforms achieved with KEMALA NGO support. Partners in six
    provinces are working with provincial, district, and local
    governments to raise public awareness of the new law and to draft
    local regulations which will define "wilaya adat" (local territories
    under indigenous management).

-   Formation of AMAN, first nationwide indigenous peoples' organization
    for effective participation in civil society.

-   One year before project ends, emergence of self-organized sustained
    NGO network to continue to assist weaker NGOs beyond LOP, with
    active donor interest from USAID, other bilaterals and private
    foundations.

    **ENV-DG Linkage opportunities**

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-   The USG had a [special democratization agreement]{.underline} with
    the Indonesian government which enabled it to fund NGOs without
    subjecting the list of potential grantees to black-list scrutiny by
    Indonesian national security agency.

-   Within their larger NRM program, the Mission created a flexible
    opportunity for engaging the energy of advocacy NGOs concerned with
    NRM issues and management by (1) establishing a program framework
    that included a component for community-based NRM, and (2) seeking
    NGO assistance to design project specifics based on knowledge of
    local situation and potential partners in-country. The mission
    accepted BSP's proposal that this component would be a DG-oriented
    project within their NRM umbrella.

-   The ENV officer did not object to BSP's addressing DG objectives and
    potentially politically-sensitive issues (as other missions have
    done), but he was unable to elicit formal involvement from the
    Mission's DG office. However, an FSN DG officer regularly consulted
    with KEMALA staff when reviewing grants in order to get advice and
    to complement efforts, so there was [informal collaboration between
    DG office and KEMALA staff]{.underline}. The DG office sent their DG
    partners to KEMALA events & apprenticeships, and supplemented
    equipment needs for mapping. There may have been some lost synergies
    by not linking KEMALA with DG efforts more formally, but on the
    other hand, in repressive situations, political issues can be
    addressed less overtly under the cover of technical interventions
    (such as NRM). So under Suharto, a dual approach to DG was useful.
    KEMALA network NRM-focused NGOs have collaborated with USAID/DG
    advocacy NGOs in coalitions. Post-Suharto, the Mission linked DG and
    ENV more closely (see new SO, for ex).

-   [G/ENV funded activities in Indonesia became the pilot]{.underline}
    for the larger KEMALA. BSP based the KEMALA design on lessons and
    knowledge from PeFoR (BSP's innovative G/ENV support program for
    indigenous peoples) work in Indonesia. And through PeFoR, BSP built
    credibility with the Mission and Indonesian NGOs as a neutral NGO
    facilitator without interests in its own longterm program in the
    country.

-   [The G/ENV-created consortium of BSP was a unique
    vehicle]{.underline}. It would be more difficult for a for-profit
    contractor or single international NGO to have the same level of
    credibility and trust with local NGOs. The Mission gave G/ENV OYB
    transfers, but followed the lead of the Mission for management
    decisions. BSP, however, will not exist after 2001.

    **LESSONS LEARNED**

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-   **The key challenge is to find effective mechanisms to incorporate
    civil society recommendations into the Mission's NRM policy work
    with government**. E.g, the Mission could create more opportunities
    for civil society representatives to influence policy, as well as
    joining donor influence to those voices, etc. Initially, in this
    case, there was weak incorporation of civil society-based NRM policy
    recommendations in the Mission's Ministry-level work. Despite the
    inclusion of one mechanism that might have facilitated this input (a
    secretariat to enhance cooperation between NRM program partners
    EPIQ, URI, BSP/KEMALA and others), KEMALA network field-based
    knowledge, political savvy and analyses were not used to guide the
    Mission's policy reform agenda until after Reformasi, when the
    Mission results framework was totally revamped to be more governance
    oriented. The AID/NRM officer revised the TORs of the primary
    contractor (IRG/ EPIQ) to address the new SO. EPIQ is now using NGO
    inputs in policy areas including joint fieldwork with our NGO
    partners in East Kalimantan on economic evaluations; and supporting
    a new community forestry forum. And they also created a Steering
    Group with prominent advocacy NGOs and business leaders to organize
    a stakeholders' workshop as input to the new Mission Strategy. That
    workshop was opened jointly by the head of the new Indigenous
    peoples' organization (AMAN) and the President of Indonesia. The
    workshop's key recommendations were that: government shouldn't
    discuss exploiting natural resources without also explicitly
    considering sustainability and rights over resources, and that
    indigenous peoples (ada peoples) will participate n determination of
    NRM plans by government**.** There is room for improvement and even
    more involvement of NGOs directly, but there have been major
    improvements between 1997 and 2000.

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-   ***Invest in strong technical assistance component with grants***.
    The intensive advice and facilitation of the "SPOs" (senior program
    officers) were viewed by partners as the most valuable aspect of
    KEMALA. The project team included Indonesians & expats with
    strengths that mirrored the expertise being nurtured in the network:
    activist lawyer, community organizer, communications specialist,
    grants management specialist, financial management specialist,
    organizational development specialist, coastal management
    specialist, and conservation specialist. Expat short-term TA was
    kept to a minimum; instead NGOs were encouraged to rely on local
    experts and each other for TA.

-   ***Environmental crises offer natural openings for strengthening
    civil society,** **IF*** (a) the crisis is clearly due to a
    governance failure, and (b) the crisis threatens the livelihoods of
    many people. When people create a structure to work together to
    monitor and challenge infractions across a region or subregion,
    their voices are amplified and government is challenged to engage in
    dialogue and modify its practices.

-   ***Community-based NRM programs can build local governance strengths
    under certain conditions.*** In situations where traditional
    self-governance remnants exist, community-level creation and
    monitoring adherence to their own forest managent rules builds
    community's capacity to renew and practice self-governance at the
    local level. NGOs can further nurture the evolution of these
    institutions by facilitating democratically-controlled credit
    unions, marketing cooperatives, schools, critical thinking, women's
    programs, access to legal council, legal information, opportunities
    to share experiences, etc.

-   ***Don't assume NGOs hold themselves accountable to their
    constituencies***. Find NGOs and networks that can serve as role
    models demonstrating accountability processes, and then support
    apprenticeships and other adult learning experiences for other NGOs
    to build their own institutional strength. Even NGOs with the best
    intentions cannot substitute for "peoples organizations", and they
    can only amplify their voices if they listen.

-   ***Even in a repressive regime, donors can focus on NRM issues to
    nurture NGOs to assume their civil society roles when democracy
    emerges**.* New relationships between local, district and provincial
    governments and civil associations were forged by supporting NGOs'
    capacity to engage government by supporting mapping, thus creating a
    map that serves as a communication tool for negotiating land use
    plans \-- a legally available option for engaging civil society and
    government in dialogue about contested resources. Contracting
    communities to grow trees (sometimes called CBNRM) provides NRM
    benefits without strengthening local governance institutions.

-   ***More results are achieved by backing winners***. The key to
    KEMALA success in both NRM and DG lies in the design principles. The
    first principle is to identify the right mix of self-motivated
    groups with proven track records of \[a\] achieving site-specific
    results that are valued by communities and done in ways that hold
    the NGO accountable to communities and \[b\] engaging in productive
    dialogue with government on policy reforms at multiple scales (local
    up to national). The second principle is to support their ability to
    formulate and achieve their vision while adapting to changing
    circumstances. It is somewhat like supporting a free market \-- when
    barriers are removed, the process runs on its own. The barriers to
    success can be removed by TA, networking and funding for strategic
    activities. Using this design, a donor's project jumpstarts a
    natural movement that multiplies by itself \-- resulting in greater
    results than expected.

The Experience of the Regional Urban Development Office

***Author: Danielle Arigoni***[^8]

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| **DG/ENV JOINT STRATEGIC OBJECTIVE & PROJECT INFO**                   |
|                                                                       |
| STRATEGIC OBJECTIVE: Strengthened Urban Environmental Management      |
|                                                                       |
| The principal goal of the CLEAN-Urban project is to enable local      |
| governments and citizens to work effectively together to improve the  |
| delivery of environmental services.                                   |
|                                                                       |
| Life of Project: 12\\1997-12\\2000                                    |
|                                                                       |
| Funding: \$35 million                                                 |
|                                                                       |
| Mechanism: contract and UE Loan Guaranty                              |
|                                                                       |
| #                                                                     |
|                                                                       |
| # Partners:                                                           |
|                                                                       |
| GOI Ministries of Finance and Home Affairs, World Bank, Research      |
| Triangle                                                              |
|                                                                       |
| The Water Efficiency Team (WET) also funded by the mission and        |
| managed by RUDO, was developed to help Indonesian water enterprises   |
| (PDAMs) streamline their services.                                    |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+

**Specific env-dg linkage activities**

-   The USAID funded and RUDO managed Coordinated Local Environmental
    Action Network (CLEAN)-Urban, working in partnership with over 100
    community-based organizations based in 14 cities, have held
    thousands of community meetings. CLEAN-Urban used these meetings as
    a catalyst through which 1,700 labor intensive infrastructure
    projects were developed and consequently accepted into the plans and
    budgets of local governments. These programs will be implemented
    with the help of World Bank funds that are to be disbursed in 2000
    to create over 50,000,000 person days of work in East and West Java.

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-   The RUDO was also concerned that the progress made in pre-crisis
    provision of clean water not be interrupted. Thus, the Water
    Efficiency Team (WET), also funded by the mission and managed by
    RUDO, was developed to help Indonesian water enterprises (PDAMs)
    streamline their services. The WET team completed initial
    assessments of 33 PDAMs. Second visits were conducted with 22 PDAMs
    which are now prepared to follow WET recovery prescriptions and
    implement their work out plans. The audits will leave these PDAMs
    well-disposed to take advantage of funding opportunities both at the
    World Bank and through the Indonesian government.

    **ENV-DG Linkage opportunities**

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-   As Indonesia begins to recover from the crisis of 1997-8, the RUDO
    team is now returning to its focus on the increased and more
    efficient delivery of urban environmental services. USAID is
    particularly concerned that Indonesians are able to perceive and
    experience the full benefits of democratic governance. CLEAN-Urban
    is working towards the expansion and equitable delivery of services
    by encouraging the widespread adoption of capital investment
    programs (CIPs) generated through the joint efforts of urban local
    bodies (ULBs) and a coalition of community members. With the
    assistance of CLEAN-Urban two more urban centers in East Java have
    adopted CIPs in FY99, bringing the total to six. CLEAN-Urban has
    also been working with the Ministry of Home Affairs to produce
    technical manuals describing a new and broader CIP strategy with a
    focus on midterm planning. It is expected that by the middle of
    FY2001, the production of a CIP, using the methodology outlined by
    these manuals, will be required of all ULBs. Plans were also laid
    for a Water Efficiency Team Technology for Establishment of Rerating
    (WETTER). WETTER will conduct a training of trainers (TOT) workshop,
    giving 25-30 engineers in NGOs and semi-governmental organizations
    the skills needed to train others to rerate water treatment plants
    at enterprises which are considering new construction. The process
    of rerating increases the capacity of the entire production chain by
    upgrading existing systems at one or two vital links instead of
    engaging in costly new construction.

    **LESSONS LEARNED**

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-   *Decentralised Government.* Efforts to strengthen local governments,
    who we know are best able to assess and, given the proper technical
    support, deliver urban environmental services are extremely
    important to our efforts in Indonesia.

-   *Collaboration.* It is equally important that ULBs be encouraged to
    work collaboratively with the communities they effect. In FY99
    members of CLEAN-Urban helped draft laws UU/22 and UU/25 1999 which
    set the framework for the devolution of power and resources to ULBs
    by May of 2001. They are now providing technical assistance in
    drafting the implementing regulations.

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-   *Accountability.* City sharing workshops were held in Kidiri,
    Tulung-Agung, and Malang. Local officials attended as did officials
    from several other cities. CLEAN-Urban also worked with the Home
    Ministry to establish community action dialogue networks in Malang
    and four other cities. In FY99 regular meetings were held and
    attended by representatives of a wide range of governmental and
    non-governmental community groups. Finally, plans were developed to
    implement Water Indicators for Satisfaction Evaluation (WISE). It is
    hoped that this will encourage increased accountability to consumer
    needs on the part of PDAMs.

The Experience of USAID/Mexico: First Steps Toward DG-ENV Synergies

***Author: Jill Pike***[^9]***, USAID/Mexico DG Officer***

+-------------------------------+---------------------------------------+
| **MISSION:** Mexico           |                                       |
+-------------------------------+---------------------------------------+
| SO 3: More democratic         | SO 1: Critical ecosystems and         |
| processes adopted in key      | biological resources conserved        |
| government institutions       |                                       |
|                               | Major Activities and Key Partners:    |
| Major Activities and Key      |                                       |
| Partners:                     | -   Protected Area Management, The    |
|                               |     Nature Conservancy (TNC)          |
| -   Municipal Governance,     |                                       |
|     including improved        | -   Coastal Resource Management, U.   |
|     capacity to deliver       |     of Rhode Island (URI)             |
|     services and increased    |                                       |
|     participation in local    | -   Sustainable Technologies,         |
|     government                |     Conservation International (CI)   |
|     decision-making,          |                                       |
|     International City/County | -   Institutional Strengthening,      |
|     Management Association    |     Mexican Nature Conservation Fund  |
|     (ICMA), local NGOs        |     (FMCN), URI, CI                   |
|                               |                                       |
| -   Legislative               | -   Fire Prevention and Restoration,  |
|     Strengthening, Research   |     FMCN                              |
|     Foundation of the State   |                                       |
|     University of New York    | Life of Project: 1999-2003            |
|     (SUNY)                    |                                       |
|                               | LOP Funding: \$14,125,000             |
| -   Administration of         |                                       |
|     Justice, Judicial Reform, | SO 2: Carbon dioxide emissions and    |
|     Judicial Education, Court | pollution reduced                     |
|     Management and Mediation, |                                       |
|     National Center of State  | Major Activities and Key Partners:    |
|     Courts (NCSC), local NGOs |                                       |
|     and Universities          | -   Resource Management Systems       |
|                               |     Initiative (RMSI), including      |
| Life of Project: 1998-2003    |     energy efficiency, pollution      |
|                               |     prevention, environmental         |
| LOP Funding: \$21,336,000     |     management systems and training   |
|                               |     programs, Hagler Bailly; Tlalpan, |
|                               |     Mexico City; National University  |
|                               |                                       |
|                               | -   Mexico Renewable Energy Program,  |
|                               |     Sandia National Laboratories,     |
|                               |     FIRCO, CONAE, Winrock, NMSU       |
|                               |                                       |
|                               | Life of Project: 1999-2003            |
|                               |                                       |
|                               | LOP Funding: \$14,175,000             |
+-------------------------------+---------------------------------------+

# LINKING ENV AND DG ISSUES

As part of a Year 2000 initiative to explore cross-sectoral linkages,
the Mission and partners have identified a number of possibilities
within existing DG and ENV activities. To date, the principal
opportunities identified are those that link the Democracy Program\'s
municipal governance activities with the several Environment and Energy
Programs and cross-cutting efforts to link DG civil society activities
with ENV institutional strengthening programs:

• Municipal Governance and Coastal Resource Management and Regional
Planning

• Municipal Governance and Energy Efficiency, Environmental Management
Systems and

Renewable Energy

• Municipal Governance and Global Climate Change

• Institutional Strengthening of Civil Society Organizations

**SPECIFIC ENV-DG LINKAGE ACTIVITIES AND RESULTS**

• During the year 2000, the Mexico Mission has gained experience with
identifying and actualizing DG-ENV synergies within existing programs.
To identify DG-ENV activity and results linkages that were not
specifically designated during the Strategy or program planning phases,
the mission DG and ENV SO Teams and partners undertook several
activities. The Mission structured an exchange of experiences, an
exploration of opportunities for collaboration and opened new on-going
channels of communication with SO Teams, program partners and Global
Bureau technical offices at USAID/Washington. This process has led to
concrete activity proposals for existing programs that are mutually
supportive of DG and ENV results and can be undertaken at minimal
addition cost to the Mission's programs and partner institutions. The
identified ENV-DG linkages do not replace current, specific program
directions in each sector. Instead, they will enhance the results of
each SO by contributing to the interdisciplinary technical assistance
provided and the information shared in each sectoral area.

• [NGO-Government Collaboration in the Chetumal Bay]{.underline}: The
Mission DG and ENV officers, ICMA, and staff involved in the University
of Rhode Island Coastal Resources Center (URI) Mexico Project in the
Chetumal Bay region have engaged in on-going dialogue. As a result, an
interdisciplinary initiative will soon be implemented to improve coastal
resource management and protection. This effort will strengthen the
participation of local NGO and university environmental partners in
local policy planning and institution building, particularly as it
relates to municipal water delivery and wastewater management in the
city of Chetumal. URI wants to see a

> strengthened relationship between its local NGO and university
> environmental partners and the Chetumal municipal government. This
> relationship is key to putting local environmental concerns on the
> local and regional government agenda. It also will support the efforts
> of local environmental organizations to promote coastal resource
> management and protection and help them to effectively participate in
> government-led regional planning and development.
>
> The DG-funded ICMA program in Mexico is a natural provider of
> assistance to strengthen these relationships. The ENV program will
> soon obligate a small amount of funds to the DG program's existing
> Cooperative Agreement with ICMA. ICMA will collaborate with URI and
> its local partners to provide technical assistance to staff from the
> state-managed water and wastewater utilities and also the municipal
> government. The purpose will be to improve the functioning of the
> utilities in order to reduce the environmental impact of current water
> usage and wastewater management. ICMA assistance will help bring
> together water managers, municipal officials and NGO and university
> partners. By working together, they can strengthen their collaborative
> relationships and initiate cross-sectoral dialogue on municipal
> service delivery and coastal resource management.

• [USAID-USEPA Environmental Management Systems (EMS) Demonstration
Project]{.underline}: USEPA and USAID/G/ENV funds will jointly support
the implementation of EMS demonstration projects over a two-year period
in three Mexican municipalities. Two of these municipalities are on the
U.S.-Mexico border and one is in the interior of Mexico. This activity
will build on the Mission's DG municipal government strengthening
activity in Jalisco (ICMA) and on the G/ENV-funded ICLEI experience.
From the beginning, the Mission has pushed to ensure that the G/ENV and
USEPA project will directly complement the DG program's work in the
municipal sector and take advantage of U.S. and Mexican partner
expertise.

> In addition to the front office's involvement, the Mission DG team are
> active members of the group from USEPA and USAID/G/ENV that is
> advising and facilitating project implementation. The activity is now
> in its early stages. The DG Team and DG partners are contributing
> directly to project implementation by: 1) ensuring that the EMS
> activities link wherever possible with DG activities, results, and
> target geographic areas, and 2) offering technical advice to the EPA
> and G/ENV team members on the elements of municipal governance in
> Mexico that need to be considered in order to ensure optimum EMS
> results. Further, one of the Mexican municipal associations---a key
> partner of DG municipal governance activities\-- will join the EMS
> effort. This organization will be a local partner to the project
> implementor and serve as a repository of project best practices and
> lessons learned. This arrangement will ensure sustainability,
> information sharing and replication of the pilot experience to
> additional Mexican municipalities.

• [Information Sharing]{.underline}:

> *International Conferences*. ENV-Energy partner Hagler Bailly invited
> the DG-funded Chief of Party of ICMA/Mexico to present at an
> international conference. The conference will focus on EMS,
> environmental audits, and energy efficiency and pollution prevention
> in various municipal service sectors. It is sponsored by the Tlalpan
> borough of the Mexico City. This borough is a target area of the
> Mission's Energy SO. AMMAC, one of Mexico's municipal associations and
> a key partner of the ICMA project, will be working with ENV partner
> conference organizers to promote attendance of Mexican municipal
> officials.
>
> *USAID Conferences.* A representative of AMMAC participated in the
> recent G/ENV workshop "Cities Matter: The Role of Local Governments in
> Global Climate Change" workshop.
>
> *Project Updates*. Both the ENV and DG teams participated in a recent
> presentation on project results to date by the Mexico ICLEI
> representative.
>
> *Joint Visits to Project Sites and Activities.* A joint
> Democracy-Environment Team site visit was made to one of the pilot
> municipalities in the state of Jalisco that has been supported by
> Mission DG funding to ICMA. The group was also joined by a project
> manager of one the Mission's energy sector partners, Hagler Bailly
> Services. The group observed a regional workshop that enabled
> municipal water system mangers to think critically about the links
> among effective water delivery, energy efficiency, and sound municipal
> management.
>
> *Partner Collaboration with Municipalities.* A meeting was held in the
> city of San Luis Potosi, one of ICLEI's pilot cities, to identify
> concrete opportunities for collaboration between the ENV and DG
> programs at the municipal level. The meeting was attended by both the
> USAID/Mexico ENV and DG officers, local representatives of the ICMA
> and ICLEI projects, Hagler Bailly's Mexico project manger, and a
> representative of the Mexican Center for Cleaner Production, a local
> ENV program partner.
>
> *Document Exchange*. DG and ENV partners share project-related and
> other documentation, such as reports and annual program reviews, in
> order to prompt continued exploration of synergies.
>
> *NRM and Institutional Strengthening*. Opportunities continue to be
> explored to determine how the local NGO partners of other Mission
> programs, including DG, can benefit from The Nature Conservancy's
> institutional strengthening of environmental groups. The DG team has
> already held direct discussions with the ENV team and TNC on this
> issue.

# ENV-DG LINKAGE OPPORTUNITIES

-   Strong leadership and initiative by the Mission front office and the
    ENV and DG SO teams helped identify and mobilize ENV-DG synergies.

-   There was effective and productive communication between ENV and DG
    SO Teams. USAID/Mexico is a small mission and this situation
    facilitates communication.

-   U.S. and Mexican partners demonstrated initiative, were willing to
    collaborate across program areas with each other and explore
    opportunities for cooperation and sharing of technical expertise and
    information.

-   The Mission had Team Strategies and Results that support: 1) the
    development of innovative pilot models for later replication, and 2)
    governance activities. The DG Program Strategy hinges on the
    development of successful pilot local governance practices in target
    areas and the replication of those best practices around the
    country. This situation has enabled staff and partners to target
    areas of opportunity and some of these have emerged in ENV target
    sites. Several ENV results focus on institution building, as well as
    ENV sector participation in governance and the policy processes
    where environmental management and protection is at stake.

-   With regard to the host country governmental context, there is
    strong and increasing support for decentralization of public service
    provision, funding, and decision-making to municipal levels. There
    are also evolving political processes that increasingly reward only
    those officials who demonstrate capacity to meet public demands.
    This situation creates a high degree of public sector interest
    (municipalities, particularly) in receiving technical assistance to
    improve service delivery and to effectively respond to citizen
    pressure. Thus, ENV issues of energy cost efficiency (and the linked
    environmental benefits), environmental protection, and response to
    citizen environmental sectors become a key component of improved
    municipal governance

-   In terms of the host country non-governmental context, there are
    deep traditions of national and local civil society organizing in
    the environmental and democracy sectors and a high degree of
    technical expertise within these CSOs. There are also technically
    expert decentralized university institutions and researchers.
    However, there has been limited experience with effective
    citizen-government collaboration. As a result of decentralization,
    the NGO sectors (i.e., environment) are now actively seeking out
    opportunities to learn how to effectively participate in, and
    influence governmental planning and decision-making.

# ENV-DG LINKAGE OBSTACLES

• Given the opportunities detailed above, few obstacles have been
encountered to date.

**LESSONS LEARNED**

Given the incipient nature of these activities, there are some initial
lessons learned from the Mexico experience:

-   The importance of Mission front office support and leadership for
    exploration of linkage opportunities

-   The value of effective and collaborative intra-Mission communication
    between members of the DG and ENV teams

-   The value of effective and productive cross-sectoral communication
    between ENV and DG partners, without necessarily requiring Mission
    intermediaries

-   Given initiative, creativity and communication, there are many low
    cost or no-cost opportunities that can be found for actualizing
    synergies among existing activities.

-   There may be a need to formalize communication within the Mission
    and among partners, considering the often quite different
    perspectives the DG and ENV communities maintain on similar issues.
    These channels could include the formation of a formal working group
    of DG and ENV Teams and partners, and the development of a simple
    database/calendar of events of interest sponsored by DG and ENV
    partners that would be circulated to all partners.

The Experience of USAID/Philippines

***Author: Mike Calavan, Former USAID/Philippines DG Officer***[^10]

+--------------------------------------+-------------------------------+
| # MISSION: Philippines               |                               |
+--------------------------------------+-------------------------------+
| **DG STRATEGIC OBJECTIVE & PROJECT   | # ENV STRAT                   |
| INFO**                               | EGIC OBJECTIVE & PROJECT INFO |
|                                      |                               |
| DG SO: Broadened participation in    | ENV SO: Enhanced management   |
| the formulation and implementation   | of renewable natural          |
| of public policies in selected       | resources.                    |
| areas.                               |                               |
|                                      | The CRMP (Coastal Resource    |
| The GOLD (Governance and Local       | Management Project) was       |
| Development) Project provided        | designed to improve coastal   |
| process/facilitation assistance and  | management by working with    |
| TA, on a demand-driven basis, to     | municipalities, both urban    |
| help improved local government.      | and rural.                    |
|                                      |                               |
|                                      | The IISE (Industrial          |
|                                      | Initiative for a Sustainable  |
|                                      | Environment) Project supports |
|                                      | the efforts of provincial     |
|                                      | offices and utilities to plan |
|                                      | for ISO certification.        |
+--------------------------------------+-------------------------------+
| Life of Project: 1995-2001 (all      |                               |
| three projects)                      |                               |
|                                      |                               |
| Funding : \$1.5-2 million (combined  |                               |
| for three projects)                  |                               |
|                                      |                               |
| Mechanism: Contracts                 |                               |
|                                      |                               |
| # Partners:                          |                               |
|                                      |                               |
| # GOLD (Associates in Rural Develo   |                               |
| pment); CRMP (Tetratech); IISE (N/A) |                               |
|                                      |                               |
| Local governments (province, rural   |                               |
| municipalities,                      |                               |
| [barangays]{.underline}) and civil   |                               |
| society organizations; IISE partners |                               |
| (DENR, Dept. of Trade & Industry,    |                               |
| Philippines Coast Guard)             |                               |
+--------------------------------------+-------------------------------+

**linking env-dg issues**

-   Through genuine synergies across one DG project (GOLD) and two ENV
    projects (CRMP, IISE), the mission was able to link technically
    sound management of local resources to autonomous, participatory
    local governance.

    **Specific env-dg linkage activities and results**

```{=html}
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```
-   [The Environmental Summit]{.underline}*:* This NGO- and
    provincial-government led planning exercise stretched over several
    months, involved 600 people, and innumerable working groups focused
    on such issues as "Ecotourism," "An Environment Law," and "A
    Provincial Environmental Management Office." GOLD helped with
    organization and process and CRMP provided technical inputs.

-   [Establishment of the Bohol Environmental Management Office
    (BEMO]{.underline}): The BEMO has been established with provincial
    funds, initially as part of the Provincial Planning and Development
    Office. GOLD provided training in participatory methods to BEMO
    staff and GOLD has also helped organize an initial "visioning and
    goals" activity as well as service delivery workshops for new staff.
    CRMP and IISE have provided extensive technical training. IISE is
    supporting efforts of BEMO to spearhead planning for provincial ISO
    certification.

-   [The Environment Code]{.underline}*:* The need for a Code was
    identified at the Summit, and the law was prepared with technical
    assistance from CRMP and GOLD, and approved by the *Sanguniang
    Panalalawigan* (provincial legislature).

-   [The Medium Term Plan]{.underline}*:* The Medium Term Plan was
    largely a provincial initiative. However, it made extensive use of
    facilitation methods (ToP) introduced by GOLD and technical insights
    gained under CRMP. This participatory exercise involved 17 working
    groups that met over six months. Citizen groups were used as
    sounding boards. A local college (Divine Word College) facilitated a
    synthesis workshop. In addition, the plan incorporated inputs from
    earlier participatory planning sessions (on investment
    prioritization) conducted by GOLD. It is important to note that the
    number one priority of Bohol is [Eco-Cultural Tourism]{.underline}
    and this focus has strengthened the province's commitment to sound
    environmental management.

-   [*"*Rollout" of CRMP and GOLD Activities]{.underline}*:* BEMO staff
    have made extensive use of facilitation skills learned under GOLD.
    They use these skills to extend lessons learned and replicate the
    institutional arrangements pioneered in an initial handful of CRMP
    pioneer sites to all 30 coastal municipalities in Bohol. For
    instance, ToP facilitation methods were used in a major workshop on
    enforcement of new coastal management regulations. CRMP continues to
    provide appropriate training and technical expertise. For "rollout"
    activities on solid waste management, GOLD will provide TA and BEMO
    will provide facilitation skills.

-   [Coastal Management Councils]{.underline}*:* The province, working
    through the BEMO will assist in the establishment of three coastal
    councils, each spanning 8-12 coastal municipalities. These councils
    will take on management responsibilities and will initially focus on
    reinforcing the need for effective enforcement of coastal/fisheries
    regulations. Multi-local-government management units like this were
    pioneered under GOLD and they will rely heavily on technical
    knowledge gained under CRMP. The province is purchasing three
    "mother boats" for enforcement, having budgeted P2 million
    (\$40,000)

-   [Privatization of Utilities]{.underline}*:* Bohol's poorly-managed,
    heavily-subsidized electric and water utilities are being privatized
    using IISE technical assistance and frequent application of, and
    heavy reliance upon the GOLD-taught facilitation and communication
    skills. The probability of achieving ISO certification will be
    dramatically increased and water resources will be used far more
    carefully.

-   [ISO Certification of Provincial Operations]{.underline}: This
    effort was spontaneously arrived at by provincial leadership and
    IISE staff. It will lead to major breakthroughs in environmental
    management, local government transparency vis-à-vis citizens and
    potential investors and provide an excellent advertising opportunity
    in the international tourist trade. TA is provided by IISE but the
    working group relies heavily on facilitation methods introduced
    under GOLD.

-   [Planning, Regulating and Implementing Provincial
    Programs]{.underline}. Newly acquired technical knowledge and
    concrete techniques in citizen participation have been combined in
    organizing public planning processes, establishing new governance
    units and organizations, drafting and approving laws and codes, and
    initiating and implementing programs.

    **ENV-DG Linkage opportunities**

```{=html}
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```
-   A major contributor to the success of these efforts is the Local
    Government Code of 1991, one of the most far-reaching local
    government laws in the world. While it leaves undesirable
    ambiguities in the working relationship between local governments
    and the national Department of Environment and Natural Resources,
    its "general welfare" clause gives ample scope for the many
    initiatives taken in Bohol.

-   Another contributing factor is progressive local leadership. Bohol
    is blessed with a young, dynamic governor and vice governor, a
    superb provincial planning and development officer, activist NGOs,
    dedicated provincial staff, and several excellent municipal mayors.
    It was [their]{.underline} insight and leadership that made the
    numerous breakthroughs and extensive synergy possible.

-   The cutting-edge implementing philosophy of GOLD ("demand-driven,
    assisted self reliance") was also essential, as was the decision of
    CRMP and IISE to work mainly with local governments, rather than
    with a central government department.

-   Geographic overlap helped too, but that was substantially the result
    of USAID efforts to locate and work with a progressive local
    government.

    **env-dg linkage Obstacles**

```{=html}
<!-- -->
```
-   Obstacles were relatively few, given the commitment of our shared
    local government partner, the Province of Bohol.

-   A few problems did arise related to the "dual nature" of the GOLD
    Project. As a "demand-driven" project, the GOLD staff were sometimes
    called upon to provide both process/facilitation assistance and TA.
    This situation sometime raised tensions with other projects that
    were more technically TA-driven. These projects sometimes assumed
    GOLD TA would somehow be too "soft" to be useful. This sometimes
    brought tensions to working relationships, but not often in Bohol.

    **LESSONS LEARNED**

```{=html}
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```
-   *Earlier Joint Consultant Dialogue and Planning.* It might have been
    useful to get our consultants together sooner for dialogue and joint
    planning. However, in the end, it was the [local
    government]{.underline} partners who ensured that our separate
    efforts would achieve maximum effect. They also ensured that help
    was received at the appropriate time from their point of view.

-   *Sustained Commitment.* Genuine demand-driven programs aimed at
    assisted self reliance can foster enormous local initiative and
    [sustained]{.underline} commitment to the use of technical processes
    and skills that have been learned under donor project activities.

ENV-DG-LABOR Linkages: Potential for New USAID Programs

***Author: Michaela Meehan***[^11]***, USAID/G/DG via Department of
Labor***

**linking env-dg issues**

• Community Right-to-Know programs would complement USAID's D&G and
Environment program structures and strategic objectives by relying on
broad-based participation, civic education, awareness-raising, advocacy,
and skills training to mitigate hazards and bring about understanding of
other environmental changes.

• Sector-Based Hazard Mitigation (SBHZ) programs link similar ENV and DG
issues as Community Right-to-Know programs but place a greater focus on
working out practical solutions for the enforcement of environmental
rule of law.

**Specific env-dg linkage activities and results**

• Community Right-to-Know activities have operated successfully over the
years throughout the United States and along the US/Canada and US/Mexico
borders. These programs focus on debates and issues arising from
unwanted or hazardous pollution generated by, or resulting from work
practices, agriculture, manufacturing and utilities, among other
factors.

• In Community Right-to-Know programs in the United States, trade unions
have often taken the lead in obtaining grant funding. Unions have been
key organizations to help find solutions, because union members are both
workers and members of the community. Right-to-Know programs place trade
unions, business, and local governments at the forefront of community
leadership. Trade unions in the United States have records of success as
catalysts in bringing communities together to understand environmental
problems, and the options, benefits, and impacts of alternative
solutions to these problems. Through civic education and technical
training, workers and the community at large increase skills and enhance
their problem-solving capacities.

• SBHZ Mitigation programs in the United States have focused on public
policy, design of regulatory frameworks, creation of industry compliance
monitors and establishment of processes to create guidelines or
standards. In addition, SBHZ programs share many of the elements of
community right-to-know programs. SBHZ programs rely on industry
consensus standards or hazardous exposure guidelines that determined by
public policy. These standards and guidelines help to determine how best
to proceed in addressing, and ultimately resolving sector-generated
environmental hazards or pollutants. SBHZ programs also rely on advisory
committees made up of representatives from labor, business, government,
occupational/environmental advisors, NGOs, and consultants, among
others. The committee members identify specific hazards, consider
engineering controls, develop new work practices for production and
materials handling and establish voluntary industry guidelines or
mandated industry occupational and environmental practices, if
appropriate.

**LESSONS LEARNED**

• *Advisory Committees*. In the North America, the formation of an
advisory committee has been key. The committee should include all
community stakeholders. Subcommittees focus on specific problems. The
advisory committee has been the primary vehicle for receiving and
distributing information. It has provided awareness-training, and
ultimately, it is the institution that delivers consensus. The advisory
committee has identified problems, developed accountability, and helped
to introduce new remediation techniques, if applicable.

• *Expert Technical Assistance*. Community Right-to-Know programs need
technical assistance. This assistance can be provided by occupational
and environmental groups with credentials and scientific expertise. For
example, if environmental testing is required, these expert groups can
provide environmental pollution measurements as part of a community
inventory of possible contaminants and other problems. In areas where
single-source pollution is a problem, particularly from a dominant
industry, the experts can examine engineering controls, recapturing
devices, and work practices as possible mitigators of pollution.

• *Three-Year Community Right-to-Know Programs*. For Community
Right-to-Know programs, funding would support technical assistance for
occupational and environmental measurements, project coordination,
community organizing, awareness training, and community-wide educational
forums of the advisory committee. Programs need to be funded for a
minimum of three years, due to the time required to develop community
awareness, prepare an inventory of environmental problems, form an
advisory committee, and identify priorities.

• *Multi-Dimensional Approaches for Sector-Based Hazard Mitigation*.
Activities include workshops, forums, short-term intensive technical
training, and roundtables to discuss issues and learn from outside
experts. Support must be allocated for some technical assistance and
research as well as environmental evaluations, which may include medical
evaluation of worker and public exposures.

The Experience of the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL)
in Indonesia & Beyond

**Author: Owen Lynch**[^12]**, Senior Attorney & Managing Director of
the Law & Communities Program, CIEL**

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| # REGION: Africa and Asia                                             |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| **ENV STRATEGIC OBJECTIVE & PROJECT INFO**                            |
|                                                                       |
| ENV SO: Decentralized and strengthened natural resources management.  |
|                                                                       |
| CIEL's Law and Communities (L&C) Program focuses on rural             |
| constituencies in developing countries and particularly on issues     |
| related to community-based property rights (CBPRs).                   |
|                                                                       |
| In Indonesia:                                                         |
|                                                                       |
| Life of Project: 1997-2001                                            |
|                                                                       |
| Funding: \$280,000                                                    |
|                                                                       |
| Mechanism: Grant from USAID/NRM/BSP/KEMALA                            |
|                                                                       |
| # Partners:                                                           |
|                                                                       |
| # BSP/KEMALA, the Institute for Policy Research and Adv               |
| ocacy (ELSAM) and the Indonesian Center for Environmental Law (ICEL). |
|                                                                       |
| In Philippines:                                                       |
|                                                                       |
| Life of Project: 1997-2001                                            |
|                                                                       |
| Funding: \$310,000                                                    |
|                                                                       |
| Partners:                                                             |
|                                                                       |
| Haribon Foundation Tanggol Kalikasan, Legal Resources Center - Kasama |
| sa Kalikasan (LRC-KSK)                                                |
|                                                                       |
| In Africa                                                             |
|                                                                       |
| Project: Southern Africa Public Interest Law and Community-Based      |
| Property Rights Workshop August 1- 4, 2000.                           |
|                                                                       |
| Funding: \$45,000                                                     |
|                                                                       |
| Mechanism: Sub-grant through WRI from USAID Africa Bureau             |
|                                                                       |
| Partners:                                                             |
|                                                                       |
| Tanzania: Lawyers Environmental Action Team (LEAT)                    |
|                                                                       |
| Kenya: Center for Environmental Law and Policy in Africa (CEPLA),     |
| Resources Conflict Institute (RECONCILE)                              |
|                                                                       |
| Uganda: Attorneys Coalition for Development and Environment (ACODE)   |
|                                                                       |
| South Africa: Legal Resources Centre (LRC)                            |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+

**linking env-dg issues**

• The linkages in this work address natural resource management, support
for indigenous and human rights,

enforcement and localization of rule of law.

-   The conditions required for greening democracies and promoting good
    environmental governance are still not in place at the global level
    or in many countries at the national level. Hundreds of millions of
    people in the developing world are directly dependent on threatened
    natural resources and have no legal incentives or other governmental
    support for the sustainable management of those resources. Perhaps
    most troubling, few efforts are currently underway to address this
    shortcoming. The need for legal incentives to promote sustainable
    management is especially acute where local people are directly
    dependent on important and threatened environmental resources such
    as forests, range lands, mountains, and coastal areas, and already
    possess local knowledge about how to manage those resources in
    sustainable ways.

-   Today, rural peoples, while comprising large majorities in many
    developing countries, are frequently neglected by lawyers, and have
    little if any say in law and policy making processes on national and
    international levels. This neglect is evident in many laws and
    policies that are hostile towards rural resource users and fail to
    provide any incentives for sustainable resource management.

-   The processes shaping economic globalization should, and can be
    broadened and enriched by the democratization of international and
    national laws, especially by designing and promoting participatory
    legal processes that address grass-roots human rights and
    environmental concerns. The key principle linking human rights and
    environmental issues should be that everyone, by virtue of being
    human, has a right to participate in decisions concerning the use of
    natural resources that she or he directly depend on for life and
    livelihood.

-   To promote this fundamental right, opportunities and institutional
    capacities need to be established and strengthened to help citizens
    and NGOs more fully participate in the design and enforcement of
    national and international laws. One of the greatest challenges is
    to employ on behalf of rural peoples the special analytical and
    advocacy skills lawyers possess. Meeting this challenge, in some
    instances, requires the creation and development of public interest
    human rights and environmental law organizations in developing
    countries that understand and promote legal aspects of
    community-based natural resource management.

    **Specific env-dg linkage activities and results**

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```
-   The most notable project accomplishments include assisting ELSAM
    with the design and implementation of an initiative that included
    the two writing workshops and the drafting by Indonesian lawyers and
    law school graduates of fourteen case studies on the relationships
    between Indonesian law and CBPRs. A synthesis report that highlights
    key findings from the case studies is being prepared for publication
    in Bahasa Indonesia and English. In addition, a new batch of fifteen
    lawyers and law school graduates are now conducting field research
    and drafting additional case studies. Current efforts include
    technical assistance to regional public interest law partners in
    Sumatra, Sulawesi and West Papua, reviewing draft natural resource
    management regulations and laws such as the new Basic Forestry Law
    of 1999.

```{=html}
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```
-   CIEL is assisting ICEL with its ongoing review of various
    environmental laws, regulations and polices related to CBPRs,
    participation, and forestry and other natural resources. As part of
    this collaborative effort, ICEL is designing a strategy for
    developing Indonesian-specific environmental law teaching curricula
    and training materials and has recently been awarded a \$60,000
    grant from USAID/Indonesia for this purpose.

The Experience of the Central African Regional Program for the
Environment

***Author: Laurent Some***[^13]***, Director Africa, BSP***

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| # REGIONAL BUREAU: Africa                                             |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| ENV STRATEGIC OBJECTIVE & PROJECT INFO                                |
|                                                                       |
| Africa Bureau/Sustainable Development ENV SO: Accelerate progress in  |
| the spread of strategically viable and environmentally sound          |
| environmental management systems                                      |
|                                                                       |
| IR 5.1: Develop, Improve, and promote cost-effective approaches in    |
| selected areas                                                        |
|                                                                       |
| IR 5.1.3: Congo Basin environmental management                        |
|                                                                       |
| Twenty year objective:                                                |
|                                                                       |
| "Reduce the rate of deforestation in the tropical forests in the      |
| Congo Basin and conserve the biodiversity contained within them.      |
| Thus, in the long term, avert potentially negative changes in the     |
| global and regional climate".                                         |
|                                                                       |
| Phase I and Post- Phase I Objective for 1995-2003:                    |
|                                                                       |
| "Identify and help establish conditions and practices required to     |
| reduce deforestation and biodiversity loss in the Congo Basin"        |
|                                                                       |
| USAID Democratic Republic of Congo Mission /Environment Strategic     |
| Objective: Congolese people are assisted to solve national,           |
| provincial, and community problems through participatory processes    |
| that involve the public, private, and civil society.                  |
|                                                                       |
| IR 2: "Good governance and rule of law promoted with emphasis on      |
| muti-stakeholher problem-solving"                                     |
|                                                                       |
| IR 3: "Constituencies for sustainable resource management and         |
| conservation strengthened through direct benefit and participation"   |
|                                                                       |
| Life of Project: 1995-2003                                            |
|                                                                       |
| Funding: \$23,650 million                                             |
|                                                                       |
| Mechanism:                                                            |
|                                                                       |
| #                                                                     |
|                                                                       |
| Partners:                                                             |
|                                                                       |
| **US-based collaborators:** African Wildlife Foundation, Biodiversity |
| Support Program, Conservation International, Innovative Resources     |
| Management, NASA/University of Maryland, Peace-Corps, USAID,          |
| US/Forest Service, US Fish and Wildlife Service, Wildlife             |
| Conservation Society, World Resource Institute, World Wildlife Fund.  |
|                                                                       |
| # Regional Collaborators: Central African go                          |
| vernment agencies, local and international Non-governmental organizat |
| ions, including IUCN / Central Africa Bureau, private sector, univers |
| ities, other research and education groups, local communities, indivi |
| duals, regional conservation and development projects, programs, and  |
| processes (CEFDHAC), and donor agencies, including USAID DRC Mission. |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+

**LINKING ENV AND DG ISSUES**

-   CARPE was established to identify major threats to Congo Basin
    forests and look for ways to mitigate them. After starting with a
    thematic approach (logging, bushmeat, agriculture, etc\...) it
    became clear across the board that governance was the overriding
    factor which would save or lose the forests. CARPE has expanded its
    governance activities in response.

    **Specific env-dg linkage activities**

```{=html}
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```
-   Global Forest Watch:

```{=html}
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```
-   The World Resources Institute initiated the Global Forest Watch to
    help establish a global network of NGOs with the skills necessary to
    provide governments and other stakeholders, with timely and credible
    information on the state and uses of the world's remaining large
    blocks of intact tropical forests in Cameroon and Gabon. This
    initiative helped provide the means for local and national
    stakeholders to gain access to relevant information on

-   the changing state of the forest;

-   forest concessions and their allocation;

-   the performance of companies engaged in forest resource use;

-   compliance with forest management policies.

-   The Cameroon national report aimed at encouraging the government to
    implement the new Forest Law. The Gabon report is intended to
    influence the current debate on the new forest law, by providing
    parliamentarians, government officials and other audiences with a
    concise, objective data overview of the forestry sector.

```{=html}
<!-- -->
```
-   Participatory mapping

```{=html}
<!-- -->
```
-   A pilot exercise of participatory mapping has been carried out by a
    selected number of local communities in Cameroon, who have a
    complete ownership of the results.

-   Congo Basin communities need to increase their control in the
    management of "their" local forest resources in the face of
    resistance from governments and corporate groups; tools and methods
    were therefore developed to enable them to negotiate with other
    stakeholders.

-   This mapping exercise served as an incentive for mobilizing
    community-level institutional engagement in activities that are
    necessary for decentralized forest resource management to be
    jumpstarted and sustained. For example, participation in mapping has
    been readily obtained from level of chiefs down to village level
    data collectors. The mapping has spawned two key products- community
    engagement and actual maps owned by the villages.

-   To facilitate the necessary validation of the maps by the
    government, representatives of the official agency in charge of
    national maps were involved in the exercise as resource people.

```{=html}
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```
-   CEFDHAC

```{=html}
<!-- -->
```
-   Support was provided to a regional process called "Conférence sur
    les Écosystèmes de Forêts Denses et Humides d'Afrique Centrale
    (CEFDHAC), which involves collaboration of environment/forestry
    Ministers across the region, and other stakeholders.

-   CEFDHAC has evolved as regional forum for debate across a wide
    spectrum of stakeholders on sustainable management of natural
    resources, and is promoting transparent debate, of sharing
    experience, and information dissemination. It is an unusual forum
    where Ministers sit at the same table with NGOs, donors, and
    indigenous communities to talk about conservation and development of
    natural resources.

-   This ministerial level process holds biennial meetings. The
    involvement of leaders of this process in CARPE's debates on ENV-DG,
    in part, resulted in the selection of better governance of the Congo
    basin natural resources as the theme of third CEFDHAC meeting.

-   CARPE supported the organization of regional workshops aiming at
    including environmental governance issues into CEFDHAC agenda.
    Support was also given to enable the full participation of
    environmental NGOs to the process, as well as helping CEFDHAC
    identify the most appropriate and efficient legal framework for its
    action.

```{=html}
<!-- -->
```
-   Transparency International workshop

```{=html}
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```
-   Transparency International and the African Forest Action Network
    (AFAN) organized a workshop to train local environmental NGOs from
    the Central African region in techniques of promoting environmental
    advocacy.

-   A resource person from West Africa was invited enabling an exchange
    of experience and cross-fertilization between African sub-regions.

    **ENV-DG Linkage Opportunities**

```{=html}
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```
-   The concept of the Env-DG has been widely accepted as a potential
    tool in sustainable natural resource management in the Congo basin.
    Opportunities are increasingly arising to discuss ENV-DG issues.

-   A real dynamic of environmental reforms is occurring throughout the
    region. The World Bank used conditionalities to press Cameroon to
    reform its forestry laws. Many donors and international NGOs have
    set up community based natural resources management projects in
    which a spectrum of stakeholders are brought together.

-   Regional dialogue among the central African countries is being
    promoted enabling experience sharing, through regional processes
    such as the CEFDHAC, and the Yaoundé Summit of the Head of States.
    The forest policy reform in Cameroon has generated a lot of interest
    for other countries, and provided a reference for them.

    **ENV-DG LINKAGE OBSTACLES**

-   General situation of political unrest in many countries the region
    diverts efforts and resources towards conflict. It is impossible to
    promote sound forest management through good governance in these
    circumstances.

-   No permanent mechanisms for and traditions of consultation exist
    between different stakeholders, particularly between governments and
    communities, and governments and civil society.

-   Existing legal framework and level and nature of different
    stakeholders accountability, and level of decentralization in most
    of the countries do not create an enabling conditions for promoting
    good environmental governance. The legal instruments and
    administrative structures, along with traditional authorities set an
    imbalance of power among governments, corporate interests, donors,
    and rural communities for the control of the uses of natural
    resources.

    **LESSONS LEARNED**

-   *Forest Policy Reform.* Encouraging and supporting the development
    of policy and legal framework at local, national, and international
    levels, that shapes a balance distribution of power over nature, the
    state institutions, and allows an equitable distribution of benefits
    from by the exploitation of natural resources, is critical for
    promoting good environmental governance. Support should be given to
    forest policy reform throughout the region.

-   *Educating the Stakeholders.* More education and information of all
    the stakeholders is needed to promote a better understanding of
    scope of environmental governance as whole array of larger
    governance issues, such as representation, legal framework, enabling
    environment for civic activities, and protection for human rights
    and social justice, in which struggles over the environment is
    embedded.

-   *Existing Regional Processes.* Continuous support to existing
    regional processes such as CEFDHAC, creates a cadre for regional
    dialogue and experience sharing among stakeholders from the all the
    Central African region, enables more transparency.

-   *Monitoring.* Few domestic "civil society" organizations (NGOs,
    associations, and movements) in Central Africa seem to have
    significant presence, independence from governments and donors, and
    capacity to play an important monitoring and watchdog role. While
    they should have no power over resources or decisions (since NGOs
    are not necessarily accountable or representative), they can monitor
    local and national government to assure they are meeting legal
    obligations. They can also lobby on behalf of the portion of civil
    society they represent.

-   *Counter-Balancing.* Taking advantage of the fact that the
    governments of the central African countries are more and more
    receptive to the need for greater transparency, more support should
    be given to NGOs and "communities" as a potential counter-balance.
    Another counter-balance could be the support of social movements,
    rather than simply environmental NGOs.

1.  *Representative Government.* Lack of transparent, representative and
    accountable governance systems at local, regional and national
    levels militates against management of forest resources that ensures
    equity in the sharing of benefits from all uses of forest resources;

2.  *Maps as Negotiating Tools.* Providing local communities with
    natural resource maps as tools for negotiation, given current
    community institutional capacities, is not sufficient to enable
    successful negotiation of community stewarded forests to occur.
    Considerable NGO capacity building and community based capacity
    building will be needed to realize the potential embodied in the
    maps. In particular, skills in negotiation, mediation, and
    facilitation will be required of partner NGOs to help communities
    capitalize on opportunities offered by revised forest legislation
    and participatory mapping.

The Experience of the World Resources Institute (WRI) in Africa:

An Initiative for Environmental Accountability in Africa --
Environmental Advocacy & Procedural Rights

***Author: Peter Veit***[^14]***, Institutions and Governance Program,
WRI***

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| # REGION: Africa                                                      |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| **REGIONAL STRATEGIC OBJECTIVE & PROJECT INFO**                       |
|                                                                       |
| ENV SO: Adoption of improved programs, policies and activities for    |
| spread of sustainable natural resources management in Africa.         |
|                                                                       |
| The Environmental Accountability in Africa (EAA) Initiative of WRI's  |
| Institutions and Governance Program seeks to foster the development   |
| of the essential legal and institutional infrastructure for effective |
| and sustainable environmental governance. Under EAA, WRI builds the   |
| capacity of NGOs to do environmental advocacy through joint WRI/NGO   |
| campaigns, providing fellowships at WRI for NGO fellows and arranging |
| South-South exchanges. WRI helps to broaden procedural rights by      |
| conducting policy analysis on the state of specific rights, preparing |
| case studies of NGO experiences and lobbying policymakers with        |
| partner NGOs.                                                         |
|                                                                       |
| Life of Project: 1999-2003                                            |
|                                                                       |
| Funding: \$750,000 per annum (USAID buy-in; other private and         |
| bilateral donors contribute additional funds)                         |
|                                                                       |
| # Mechanism: Grant                                                    |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+

**linking env-dg issues**

• The Environmental Advocacy and Procedural Rights (EAPR) project of the
EAA Initiative seeks to strengthen state-civil society relations with
regard to environmental policy matters. Whether in the fore or wake of
political reforms, civil society in Africa has the potential to become a
powerful force and influence environmental decision-making at the local,
national, regional and global levels. The EAPR recognizes the important
roles and contributions that policy-focused, environmental NGOs, in
particular, can make to improving environmental policy, ensuring
compliance to environmental regulations and supporting environmental
accountability.

• Procedural rights help establish an enabling environment for
independent policy research and environmental advocacy. In Africa, key
freedoms and rights include freedom of environmental association, access
to environmental information, access to environmental justice, and
public participation in environmental policy matters.

**Specific env-dg linkage activities**

-   *WRI Partners.* WRI supports independent policy research and
    advocacy organizations as well as their networks/federations. WRI
    works with a small, select group of promising independent
    organizations with interests in public policy matters. These
    partners include policy research, environmental law and advocacy
    NGOs, such as the African Centre for Technology Studies (ACTS) and
    RECONCILE in Kenya, the Lawyers' Environmental Action Team (LEAT) in
    Tanzania, and the Centre for Basic Research (CBR), Advocates
    Coalition for Development and Environment (ACODE) and GreenWatch in
    Uganda.

-   *Strengthening Independent Policy Research and Environmental
    Advocacy Organizations.* WRI shares tools for analysis and outreach
    on environmental policy issues with its partners. WRI helps build
    capacity in policy research, legal analysis, and outreach, including
    publications, press releases, and public presentations. As needed,
    WRI also supports organizational development to ensure that the
    policy research/outreach capacity is housed in strong and
    sustainable institutions. Organizational development may involve
    board development, strategic planning, financial management, and
    fund raising.

• *Broadening Environmental Procedural Rights.* There are three key
aspects to WRI's work on procedural rights:

> [Promoting national-level procedural rights in law and
> practice]{.underline}. Ironically, while many governments in Africa
> are broadening political liberties and issuing in multi-party
> politics, some are also restricting civil liberties and personal
> freedoms. Through legal and case study analysis, WRI and partner NGOs
> conduct research on advocacy experiences and the opportunities and
> constraints for greater impact. Outreach efforts are designed to
> broaden and guarantee critical environmental procedural rights.
>
> [Promoting regional environmental procedural rights]{.underline}. Many
> developments in Africa have transboundary environmental impacts, yet
> the government and citizens from one country have few opportunities to
> participate in relevant decision-making processes in neighboring
> nations. WRI works with regional bodies -- East African Cooperation,
> Southern African Development Cooperation -- to incorporate regional
> procedural rights into Environmental Protocols and would enable
> citizens to address transboundary environmental costs.
>
> [Establishing international norms in environmental procedural
> rights]{.underline}. To complement efforts to establish appropriate
> public policy and legislation, WRI is working with partner NGOs to
> develop continental/international norms on good environmental
> governance. Respected and powerful norms, even if not codified in law,
> can influence government and private sector decisions and actions with
> environmental and social consequences. As part of this effort, WRI and
> partner NGOs are identifying national-level environmental governance
> indicators which will be measured on an annual basis.

The Experience of the World Resources Institute (WRI) in Africa:

An Initiative for Environmental Accountability in Africa -
Decentralization

***Author: Jesse Ribot***[^15]***, Institutions and Governance Program,
WRI***

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| **REGIONAL STRATEGIC OBJECTIVE & PROJECT INFO**                       |
|                                                                       |
| ENV SO: Adoption of improved programs, policies and activities for    |
| spread of sustainable natural resource management in Africa.          |
|                                                                       |
| Under their Initiative for Environmental Accountability in Africa     |
| (EAA), the Institutions and Governance Program of WRI aims to         |
| influencing the design and implementation of decentralization via     |
| informed multi-level research and analysis. Their goal is to improve  |
| the long-term state of the environment, rural livelihoods and         |
| environmental justice.                                                |
|                                                                       |
| Life of Project: 2000-2003                                            |
|                                                                       |
| Funding: \$400,000 per annum (USAID buy-in; other private and         |
| bilateral donors contribute additional funds)                         |
|                                                                       |
| Mechanism: Grant                                                      |
|                                                                       |
| Partners:                                                             |
|                                                                       |
| Cameroon Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), Centre   |
| Universitaire Mande Bukari, Centre for Basic Research (CBR),          |
| Institute of Environmental Studies (IES)                              |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+

**linking env-dg issues**

• This WRI project focuses on issues related to accountability,
decentralization, local democracy and natural

> resource management in Sub-Saharan Africa. By working together on
> policy research, WRI also helps to build the capacity of environmental
> research organizations and networks.

-   Environmentalists around the world have moved toward decentralized
    models of natural resource management to allow communities greater
    participation in the use, maintenance and restoration of forests,
    pasture lands, wildlife and fisheries. These reforms, spurred on by
    the end of the cold war, reflect the convergence of state critiques
    from the left and right, populist participatory movements, and
    structural adjustment programs. This new focus on decentralization
    writ large, and decentralized environmental management in
    particular, is justified on the hypothesis that central management
    is damaging and that local resource management can have positive
    effects on efficiency and equity, and therefore on social and
    ecological outcomes.

    • Theory tells us that achieving expected benefits of
    decentralizations---through internalizing social and environmental
    costs in decision making or accounting for local
    preferences---depends on the powers devolved and the accountability
    of local authorities. Because rural communities are highly
    stratified, the implications of decentralization are deeply affected
    by who represents local populations and how these representatives
    are held downwardly accountable. Rather than creating new democratic
    forms of rural participation and representation, however, many
    decentralizations appear to be supporting unaccountable institutions
    or reproducing top-down rural administration. Such decentralizations
    are undermining long-term environmental and social agendas of
    sustainability, justice and democratization. The significance of
    this program is its potential to explain these problems and involve
    policy makers and other interested parties in attempts to redress
    them and to capture opportunities.

    **Specific env-dg linkage activities**

• The policy research of the Decentralization Project examines how
different kinds and mixes of local accountability relations (downward to
local populations, upward to the central state or political parties,
horizontal ties, unaccountable) affect efficiency, equity and
environmental outcomes in current decentralizations of natural resources
management (NRM) authority.

• At the macro level, the research aims to explain the forms of
decentralized institutions being established by exploring the roles of
local governance structures in national state formation and stability
and in the context of global political economic trends.

• The Decentralization Project involves considerable and in-depth field
research for primary data collection, as well as a literature review and
historical analysis. The research program uses a field-based,
multi-method interdisciplinary approach in order to: 1) understand the
historical, legal and political-economic configuration of local
*actors*, their *powers* and their *accountability* relations; 2) assess
the effects of these different accountability relations on ecological
and social practices; and 3) ascertain how institutional arrangements
shape the institutional sustainability and spatial replicability of
decentralizations of NRM authority.

• There is a shortage of environmental policy researchers in Africa. The
Decentralization Project supports the

> emergence of a new generation of African policy analysts and
> institutions that are focused on decentralization and environmental
> management, use and justice. This research program supports
> institutions that are already engaged in independent environmental
> policy analysis and also emerging environmental policy research
> institutions, networks and programs working to engage and guide a new
> generation of analysts and advocates. The Decentralization program
> collaborates with independent research institutions in each of
> Sub-Saharan Africa's our main regions, an Africa-wide institutional
> partner, and researchers in six other countries doing parallel case
> studies.

• Publications and national-level workshops with policymakers are the
principal modes of outreach.

.

The Experience of the Environmental Law Institute (ELI)

Author: Carl Bruch[^16], Staff Attorney, ELI

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| **STRATEGIC OBJECTIVE & PROJECT INFO**                                |
|                                                                       |
| ENV SO: Adoption of improved programs, policies and activities for    |
| spread of sustainable natural resource management in Africa.          |
|                                                                       |
| Starting in 1999, the Environmental Law Institute commenced work on a |
| research project, \"Implementing Constitutional Environmental         |
| Protections in Africa.\" The goal of the activity was to develop      |
| legal tools for protecting the environment and advancing citizen      |
| participation in environmental management.                            |
|                                                                       |
| Life of Project: 1/1999-11/1999                                       |
|                                                                       |
| Funding: \$5,000                                                      |
|                                                                       |
| Mechanism: Sub-Grant from World Resource Institute, USAID/AFR/SD      |
| funds                                                                 |
|                                                                       |
| # Partners:                                                           |
|                                                                       |
| WRI, USAID/SD/AFR, USAID/Uganda, ACTS, LEAT, Greenwatch, and ACODE    |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+

**Linking env-dg issues**

-   While the primary focus of this project was ENV, it necessarily
    involves DG issues through its development of the rule of law and
    efforts to strengthen citizen access to information, due process and
    justice, and freedom of association.

• By strengthening the rights of citizens to have a role in government
decisions affecting them, implementing constitutional environmental
protections provides an environmental context in which to develop
environment and governance principles. Additionally, DG is essential to
environmental protection. For example, the research highlighted a number
of non-environmental decisions (e.g., freedom of association, standing,
and access to information) that could provide valuable precedents to
environmental advocates.

**Specific env-dg linkage activities**

-   This project surveyed the constitutions of 53 African countries for
    rights, duties, and other provisions that could be used to protect
    the environment.

-   These provisions included ones that addressed the environment and
    natural resources, including provisions that implicated the public
    trust doctrine. The project also looked at provisions related to the
    right to life. Many courts

worldwide have interpreted this latter right so that it includes the
right to healthy environment.

• The study also looked at provisions related to procedural rights.
These are rights that greatly facilitate or are an outright necessity
for the ability of organizations and individuals to protect the
environment. These rights include the freedom of association, access to
information, the right to participate in decision-making processes, and
access to courts and administrative agencies to protect the rights
(including the right of \"standing\").

-   The project also analyzed court decisions from common law and civil
    law jurisdictions in Africa. As most of the relevant constitutional
    provisions are new (having been adopted in the last decade), few
    African courts have had the opportunity to implement or interpret
    them. Consequently, the research also considered constitutional
    precedents from Asia, the Americas, and Europe \-- jurisdictions
    whose decisions are persuasive to African courts.

• Since the completion of the project, ELI has continued its work to
strengthen and implement constitutional environmental projections,
including environmental procedural rights. The research has formed an
important component for subsequent capacity-building projects. In June
2000, ELI and its partners (WRI, USAID/SD/AFR, USAID/Uganda, ACTS, LEAT,
Greenwatch, and ACODE) discussed ways to develop constitutional
environmental law in an East African Workshop on Access to Environmental
Justice held in Uganda. The workshop explicitly linked ENV and DG
issues. Constitutional environmental provisions (including procedural
rights) are likely to form an important component of ELI\'s upcoming
course on environmental law and policy for East African judges. Other
opportunities (e.g. in the Democratic Republic of Congo) have arisen to
develop and implement constitutional environmental provisions in Africa.

• ELI has received requests for the research from African and
non-African environmentalists (including those in DRC, Kenya, Tanzania,
Uganda, Ethiopia, Nigeria, and South Africa, as well as Japan).

**env-dg linkage opportunities**

-   WRI and USAID/AFR/SD were particularly helpful in conceptualizing
    the project and highlighting recent legal and institutional
    developments that were likely to be relevant.

    **ENV-DG Linkage obstacles**

-   The comparative, pan-African nature of this project meant that it
    was difficult for any particular host country mission to play a
    role. However, as described above, this work provided a basis for
    various country-specific and sub-regional projects (e.g., the June
    2000 East African Workshop on Access to Environmental Justice

-   In the end, significantly more time was needed to complete the
    research than anticipated because the constitutions were more
    difficult to locate and review. Additionally, judicial decisions
    applying constitutional environmental provisions were difficult to
    obtain.

-   Another difficulty faced in this project was its modest level of
    funding. Much of the original research and writing was conducted
    off-budget. This situation was probably due to the factors listed
    above and can also be attributed to the difficulty of obtaining
    funding when \"measurable results\" are hard to prove.

    **LESSONS LEARNED**

```{=html}
<!-- -->
```
-   *Wide Distribution of Information.* To make the information
    available as widely as possible, ELI has posted the complete report
    on-line (for free, at www.eli.org/africa.htm). WRI is publishing
    part of the research as a policy brief and it is being published by
    the Columbia Journal of Environmental Law.

-   *Follow-up Required.* In addition to disseminating the research to
    environmental advocates, governments, and judges, specific follow-up
    with partners will be necessary so that the research can have the
    full force.

-   *Constitutional Provisions as Tools.* The research and ELI\'s
    experience has shown that constitutional environmental provisions
    can be powerful tools for environmental advocates. These provisions
    tend to be measures of last resort and are used when nothing else
    works. The right to a healthy environment and right to life are
    likely to constitute the underlying context for environmental
    protection. However, statutes, codes, and regulations will
    increasingly provide the specific details about the meaning of these
    rights. Nevertheless, African advocates and courts may continue to
    rely on these constitutional guarantees and those of procedural
    rights. In a similar manner, the U.S. continually refers back to the
    First Amendment, even in light of a vast body of laws governing
    communication and religion.

    ***The Regional Experience of the Initiative for Social Action and
    Renewal in Eurasia (ISAR)***

    ***Author: Eliza Klose***[^17]***, Director, ISAR***

+---------------------------------------+------------------------------+
| # REGIONAL BUREAU: Europe -- Eurasia  |                              |
+---------------------------------------+------------------------------+
| **DG STRATEGIC OBJECTIVES & PROJECT   | # ENV STRATEG                |
| INFO**                                | IC OBJECTIVES & PROJECT INFO |
|                                       |                              |
| DG SO:                                | #                            |
|                                       |                              |
| Increased, better--informed citizen   | ENV SO:                      |
| participation in political and        |                              |
| economic decision-making              | Public participation in      |
|                                       | environmental protection     |
| With funds from the Democracy and     |                              |
| Governance Division of USAID/EE, ISAR | The Energy and Natural       |
| strengthens civil society by          | Resources Division of        |
| providing small grants, training and  | USAID/EE supports ISAR to    |
| TA to NGOs in Azerbaijan, Georgia and | provide small grants and T/A |
| the Russian Far East. Some of these   | to environmental NGOs in     |
| services go to environmental NGOs.    | Central Asia, Russia and     |
|                                       | WNIS. ISAR promotes NGO      |
| Life of Project &Funding:1996-97,     | coalition-building around    |
| \$291,400 (EE Bureau)                 | the Caspian Basin and is     |
|                                       | assisting in the             |
| Life of Project                       | implementation of the        |
| &Funding:                             | preparation phase of the     |
| 1997-2001,\$4,162,000(USAID/Caucasus) | Local Environmental Action   |
|                                       | Plan (LEAP) for Ukraine      |
| Life of Project                       |                              |
| &Fundin                               | Life of Project & Funding:   |
| g:1998-2001,\$1,400,000(USAID/Moscow) | 1993-2002,\$10,358,000 (EE   |
|                                       | Bureau                       |
| Life of Project &Funding:             |                              |
| 1990-2002,\$1,400,000                 | Life of Project &            |
| (USAID/Caucusus)                      | F                            |
|                                       | unding:1996-1998,\$1,127,000 |
| Mechanism: Grants                     |                              |
|                                       | (USAID/Russia)               |
| # Partners:                           |                              |
|                                       | Mechanism: Grants            |
| USAID/Washington                      |                              |
|                                       | Partners:                    |
| USAID/Caucasus                        |                              |
|                                       | # USAID/Washington           |
| USAID/Russia                          |                              |
|                                       | USAID/Russia                 |
| Community-based NGOs                  |                              |
|                                       | Community-based NGOs         |
| Horizonti (1st indigenous 3rd Sector  |                              |
| Org. in Georgia)                      |                              |
+---------------------------------------+------------------------------+

# LINKING ENV AND DG ISSUES

• ISAR activities link civil society development, advocacy,
brown/pollution issues and biodiversity

conservation issues.

**SPECIFIC ENV-DG LINKAGES AND RESULTS**

• ISAR's Seeds of Democracy program (ENV funds) provided small grants
(\$500-\$10,000), technical support And training to community-based
environmental NGOs through offices in Moscow and Vladivostok, Russia;
Kyiv, Ukraine; and Almaty, Kazakhstan. From 1994-96, the program also
offered larger grants (\$10,000-\$75,000) to partnership projects
between US and NIS NGOs. In addition to supporting environmental
protection efforts, the program sought to promote public monitoring of
government and business activity, outreach to the media, and links
between NGOs, between NGOs and the public, and between NGOs and
government. This program came to an end in 1998.

• In its second phase, ISAR's Cooperative Agreement with the
Europe-Eurasia Bureau provided funding for

> several projects: A Caspian project that supports NGO networking,
> seminars, and partnership activities among NGOs in the Caspian region;
> support for environmental NGOs in Atyrau, Kazakhstan, a "remote
> grants" project for NGOs located outside capital cities in Central
> Asia; and the preparatory or information-gathering stage of a local
> environmental action plan project for Ukraine.

• With DG funding from USAID-Caucasus and USAID-Moscow, ISAR runs
general NGO support programs in Azerbaijan

> and the Russian Far East, which provide small grants, training and
> technical assistance to NGOs throughout both regions. In addition, it
> provides funding through a subgrant for Horizonti, the first
> indigenous foundation for the Third Sector in Georgia, which was
> originally established as ISAR-Georgia. These programs provide some
> funding, in some cases as high as 20 percent, to environmental NGOs.

• Georgia (DG funds): In April 1997, a Georgian governmental commission
approved a plan to test the environmental impact of artillery training
by the Georgian army at a former Soviet military testing site in the
David Gareji desert. The Gareji desert is home to 6th century
monasteries, endangered plants and animals, and evidence of possibly the
oldest human life in Eurasia. Military exercises were held in the desert
during Soviet times, but had ceased in the late 1980s. With a \$400
grant from ISAR, two NGOs, the Georgian Center for Conservation of
Wildlife and Udabno, transported 100 NGO representatives to the site to
protest the army manuevers. They set up tents in the middle of the
army's firing range and met the soldiers with signs and placards
describing the importance of the desert. Press and television covered
the confrontation and the military quickly agreed to halt the manuevers.
Subsequently, four NGO representatives were named to a government
commission set up to consider alternative locations for the trainings.

• Uralsk, Kazakhstan (ENV funds): An Uralsk NGO called Naryn used a
\$3,000 seed grant to lobby the government of Kazakhstan for assistance
to citizens affected by nuclear radiation from weapons testing in their
region. Naryn, a group of local scientists, used the money to monitor
the radioactivity of the test sites and survey local citizens on the
state of their health. They used the results of their research to
pressure both local and national officials to provide reparations to
those who had suffered from the effects of the radioactive testing.

• Karakala,Turkmenistan (ENV funds): A \$100 grant to a group of
elementary school teachers allowed them to bus several classes of
children to the site of a large illegal dump outside the town. The
children drew pictures of the dump and wrote letters to city officials
and their parents expressing their dismay and anger that people in their
town were destroying nature in such a careless way. Upon receiving the
letters, the town council called a special meeting at which they passed
a bill requiring clean up of the dump site and levied fines against
people caught dumping there in the future.

-   Kostroma, Russia (ENV funds): In the 1980s the Ministry of Atomic
    > Power decided to build a nuclear power plant in Kostroma, an
    > agricultural area east of Moscow. After the Chernobyl accident,
    > construction was canceled; however, the Ministry and the regional
    > administration decided to revive the project in the mid-1990s. A
    > local NGO with the help of green NGOs from other parts of Russia
    > and a \$6,000 grant from ISAR organized a city-wide referendum to
    > oppose the project. The effort was met with widespread skepticism,
    > but the NGO campaign brought out the vote and 87% of those who
    > cast their ballots voted against the completion of the nuclear
    > plant.

```{=html}
<!-- -->
```
-   Kishinev, Moldova (ENV funds): With ISAR support, a group of
    journalists in Moldova, alarmed at the lack of public interest in
    environmental protection, established their own newspaper, *Natura*.
    *Natura*, which is distributed throughout Moldova and in some parts
    of Ukraine, has become an important source of environmental
    information and created a watchdog mindset in the public, mobilizing
    them against exploitation of Moldova's natural resources. In June
    1995, *Natura* learned that a government minister had drafted a
    secret contract offering to sell 7,000 hectares (about 14,000 acres)
    of one of Moldova's last remaining forests to a European logging
    firm. Before the deal was complete, *Natura* published an article
    about the impending sale, which was picked up by the national media.
    The government threatened to close down the *Natura* office, but
    citizens across the country fought to save the forest, appealing to
    the government with public hearings. After a parliamentary hearing
    and a presidential intervention, the project was stopped and the
    forest preserved.

**ENV-DG Linkage opportunities**

• USAID Environment and Natural Resources Division undertook a scouting
mission to the NIS in 1992. Determining that the environmental movement
had been in the forefront of reform in the Soviet Union, they decided to
target some assistance funds to support environmental NGOs. The
Clinton/Yeltsin Summit in 1993 led to funding for joint US/NIS NGO
projects. ISAR links with NIS environmental NGOs and with US
environmentalists active in the NIS, dating back to 1990, enabled ISAR
to quickly establish regional offices with local staff and boards. The
program was modeled on the German Marshall Fund's successful
Environmental Partnership for Central Europe, which generously shared
its grant-making expertise and documentation, thus speeding program
implementation.

-   ISAR's experience working in partnership with NIS and US NGOs made
    it a natural partner for USAID Environment Division when it sought
    to include an interregional NGO component in its Caspian Sea
    program, which was launched in 1998. The Caspian program supports
    joint efforts among NGOs from Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan,
    Russia and Turkmenistan as well as NGOs from Iran. Iranian
    participation is funded privately.

    **env-dg linkage Obstacles**

    • The major obstacle to all environmental projects in the NIS has
    been the sharp drop in funding for

    environmental protection over the life of the US assistance program.
    As a result of the drop in funding, the energy and environment
    office of the Europe-Eurasia Regional Bureau had to limit the range
    and variety of its programs.

```{=html}
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```
-   Since program funding was originally offered through
    USAID/Washington, mission project officers had little knowledge of
    or commitment to ISAR. They tended to see ISAR as a program imposed
    on them from Washington. As time went on and environment monies were
    sharply cut, environment staff at the mission felt that ISAR's NGO
    support program belonged more appropriately under DG. Since D&G felt
    the program was more environmental than democracy -building, we had
    increasing difficulty finding mission support despite low costs and
    good program evaluations.

• Another significant problem arose when, in 1995, the American and
European governments decided to establish Regional Environmental Centers
(REC) in a number of NIS countries. The RECs were to be modeled after
the REC in Hungary. The plan was for the RECs to offer support to
environmental NGOs and promote government/NGO/business connections . The
fatal flaw in the idea was that the money for these RECs was to be
distributed through government agencies. However, the governments in
most NIS countries have no interest in supporting real NGOs. They prefer
to set up GONGOs (Government-Organized NGOs). As a result of this plan,
the attempt to set up the RECs has been mired in bureaucratic process.
Five years later, the REC idea is still a work-in-progress in most
countries. In the meantime, money has ceased to flow to environmental
NGOs through ISAR or any other mechanism because virtually all money for
environmental NGOs has been ear-marked for the RECs.

**LESSONS LEARNED**

• In the face of the following circumstances, it is difficult to know
what ISAR could have done differently :

a\) sharp cuts in environmental funding in the NIS assistance program

b\) commitment of Western government money to the REC

c\) ambiguity about whether supporting environmental NGOs is a valid DG
priority, and

d\) skepticism about the value of small grants and support for
grassroots NGOs.

• *Marketing*: Perhaps ISAR should have spent more time, energy and
money on advertising the successes of our type of program for the
post-Soviet region but whether such attempts would have changed people's
minds remains a question.

The Regional Experience of the American Bar Association, Central &
Eastern European Law Initiative

***Author: Brian Rohan***[^18]***, Director, Western NIS & Environmental
Law Program, ABA/CEELI***

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| # REGION: Europe-Eurasia                                              |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| **STRATEGIC OBJECTIVE & PROJECT INFO**                                |
|                                                                       |
| DG SO: Legal systems that better support democractic processes and    |
| markets.                                                              |
|                                                                       |
| Strengthened rule of law and respect for human rights.                |
|                                                                       |
| \[EPAC activities primarily support the SOs related to rule of law    |
| but there has been substantial overlap with civil                     |
|                                                                       |
| society, local government and environmental SOs\]                     |
|                                                                       |
| The major thrust of CEELI\'s environmental law program has been the   |
| establishment of Environmental Public Advocacy Centers (EPACs), in    |
| partnership with indigenous NGOs.                                     |
|                                                                       |
| Life of Project: 1994-present                                         |
|                                                                       |
| Funding: Variable (USAID mission DG funds)                            |
|                                                                       |
| (1^st^ year start-up = \$200,000; thereafter, \$150,000/year with     |
| expat legal advisor or \$60,000 w/o expat advisor)                    |
|                                                                       |
| Mechanism: Grant                                                      |
|                                                                       |
| # Partners: USAID, local NGOs                                         |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+

**linking env-dg issues**

• The ABA/CEELI work linked pollution-related ("brown) and natural
resource management issues, in addition to rule of law, citizen
participation/civil society development and local governance issues.

• In its 1999 evaluation of CEELI's rule of law programs, MSI described
CEELI's Ukraine EPACs as "a particularly impressive achievement." The
evaluation stated that through the EPACs' efforts "the link between
citizen participation and strengthened rule of law has been
demonstrated." Specifically regarding the EPACs' casework, MSI found
that "EPAC cases that have gone to trial have helped establish precedent
for the principle of public participation in decisions regarding local
governance. Members of Ukraine's legal community believe that the impact
of such victories reaches beyond the environmental sector to help
strengthen broader rule of law doctrines in Ukraine." MSI generally
concluded, "CEELI has demonstrated that the EPAC model is highly
successful at facilitating the link between public participation and
democratic processes. Due directly to EPAC efforts, citizen awareness
has increased, giving individuals and NGOs a greater sense of
empowerment for asserting legal rights."[^19]

**Specific env-dg linkage activities**

• The EPACs are indigenous advocacy NGOs, staffed by local lawyers,
under the guidance of an experienced environmental law liaison. Lawyers
in each EPAC office perform a variety of activities, including:
counseling citizens and local NGOs on a variety of environmental
complaints; bringing high-profile lawsuits to uphold environmental
rights; publishing materials on topics such as access to information,
public participation and access to justice; conducting seminars for
environmental stakeholders including NGOs, prosecutors and industrial
enterprise representatives, and training law students in advocacy skills
through clinical programs operated in their offices.

• Often, the EPACs\' expertise crosses over to other substantive areas,
such as counseling NGOs on registration and taxation matters or
providing expert analysis on laws pertaining to the legal status of
NGOs. However, public advocacy legal work is the EPACs' hallmark.
Through their active caseload and citizen consultations, the EPACs have
become models of successful rule of law programs, requiring greater
accountability in governmental decision-making processes, fostering
judicial independence and support for public interest advocacy, and
increasing perceptions that the law is a viable mechanism to defend
citizens\' rights.

• CEELI\'s expatriate environmental law liaisons play a critical role in
assisting each EPAC to develop and successfully implement its agenda. At
the commencement of the project, liaisons work closely with the EPAC to
secure space and equipment, establish a strategic plan, set up case
intake procedures and so on. As the EPAC matures, the liaisons provide
guidance on specific advocacy projects and on how to bring other
stakeholders into EPAC activities. Liaisons also identify and facilitate
other projects that help the EPAC develop substantively and gain greater
organizational credibility within the local legal community. Such
projects have included convening precedent setting open parliament
meetings, organizing NGO-government working groups on implementation of
international environmental conventions, and initiating mass media
programming highlighting the EPACs\' legal victories. CEELI liaisons
also work with the EPACs to develop fundraising strategies and
organizational structures that enhance long-term organizational
viability.

• ABA/CEELI helped to establish the Environmental Policy Advocacy Center
(EPACs) with indigenous NGOs. The first EPAC was established in 1994 in
Ukraine in collaboration with Eco-Pravo Lviv. Other Ukrainian EPACs were
begun in 1996 and 1997, with Eco-Pravo Kharkiv and Eco-Pravo Kyiv,
respectively. In 1996, an EPAC was established in Armenia and the
Moldovan one was started in 1999. There are plans to open an EPAC in
Uzbekistan in the autumn of 2000. While the three Ukrainian EPACs were
created in partnership with pre-existing NGOs, the Armenian and Moldovan
EPACs resulted from a CEELI partnership with interested environmental
lawyers who were interested in creating a new NGO devoted to
environmental law and advocacy.

• CEELI\'s first EPAC in Ukraine initially was funded by sources other
than USAID. However, in-country USAID representatives saw the D&G
potential of the EPACs and began providing support. Thereafter, as the
first EPAC produced very strong results, the Ukraine AID mission
encouraged CEELI to open other EPACs in Ukraine, as well as one in
Moldova. Based on the Ukrainian success, AID missions in Armenia and
Uzbekistan also tasked CEELI to open EPACs. The EPACs generally have
produced very strong results. In Ukraine, their cases and consultations
have been repeatedly touted as solid examples of successful AID
programming and rule of law development.

# Some illustrative EPAC activities are described below:

# 

# Kharkiv, Ukraine EPAC - Olkhovka Landfill Case: This case began in December, 1996. Citizen activists of the village of Olkhovka fought against the proposed siting of a residential and industrial waste landfill in their village. The proposed siting was in violation of the public participation requirements of Ukrainian environmental legislation, as well as laws governing local referendum and state "takings" of property. The EPAC filed two cases: the first was filed on behalf of the citizens against the regional administration, and the second was filed on behalf of the village council, also against the regional administration. The first suit was rejected in Regional Court, and the second suit was rejected twice in the High Arbitration Court, first in the Court's original sitting, and second in appeal to the Collegium. The EPAC subsequently appealed this decision to the Presidium of the Court. Through combined legal, lobbying, and public relations activities, along with the citizens' unceasing vociferous opposition to the project, on August 4, 1998, the regional administration announced that construction of the landfill would be terminated. The Presidium of the Court subsequently ruled that the regional administration's actions had been illegal.

> **Lviv, Ukraine EPAC - Stynava Information Case:** The case began in
> December 1997. A citizen request from government officials for
> information regarding the company Stynava Oil Field was denied and a
> hearing was held in October, 1999, in the High Arbitration Court.
> Three representatives from the State Geology Committee ("Committee")
> attended the hearing, and after arguments from both sides were
> presented, the judge strongly suggested that the Committee voluntarily
> provide the information requested by the EPAC. The members of the
> Committee agreed to supply the information, and the EPAC agreed to
> close the case if the Committee provided complete information
> including copies of requested documents and answers to questions, and
> pay court expenses. At 5:30 p.m. on the day of the hearing, the
> Committee provided the EPAC with complete information, the judge
> imposed court expenses on the Committee and dismissed the case.
>
> **Armenia EPAC - Victory Park Case:** This case began in 1997. The
> Armenia EPAC received a complaint from a group of 50 citizens who
> learned that the Mayor of Yerevan had unlawfully transferred a tract
> of land near Victory Park to some high ranking government officials
> for the construction of summer houses. The EPAC filed a case in court,
> but the judge hearing the case dismissed it with no explanation of his
> decision. While the EPAC was working on its appeal, it also organized
> a group of 12 environmental NGOs to draft and sign a petition to the
> Prime Minister requesting his intervention. The Petition stated that
> the issue before the government was a choice between the narrow
> interests of a few politicians and the broader interests of democracy
> and the rule of law in Armenia. The Petition was released to the media
> and subsequent news articles restated the situation in similar terms.
> In August 1997, the EPAC learned that the Mayor had issued a new
> decision reversing his previous one and ordering no further
> construction in Victory Park.
>
> **Moldova EPAC - Bacioi Wine Factory and Slaughterhouse, and Arma
> Beton Company Case:** This case began in August 1999. Citizens in
> Bacioi complained to the EPAC regarding the pollution of the waters in
> the canal next to their village and the Isnovat River. The pollution
> allegedly originated from three companies in the village: a wine
> factory, a slaughterhouse and Arma Beton, a concrete company. The
> state environmental agency had required the Mayor of Bacioi to make
> necessary repairs. Subsequently, an EPAC attorney and the state
> environmental inspector visited Bacioi and determined that no repairs
> had been undertaken. In addition, the attorney and inspector
> discovered a broken pipe through which wastewater was flowing directly
> into the canal. The inspector took samples of this water. Subsequent
> tests revealed that the concentration of ammonia nitrate was 1,176
> times higher than that allowed by law. Based upon the analysis of
> these samples, the inspector calculated environmental damages. The
> three companies, together with the Municipality of Bacioi, were
> ordered to repair the pipe system, to collect and remove all garbage
> from village territory, and to repair the purification station by
> January 31, 2000.
>
> **Kyiv, Ukraine EPAC - Parking Lot on "40^th^ Anniversary of October"
> Street:** This case began in 1998. A citizen complained to the Kyiv
> EPAC about the construction of parking lot that destroyed a
> playground, and about subsequent automobile fumes*.* In September
> 1999, the last court hearing on the case took place. The judge ruled
> in favor of the plaintiff, finding that the Moscow District
> Administration of Kyiv City had unlawfully failed to act on behalf of
> the citizens. In October, the Moscow District Administration of the
> City of Kyiv took measures to close the parking lot.
>
> **Ukraine EPAC Joint Project -- Open Parliament Meeting:** In
> December, 1997, the three Ukrainian EPACs spearheaded a first of its
> kind open parliament meeting on the Draft Law on Waste of Ukraine.
> Organized by the Kyiv EPAC, three EPACs and other NGOs met with
> representatives of the Environmental Committee of Parliament to
> discuss detailed provisions of the draft Law. The mood was
> professional and collaborative, and several Deputies remarked that
> they were impressed with the NGOs' preparedness for the event. A
> number of NGO proposals were incorporated into the final Law.

**LESSONS LEARNED**

-   *The EPAC program\'s value and success must be recognized across
    several different SOs and funding structured accordingly*. Many of
    the EPAC cases and other programs specifically involve local
    government units, or contribute directly to civil society
    objectives. However, these other SO units typically have neither
    contributed to the EPAC program nor acknowledged its successes. The
    EPACs should also receive credit for their anti-corruption efforts,
    which lie at the core of the majority of their cases.

-   *Funders must support other EPAC activities that contribute to
    effective advocacy.* When funding an EPAC, it is not enough to
    support the salaries of lawyers who are bringing cases to court.
    Effective advocacy requires the development of a competent
    judiciary, an NGO community and citizenry that understand their
    rights, and a culture of governmental transparency. To this end,
    other EPAC activities, such as convening public hearings, publishing
    information about public rights, and particularly judicial training,
    must be incorporated into an EPAC portfolio.

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-   *From the EPAC's inception, it is essential to work with it on NGO
    capacity issues.* In the quest for advocacy results, it may be
    tempting to structure funding and technical assistance to an EPAC so
    as to enable it to pursue its case and consultation work to the
    greatest extent possible. This may lead to the precarious situation
    in which the EPAC becomes highly effective in its advocacy work, but
    underdeveloped in essential long-term skills such as fundraising,
    organizational management and financial planning.

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-   *Funding levels should be moderated to ensure long-term
    organizational health.* EPACs are inexpensive for the quality of
    results they produce. While generous funding may thus be possible,
    it is important not to fund the organization too well for its own
    long-term well being. In addition to potentially creating a sense of
    entitlement and unrealistic funding expectations within the EPAC,
    overly generous funding carries the risk of transforming formerly
    poorly funded NGO activists into highly skilled but less passionate
    professionals who are more likely to \"jump ship\" during funding
    contractions.

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-   *When measuring EPAC results, due credit must be given to the
    different types of cases and consultations undertaken.* In those
    countries where the judicial system is sufficiently operational to
    obtain favorable court decisions, it may be tempting to measure the
    EPACs\' successes merely in terms of numbers of cases and
    consultations conducted periodically. However, some EPAC cases are
    extremely difficult and time-consuming and can last a number of
    years and involving large numbers of plaintiffs. Complex
    consultations also can take several months to resolve. Nonetheless,
    these complicated undertakings are often the most significant in
    terms of their value in setting precedents, their potential for
    publicity and their impact on governmental transparency. Advocacy is
    not a game of numbers, and an EPAC should not be pressured to
    \"produce numbers\" to the point that it no longer pursues the
    projects with the greatest potential impact.

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-   *Measurement of EPAC results should also acknowledge the broad range
    of activities an EPAC undertakes, and be realistic on a
    country-by-country basis.* An EPAC\'s success should be measured on
    the basis of a variety of activities. In some countries, courtroom
    advocacy is ineffective due to weak judicial capacity or local
    norms. In these situations, it may be more effective and culturally
    appropriate to use a variety of non-judicial advocacy activities,
    such as lobbying, fostering public participation, brokering
    agreements between citizens and polluters and gaining greater
    citizen access to decision-making structures. In addition, these
    approaches can lead to equally important DG results. Public interest
    lawyers throughout the world have demonstrated a marvelous ability
    to use culturally relevant and realistic approaches to advocacy.
    Donors must recognize and encourage these country-specific
    variations rather than expecting a \"one size fits all\" approach.

• *Support to the EPAC must be consistent over time*. Consistent support
is particularly important to the EPAC program. To begin an EPAC, CEELI
must identify and partner with individuals or NGOs willing to commit to
the long-term struggle of public interest advocacy. Without a reasonable
assurance of support over time, otherwise- motivated individuals may be
unwilling to leave a secure position in government or a university.
Funding interruptions also can be particularly damaging to the EPAC
caseload, since high-impact and complex advocacy projects often require
years of effort.

• *EPAC funding levels are somewhat different for each country*.
Generally speaking, the first year start up costs for an EPAC office are
approximately \$200,000. This amount includes local salaries, equipment
purchase, office procurement and remodeling, a workshop and special
projects budget, and all costs associated with a seasoned American
environmental lawyer serving as full time liaison to the EPAC office.
Maintenance costs in subsequent years are lower, approximately \$150,000
per year, and after the EPAC is sufficiently developed the liaison can
be withdrawn, further reducing costs to \$60,000 or much less, depending
on alternative funding options.

The Experience of USAID/Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean

Author: Marsha McKay[^20]

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+---+------------------------+------------------------------------------+

**LINKING ENV AND DG ISSUES**

-   This is a project to fund citizen participation activities through
    the Partners of the Americas' network of chapters in LAC and through
    the Inter-American Democracy Network (IADN). The purpose of the
    project is to "strengthen the foundation of democracies in Latin
    America and the Caribbean by promoting democratic skills and values
    as well as by increasing citizen participation in the political
    process".

    **Specific env-dg linkage activities**

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-   Since 1995 emphasis of the project was on south-south sharing of
    citizen participation approaches and capacity building through
    training of approximately 100 organizations. Any work directed
    toward environment was incidental to the interests and goals of the
    participating organizations, reflecting concerns/needs in the
    communities in which they work. The project was not designed to
    address environmental issues, specifically.

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```
-   Much of the IADN's work in 1995-99 was training for non-governmental
    organizations on how to hold deliberative forums. Part of this
    process involved development of "issue guides" -- booklets or
    brochures that combine research on the issue with citizens'
    viewpoints about possible solutions. The guides were used in forums
    to discuss alternate options. NGOs participating in the IADN
    developed 32 issue guides. Of these, two were on environmental
    issues. In the state of Paraná, Brasil the State Universities in
    Londrina and Ponta Grossa held two forums to discuss how to balance
    development with environmental conservation. Over 100 people
    attended. In Guatemala, the Instituto de Investigación y
    Autoformación Política (INIAP) helped four youth and community
    development organizations develop a guide on "rescuing" the
    environment. Forums were held in six communities, with 160 people
    attending.

    **ENV-DG Linkage opportunities**

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-   The project was designed to promote methodologies for increasing
    citizen participation. How citizens would participate, and around
    what issues, were left up to the specific organizations involved.
    This allowed flexibility in addressing local needs, such as
    environment.

    **ENV-DG OBSTACLES**

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-   Just as having flexibility to direct efforts to locally-identified
    issues was an asset, it also meant that an overall framework for
    working in this area was lacking.

-   No sharing between the Brazil and Guatemala projects occurred.**\
    **

    **LESSONS LEARNED**

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-   *Collaboration.* In the future, the Inter-American Democracy Network
    will make a concerted effort to locate and collaborate with one or
    more networks of environmental organizations in the region. Specific
    activities to be determined by the interests and attributes of each
    network.

The Experience of the Regional Urban Development Office

***Author: Danielle Arigoni***

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| **DG/ENV JOINT STRATEGIC OBJECTIVE & PROJECT INFO**                   |
|                                                                       |
| STRATEGIC OBJECTIVE: Increased Environmental Protection in Energy,    |
| Industry and Cities                                                   |
|                                                                       |
| The FIRE program provides assistance to municipalities throughout     |
| India to secure resources from the capital market to fund urban       |
| environmental activities, as well as works at the policy level for    |
| expanded autonomy and                                                 |
|                                                                       |
| authority for local government units. The India RUDO is also working  |
| to integrate planning and policy frameworks in urban areas both by    |
| assisting urban local bodies (ULBs) in finding new avenues through    |
| which they can fund environmental infrastructure and in assisting     |
| them in the process of privatizing services.                          |
|                                                                       |
| Life of Project: 9\\1993-9\\2003                                      |
|                                                                       |
| Funding: \$142.5 million                                              |
|                                                                       |
| Mechanism: Contract, UE Loan Guaranty                                 |
|                                                                       |
| # Partners:                                                           |
|                                                                       |
| Housing and Urban Development Corporation (HUDCO), Infrastructure     |
| Leasing and Financial Services, Ltd. (IL&FS), National Institute of   |
| Urban Affairs (NIUA), and GOI\'s Ministry of Urban Development,       |
| mmunity Consulting International, The Communities Group               |
| International, PADCO.                                                 |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+

**Specific env-dg linkage activities**

-   The RUDO-India activities demonstrate linkages between urban
    environmental issues and improved local government and governance.

    **Specific env-dg linkage activities**

• In FY98 the RUDO in India was lauded for its assistance in the
successful issuance of a municipal bond in Ahmedebad. The effects of
this effort has rippled across the country and has generated a
considerable demonstration effect. In an effort to encourage more
progress in this arena, the Financial Institutions Reform and Expansion
Project-Debt Market Component (FIRE(D) provided assistance to develop
credit rating methodology for municipalities, with Ahmedabad being the
first municipality to be rated. To date, 30 municipal ULBs have either
been credit rated or have started the process of being rated and six
cities (Bombay, Pune, Ahmedabad, Banglore, Ludhiana, Nashik and
Vijaywada) have published their results. Both the Nashik Municipal
Corporation in Maharashtra and the city of Ludhiana have also
successfully issued municipal bonds. Proceeds from the bonds are to be
invested in urban environmental infrastructure for the city.

-   The RUDO has provided technical assistance to Indian state and local
    governments. For example, as a follow-up to the workshop on best
    practices last year, the Government of Maharashtra issued
    guidelines/manuals on energy management, leak detection and the
    importance of operations and management based on best practices
    presented at the Nashik workshop. Using the work of the RUDO in
    Ahmedabad as an example, Kohlpur adopted specific leak detection and
    energy efficiency best practices in water pumping. The FIRE(D)
    project is working with the Government of Maharshtra to develop a
    road map for state level policy framework for private sector
    participation in water and sanitation services which will lead to
    operational improvements in the areas of leakage reduction and
    energy management.

```{=html}
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```
-   Elsewhere in the region, RUDO provided technical assistance to Kandy
    Municipality in Sri Lanka to prepare Capital Expenditure Planning
    for the municipality. A project through the SANASA Infrastructure
    Unit is also placing local consultants to help primary thrift
    societies on improved accounting and cost recovery/pricing for
    community based infrastructure activities.

```{=html}
<!-- -->
```
-   The RUDO has worked with great success to get Disaster Mitigation
    Actions Plans adopted in Nepal, two cities in India (Vadodara and
    Calcutta), and Bangladesh to respond to the environmental and
    infrastructure impacts of earthquakes, floods, and other natural
    disasters. Nepal has completed the action plan prepared under the
    AUDMP has been extensively discussed with and reviewed by all the
    key government departments and major utility operators and are now
    being implemented within departmental work plans. The action plan is
    almost complete in India and local authorities in Calcutta and
    Vadodara have begun acting upon the recommendations.

    **ENV-DG Linkage opportunities**

```{=html}
<!-- -->
```
-   The far-reaching hand of the central government in India has long
    hampered the ability of ULBs to adequately provide environmental
    services in urban areas. In passing the 74^th^ Amendment to the
    constitution, the federal government paved the way for changes in
    this area. FIRE(D) is working with central and state commissions to
    support the development of legislation that will implement the
    changes introduced in this Amendment. FIRE(D) is working with
    several cities to develop city corporate plans (CCP). CCPs have been
    developed for two cities in Tamil Nadu . TNUDF is now requiring that
    all ULBS have a CCP before approaching the fund for financial
    assistance to develop urban infrastructure projects. The World Bank
    is also now insisting that all cities submit a CCP before asking for
    World Bank assistance.

    **LESSONS LEARNED**

• *Adequate Training and Support.* It is also important that ULBs
receive the technical training and support needed to enable adequate
performance in the provision of environmental services.

# 

## 

**Dan Martin**

**Area Director, Ecosystems Conservation and Policy, Program on Global
Security and Sustainability, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur
Foundation**

**Adventures of a Political Scientists Disguised as a Conservationist:**

**A MacArthur Foundation Experience**

Introduction:

He oversees a 16 million dollar grant program.

Dan started with John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in 1986

He has a staff of 9

He has a Ph.D. in Political Philosophy and International Relations from
Princeton.

He also has been in academia and administration at Vanderbilt University
and involved in leadership of another foundation and other
organizations.

Dan Martin:

Well this is going to be hard to do in time allowed.

MacArthur slide -- to remind him and us that all of his comments are
entirely personal and not speaking on behalf of MacArthur Foundation.

Second, as a recovering political scientist, I can't avoid observing the
peculiar appropriateness of our meeting in this building and in this
space named for W. Wilson and R. Reagan. Now you think they are
different and my comment is they both represent the particularist strain
of American diplomacy: that the US has a special mission in the world,
that it is not a normal country that has diplomatic interests and
economic interests but rather that it has the mission to extend
democracy and the blessings of freedom to humanity. The fact that we are
at the Wilson and Reagan Center is kind of appropriate.

The thing about the name of this organization that I have worked for far
too long is that in many parts of the world and especially in SE Asia, I
have to explain that our founder was not Douglas MacArthur. He probably
didn't make a whole lot of money. He actually married some money but he
didn't earn a whole lot of money in the US Army or even as the Emperor
of Japan but I would say that it comes back to all the money we spend
came from one man who was a very serious pirate and who was a genius at
making deals. But he left no instructions so the board of our foundation
has this remarkable freedom. We're not responsible to stockholders.
We're not really responsible for taxpayers even though the IRS looks
over our shoulders. This is perhaps the most important distinction
between AID and private foundations.

But I am really honored to be here just because of a long-standing
friendship with David Hales. And I am sorry that David isn't here. I
would say my presence is kind of a reflection of how poorly qualified I
am to be doing the job that I have been doing for the last 14 years.
Part of the irony is that my disguise led me into these adventures in
international politics in the emergence of civil society, the appearance
of democracy and of an independent judiciary in many places where there
is no tradition, where the stories are tragic and where the setting is
strategic. So, that background in political philosophy and international
politics, which I have to say, parenthetically, is an increasingly
archaic term as the role of nation states continues to fade in this
world. That was a rather long-standing focus and I have never taken a
single course in botany, zoology or ecology. So that's why I claim that
I am decidedly an imposter.

I truly believe that that lack of appropriate training was an advantage
because specialization is so clearly the arch-enemy of lateral thinking
which is so much needed for responding to real world problems. So do I
have an opinion about this? Well, not really. I will just suggest that
disciplinary thinking and critical and creative thinking are mutually
exclusive. Well, perhaps that's the thesis that I have here today. That
to be creative in this shifting ground of development, you need to dodge
disciplinary thinking or even if our organizations are structured that
way. And certainly mine is in a much more minor, small scale way than
USAID is. But disciplines like political science, economics and
sociology make sense only in the abstract, which means being removed
from concrete reality. We're talking about the messy, complicated real
world where we don't have that luxury of a laboratory and the
experimental conditions where we can control and manipulate the
variables. We can make discoveries anyway and that's what I want to get
into.

Since I kind of stumbled into biodiversity conservation or being a
conservationist without knowing much about it, my background made the
political implications something that were always hooked to
environmental problems, something that always caught my eye and those
actions stood out. The links are remarkably deep and pervasive and our
experiences with that over nearly 15 years have been pretty extensive.

So I am not sure how relevant the experiences that we have had as a
private foundation are for AID and I would like to sketch out some of
the differences. Our resources are infinitesimal compared to AID. Our
total grants are \$175 to \$180 million dollars a year. The endowment
has come along nicely. It's now 4.7 billion dollars and our
environmental grants, including some things that we do in other pockets
besides the ones that I am directly responsible for, are only about
20-25 million dollars. The whole foundation has a staff of 195 people, 9
of these are in my program and all of whom are based in Chicago. We have
five small field offices and none of them are involved in our
environmental program because I don't believe in field offices.

Those factors, I contend, allow us to be agile, to fly under the radar
of governments who wouldn't particularly like what we are trying to do
if they understood it, we don't have contracts with government, we don't
have to have the governments approve anything that we do, we don't even
talk to the government in most cases, unless there is nobody else to
talk to and there certainly are countries like that.

I have to say that, again, parenthetically, with this emphasis on the
growth in civil society, which I will come back to, we once made a grant
to a large NGO based in Bangkok so it could make small grants to
emerging organizations that it was working with in SE Asia. They made a
most creative grant in Laos where they had a request from the Finance
Ministry because the Finance Ministry in Vientiane had heard about these
NGOs and that there was international money for NGOs. So they said, we'd
better have one of those so we can get some of that international money.
So our friends in Bangkok gave them \$8,000 to set up an NGO so this
exemplifies what has now become a substantial category called QONGO's
(quasi-NGOs). I thought it was really indicative of the trouble that you
get into with categories that are meaningful to us in the US or to us as
political scientists or people with certain kind of professional and
academic backgrounds.

But end of parenthesis, the thing that I think allows us to come in
under the radar, and I will illustrate a little bit with some slides,
also is that we can ignore those increasingly irrelevant or immaterial
political boundaries and we are following scientific criteria which
gives us an excuse -- we say we're here because of the biodiversity. You
have a global treasure, we have some money. We would like to help the
people who are working on the conservation of this as a global
responsibility. We are supporting political change or have been
supporting political change in a lot of countries. I will try to give
you a few examples.

I would say, by putting my old political science professor hat back on,
that from that perspective, the most significant result of globalization
and the various things that that really means, is the simultaneous
movement of power up to regional structures and down to sub-national
structures away from national governments. The nation-state is fading
and playing a smaller role in most economies. The European Union, NAFTA,
SADEC, and so forth as examples on the regional side and Catalonia and
Scotland and district and provincial governments on the sub-national
side.

The number of semi-autonomous regions in the world is becoming quite
substantial and I am sure that there is a political scientist somewhere
in the world who is cataloguing all of that.

I think that one of the problems in looking at a political map of the
world or of Africa or Asia or wherever it is, that's the map that's in
most of our heads. That's in our minds and that's how we represent the
world. And they show the extent of these entities that we call the
"state." And they are usually the same color -- all of Mexico is one
color, all of Russia is one color. As if that were some common
monolithic thing out there. And that's the way the world is divided and
those are the units of analysis that are most meaningful. Of course,
what we really need are multi-layered maps since that traditional way of
representing the world is no longer sensible. One of the most telling
observation from some early astronaut (I don't remember who it was) that
looking at the earth from a satellite said that you couldn't see the
political boundaries. They didn't have all of those lines, the globe
doesn't have all of those lines the way that maps that represent the
globe do.

So the map that we started with in the mid-1980's was largely biological
and it gave us a way of taking a global view with a small amount of
money and trying to focus our small amount of resources quite tightly.
So I want to give you just a quick review of how we operate this and
then come back to a couple of anectdotes and some of the lessons that
come out of those adventures.

The average grant that we make is about \$250,00 -- usually spread over
three years. The range is roughly from \$50,000 to 5 million dollars.
Occasionally much larger grants like the \$40 million that went into
establishing the World Resources Institute and other kinds of
institutional grants that we make. It's a pleasure to see that these
relationships with some our grantees such as CIEL (Center for
International Environmental Law) and the Environmental Law Institute are
strong ones.

The discoveries that we have made along the way are interesting and
numerous. Some of those discoveries come as a result of our not having
the political constraints that a government agency has, such as those
faced by USAID. At the same time, we are pursuing political objectives
that we would never ever announce or claim (and that's why I say that I
am not speaking for the foundation).

Most relevant for today's discussion is that environmental activism has
very clearly been the leading edge of democratization and civil society
all around the world -- the leading edge, it's where it happens, it's
the frontier. The emergence of these other phenomenon which are rather
abstract occur as a consequence of people being mobilized and motivated
by environmental problems.

This was true for example in Brazil. There was an explosion of
environmental NGO activity in the late 1980s. It was not long after that
that the Brazilian President (Fernando Color) was forced out of office.
What was the tradition of civil society in Brazil? Zilch. What was the
standard political gesture for centuries? A shrug. What can you do? What
else is there? The idea that you would go out on the streets and demand
the resignation of a corrupt president had never occurred before. And I
contend that it was significantly a consequence of people learning how
to act as citizens because of environmental problems.

Eliza mentioned the way that this developed in the Soviet Union before
its disintegration. Some of the leaders of the environmental movement in
the Soviet Union illustrate some of the ways that that has happened
because they really had broader objectives and a broader palate of
interests but it was in the environmental area that they could make
progress. Once there was more political freedom, some of those political
leaders stray away from the things that they had emerged from
(environmental issues). I can illustrate at length but there is not
enough time.

There is one other clear case -- China is most open to coordination with
foreign organizations on environmental issues.

But tell me, who is motivated to advance civil society as civil society?
Do we support the Civil Society Society? I don't think so. It's an
abstraction. It's interesting and very interesting to me as a political
scientist. Is it important? Of course. Is it fundamental? Yes, we
believe in what De Toqueville said. Is it motivating? No. It's just too
abstract. Civil society, in other words, or democracy, must be about
something rather than these abstractions. The whole judicial process in
the US, the practice of Constitutional law is all about specific cases,
general abstractions. The Supreme Court of the US rules on specific
cases and that's what makes it so fascinating because they are concrete
stories from which general principles are generated.

So, I think the same question applies to democratization. To rural
people in Nigeria or in Indonesia or in many other places, what does an
election mean? Not a whole lot when even the notion of the State is a
little distant. Poor people who are mostly concerned with their survival
don't have a lot of interest in the things that interest me as a
political scientist. Local control of natural resources and access to
livelihood are very compelling. It's survival, it's being able to
maintain your culture, your traditions. And there are few sources of
political instability that are greater than that kind of interference
with access to livelihoods, as in Chiapas. Mexico is certainly one color
on our political maps but Chiapas and Sonora are extraordinarily
different from one another. And the fact that the tropical forest that
attracted our attention is in the very same place as the Zapatista
insurrection is no coincidence. Same in Colombia, same in Papua New
Guinea, same in The Philippines, it's everywhere.

So there were good discussions earlier about decentralization and the
rule of law and these are things that are necessary for environmental
protection and for the political advancement that is part of this sense
of mission that we share. This can be done in places even where there is
no NGO sector whatsoever. I will never forget the kind of datum that I
took away when I met the Forestry Minister in Hanoi. And he handed me
his business card -- the front had his position as the Minister of
Forests and there was a back side and which he was the President of the
Viet Nam Forestry Association. So maybe that's a QUONGO but it also
struck me as part of an incipient evolution of structures that turn out
to be very convenient. People begin to learn that this apparently
rational structure that a Marxist government can give you, appears to be
rational even if it isn't, does not work as well as something that is
really untidy where you have all of these NGOs running around.

We also could get into things by working with government structure in
Vietnam with arms of the Communist Party such as the Vietnam Youth
Association, which just like the Women's Association, was the women's
structure within the Communist Party. Because they decided in their
rural literacy effort that it would be good to include environmental
education.

Coming along as a private foundation, we are in a position to do some
unusual things including making grants in Cuba and making relationships
between Cuban and American conservation groups, for compensating for
political decisions which lead to official development assistance
agencies pulling out of places to punish nasty governments. For example,
there was a period when both Colombia and Peru experienced considerable
declines in official development assistance but yet because of their
biodiversity significance, we thought - we had better gear up. We could
not come anywhere close to replacing that but we want to keep the NGOs
going because the NGOs are the ones that suffered the most when the
international money for the Andean region was going into Ecuador and
Bolivia instead of Columbia and Peru.

Environmental law and human rights and the use of courts, environmental
economics and the training of people in Finance and Planning Ministries
both to deal with the multilateral institutions such as the World Bank
and their own NGOs are parts of what we have gotten into. And being able
to deal with places where borders are tense and often environmental
problems can lead to interstate cooperation where there is still
political conflict. So the point is that we try to go where there is
motivation and leadership. We seek out leadership, seek out passion and
not be constrained, as we don't have to be by formal structures. Because
that's where political change will arise. Political change doesn't come
out of governments, it doesn't come out of government agencies, it comes
out of the leadership and passion of people who can be mobilized in a
variety of ways. And it doesn't happen in these dry categories that we
academics like to think about and find important because they are
important even though they are abstract, like civil society and
democracy and governance.

I will show a slide -- prepared for internal consumption at MacArthur --
we also have departments and while they are small, they are just as
constraining. What the slide is suggesting is that our environment
department identified places around the world that are highest in
biological diversity. The other (skipped) slides show how we selected
them and there are about ten place which do not recognize political
frontiers that we chose. In almost every case, those places with the
highest biological diversity are simultaneously the places of greatest
highest cultural diversity. As a consequence of the cultural diversity,
they are places where you have ethnic conflict and human rights abuses,
as in Chiapas, as in tribal places in India, as with indigenous people
in the highland regions in The Philippines and on and on and on. At the
same time, those places are often the poorest places in the world so you
have all the conditions that follow from that: high illiteracy, very
high fertility of women, very low status of women, morbidity.

That's the kind of things where if you looked at a map of health
statistics in Mexico, it's not all the same color. Chiapas is very
different from Baja Norte and Sonora. When I say that they are
politically marginal areas, very often that means that they are on the
edges of state -- either a river or a rugged mountainous area is where
the political boundary was drawn. And so those tense border areas are
often places of military and political confrontation as is the disputed
border between India and China which happens to be a very high priority
place for biodiversity conservation. The South China Sea, over which
China claims it all, despite the fact that Vietnam, The Philippines and
Malaysia have overlapping claims. There are things that we have been
able to do to try to cool down that conflict over the South China Sea
bringing together people from all of the littoral countries with some
nice Indonesian intervention. But the fact that those conditions which
concern us all stack up without reference to where is Peru, where is
Zimbabwe and where is Tanzania and where is Thailand is something that I
hope can be more of a basis for thinking about the way these things go
together.

Which gets at -- what do we really mean when we talk about democracy? Is
it just elections? Mexico has had elections every six years for a long
time. Is that satisfactory? Nigeria just had an election. No one
believes it was a very genuine one. Democracy is such a marvellously
diverse phenomenon. We think of America as defining democracy but would
we be satisfied with French-style democracy in the places where we are
working or Brazilian-style democracy or British-style? It's not a single
thing. In many places, local elections have only recently been held,
like the mayor in Mexico city. I remember being in Bogota in 1989 and
there were banners for the election of the Alcalde and I think Bogota
was founded in 1521. In 1989 was the first time that they ever elected
the mayor of that city. 1521 is about right -- I don't have it exact.

So what is our objective? When we think about civil society, there is no
other city in the world that has great big building like Washington does
of civil society organizations that look like government buildings. They
could be Ministries -- the National Association of this, that and the
other. Is that our goal? What is our objective? What do we mean by good
governance? And I would say, going back to De Toqueville, all of these
things depend on the cultural, the social context of the United States
and trying to change a culture has to be about the most difficult things
you could ever undertake.

So this just brings me back to the fundamental point that dealing with
governments is inherently problematic -- both because of the loss of
potency of states and the extent to which government are often simply
organized crime in disguise. Notions of national sovereignty have
certainly taken a beating in the last 10+ years. Organized crime that is
informal, in the sense of political structures, seems to be taking power
away from governments but the fact that governments are often organized
crime themselves is less recognized. But the way in which environmental
progress requires decentralization may be the acid test of democracy and
rule of law and that democracy and rule of law require social
mobilization and the kind of social structures without which they are
rootless and meaningless. That has been our experience over the last 15
years and underscores the point we are really trying to make here.

If there is any axiom out of this, it is that there's a big distinction
between political science and politics. And what we are really talking
about is politics.

Thank You.

[Audience Question]{.underline}:

I was interested in your approach to funding projects that can fall
under the radar screen. On the one hand, when USAID funds projects and
programs, there is a measure of transparency and public accountability
that you may call upon should sensitive projects run aground. When you
fund projects, how do you monitor their progress and success and how do
you help them when they are running into trouble and what indicators do
you rely on for helping them?

[Dan's Answer]{.underline}:

Do I have 15 minutes to answer the question? No -- well, I am really
glad that you asked that question because I think that it gets at a lot
of the distinctions in the ways that we are different. One, we try very
hard not to support projects. The word, projects, for me, is a very bad
word. We try to support programs and we support institution that may be
able to develop in ways that will attract the support of other donors,
like development assistance agencies. I take it as a success, an
indicator of success, if some institution that we have put some money
into is able then to sell itself to the bigger donors, mostly in the
public sector.

Trouble\...that's their problem. We are not their parents -- we simply
send money. They are not our agents. We are not responsible. We are a
foreign organization. We are not responsible for the Philippines
Environment Law Group. They are Filipino citizens. And we're an American
organization. We have this funny business that we have to give away some
money. So accountability is a funny word. I think we are accountable to
the American public in the long-term for results. And it's very hard to
measure.

Another axiom out of my experience -- there is an inverse relationship
between attempts to control and the influence that your grant will have.
You minimize effectiveness. Measure of accountability. Official donor
agencies deal in short time frames and there is pressure for short-term
results. MacArthur can escape these pressures and operate with longer
term time frames and provide institutional support. Project is a bad
word because it means something that is very highly defined. Indicators
and measure of success often are trivial -- increase precision, increase
triviality (trees planted vs. trees surviving 10 years later). As
private agency, we can get away with more.

[Audience Question (Harry Blair, USAID/G/DG):]{.underline}

I am another recovering political scientist who has also worked on ENV
issues for some time and come back now to the "mother discipline." Dan
makes a good case for environment being the leading wedge issue for DG.
Why ENV and not some other sector like health or labor -- govt. Perhaps
government's find it less threatening (e.g., authoritarian). These
environmental issues are more motivating and can generate critical mass.

[Dan's Answer]{.underline}:

I have puzzled over it. Our experience has indicated that ENV is where
it has happened. You would think that health would be at least as
strongly motivating but it does not seem to be. ENV issues are in
people's back yards. It is harder for a repressive government to resist
some of these things -- they may get sneaked up on -- as in the
Gorbachev era and what was happening in Soviet Union. As for ENV law,
you can argue that you are defending the law of land, which is not
anti-patriotic but instead a conservative thing to do. Actually, it's a
radical thing to do. If I had more time for research and writing, then I
think this would be a v. worthwhile thing to do (write about the
uniqueness of ENV-DG linkages). All I can do is testify that that is
what is happening on the ground. It just seems to elicit leadership and
has the capacity to mobilize people who have no experience or tradition
of acting like citizens. Certainly in Latin America, the culture is
antagonistic to voluntary associations and yet, civil society sector is
really vigorous in many countries.

[Comment from Eliza Klose]{.underline}:

In FSU, nuclear regulatory -- only scientists involved but for ENV
issues, everyone can be involved. Women, children, adults, scientists
can be involved.

[Dan's Answer]{.underline}:

Environmental issues are more accessible and local leaders can be drawn
into these issues. What's necessary is to achieve the ecological and
political objectives. Using an ecological term -- we need to shorten the
"feedback loops." People are understanding that they need to take
responsibility for the things that affect them directly rather that
saying that all of the important decisions will be made by some genius
sitting in Beijing or Brussels or NY or someplace else. These are the
decisions that are going to influence the poor people in E. Kalimantan
or wherever else you are thinking about.

## 

## 

## 

## 

## 

## 

## 

## Derick W. Brinkerhoff

## Implementing Policy Change Project

## July 18, 2000

**Greening Democracy and Governing the Environment: Where are the
Synergies?**

## 

## DG-Sectoral Reform Linkages

## IPC study in 1997 looked at these linkages with the aim of identifying potential synergies.

## The study asked two questions:

### How does democratic governance affect sectoral development efforts?

### How do sectoral reforms influence democratic governance?

# What is Democratic Governance?

## High levels of transparency and accountability

## Citizen participation and devolution of meaningful authority to local bodies

## Policy pluralism 

## Equitable delivery of public services

## Respect for human rights and rule of law. 

# DG ==\> ENV Policy

## DG creates a positive enabling environment

## For example,

### **Tanzania rule of law: successful legal challenge to law that eliminated customary village land tenure.**

### **Mali rule of law: government willingness to accord legal authority to traditional village courts.**

### **Mali accountability: changes in forestry department led to increased accountability of forestry agents to local populations**.

# DG ==\> ENV Policy

## DG increases the efficiency and effectiveness of ENV reforms.

## For example,

### openings for local participation and devolution of control increase the effectiveness of NRM through co-management: Zimbabwe (CAMPFIRE wildlife), India (West Bengal forestry).

# ENV Policy ==\> DG

## ENV policies and programs generate social capital.

## For example,

### "Green" civil society mobilization: Kenya, Uganda.

### Indian Himalayas: Chipko, from local community mobilization to international movement.

# ENV Policy ==\> DG

## ENV policies and programs build citizen experience with DG.

## For example,

### Sahelian forestry policy reform empower local communities for NRM.

### CAMPFIRE promotes basic DG principles: local empowerment, devolution, responsiveness, accountability, transparency.

# ENV Policy ==\> DG

## ENV policies and programs create structures and mechanisms for DG.

## For example,

### Costa Rica's BOSCOSA created community organizations for forest resources management.

### India's NRM programs established forest protection committees.

# DG-ENV Synergy Blockers

## Political and economic power differentials.

## Elite capture.

## Weak winners, strong losers.

## Romanticizing about civil society.

## Fantasizing about DG.

## 

# Conclusions

## The synergies are real.

## The obstacles are too.

## Both DG and ENV are critical for development.

## Donors and NGOs can help.

## 

## 

[^1]: Please send requests for the original paper to (
    <Valerie.Hickey@WWFUS.ORG>) or visit the BSP website
    (www.bsp-online.org).

[^2]: ^?^ This work has been supported by the Biodiversity Support
    Program. However, I take full responsibility for the opinions
    expressed

    herein and for any inadvertent factual errors or omissions. Please
    send corrections and additions to:
    [Nkdiamond@aol.com](mailto:NKDIAMOND@AOL.COM).

[^3]: Ronald Glass can be reached via e-mail (rglass@usaid.gov)

[^4]: Aaron Chassy is now a DG Officer/New Entry Professional in
    USAID/LAC and can be contacted via e-mail (achassy@usaid.gov).

[^5]: All of the above draws substantially and directly from Lippman, H.
    et. al. *Democracy and Governance And Cross-Sectoral Linkages --
    Guinea -- Working Paper, United States Agency for International
    Development, Center For Development Information And Evaluation,
    April 1999* and Groelsema, R. et. al., *Synthesis of Democracy and
    Governance Cross-Sectoral Case Studies, May 2000*

[^6]: Michele Schimpp is currently in the Strategies/Field Support
    Technical Team of G/DG and can be contacted via e-mail
    (mschimpp@usaid.gov).

[^7]: Janis Alcorn is Director of Asia and pacific at BSP. She can be
    reached via e-mail (janis.alcorn@wwfus.org).

[^8]: Danielle Arigoni can be reached via e-mail (darigoni@usaid.gov)

[^9]: Jill Pike can be reached via e-mail (jpike@usaid.gov).

[^10]: Mike Calavan will become the new DG Officer for USAID/Indonesia
    in August and can be reached via e-mail (mcalavan@usaid.gov).

[^11]: Michaela Meehan is currently on detail from the Department of
    Labor and working at USAID/G/DG. She can be contacted via e-mail
    (mmeehan@usaid.gov).

[^12]: Owen Lynch can be reached via e-mail (olynch@ciel.org).

[^13]: Laurent Some can be reached via e-mail (laurent.some@wwfus.org)

[^14]: Peter Veit can be reached via e-mail (peterv@wri.org).

[^15]: Jesse Ribot can be reached via e-mail (jesser@wri.org).

[^16]: Carl Bruch can be reached via e-mail (bruch@eli.org).

[^17]: Eliza Klose can be reached via e-mail (eliza@isar.org)

[^18]: Brian Rohan can be reached via e-mail (brohan@abaceeli.org).

[^19]: Evaluation of the Rule of Law Program in Central and Eastern
    Europe and the New Independent States: The American Bar
    Association/Central and Eastern European Law Initiative (ABA/CEELI)
    -- Final Report; January 29, 1999, Management Systems International.

[^20]: Marsha McKay can be reached via e-mail (mm@partners.poa.com)