El empleo en los municipios mineros del Suroccidente de Asturias

According to Hara and Nielsen (2003, p95), co-management needs to be a mutual adaptation that tries to establish a convergence between government policies and the local institution structures, a partnership in which government agencies, local communities and resource users, NGOs and other stakeholders, share, as appropriate to each context, the authority and responsibility for the management of a specific territory or a set of resources (see also Section 1.5.4). Co- management means that some or all management responsibilities are formally shared between government management agencies and user-organisations as well as other stakeholder groups, such as the scientific community (Jentoft, 1989). Nielson et al. (2004) defined co-management as a dynamic partnership using the capabilities and interests of user- groups complemented by the ability of the fisheries administration to provide enabling registration and administrative assistance. Hersoug, Jentoft and Degnbol (2004) noted that co-management takes into consideration that a fishery cannot easily be run by an external authority such as political assembly, but must permit those who are directly concerned and who control the inputs that the management process relies on, to assume responsibility. Co- management promotes interactions as those involved in the process continuously meet as a community of practice to decide on the practices.

Co-management strongly advocates a more bottom-up deliberative approach; it recognises that most of the management and development ideas should originate from the communities themselves (Sen & Nielsen, 1996). The introduction of co-management reform in Malawi was a response to the community participation concept which was promoted in many parts due to the introduction of democracy. This facilitated the decentralisation reform in the fisheries sector, a process that has also consolidated democracy (see Section 1.4). This shifts emphasis from being either government based or community based to a co-management system which provides opportunity for stakeholders to come together; it also seeks to create a sense of ownership as people participate in the process of planning and decision making on how to effectively manage their resources. However, it requires continued dialogue, learning and understanding between the two co-managing partners (Donda, Hara, & Njaya, 1999) to be able to benefit from each other’s contributions. Donda (2000) noted that fisheries co-management in Malawi is aimed at



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The spectrum shows three scenarios in a co-management system with one extreme with government fully responsible for the management of a resource. In the middle there are three levels where resource users and government join hands to co-manage the resources through consultation, cooperation and delegation at different levels of engagement and interaction. The other extreme is user group-based management where the user communities develop their own management objectives and strategies and implement them with minimal government intervention. Co-management involves power sharing in the process of managing the defined resource. It promotes the notion of shared authority, shared responsibility, stakeholder ownership of the fisheries resources and direct benefit to all those involved. It is therefore evident that the co-management in the above spectrum mainly takes place in the three middle levels of consultative, cooperative and delegation since the three involve sharing of responsibilities at different levels (Sen & Neilson, 1996). The learning interaction potentially increases as the two sides continue dialoguing in an effort to find solutions to the existing challenges, in this case the decline of fish stocks in Lake Malombe and the south-east arm of Lake Malawi. As discussed earlier, declining fish stocks prompted the government to introduce co-management and the approach was aimed at facilitating the recovery of the fisheries (see Section 1.5.4). In the co-management system fishing communities and the government collaborate and form a network where they share skills, knowledge, experiences, and challenges, and the existence of the network allows them to explore appropriate solutions. It is therefore assumed that the process provides an opportunity to change to better management practices. The bottom-up approach in co-management assumes that the views and contributions of the user communities should be taken into consideration and promotes ownership among resource users. However success in co-management does not come automatically. Pinkerton (1992) defined co- management as power sharing in the exercise of resource management between government agencies and a community organisation of stakeholders. What is important is that co- management systems remain flexible and are able to adapt to social and institutional circumstances which are unique to fisheries in the case of this study. In the process both sides should feel they are contributing to the success of the resource management and that views and ideas from those taking part are respected and taken into consideration. In one of the newly developed co-management systems in the marine lobster fishery, Acheson (2003) observed:

Bottom up approaches are successful largely because people support them so that the enforcement costs are lowered. When people devise their own rules, they will formulate ones they consider sensible, effective, and low-cost. They will also frame rules that embody local knowledge, that are designed to be adapted to local conditions, and that avoid conflicting with basic norms. They are far more likely to obey such rules than those imposed by outside authorities, which, all too often, are framed in ways that impose high economic costs on users, promote conflict, and are seen as effective in helping to maintain the resource. (p. 231).

Co-management arrangements differ from one context to the other; in other words there is no blueprint formula. Co-management raises questions as to who the relevant user-groups and stakeholders are and exactly how they should be represented. The second concern pertains to scale: at which level should co-management be instituted – at local, regional and/or state level? A third key question is what should be the underlying property rights regime: state, private or communal property? A fourth issue concerns the management function: should it be retained by the state and or handled by user organisations (Pomeroy & Berkes, 1997). The questions raised by Pomeroy and Berkes focus on issues of transparency and accountability among co- management stakeholders. This has been one of the big challenges faced by the co-management programme in Malawi (south-east arm of Lake Malawi and Lake Malombe). Co-management is a recent phenomenon, newly installed as a response to a resource crisis, as in the case of Beach Village Committees on the lakes of Malawi (Donda, 2001). Jentoft (2004) argued that a government that does not provide communities with a role and function in fisheries management misses the opportunity to enhance community viability and to make management systems work more proficiently. Resource rights vested in communities are among the tools at hand for creating qualities crucial for sustaining the resource and avoiding community failure. The continuous interactions between the fisheries co-management stakeholders as they seek ways to improve the crisis at hand provide good resource management opportunities. Etzioni (1988) presented the view from a sociological perspective, that it is the relations that people have, the networks they build, the interactions that occur between them, the history they share and the identity and the meaning they attribute to it all – this makes the communities what they are. Members of the community – which may or may not, as the case may be, be place-based – do not view each other as strangers: their social relations are multifaceted and extend beyond the moment (ibid.). People that form a true community have a feeling of ‘togetherness’, of belonging to a ‘we’. Meaningful participation requires better understanding of all the stakeholders involved in the process since their participation is based on trust and understanding of the subject involved. Ramaru, Mamabolo and Lekgolo (2000) provided insight into how this can be done by describing five progressive stages of participatory approaches to extension, as shown in the table that follows.

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Table 2.1: Five stages of the participatory extension approach (Ramaru, Mamabolo, & Lekgolo, 2000)

Approach to the progressive stage Process informing the extension approach 1 Social mobilisation 1. Entering a community and building trust

with the community members

2. Identification of local organisations working with the communities

3. Awareness raising on the subject matter 4. Feedback to the community

2 Action planning 1. Prioritise needs and problems with the community members

2. Search for solutions together with the community members

3. Mandate local institutions

4. Action planning together with the local communities

3 Experimentation 1. Trying out new ideas with all the concerned people

4 Sharing experience 2. Joint evaluation at midsession 3. Review and monitor progress 5 Self- evaluation 4. Joint planning for the next cycle

As already stated, the concept of co-management revolves around the idea of shared roles and responsibilities between the government authority and community institutions (Sen & Nielsen, 1996). One of the assumptions in co-management is that management with active fishing community involvement is expected to result in strong legitimacy of the regulations and management rules, especially when these are formulated by, or in consultation with the user communities (Jentoft & Kristofferson, 1998; Pomeroy, 1995; Sen & Nielsen, 1996) (see Section 1.5.4). However, the co-management approach to natural resources management programmes has recently received criticism, following evidences of recurrence of issues such as “elite capture” (Abraham & Platteau, 2000; Crook & Sverrisson, 2001; Béné & Neiland, 2006) whereby particular individuals or groups (usually among the elites and/or privileged) hijack the reform to their own interests. This is evident in some BVCs in Lake Malombe and the south-east arm of Lake Malawi where some local chiefs have disbanded BVCs which were democratically elected and instituted their own management regimes because of power conflicts between the traditional leaders and BVC members.

In the field of natural resources management, social learning has been defined as collective action and reflection that takes place among both individuals and groups when they work to improve the management of the interrelationships between social and ecological systems (Keen et al., 2005). The current participatory extension models do not provide in-depth insights into the role and significance of learning and how communities learn to respond to, and adapt to fish depletion as most provide only broad process descriptions as in the case of the Ramaru et al. framework outlined in Table 2 above. The assumption is still that extension workers know and that the communities have to learn to know, which can be process reduced to a technology transfer approach, using the concept of participation to educate communities about risks in declining fish catches and how to adapt and respond.

Both these sections (Section 2.2 and 2.3) point in the same direction, namely towards more collaborative social learning approaches in the conservation and extension context, especially for supporting adaptive co-management practices.

The introduction of co-management approaches as described in this section, show that there is a strong emphasis on collaborative approaches to learning and engagement. However, there is a need to probe what this means in more detail. In the next section I focus on what is being said about these latter approaches to learning in adaptive co-management contexts. In particular, I draw from the international literature on extension, social learning and co- management, a set of what seem to be key principles for guiding collaborative social learning practices in the context of co-management and extension.

2.4 Key principles of collaborative social learning in adaptive co-

management and extension service contexts

In this section, I review recent literature that is more focussed on collaborative social learning in adaptive co-management and extension service contexts. As noted in the discussion on trends above in Sections 2.2 and 2.3, this focus forms part of recent trends, hence I draw mainly on literature published in the past 15 years. I seek to ‘draw out’ of the international literature on extension, social learning and co-management a set of what appear to me to reflect key principles for guiding collaborative social learning practices in the context of co-management and extension. These, as mapped out through my literature review work, include:

1. Dealing with sustainability issues creates certain new learning challenges.

2. Participatory approaches gain significance, and include the recognition of local knowledge.

3. There is a stronger practice-centred and action-oriented approach to extension and associated learning interventions.

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4. The concept of social innovation is more strongly foregrounded.

5. Collective learning and problem solving are key concepts shaping learning and learning interaction in extension work.

6. The knowledge that is dealt with is systems based, and involves social-ecological and socio-cultural dynamics, making for a complex knowledge context.

7. The role of the extension agent is a co-learning role.

I now discuss these principles, sharing perspectives from the literature on each.