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In the study of policy processes, the roles of key individuals and chance are often not acknowledged. Personal beliefs of these key individuals can be instrumental in pushing through policy reform that is facing resistance, hesitation or debate both within the policy

156 community or the wider policy network (Barrow et al., 2001). For example, the development of the CCS in Tanzania was the direct result of the work of the Director of TANAPA between 1989 and 1992, despite the risks involved in implementing an untested and initially unpopular idea (Barrow et al., 2001).

In the mid to late 1990s the Directors of both Forestry and Beekeeping and Wildlife were individuals who advocated policy reform and the introduction of community conservation, and especially CBNRM, in Tanzania (Ylhäisi, 2003; Interviews P2, P80). In an interview, the former director of the Forestry and Beekeeping Division implied that promoting the discursive shift to CBNRM and making national policy reform were his first priorities on taking up the role (Interview P2). He described facilitating policy reform through discursive processes to recruit members of the policy community to a populist narrative of ‘forests are wealth⁶¹’, shifting perceptions of forests from a national asset to a view that accepted that

“these people surrounding the forest have legitimate needs from the forest...they are the ones who know who is conducting illegal harvesting…they are the best people to manage the resource” (Interview P2). The rationality of this narrative builds on protectionist narratives of the need to safe-guard natural resources, which were familiar to the policy community, whilst at the same time shifting the argument to conceptualise local communities as best-placed to achieve this. The respondent’s description of these discursive processes clearly indicate the importance of policy entrepreneurs, particularly those in positions of authority, who are able to manipulate the policy network and discursively cultivate support for their own beliefs, priorities and policy agenda (Fischer and Forester, 1993; Hajer, 1995). His account also exemplifies the discursive nature of power through the use of policy narratives and story lines (Roe, 1991; Hajer, 1995; and see 2.2.2.2) to socially construct environmental problems, control the issues on the policy table, reduce uncertainty or alternatives and organise actors into discourse coalitions (Hajer, 1995). Adger et al., (2001) describe the process of creating discursive homogeneity when a specific discourse comes to dominate thinking and is translated into institutional arrangements. I argue that the Director of Forestry and Beekeeping was engaged in such a process of creating discursive hegemony in which he actively recruited other members of the Forestry and Beekeeping Division to support a shift to CBNRM using the social power associated with his title and discursive tactics to persuade people of the rationality and moral imperative of such a policy shift.

61 ‘Misitu ni mali’ is a well-known Kiswahili phrase

157 Similarly, in the Wildlife Division, the views and beliefs of the new Director, appointed in 1995, were crucial to the discursive institutionalisation of CBNRM at the ministerial level, and particularly to the adoption of utilisation as a component of this policy shift. The new Director of Wildlife’s beliefs concerning utilisation were shaped by his long history of employment with community conservation projects in Tanzania and across Southern Africa Former project staff who worked closely with him at the time reported that his support for utilisation came from experiences working on both the Serengeti Regional Conservation Strategy which, until 1998, employed a policy of non-utilisation, and later experience in Botswana (Interview P77). WMA pilot project staff reported that these experiences in both utilisation and non-utilisation contexts were formative in the Director’s opinions and his employment of a narrative that utilisation represented “the only way forward for a successful community conservation strategy in Tanzania” (e.g. Interview P77). The strong disincentives for the devolution of power over wildlife resources, as discussed in section 5.4, made the personal commitment of the Director to the approach a key driver in the development of a national policy and the adoption of the utilisation strategy within CBNRM in Tanzania.

The key role that these entrepreneurs in strategic positions of the policy community played in the formation of policy, and the pathways adopted in this, is exemplified in the subsequent changes that took place in the wildlife sector. In 1999 the director who had presided over the publication of the WPT (1998), and thereby developed the first legislation to incorporate CBNRM in the wildlife sector was described as being forced out of his position due to the politics surrounding the management of wildlife resources, and the controversy within the policy community over WMAs (Interview P77). The new director had very different ideas about community involvement, and worked to implement changes in the policy framework that shifted the nature of WMAs. Respondents from the ministerial, academic and NGO sectors explained that the changes he attempted to put in place were significant, although subtle (Interviews P77, P80). Former Wildlife Division staff members reported that the new Director and his team “didn’t think that communities could achieve anything and they put obstacles to their achievements in the form of the WMA guidelines, by making them so complex that it stalled the process and made it very difficult for communities to go through and understand” (Interview P0).

There is a strong link to these shifts within the dominant discourse of CBNRM in Tanzania, which altered with the change of director, and the politics of devolution described in 5.4.3.

Whilst the official discourse of CBNRM could not be abandoned in Tanzania, the new policy

158 community held the next step of policy formulation (to produce the Regulations and Guidelines⁶² for the implementation of WMAs in Tanzania) within their power. In effect these policy documents provide the detailed basis, rules and systems that are implemented in WMAs. A former member of the Wildlife Division staff reported that the new Director was

“very corrupt and very authoritarian” and viewed the implementation of WMAs through the WPT (1998) as highly threatening to the established channels of corruption and personal benefit within the wildlife sector, especially around hunting (Interview P80). The change in Directorship within the Wildlife Division in 1999 not only signalled a shift in the dominant discourse coalition within the policy community, but is an excellent example of the control exerted by the policy community in processes of policy reform, and the manipulation of policy processes according to individuals’ private agendas.

The examples from the Forestry and Beekeeping Division and the Wildlife Division have highlighted the important roles that such policy entrepreneurs within the policy community can play in shaping policy processes, and how the ways that they do this are determined by their own personal beliefs and private interests. It is important to note that I do not argue that these influences demonstrate the elite control over decision-making that has often been conceptualised in linear models of policy reform (see Thomas and Grindle, 1990), but that they highlight the discursive nature of policy processes, and the central role of power over natural resources in shaping the discourses about their management. The Tanzanian wildlife sector is an excellent example of the politics of power over wildlife resources (see Duffy, 2000; Brockington et al., 2008; Nelson, 2010) and how the devolution of this power as envisaged in the WPT (1998) sparked a political struggle between different interest groups and discourse coalitions within the policy community.

The way these struggles were played out discursively within the wildlife sector is shown in the development of the first WMA Regulations (Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism, 2000a) and WMA Guidelines (Wildlife Division, 2001). The creation of the guidelines followed a participatory process in which representatives from pilot projects such as Selous Conservation Programme (SCP), Serengeti Regional Conservation Strategy (SRCS) and MBOMIPA were invited to discuss and contribute to their formulation. During semi-structured interviews, participants from these workshops described a change in atmosphere and relationships with the Wildlife Division at this transition of director. After the

62 MNRT (2000a; 2001a)

159 appointment of the new Director of Wildlife in 1999, respondents described a clear feeling of unwillingness to relinquish control over wildlife resources from the Wildlife Division staff they dealt with, and the outcome of the participatory workshops as unsatisfactory, especially over issues of financial resources and the application procedure to create a WMA (Interview P74). Respondents recalled feeling that these areas were beyond their control or influence, and they expressed the Wildlife Division staff’s lack of interest in their opinions and suggestions on these issues (Interview P1). Within a discourse of participation and collaboration with the policy network, the policy community utilised the policy processes in creating these documents as a means to recentralise control and power over wildlife resources (Shauri, 1999; Nelson, 2007; Nelson et al., 2007). A former REWMP staff member described how they felt that the shift towards CBNRM that was taking place at the time in Tanzania directly catalysed a “drawing back” by those who were unsure about it (Interview P77). The restrictions placed on the devolution of power to local communities, particularly with reference to ownership of wildlife resources and the financial arrangements for WMAs (see 5.2.4) are a clear example of this recentralisation of power (Schafer and Bell, 2002;

Goldman, 2003; Ribot et al., 2006).

5.5.3 Pilot Projects in the Issue Network: Roles of Local Level in National