Civil Society Participation and the Pilot Program to Conserve the Brazilian Rain Forest - Preliminary Draft

INITIAL PRELIMINARY DRAFT

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Civil Society Participation and the Pilot Program to Conserve the Brazilian Rain Forest

Rebecca Neaera Abers (coordinator)

With

Paul Little

Brent Millikan

Marisa von Bulow

Brasilia

2000

This document is the first draft of a consulting report produced for the World Bank. The Bank did not publish the final draft, to which the author was not given access. I suggest

citation as follows:

Abers, Rebecca, with Little, Paul; Millikan, Brent; and von Bülow, Marisa, 2000. Civil Society Participation and the Pilot Program to Conserve the Brazilian Rain Forest. Brasilia: Unpublished manuscript, Preliminary draft.


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CHAPTER I

The Pilot Program and Participation

1.1. Introduction

The Pilot Program to Conserve the Brazilian Rain Forest is a joint undertaking of the Brazilian government, Brazil’s civil society, and the international community that seeks ways to conserve the tropical rain forests of the Amazon and Brazil’s Atlantic coast. Major donors include the G-7 countries, the European Union and the Netherlands. The World Bank coordinates the program and administers the Rain Forest Trust, in which a portion of the Program’s resources are pooled. The program’s objectives include contributing to: (i) demonstrating that sustainable economic development and conservation of the environment can be pursued at the same time; (ii) preserving the biodiversity of the rain forests; (iii) reducing the rain forests’ contribution to the world’s emission of greenhouse gases; and (iv) setting an example for international cooperation on global environmental problems.

The program was initiated in 1992 and the first set of projects were approved in 1994 and begun in 1995. This first group of projects includes 1) The Demonstration Projects “Type A” Project (PD/A), which funds environmental and sustainable development sub-projects implemented by CSOs and municipal governments in the Amazon and Atlantic Forest regions; 2) The Extractive Reserves Project (RESEX), which provides support to four extractive reserves in the Amazon; 3) The Indigenous Lands Project (PPTAL) which has as its central task the demarcation and subsequent protection of 149 indigenous lands in the Amazon; 4) The National Resources Policy Project (NRPP), which supports sustainable development and environmental protection activities carried out by state environmental institutions in the Amazon; and 5) the Science Centers and Directed Research Program, which supports the creation of centers of scientific excellence and funds research projects related to the goals of the Pilot Program in the Amazon. In 1998, the Forest Resources Management Project (PROMANEJO) and an emergency project for Fire Prevention, Mobilization and Training (PROTEGER) were initiated. In 2000, the Floodplain Resources Management project (PROVÁRZEA) and the Monitoring and Analysis Project (AMA) began. Several other projects are still pending, including the Rain Forest Corridors projects, Demonstration Projects of Indigenous Peoples (PDPI) among others.

From its inception, the Pilot Program has sought to involve a wide range of stakeholders at different levels of decision making. The project was initiated in the wake of environmental disasters that had been exacerbated by large programs implemented with multilateral funding, most notably the POLONOROESTE program in the western Amazon region. POLONOROESTE was the subject of intense international critique both because the actions carried out contributed to environmental destruction and because they were implemented with little transparency and virtually no participation by civil society (Soares, 1998). At the same time, the latter part of the 1980s was a period of growing international concern with deforestation and of increasing visibility of social movements in the Amazon region. In particular, the Rubber Tappers movement led by the National Rubber Tappers Council (CNS) gained international fame in its defense local populations that engaged in environmentally sustainable economic activities. Finally, the Rio 92 Conference on Environment and Development provided the context in which Brazilian Environmental CSOs consolidated, including groups to defend not only the still largely intact Amazon rain


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forests but also the remains of Atlantic rain forests which had suffered centuries of extensive deforestation.

By the time the Pilot Program was underway, Brazilian civic organizations defending the environment were gaining force, not only in terms of organizing capacity and their influence over public opinion in Brazil and abroad, but also in terms of their ability to propose alternatives to traditional forms of economic development.1

Groups working with the Atlantic Rain Forest differed substantially, however, from those in the Amazon region. Given the extreme degradation of rain forests on the Atlantic coast of Brazil, the main goal was not sustainable use of forest regions, but protection and regeneration. Environment-related CSOs defending the Atlantic forests tended to be staffed by liberal professionals and were well articulated by the time the Rio 92 Conference took place, having created the Atlantic Rain Forest Network of CSOs (RMA) in preparation for the conference. CSOs based in grassroots communities or with social agendas were also growing throughout the Brazilian Northeast, Southeast, and South, but these rarely focused on protecting the remnants of Rain Forest in these regions.

In the Amazon Region, social and environmental CSOs had much more in common, especially with the growing strength of the Rubber Tappers’ movement, which promoted both social and environmental objectives. A growing number of groups defended the idea that traditional populations living in the forests and floodplains of the region were capable of using environmental resources sustainably while a few urban-based CSOs had appeared by the early nineties to defend environmental agendas. Despite the strength of the rubber tappers movement, civil society was much weaker in the Amazon region than in southeastern and southern Brazil, characterized by extremes of poverty, migrant populations, geographic isolation, and a much smaller liberal professional class.

In this context, the Pilot Program at a time of increasing acceptance of the idea that to achieve environmental and sustainable development objectives, civic organizations should be involved in decision-making throughout the Program. Although the program sought to give civic organizations representing the private sector a role in program decision-making, the changes described above meant that there was a particular concern for involving groups that historically have had little influence over policy-making and project implementation in Brazil.

The focus of this study is on the participation of this sub-set of CSOs, referred to here as those representing “traditionally excluded groups”. This sub-set includes CSOs representing local populations that use environmental resources and intermediary environmental and social CSOs. The distinction is important, since non-governmental organizations representing the industrial and commercial interests have historically had powerful influence over public policy-making in Brazil while CSOs representing impoverished populations and promoting alternative agendas have had a marginal role, at best, even in decisions about policies directly affecting their concerns. Even today, to a large extent, CSOs representing powerful economic interests have much more influence over public policies than those representing traditionally excluded groups, although the latter have gained influence in some arenas. This study examine the extent to which CSOs representing

1 See Bernardo (1999) for a review of the consolidation of environmental movements in Brazil.


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traditionally excluded groups been able to influence decisions in the Pilot Program, thus becoming “less excluded” at least in the realm of this set of projects.

Given the diversity of projects implemented under the umbrella of the Program, the extent to which CSOs representing traditionally excluded groups (henceforth referred to merely as “CSOs”) actually influenced decisions has varied substantially. This study seeks to analyze

this diversity by mapping out the extent of influence by CSOs in Pilot Program

decisions and to identify some of the impacts of this influence, where it occurred, on the

way decisions were made.2

The study analyses participation at three levels of decision-making within the Pilot Program:

1) The Program as a whole;

2) Project design and implementation (e.g., PD/A, RESEX, PPTAL, NRPP, etc.);3

3) Sub-project design and implementation. This third level is divided into two categories:

a) those sub-projects that are focused on the interests of specific local populations (e.g. PD/A sub-projects, extractive reserves, indigenous land demarcations); and

b) sub-projects involving broad-based public-policy formulation (e.g. NRPP at the state-level).

The distinction between these levels of decision-making is heuristic and there is some overlap among them.

• Program-level decision-making generally involves defining the “rules of the game” for the Program: defining the priorities and objectives of the program as a whole and adjusting them over time; designing the decision-making structure of the Program, negotiating the resource allocations for each project, defining how project design should take place, and determining when a project is ready to initiate implementation.

• Project-level decision making involves the detailed processes of project design and implementation itself within the broader rules determined at the Program level. Many of the Pilot Program projects decentralize a great deal of decision-making to the sub-project level. In these cases, project level decision-making refers to decisions about project design and about a variety of everyday decisions that must be made during the implementation phase, such as sub-project selection, resource allocations among sub-projects, general criteria and procedures to be used, modifications in project priorities, approval of sub-project reports, and technical support to sub-projects.

• Sub-projects that benefit local populations involve decision making processes at the level of local communities, such as the work carried out on specific extractive reserves, specific indigenous lands, or through specific demonstration sub-projects. Here decision-making involves both sub-project design and planning and monitoring specific implementation activities (which includes a diversity of decision-making processes such as choosing how to allocate sub-project funds to or controlling how sub-project actions will be carried out).

2 The study was financed by the World Bank Strategic Compact Resources (ESSD/LAC and Brazil CMU) with complimentary funding from the RFT/Pilot Program. 3 This document refers to all “projects” and “sub-programs” as “projects”.


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• Public policy formulation occurs in sub-projects that have the objective of defining government policies. In the case of the Pilot Program, the main project with this objective is NRPP, which seeks to develop environmental policy capacities in state governments. One of the main tasks in this respect is the design of Integrated Environmental Management Plans (PGAIs) in regions of each Amazon state. Other projects, such as Rain Forest Corridors, PROMANEJO and PROVARZEA also have policy making components, but since none of these projects have gone beyond the initial stages, the study does not focus on them (although the design processes involved in Rain Forest Corridors and PROMANEJO are discussed in the section on project level decision-making).

1.2 Analyzing Participatory Decision-making

Participation as Influencing Decision-making

“Participation” is a term that has been increasingly used to imply a multiplicity of activities. Although participatory methodologies only began to influence the international development sector in the 1980s4, Sherry Arnstein’s classic (1969) article is still useful for distinguishing different forms of participation. Arnstein defines eight levels of participation. The first two levels, Manipulation and Therapy, she calls "Non-participation." The next levels, Informing, Consultation, and Placation, are "Degrees of Tokenism." Only Partnership, Delegated Power, and Citizen Control can be called "Degrees of Citizen Power." Only in this last group do participants actually have influence over decision-making. Other authors make clear that the formal creation of participatory councils, committees, or working groups does not necessarily mean that participants actually have some influence over decision-making, even when those forums have formally deliberative powers5. Many studies of decision-making processes touted as participatory have shown that governments often ignore or manipulate decisions made by participants (Gilbert and Ward, 1984; Oakley and Marsden, 1984; Hall, 1988; Goulet, 1989l Stiefel and Wolfe, 1994).

In this respect, understanding participation requires focusing on the influence participants have over decision-making. Do participatory mechanisms engage participants to actively discuss and debate government decisions, or are they merely ways to inform them of decisions made elsewhere or to solicit their help in implementing those decisions? When participants are consulted, does this actually influence decisions? Even where participatory forums do not have formal deliberative power, they may actually influence decision-making. At the same time, officially deliberative forums may have little impact on decisions, either because government ignores or is unable to implement the decisions they make or because such forums have little control over critical aspects of decision-making such as agenda setting. Beneficiary participation in project implementation, through, for example “cost sharing” or voluntary labor contributions, may have their benefits for project effectiveness. However, this study does not consider such processes to be example of “citizen control” over projects, unless the beneficiaries actually participate in how decisions are made.

4 Especially with the creation of the UNRISD Participation Program, the results of which are compiled in Stiefel and Wolfe (1994). 5 The classic reference in this respect is Selznick (1949) who argued that formal mechanisms of participation tend to have much less influence over government decision-making than informal mechanisms (such as lobbying by the business sector).


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The first step in evaluating if CSOs have influence over decision-making is, therefore, to identify how decisions are made in any given project. While some actors identify decisions as only those made by formal commissions or only those made in the design stage, we consider decision-making to relate to all aspects of the project cycle and to occur both formally, through the approval of proposals by upper-echelon personnel and official commissions, and informally through a complex array negotiations related to agenda-setting, project management and programmatic.6 This study seeks to identify the principal sites of decision-making in each of the four levels of the Pilot Program cited above in order to establish the extent to which CSOs have, in practice, influenced decisions made both formally and informally.

Participation versus Representation

Participatory models are often criticized because those who participate do not ‘represent’ the beneficiary population as a whole. Participatory decision-making processes inevitably involve a certain degree of “self-selection” of participants, and this means that those who participate most intensely do not necessarily represent the opinions of all those who will be affected by a particular project. Local community based organizations usually include only ‘mobilized” sectors of the population. People who live farther away from association headquarters, who have lower levels of income (and who therefore have a greater resistance to paying association dues) or lower levels of formal education, who do not believe that association membership will bring material benefits, or who have political affiliations with groups in opposition to local associations are less likely to belong to such associations. Larger scale organizations representing traditionally excluded groups, such as the Rubber Tappers Council or an umbrella indigenous organization, often include only leaders promoting general political or social agendas of which the majority of the population may not even be aware. For example, according to extractivist leaders interviewed for this study, despite the intense movement by local unions and the CNS in favor of Extractive Reserves, many residents of the reserves that were created did not even know what an Extractive Reserve was at the time the RESEX project was initiated. In the case of intermediary social and environmental CSOs, membership is even more specific, usually incorporating liberal professionals with strong ideological agendas that may not be adhered to, or even understood, by the majority of the population.

Some views of participatory decision-making suggest that all those who are affected by a particular government action should be directly involved in deciding how it should be carried out. However, most authors have suggested that this conception is both impractical and potentially coercive. It is impractical, because face-to-face assemblies are impossible where issues affect large numbers of people and because people cannot be expected to have the time to acquire specialized knowledge about all the complex issues that affect their lives. Some form of representation or delegation is therefore necessary (Barber,1984:272; Mansbridge, 1980:278-289). It can be coercive because, even if opportunities for participation exist, many people may not want to join up. Given these problems, some authors suggest that direct participation should be avoided altogether, since it gives special power to better organized groups. From this perspective, representative voting systems are more inclusive (Sartori, 1987: 114). But others argue that most representative systems also give special power to 6 This vision is contrary to the belief expressed by some government representatives who suggested that after a project was designed, “there were no more decisions to be made”.


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certain groups, such as economic elites who have substantial over voting patterns, and that direct participation, even by “self selected groups” has a variety of benefits. Rather than insisting that all people discuss all issues, however, these authors suggest that participatory mechanisms can give ordinary people more control over government decision-making, even if all do not actually participate (Barber, 1984; Mansbridge, 1980).

Despite the distinction between participation and representation, we argue here that participatory decision-making should do more than simply ‘open the doors’ of government decision-making to civic groups. Efforts should be made to ensure that all interested civic groups are able to participate and to increase the representativeness of the groups that do participate. Where this occurs, some of the benefits of participation will be increased, such as ensuring that projects meet the needs of traditionally excluded groups and building social capital. Promoting expanded beneficiary participation in CSOs involves, however, certain risks, such as loss of CSO autonomy. These issues are discussed in more detail in Chapter 5.

Factors Determining the Extent of CSO Influence

In addition to identifying where CSOs have been able to influence Pilot Program decision-making, this study also seeks to explain why some projects and sub-projects have been more open to such influence than others. To do so, it is necessary to examine both what leads government agencies to allow for such influence and what leads CSOs to seek it. There are two general factors that must be present on both sides of participatory processes in order for influence by CSOs to occur: motivations and capacities.

Government Motivations and Capacity

It is not immediately obvious why government decision-makers would choose to diminish their own control over decisions by devolving power to groups outside the state, especially to groups that have been traditionally excluded from decision-making precisely because they have little economic or political power. Such devolution usually occurs because state actors see the immediate reduction of their own control over decisions as ultimately in their interest, either as a way to foster more successful or popular policies, or as a way to build political support more generally. State actors can be interested in promoting participation for a variety of reasons: because of the belief that participation leads to more successful projects, because of pressure from CSOs themselves, out of a desire to give decisions greater legitimacy in the eyes of the public, or because of pressure from donor agencies funding projects. Without such “political will”, it is extremely unlikely that governments will create opportunities for CSOs to influence decision-making.7

Nevertheless, “political will” alone is not enough to ensure that governments interested in promoting the influence of CSOs over decision making are actually capable of doing so. Indeed, Stiefel and Wolfe’s (1994) comparative study of state-sponsored participatory programs throughout the world shows that even where such political will exists, governments are often unable to devolve power to CSOs. Stiefel and Wolfe cite a series obstacles to implementing participatory policies, ranging from the opposition those efforts raise from powerful elites accustomed to influencing government decision-making, to resistance to participation within the bureaucracy, to the technical difficulties that state-actors face in

7 For an extensive discussion of how participatory policies must fit into broader political strategies in order to be successful, see Abers (2000).


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seeking to attend the demands made by participants. In general, it is necessary to ask two basic questions about governments seeking to give CSOs influence over decision-making

1) Do they actually have full control over the arenas of decision-making in question, so as to be able to effectively devolve that control to whom they wish? Specific agencies within the government do not necessarily have control over many resource allocation decisions, which must be approved by higher level government agencies or by donors funding projects, or both. Upper echelon-personnel may approve of participatory processes, while lower-level personnel who actually implement project resist carrying out decisions influenced by CSOs. In some cases, agencies also lack management capacities to implement actions if there is internal and external approval of them.

2) Do they have technical and financial capacities for promoting participation, such as resources to organize meetings and technical personnel specialized in using participatory methodologies? Working with CSOs often requires knowledge of participatory techniques, conflict resolution and community organizing which are usually absent among government personnel. In many cases, personnel may avoid working with CSOs simply because they do not feel comfortable with the kinds of negotiations this involves. It is also necessary to have financial resources earmarked to promoting participation, since disseminating information about opportunities to participate, holding meetings and developing appropriate documentation involves substantial costs, especially where projects work with CSOs located at a considerable distance from the government offices, as is the case of the Pilot Program.

CSO Motivations and Capacity

Even where government agencies have the motivation and capacity to include CSOs in decision-making processes, this may not occur because those groups do not perceive projects as relevant to their concerns, are not mobilized to participate, or lack technical and financial resources to do so.

Participation involves the dedication of time and resources on the part of participants, which must be diverted from other activities. In this sense, the decision to participate involves a “cost/benefit” analysis. Where potential participants are poor, it can be particularly difficult to motivate them to participate, since the costs of participation are relatively high compared to the resources they have. If participants do not see particular projects as potentially bringing returns related to issues they see as important, they are unlikely to participate. In most cases, especially where local communities are involved, this means bringing some sort of material return, such as an increased quality of life or income generation. Where intermediary CSOs are involved, however, the questions of returns may apply more to meeting ideological goals, such as actually promoting environmental agendas. In order to motivate CSOs at all levels to participate, projects must be conceived in ways that are understood by CSO members as relevant to their interests. The institutions implementing the projects must also have some amount of credibility that leads CSOs to believe that their participation in those projects will actually result in relevant outcomes.8

At the same time, in order to participate, CSOs must have certain capacities. In the first place, CSOs working with the issues involved must exist. Even if they do exist, however, they may 8 For an extensive analysis of the “motivation” problem in participatory policies, see Abers (1996, 2000). See also Hall (1998:26-28) for a discussion of the importance of material returns for collective action applied to the question of sustainable development.


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not have the financial resources to participate in all the projects that they see as relevant to their concerns. Without resources to attend participatory forums or to meet together to develop positions, CSOs are unlikely to participate. They must also have a variety of technical capacities: knowledge and experience with political activities and the workings of government; the ability to analyze technical issues involved and to develop their own proposals. Finally, they must have the same kinds of organizing capacities that government agencies working with participatory decision-making need: knowledge of participatory decision-making methodologies, conflict resolution capacities, etc. Such capacities are necessary both in order to work with government officials and to work with their own membership or constituencies to develop and approve proposals.

It is important to remember that traditionally excluded groups are usually “excluded” precisely because they lack such organizational capacities. Participatory processes themselves can help them develop those capacities, especially when implementing institutions promote widespread information dissemination, teach organizing skills, provide physical infrastructure and the like. But participation can also change the organizational structure of CSOs in complicated and not always desirable ways. Those who have formal education, are bilingual, or have other skills that allow them to take advantage of participatory processes can gain power in their communities at the expense of traditional leadership. New conflicts can emerge among different levels of representation, such as between local associations and broader based organizations.

1.3 Research Methodology

The research for this study took place between March and June of 2000. The researchers analyzed descriptive program documents, evaluations, studies, meeting minutes, written correspondences and other documentary sources. Given the largely undocumented nature of the data collected, however, the main sources of information were structured interviews averaging one and a half hours in length with 96 informants representing different sectors within the Brazilian government, Brazilian and international civil society organizations (within and without the networks funded by the Program), Bank and donor institutions (See Annex 2 for list of people interviewed). Informant selection privileged those directly involved in project design and implementation and sought to incorporate a diversity of viewpoints about each project considered. In some cases focus groups were also carried out.

The Pilot Program involves a large number of projects, each of which includes a sub-projects in some cases numbering in the hundreds, each of which has involved different types of participatory processes. The cost and time limitations of this study did not allow for an analysis that fully accounts for this diversity. Our purpose here was to collect data on the projects that would allow for a general comprehension of the variety of models of participatory decision-making used. Although more weight was given to those projects that have longer histories of implementation, some data was collected on projects which have begun more recently or which are still in the design phase.

The majority of interviews were carried out in Brasília. In addition to interviewing government, donor, and civil society participants residing in that city, the researchers took advantage of events taking place in Brasília during the research period that brought CSO participants from elsewhere. An evaluation seminar for the PD/A project allowed for representatives of CSOs implementing PD/A sub-projects to be interviewed. The data from


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these interviews were then compared with the actual evaluations of the sub-projects studied, giving depth to the analysis of these cases. Similarly, the National Meeting of the CNS in Brasília made it possible to interview residents of three extractive reserves in the RESEX project. Some informants were also interviewed in a short visit to Manaus. Sections on PPTAL were developed by a consultant with extensive experience working with indigenous groups, based largely on interviews in Brasília and document analysis. More extensive information on the RESEX project was collected through a field visit to the Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve, where formal interviews were carried out with leadership of the three reserve associations, local CNS and CNPT representatives and other key informants. A focus group discussion with the participants of a meeting of school teachers working in the reserves was also carried out. Data on NRPP activities at the state level was collected largely through field visits to the states of Amapá and Pará. In these states, in addition to formal interviews with government, civil society, and donor representatives residing in the capital cities, visits were made to PGAI priority areas in each state. Participant observation was carried out in one community meeting in each state and a focus group discussion carried out with the Tucuruí Forum for Agenda 21, in Pará.

Data analysis used established qualitative methods to interpret the data collected. This involves on the one hand, the “triangulation” of opinions collected: that is the comparison of opinions expressed in interviews and documentation to identify points of consensus or disagreement and the analysis of the background of informants or authors holding specific positions to interpret reasons for such similarities or differences. It also involves what some have referred to as “pattern-matching.” In the study of the complex interactions among actors and between actors and social conditions, the researcher cross-checks information collected from different sources to identifies "patterns" of interaction and to attempts to see if the logical implications of a given conclusion can be identified empirically through other sources of information.9 Throughout this report, we seek to make clear where certain opinions were widely agreed on and where they were not, and to identify the sector of origin (government, CSOs, donors) of those expressing certain opinions.

However, the conclusions expressed here are provisional and the authors encourage debate and discussion in the effort to correct and fine tune them. In this spirit, on August 30, 2000, a workshop was held in Brasília including civil society, government, World Bank and donor representatives to discuss a preliminary document that presented the initial findings of the study at the Program and Project levels (See Annex 3 for list of workshop participants). This workshop served to confirm some of the conclusions of the study and to reject others, as well as to develop a number of additional recommendations for changes. The authors have made an effort to incorporate these suggestions and criticisms into this document, although the conclusions here remain their full responsibility and do not necessarily represent a “consensus” among the groups consulted.

1.4 Outline of the Report

The remainder of this report is divided into five chapters. Chapter 2 examines the extent of influence of CSOs at the Program and Project levels. The chapter examines how decision-making mechanisms evolved over the eight year period since the Program began, looking at both formal and informal mechanisms of influence over decision-making and

9 On these methods of qualitative analysis, see Campbell (1985), Diesing (1971) and McCorcle (1984).


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comparing the ways CSOs have participated in a variety of projects. Chapters 3 and 4 examine the extent of influence of CSOs at the sub-project level. Chapter 3 examines the sub-projects of three projects that are targeted to attending the needs of specific communities: PPTAL, RESEX and PD/A. Chapter 4 examines the sub-projects of NRPP, which involves environmental policy formulation at the state level. Chapter 5 goes on to explore the impacts of participation at each of these levels of decision-making, considering the five categories of impacts noted earlier. Chapter 6 presents some general conclusions, focusing on how different combinations of government and civil society motivations and capacities led to different levels of influence in different projects and sub-projects. That chapter also presents some general recommendations for changes in the Pilot Program that would guarantee greater CSOs have influence over Program decision-making and would better ensure that that influence have positive impacts on the projects implemented.


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CHAPTER II

Participation at the Program and Project Levels

2.1 The Context of Participatory Decision-making in the Pilot Program

Designing the Pilot Program

CSOs have been involved in the Pilot Program since its inception. Indeed, according to CSO documents and informants, European-based CSOs contributed to the creation of the Program in the first place. In 1990, the European office of Friends of the Earth sent a letter to the G7 countries urging them to take action in defense of the Amazon forests and its traditional populations. A month later, at the Houston summit, the G7 countries decided to support a broad-based pilot program for the region (GTA/FOE 1996:165).

The early discussions of what that program would involve, however, did not occur with the participation of civil society. Indeed, according to numerous informants, the Brazilian government strongly rejected idea initially. This was a period in Brazilian history when government, especially the Federal Government, had little experience cooperating with CSOs, who were largely associated with the left-wing opposition to both the previous authoritarian regimes and the conservative government elected in 1989. CSOs were only allowed to attend meetings to discuss the design of the PPG7 after several initial meetings between the Brazilian Government, European Community and the World Bank took place in the semester of 1991. The eventual inclusion of CSOs into the process was largely a result of donor pressure, which in turn came in response to significant activism by Brazilian and European CSOs in Europe. Even with this pressure, CSO participation was not guaranteed at the most important decision-making forums. For example, at the first meeting of Participants in December of 1991 (Geneva) CSOs were not permitted to participate. (Ibid.: 165-169)

CSO participation also depended on the organization of civil society groups in Brazil. As noted earlier, by the early 1990s, a network of environmental CSOs had developed working with the issues related to the protection of the Atlantic Rainforest, but CSO organization in the Amazon was much weaker, dominated by the activism of a few groups. In July of 1991, as the initial negotiations for the Pilot Program were taking place, a group of 13 Brazilian CSOs, mostly from the Northern region of the country, founded the Amazonian Working Group (GTA), with the expressed purpose of seeking to influence Program design. The foundation of the GTA did not occur without opposition from other CSOs who condemned the Pilot Program as yet another ‘big project” for the Amazon and criticized the CSOs belonging to the GTA organizations for cooperating with a government that had traditionally ignored the concerns of environmental and social movements and made decisions without the participation of civil society. The members of the GTA, on the other hand, argued that the although they had criticisms of some of the PPG7 proposals, they agreed with the general principals of the program and that without some organized effort to influence the process, non-participatory forms of decision-making were certain to be reproduced.

Although the Pilot Program’s founding documents call for the participation of CSOs in all aspects of the program, the statements were generic and in fact, the level of participation depended on the particular history of each project. In the early years, not all of the implementing institutions were motivated to promote participation nor did the CSO networks


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actively seek to influence the design of all the projects. Neither NRPP nor the Science sub-program were the target of strong CSO demands to participate (though documents produced by the GTA with Friends of the Earth complained that the design of these programs occurred behind closed doors). PPTAL was the target of some organizing on the part of GTA and indigenous groups within it, but the sensitive nature of the project (see below) limited influence of CSOs on its design. Indigenous representatives had half the seats on the project’s coordinating commission, but the commission had only consultative powers. Ultimately, RESEX and PD/A were the two programs with the highest levels of participation. The PD/A Executive Committee was the only project coordinating committee that had both equal representation for CSOs and deliberative power.

For some informants this reflected a “divvying up” of the Pilot Program among interested parties. This view, held by some but not all informants in both government and civil society, suggests that the majority of the Program resources were to be given over to the government while the PD/A was a small “consolation prize” intended to please the well organized CSOs. Those who hold this perspective suggest that giving CSOs an influential voice in all projects was not the original intention. All of the projects, with the exception of Science and Technology, formed committees with some seats for CSOs. However, as we will see in Section 2.2, only in the cases of PD/A and RESEX were CSOs able to have a strong influence on design and implementation in the early years.

Nevertheless, even before projects began implementation, which only occurred in 1995, there was evidence that the Program was unusually open to CSO participation in the context of the early nineties.

• CSOs obtained three seats on the National Coordinating Commission. The 1992 federal government decree (Decree no. 563/92) establishing the Commission included two representatives of Amazon CSOs and one representing Atlantic Forest CSOs. The CSOs were by far a minority on the Commission which included representatives from twelve federal government agencies and two representatives from state environmental agencies. Nevertheless, that CSOs were included on the commission at all was considered a conquest, extremely unusual at that period in Brazilian history.

• The initial proposals for the Demonstration Projects component of the program conceived of sub-projects being implemented by local and state governments. Only after the GTA consolidated was the project modified so that civil society organizations could receive funds. As the design of the project went forward, it increasingly focused on funding local CSOs (although municipal governments remained eligible for funds), while a parallel project, called PD/B, which would fund larger projects and would give more resources to government agencies, has yet to go forward.

• The Pilot Program allocated specific funds to building the institutional capacity of the GTA and, later, the RMA. An initial grant helped the network consolidate, providing funds to open an office in Brasília and financing meetings. A second larger grant initiated in 1995 funded a variety of activities, ranging from personnel and office equipment and space, meetings, including the bi-annual assemblies of all GTA member CSOs, documentation and information dissemination, and training CSOs to develop proposals for the PD/A. In 1997, a grant was provided to the RMA to establish an office and pay for


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personnel. In 1999, the RMA received funding to establish a second, smaller office in Brasília.

• Projects were designed for which there was substantial public opinion support both in Brazil and abroad, even when they were not in the original proposal of the Pilot Program designed by the Brazilian Government. This support, in turn, was at least in part a result of the activism of European and Brazilian CSOs that had helped make visible the problems faced by extractivists and indigenous groups in the Amazon.

- The Indigenous Lands project raised substantial opposition from the powerful sectors of the Brazilian government that were less committed to indigenous land demarcation (despite the requirement in the 1988 Constitution that indigenous lands be demarcated) and were extremely suspicious of ‘foreign’ interventions in what was seen as a sensitive issue involving national sovereignty. Nevertheless, it was among the early projects to begin, a result, according to some informants, of the priority given to the project by the German government in response to CSO mobilization and public opinion more generally in that country.

- The Extractive Reserves project had a similar history. Only in 1992 were Extractive

Reserves included into what was initially called the Direct Use Conservation Units

project, which had previously focused only on National Forests (FLONAS). Later, the

Extractive Reserves component was denominated a project of its own and as in the case

of the PD/A, despite the fact that it was not part of the original design, RESEX was one of

the first projects to actually initiate implementation. This was at least partially a result of

substantial activism on the part of social movements in Brazil and in Europe. For

example, according to one informant, the European Union pushed for the initiation of the

project in response to activism from the CNS.

Changes as the Program Evolved

As the decade progressed, changes took place both within the CSO and government sectors that increased the participation of CSOs in Program decision-making.

First, the GTA expanded dramatically, within a few years incorporating more than three hundred CSOs (today the GTA has more than 400 members) and gaining a widespread recognition as a highly legitimate organization that effectively represented a large portion of civic groups within the Amazon region. This process would certainly not have occurred without the significant funding that the GTA received from the Pilot Program itself, but it also reflected an expansion of the CSO sector more generally in Brazil (Fernandes, 1994)

Second, a more participatory culture developed within government institutions in general. This was in part a result of general trends towards democratization in Brazil, out of which the


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total opposition between government and civil society that existed during the military regime broke down and partnerships between the two became more common. The increase in such partnerships also resulted from the crisis of the state itself, which increasingly sought out the help of CSOs to design and implement projects (Bülow and Abers, 2000; Fernandes, 1994; Landim, 1993).10

Third, changes occurred within the government agencies implementing the Pilot Program as a result of the Program itself. Projects involving CSO participation were among the first to be implemented and were evaluated to be among the most successful. It is difficult to establish the extent to which this success was directly related to participation, especially since one of the less participatory projects, the Science sub-program was also implemented early on with good evaluations. In any case, the success of the early participatory projects gave credibility to participatory decision-making and promoted the idea within the Ministry of Environment that projects could be effective if they included participatory mechanisms. At the same time, donors and the World Bank increasingly sided with CSOs insisting that Pilot Program projects be participatory.

The culmination of these changes was the nomination of Mary Allegretti as head of the Secretariat for Coordination of Amazon Issues (SCA). Allegretti was a long time CSO activist who had strong ties with the GTA, especially to the CNS. Her nomination reflected both the strength of the Amazon-based CSOs and the growing belief within the government that close ties to CSOs could increase government effectiveness and legitimacy. With Allegretti, numerous people who had previously worked in the CSO sector joined the Secretariat, thereby increasing even more the “culture of participation’ within this agency.

In this context, CSO informants unanimously note that over the decade they gained substantial access to key decision-makers in the program. As one GTA informant commented:

“The spaces of dialogue with the Brazilian government changed. In the beginning, the

NGOs had a lot of space with the donors and none with the government. Today that space

exists at all levels.”

Although, for the most part, these changes did not affect the way projects originally designed without much participation were implemented, it did result in significant amounts of CSO participation in projects that were designed several years after the first projects began implementation. PROMANEJO, PROVÁRZEA, Rain Forest Corridors and PDPI all involved CSO participation in their design.

Structural Limitations to Participatory Decision-making

Despite this process of approximation between government and civil society, structural problems have limited the influence that civic associations have in practice over Program decision-making. These problems tend to affect not only the capacity of CSOs to influence

10 For example, in recent years, the Brazilian government has been responsible for legislation making it easier for CSOs to receive government funding to carry out projects. See Bülow and Abers (2000).


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decision-making, but also that of other sectors involved in the Program, including government itself.

1. As has been noted repeatedly by the participating CSOs, the capacity of the Pilot Program’s to actually promote sustainable development is sharply constrained by what is decided elsewhere in the federal administration, such as monetary policy, regional development policy and land reform. To a large extent, Brazilian government actions in these areas have countered the principles of sustainable development. In this context, the Ministry of Environment appears to be an island of sustainable development policy in a hostile context where its ability to actually promote development alternatives on a broad scale is limited. No matter how friendly the relations between the Ministry and CSOs, the capacity of CSOs to influence broader policy goals is thereby constrained by these same limitations. For example, since the inception of the Pilot Program, documents produced by the GTA in collaboration with the Friends of the Earth have demanded greater integration between the Pilot Program and other public policies affecting the Amazon. For the most part these demands have gone unattended, largely because the Pilot Program and the agencies promoting it have little influence over those broader policy spheres (GTA/FOE, 1991, 1994, 1996, 1997/98).

2. Even with respect to the activities within the Pilot Program’s sphere of influence, the lack of integration among projects limits the capacity of CSOs to influence the governance of the program as a whole, although they may have significant influence over the design and implementation of some of its parts. This problem was amply noted in the recent Review of Institutional Arrangements which stated that the program was launched “without a clear mutual understanding about the objectives of the ‘sustainable development’ which was to be piloted” (PPG7, 1999:10). Or, as one informant interviewed for this study noted, the PPG7 is not really a “program” but a “collection of actions”. From this perspective, a “program’ would have a strong coordinating institution which would ensure that the various projects that make it up are leading to the achievement of its general objectives. Such a coordination would define the nature of projects to be implemented and would coordinate actions among those projects to ensure that they are geared towards the general goals of the program. In lieu of a general consensus on what those goals would be, projects have been negotiated separately and their relevance and priority for the general objectives of the program has had little impact on whether or not they are implemented.

In response to these critiques, the Pilot Program has made an effort at increasing coordinated decision-making, most importantly through the creation of a Joint Steering Committee in 1999, including donor, government and CSO representatives, which would meet with more regularity than the highest instance of Program decision-making, the Participants meetings, had up that point. It is too early, however, to evaluate the impact of these changes. 3. The Pilot Program brings together a larger number of government and donor institutions

than are involved in most government programs. This means that each major decision must be approved by multiple institutions. Each project within the Program is separately negotiated among the Brazilian Government, a variety of donor countries and the World Bank. The often cited delays in project implementation as all parties seek to come to agreement are the result of these multiple negotiations. Although the Brazilian Government is the formal executor of the project, the donors and the World Bank have


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significant veto power in decisions about what activities will receive funding. Likewise, during implementation, project managers typically face “triple supervision and clearances – from GOB, from Donor and from the World Bank – for one and the same transaction’ (PPG7, 1999: 17). In this environment, the precise location of decision-making is often difficult to identify.

How each of these problems affects the extent of influence by CSOs in decision-making will be discussed in the next section.

2.2. Mechanisms of Influence at the Program Level

Formal Mechanisms

Until the creation of the Joint Steering Committee, which includes two CSO representatives, CSOs did not have voting power at the highest level of decision-making for the program. At the second level of decision-making, the Program is governed by a National Coordinating Commission, renamed the Brazilian Coordinating Commission in 1999. This commission has included three seats for CSOs since the Program’s inception, one held by the RMA and two by the GTA. The Commission’s main role is to approve project proposals, ranging from the initial design of projects to reformulations in that design. It also analyzes major evaluations of the program, discuss operational problems in the Program and recommends changes. There are two general levels at which we can examine whether or not these representatives have influence over program decision-making by having seats on this commission.

At the first level, we can examine the extent to which the CSO members of the commission are able to influence the decisions it makes. Although the number of CSO seats on the commission is small compared to government representatives, CSO informants interviewed for the most part felt that they had an influential voice and that their positions often affected commission decisions.. In this sense, the fact that the commission had only a small number of seats occupied by CSOs does not mean that their positions are constantly outvoted. In fact, some informants suggested that CSO positions had a particularly heavy weight, having a certain “moral authority”. The main problem with the small number of seats for CSOs is related to the difficulty for so few individuals to effectively represent the complexity of groups within civil society. As one CSO member of the commission noted:

“Today there is a small opening for participation in the Commission. Society participates,

but only a little. The Commission should be open to other segments of society. The

government has representatives of a variety of ministries and we only have one for the

Amazon and another for the Atlantic Forest. It is an enormous weight for one person. An

enormous responsibility. We have people following each sub-program who pass on

information to us, but even so, it is a heavy load.”


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At a second level, we can examine the extent to which the commission has influence over Program decisions. Here the analysis is less positive. As noted in the last chapter experiences with citizen participation in decision-making have shown that the capacity of CSOs to influence government decision-making is not only a matter of political will on the part of government or organizing capacity and interest on the part of civil society. It also depends on whether the decision-making forums in which citizen groups participate actually not only have the power of final approval but also have the capacity to set agendas and to define proposals.

As noted above, the Pilot Program is characterized by particularly complex decision-making processes, that involve a multiplicity of negotiations among a variety of donor and government institutions. The fact that each project is designed and negotiated by different sectors within the Brazilian government (SCA, CNPT, other sectors of IBAMA, FUNAI, Ministry of Science and Technology) and with different groups of donor countries seems to have given each project its own inertia. The Coordinating Commission finds itself with decision-making power only at the end point in lengthy and intricate preparation processes, approving decisions that have been made elsewhere in the constellation of negotiations that make up the program. Rarely can the commission be characterized as a ‘propulsive” site of decision-making, where agendas are set and proposals are defined. Furthermore, the multiplicity of “sites of decision” means that the Commission does not necessarily approve all Pilot Program decisions. For example, CSOs have complained that the World Bank spends a relatively large portion of RFT funds on pre-investment activities which are not subject to controls by the Coordinating Commission (GTA/CNS/COIAB, 1999).

One evidence of the relative distance of the Commission from everyday decision-making is the fact that during long periods of the Program, it met infrequently. As can be seen from Table 2.1, between 1992 and June 2000, the Commission had twenty-four meetings, eleven of which took place in the first three years of the Program. Between 1995 and 1998, the number of meetings declined substantially, with only one meeting being held in both 1996 and 1998. Since 1999, the frequency of meetings has increased substantially.

Table 2.1

Meetings of the National Coordinating Commission

Year Number of

Regular

Meetings

Number of

Extraordinary

Meetings

1992 2 1 1993 3 1 1994 3 1 1995 1 1 1996 0 1 1997 2 0 1998 1 0 1999* 2 1 2000 (Jan – June) 2 0


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*In mid-1999, the National Coordinating Commission became the Brazilian Coordinating Commission

Recent efforts at institutional restructuring have sought to streamline and coordinate decision-making in the Program. The creation of the Joint Steering Committee is one example of these changes. For some time, informal (non-deliberative) monthly meetings organized by the World Bank were important loci of Program-wide collaboration. Since the Institutional Review, these meetings have been organized by the government and include CSO participation. This group provides an important opportunity for information sharing and collaborative action. It is early, however, to evaluate if such changes have been effective at providing more effective forums where CSOs can seek to influence Pilot Program decision-making.

Informal Mechanisms

If the Coordinating Commission is therefore, not the “decision-making core” of the Pilot Program then it is difficult for NGOs to influence decision-making through that commission. Since it is only here that NGOs have a formal seat for decision-making regarding the Program as a whole, their ability to influence those decisions largely depends on informal mechanisms. CSO informants describe almost daily meetings with program managers of the different projects, with World Bank staff and representatives of donor agencies, especially in recent years.

In this context, Program decision-making tends to have an ad hoc in character, that is, it does not follow any predefined rules of how decisions should be made, who should participate in them, and who has deliberative power. Forms of decision-making vary dramatically depending on which donors and government agencies are involved and on the degree of consensus about project goals among these groups. Under these conditions there are no clear ground rules about the role of CSOs.

Nevertheless, most informants agree that CSOs have had an increasing amount of influence on decision-making processes through such ad hoc negotiations with government and donor personnel. According to more than one informant, at the early stages of the pilot program, the government was generally suspicious of CSO involvement. CSOs had greater access to staff at the World Bank and donors who, in turn, often lobbied for their positions with the government. With changes described earlier, CSOs found it increasingly easy to make contact with key decision-makers in the government, especially the SCA. Today, the SCA is considered to be extremely open to NGO participation in everyday decision-making, such that it is standard practice to invite network representatives to all important meetings about the Pilot Program, as well as about other projects. Through these informal, everyday negotiation processes, crucial decisions are made about how projects are designed and about when or if they will begin to be implemented.

One indicator of the importance given to everyday informal contacts between CSOs and key decision-makers is the fact that the Program recently funded the creation of an office for the RMA in Brasília. According to an RMA informant interviewed, the intention was to make it easier for the network to take part in Program decision-making.

General conclusions about the capacity of CSOs to influence Program decisions through such informal mechanisms are the following:


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• The ability of the CSOs to influence decision-making through informal mechanisms depends on the experience of the leadership in what some informants referred to as “the ways of Brasília”. That is, not all CSO leaders have the political experience with federal government bureaucracies to be able to take advantage of these informal relationships. Those who have close personal contacts with key decision-makers are at a particular advantage.

• These informal mechanisms function through relationships among individuals. This has benefits and drawbacks. On the one hand, repeated negotiations among individuals within government, donor institutions and civil society facilitate discussions on the complex details of project design and implementation in which all interlocutors develop specialized knowledge not only about how the projects function but also on the concessions and trade-offs that have been made over time.

• On the other hand, this form of participation opens up the Program up to a number of criticisms. Some informants questioned the representativeness of the individuals that have greatest access to key decision-makers. They also questioned the transparency of the processes, suggesting that deals were being made between government and leadership of the GTA and RMA that network members might not agree with were they more actively involved. It is difficult to determine whether or not this actually occurred. The fact, however, that such questionings were relatively common suggests that the predominance of informal decision-making raises some problems for the legitimacy of Program decisions.

In addition to gaining access to key decision-makers, CSOs utilize a number of other instruments to seek to influence Program decisions which we can refer to as “movement techniques” since they are the same types of actions that social movements engage in whenever they seek to change government policies from the outside. These largely include circulating documents (such as the ‘Mind the Gap! series by Friends of the Earth and GTA), writing open letters to high level Government, Donors and World Bank officials; and gaining access to the press to mobilize public opinion in their favor.

According to some informants, these “public” actions of the network tend to be much more radical than the positions held during the ‘closed door” negotiation processes described above. This is reasonable, since negotiations necessarily result in concessions for all parties. Presenting more radical positions publicly, however, has allowed the networks to gain public opinion support for them, which in turn gives them more bargaining power when negotiating the details “behind closed doors”.

In general, “movement techniques” when utilized intensely have influenced Program decision-making. The most striking examples of this is the fact that projects such as RESEX, PD/A and PPTAL, around which there was substantial mobilization by both national and international CSOs, were among the first to be implemented. While this fact confirms the importance of informal mechanisms of influence on the program, it also reflects its ad hoc style of participatory decision-making. On the one hand, it is certain that where CSOs mobilize to influence decisions, they are largely able to do so. On the other hand, no broader mechanism systematically promotes participation where such mobilization does not occur, as we will see in the next section.


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2.3 Influence in Project Design and Implementation

Each Project within the Pilot Program is characterized by a distinct form of decision-making. As a result, the extent to which CSOs influence design and implementation varies dramatically among projects. The next section will summarize the extent of influence CSOs have had in the projects that have a longer history of implementation (it is too early to determine the full extent of influence of these groups in more recently initiated projects such as PROMANEJO and PROVARZEA). The following section describes the design processes of two projects, PROMANEJO and Rainforest Corridors, the first of which only recently began to be implemented and the other which is still in negotiation.

Participation in the Design and Implementation of the Earlier Projects

PD/A (Demonstration Projects)

The Demonstrative Projects sub-program is implemented by the SCA and has the general objective of contributing to conservation, preservation and sustainable development of natural resources in the Amazon and Atlantic Forests by supporting local initiatives by CSOs and municipal governments with grants of up to $200,000. By May, 2000, 158 projects had been approved in four thematic areas: environmental preservation (8), forest management (49), agroforestry systems and recuperating degraded areas (84) and aquatic resources management (17). Seventy-nine percent of the projects were implemented in the Amazon region (125) and 21% in the Atlantic Forest (33). All but three of the projects approved were carried out by CSOs (see Chapter 3 for more discussion of the projects).

Soon after the Pilot Program was underway, the PD/A became one of the privileged spaces within the Program for CSO participation. Creating a funding line in the Program that would go to CSOs grew not only out of pressure from the CSO sector (in Brazil and abroad), but also out of the increasingly popular notion in the international development sector that local communities had access to traditional knowledge about how to use environmental resources sustainably and that local organizations had the capacity to carry out certain kinds of productive and environmental protection activities that government could not (Hall, 1998).

The design of the PD/A project began with the hiring of a consultant from a U.S. based environmental NGO who developed an initial proposal, which was discussed intensely with the founding organizations of the GTA. In a later stage, when the project expanded to include the Atlantic Forest region, the RMA was invited to participate in discussions on how to restructure the project in this context. According to CSO representatives from both networks, their presence at the design phase was critical for insuring that the funding mechanisms used would be appropriate for the specific needs of CSOs, guaranteeing a greater deal of flexibility both in terms of what could be funded and in terms of allowing for changes over the course of project implementation (see Chapter 5)11.

In the implementation stage, PD/A is widely agreed to be the project over which CSOs have the most influence at the Project level (participation within sub-projects will be discussed in Chapter 3). The project incorporates an Executive Committee with deliberative powers in which CSOs have an equal number of seats as government representatives (See Table 2.2). The commission’s principal mandate is to select sub-projects. But in practice, its activities have gone beyond this task, involving broader decisions about changes in criteria for

11 See Soares (2000) for a comparison of PD/A to other World Bank financed social funds in Brazil.


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selection and about adjusting project priorities. The project also includes numerous informal mechanisms of participation that are not, as is the case of the Program as a whole, ad hoc. That is, network participation in everyday decision-making is systematic and transparent. Twice a year, the project holds planning meetings to which network leadership are invited. Furthermore, since 1999, the Technical Secretary and the Adjunct Secretary are selected from a list defined by the networks themselves.

PD/A is fundamentally different from the other projects in the Pilot Program since, with the exception of a few sub-projects implemented by municipal governments, it primarily involves the direct transfer of funds to the civil society sector. In this context, the project has two unusual characteristics: 1) the government representatives on the Executive Committee do not compete with CSOs for “a piece of the pie”12; and 2) although it is involved in broader decision-making, the Executive Committee has a much more clearly defined mandate than other project committees: to select sub-projects for financing. Both of these factors contribute to giving CSOs a great deal of control over key decisions: on the one hand their influence is not challenged by other sectors; on the other hand, their mandate is a clearly defined task that is central to project decision-making.

All informants interviewed agreed that CSOs have a strong influence over project-level decision making. However, the reasons given varied substantially. A common statement by both CSO and government informants expressed the belief that the PD/A is “CSO territory”, which the government has “allowed” CSOs to control. According to one CSO informant, this implies a tacit agreement that CSOs, in turn, will not try to influence projects perceived as ‘government territory’, such as NRPP. According to several other informants, such a “divvying up” of the Program may have occurred in the early years, but as the networks consolidated and acceptance of participatory decision-making grew within the government, this relation changed. These informants suggest that the main reason that CSOs have influence over decisions as government is that both side generally agree about how project funds should be allocated, especially after the Technical Secretariat began to be chosen from names proposed by the GTA. Several informants noted that the government representatives selected by their institutions to sit the Executive Committee tend to be individuals sympathetic to the community based projects.

However, some differences between government positions and CSO positions on the Executive Committee were cited regarding project selection. One informant noted that CSO representatives tend to give more priority to distributing funds to CSOs within the networks than to the goal of promoting ‘demonstrative’, and therefore “unique” projects, which government representatives prefer. Another informant said that government representatives, unlike CSOs, tend to resist allowing projects to spend more than a minimum amount on personnel and capital expenditures. But most informants agreed that these differences had to do with the details of decision-making and far from represented major conflicts between government and civil society sectors on the committee. In this sense, it seems that the general agreement about project goals and a clarity about the mandate of the Executive Commission allowed for a relatively peaceful relationship between government and civil society in the PD/A.

12 Municipal governments, which are eligible to receive funds do not have representatives on the Committee, a factor that certainly reduces tensions and favors CSOs.


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The Extractive Reserves Project (RESEX)

The general objective of the RESEX project is to test models of economic, social, and environmental management in four extractive reserves, perfecting methods used by traditional populations through the joint management between government and society of the project. The project has five specific objectives: to complete the legalization of the Extractive Reserves; to strengthen community organizations and build social and community infra-structure on the reserves; to develop, test and disseminate appropriate technologies for subsistence and commercialization, prioritizing non-timber forest products; to perfect the management and conservation of natural resources on the extractive reserves; and to promote participatory methods of project administration.

Of all the PPG7 projects, the one that grew most clearly in response to the demands of a prior social movement was the Extractive Reserves Project. As noted earlier, well before the Pilot Program began, the Rubber Tappers’ Movement, spearheaded by the CNS, had gained international fame. With the murder of CNS leader Chico Mendes, pressure grew in both national and international public opinion to create extractive reserves which would serve the double purpose of guaranteeing the rubber tappers’ (and other extractivist populations’) land rights and protecting the environment. Laws were passed creating a number of Extractive Reserves and the Centro Nacional de Desenvolvimento Sustentado das Populações Tradicionais (CNPT) was established within IBAMA, the federal environmental enforcement agency, to work with them. However, public policies still did exist to ensure that the reserves would actually be established nor to create basic conditions to ensure that the populations living in them could survive. It was in this context that the proposal to create a specific project within the Pilot Program for the extractive reserves gained force.

According to CNS leaders, initially, their participation in the design of the project faced government resistance. CNPT informants interviewed disagreed, however, arguing that from the beginning they were careful to include the CNS in the design of the project. It is clear that the CNS ultimately had substantial influence over how the project was designed. A fundamental idea behind the project was that all resources would be “co-managed” by the CNPT and local associations. One central area of disagreement, however, was whether new associations should be created on the reserves to work with the project or whether the project should work with existing organizations, such as the rural labor unions (STRs) and the local offices of the CNS. According to the mid-term review of the project, “an understanding was obtained about this issue, with the assurance that the new associations would act in conjunction with the STRs, regional offices of the CNS and existing organizations (Irving and Millikan, 1997:23). Nevertheless, as we will see in Chapter 5, tensions between these organizations and the reserve associations were never fully resolved.

Unlike the PD/A, where the most important decisions are made by the central office in Brasília, the decision-making structure of RESEX was highly decentralized to the level of each of the four extractive reserves. A Consultative Commission with eight of the fifteen members representing civil society was created (the remainder are representatives of IBAMA), but with a much less active role than the PD/A Executive Committee. CSO representatives on this Commission include six representatives of the Reserve communities, one representative of CNS and one of GTA (See Table 2.2). The main function of the Commission, which met annually during the four years of the first phase of the project, is to monitor the program by approving annual reports of program activities and making general


34

recommendations. It is not the primary site of CSO participation in the project. However, this does not mean that participation within the project is not systematic: at the sub-project level, decision making has been highly participatory, as will be discussed in Chapter 3. At the Project level, informal mechanisms of influence are also present, largely in the (often tense) relationships between the CNS and the Technical Secretariat.

Reserve residents, on the other hand, are only peripherally involved in general Project decision-making. Several of the reserve residents interviewed expressed criticisms about some aspects of the way the project was designed and about how resources were allocated. Nevertheless, the solution proposed by these informants was not greater participation on the Consultative Commission (although theoretically this might have increased their satisfaction with project level decision-making), but an even greater decentralization of project decision-making giving more autonomy to reserve organizations. This criticism has been incorporated into the design of Phase 2 of the RESEX project, which is awaiting approval.

The Indigenous Lands Project (PPTAL)

The central objective of the Indigenous Lands project, which is implemented by the Brazilian indigenous people’s agency, FUNAI, is the creation and protection of indigenous reserves. The project incorporates activities dealing with the identification, demarcation, legalization of indigenous reserves, with the surveillance and protection of indigenous lands and with research and capacity building. By May of 2000, project completed 38 demarcations, was in the process of demarcating 16 lands and was preparing to demarcate another 14. Another 68 areas were still in the identification stage which occurs prior to demarcation.

Donor and World Bank sectors initially proposed that indigenous populations and CSOs working with them be involved in the project’s design, but government resistance to such participation was strong. The indigenous protection agency, FUNAI, responsible for the project was characterized by an ideology against indigenous participation. At the same time, Brazilian Foreign Ministry perceived indigenous lands as a question of national sovereignty, and was extremely suspicious of CSO “meddling” in this area. Finally, with some exceptions, indigenous groups themselves were not very well organized at the time the project was under implementation, although there was a growing movement of national and international CSOs in defense of indigenous rights. In this context, indigenous groups played a minimal role in the design of the project, although there was interest on the part of donors and some sectors of the government that increasing indigenous participation should be one of the unofficial goals of the project.

During the implementation phase, however, PPTAL underwent a major transformation with respect to participatory decision-making. The creation of a Consultative Commission with 50% of the seats given to indigenous representatives named by COIAB, one of several umbrella indigenous organizations in the Amazon, the project made a significant break with traditions in indigenous policy in Brazil (See Table 2.2). Interviews showed a great deal of disagreement about the extent of real influence this commission had on Project decision-making. The general conclusion of the study is, however, that the commission has in fact had an important role in project decision-making. It has met 11 times between 1996 and 1999, on several occasions in locations in the Amazon region. In addition to the official representatives, these Amazon-based meetings have benefited from the extensive presence of other indigenous representatives adding substantially to the transparency of the program.


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Initially, no mechanism existed to register the Commissions recommendations. From the fifth meeting on, however, a special document was approved at the end of each meeting listing recommendations. An analysis of project decision-making shows that these despite the formally “consultative” character of the Commission, these recommendations were been implemented almost in their entirety. For example, of the 20 recommendations made at the seventh meeting, twelve had been carried out by the eighth meeting and all had been carried out by the tenth meeting. Of the 17 recommendations made at the eighth meeting, all but one had been carried out by the tenth meeting. Nevertheless, indigenous participants were not always aware that the recommendations were taken into account and several informants suggested that if the commission were perceived to be more effective, participation would be more intense, since indigenous representatives would take the meetings more seriously. This proposal was approved in June 2000 and the impact of the Commissions new deliberative status has yet to be seen.

The Natural Resources Policy Program (NRPP)

The Natural Resources Policy Program is implemented by the SCA and has undergone significant changes since it began implementation. The original objectives of the project focused on strengthening the policy analysis, regulatory and implementation capacity of state level environmental agencies, to implement activities in zoning and environmental monitoring, enforcement and control in selected locations in the states and to support the decentralization of environmental management from the federal to the state and municipal levels (World Bank, 1994).

In 1996-97, the NRPP went through a process of restructuring that altered the objectives and components of the project. This change reflected difficulties in the initial stage of implementation, especially a tendency for the investments in "institutional strengthening" of state environmental agencies to show little impact on integrated actions in environmental management. The specific objectives of the project were redefined as follows: 1) integrated implementation of activities in environmental management in priority areas selected by the states; 2) strengthening of the capacities of state environmental agencies to analyze and formulate policies in regulation and environmental management; 3) support for decentralization of environmental management, from the federal to the state and municipal levels; 4) integration of the diverse environmental agencies at the state level with the public and private sectors and 5) dissemination of environmental information. In addition to a project administration component, the project now includes a component dealing with the design of Integrated Environmental Management Projects (PGAIs) and a component aimed at creating institutional capacity in the states to address demands that extrapolate the specific actions of the PGAIs (SPRN, 1999). (See Chapter 4 for more details on state sub-projects) During the initial design phase of NRPP (1993-94), no systematic effort was made to include the participation of CSOs. Although two regional workshops were held in 1993, including the presence of several NGOs, consultations with CSOs were not conceived as significant to the process of project design. The lack of CSO participation in the initial design phase appears to reflect, on the one hand, a prevailing view among coordinating institutions that since NRPP was envisioned as a public policy project, mainly aimed at institutional strengthening of state environmental agencies, CSO involvement at this stage was largely irrelevant. On the other hand, CSOs did not make concerted efforts to influence the design phase of NRPP, for reasons which are discussed in more detail in Chapter 4.


36

The absence of effective participation of CSOs and other stakeholders (e.g. private sector, municipal governments) in the initial design phase of NRPP is reflected in the original structure and operational strategy of the project, with its strong emphasis on the institutional strengthening of governmental agencies responsible for environmental control and technical activities in ecological-economic zoning. Moreover, as discussed in Chapter 4, the design phase of NRPP and the structure that emerged from this process had important repercussions, in terms of the potential for CSO participation in state-level planning and implementation.

Similar to RESEX, the most important NRPP decisions are made at the sub-project level, in this case through state government institutions. But representatives CSOs are much more critical of this decentralized approach in NRPP than in RESEX, since most of the state institutions involved have shown little interest in giving CSOs significant influence over decision-making (see Chapter 4).

At the Project level, a Projects Commission with deliberative powers includes nine members of which two are from CSOs representing traditionally excluded groups and one from CSOs representing the industrial sector (See Table 2.2). The mission of this commission is to approve the Integrated Environmental Management Plans of each state, to approve emergency funding for the states, to analyze and approve bi-yearly progress reports, to define norms, criteria, procedures and to deliberate about strategic goals of the project. Since 1996, it has met 14 times. Despite this relative frequency of meetings, the commission has been largely ineffective at reaching its goals because NRPP has suffered from chronic central management problems that have made it difficult to effectively implement the Commission’s recommendations.

In this context, CSO representatives have had little influence over central project management because their participation has been largely reduced to a commission which itself had little practical influence. Furthermore, the informal mechanisms of CSO influence that have predominated at elsewhere in the Program have not been prevalent in this project. CSO informants generally suggest that until recently, they have little access to information about project activities and little voice in decision-making. It should be noted that currently, the project is seeking to address these problems, especially in terms of improving participatory mechanisms at the state level (as will be discussed in more in chapter 4).

Science Centers and Directed Research – Emergency Assistance and Phase 1 13

This project was implemented by the Ministry of Science and Technology and had two objectives: 1) to provide institutional funding to develop two “Centers of Scientific Excellence” in the Amazon region (INPA in Manaus and Museu Goeldi in Belém) and 2) to finance research projects geared towards the general issues involved in the Pilot Program. A first call for proposals for the Directed Research Component financed 23 research projects in 1996. In 1998, an additional 30 studies were funded.

Unlike the other projects examined above, the Science Sub-program did not create a new commission to monitor the project. Instead, the project took advantage of a pre-existing commission within the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Regional Coordinating Commission for Research in the Amazon (CORPAM), which had been created in 1989 to

13 Henceforth referred to as the “Science sub-program.”


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develop research guidelines for the Amazon region. This commission was assigned the task of analyzing the proposals for the project, meeting regularly during the design phase.

CORPAM had, among its seventeen members, two from conservationist CSOs in the region (See Table 2.2). During the period that the Science Sub-program was designed, one of the founding CSOs of the GTA sat on the commission. Nevertheless, the project never was perceived by the GTA as having been designed in conjunction with the CSO community. Indeed, from the beginning, the GTA complained that the project was not geared towards the interests of local populations, serving instead to fund scientific efforts that were not necessarily a priority for promoting sustainable development.

During the implementation stage, this distance from the CSO sector only widened, as even CORPAM met rarely. A CSO informant who represented the GTA on the commission during this phase noted that the majority of commission members were only concerned with “scientific” issues and had little interest in dealing with the most pressing environmental or social problems of the region. The opinions of the two CSOs on the large commission tended to be disconsidered. Essentially, there was no regular or systematic formal mechanism in place for CSO contributions to Project decisions. Nor did CSOs feel that the project was open to their informal participation.

Of the first selection of twenty four research projects in the Directed Research component of the study, the majority were implemented by government research institutions (especially INPA, in Manaus). Most of the studies focused on generating basic scientific knowledge about issues such as alternative uses of environmental resources or about the impacts of deforestation. Few included policy recommendation or dissemination components. Even fewer actively involved local communities in the research.

By the middle of the project’s implementation phase, criticisms were mounting that the project failed to promote studies relevant to the Pilot Program. A second call for proposals in 1998 showed a number of changes. A much larger number of studies carried out by Amazon-based NGOs were approved and many more projects involved local populations either in the research itself or in later dissemination stages. According to one government informant this resulted in part from a new rule requiring that the principal investigating institution be located in the Amazon region, giving more space to research NGOs and to projects with greater “insertion” in local problems.

Nevertheless, CSOs still criticized the project for being overly “technical” and for failing to incorporate the GTA in decisions about thematic priorities. These criticisms reached their height at a 1999 seminar presenting the results of the first group of studies. Project representatives responded that research priorities focused on technical quality precisely because no demand for research on specific themes was generated by other sectors involved in the Pilot Program, including CSOs. Since, however, this critique only intensified in the final stages of the project, the opportunity CSOs to attempt to influence the project by demanding research on specific issues was effectively missed (unless a Phase 2 is approved).


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Table 2.2

Composition of Project Commissions

Decision-making Power

Total Number of Seats

CSOs representing Traditionally Excluded Groups

Government Others

PD/A Executive Committee

Deliberative 10 3 – GTA 2 – RMA

1 – FUNAI 1 – Banco do Brasil 1 – IBAMA 1 – Ministry of Science and Technology 1 – Ministry of Environment

RESEX Consultative Commission

Consultative 15 1 – GTA 1 – CNS 6 – Reserve Associations

7 - IBAMA

PPTAL Consultative Commission

Consultativea 8 4 – Representatives nominated by COIAB

1 – Ministry of Justice 1 – Ministry of Environment 2 – FUNAI

NRPP Projects Commission

Deliberative 9 1 – Environmental CSO 1 – Social CSO

2 – State environmental Agencies 1—Ministry of Environment 1 – IBAMA 1—Technical Secretariat of NRPP

1-- Industrial CSO

Science Sub-Program CORPAM

Consultative 17 2 – Conservationist CSOs 1—Ministry of Science and Technology 1- IBAMA 1- SUDAM 1- SUDECO 1- INPA 1 – CNPq 1 – EMBRAPA 1 – FINEP 1—State Government

3 – Universities 3 – Researchers


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Participation in the Design of Two Later Projects

As the approximation between CSOs and government described earlier took place, project design within the Pilot Program naturally became more participatory. The projects that took the longest to get off the ground all incorporated systematic discussion processes about design which involved CSOs. The cases of PROMANEJO and Rain Forest Corridors provide some lessons about how CSOs can effectively influence project design.

PROMANEJO

The Forestry Management in the Amazon Region project, PROMANEJO, was originally included in the Pilot Program under the name National Forests (FLONAS) and principally emphasized developing IBAMA’s institutional capacity for protecting three National Forests in the region. It was through a series of workshops involving all sectors affected by the project that the profile of the project was radically reconsidered. In 1995, a workshop was held in Belém that included representatives of CSOs and the logging industry, in addition to state and federal government. Several informants noted that the commentary by one industry representative was critical for changing the focus of the project. This participant noted that there was no economic incentive for loggers to work in National Forests when they could easily extract timber in much more accessible areas. This argument led workshop participants to agree that the project should address forest management policy more generally, and not just provide infrastructure for National Forests.

A second meeting was critical not only for defining the general design of the project, but also for insuring that components addressing the needs of local populations would be included. This four-day meeting took place on a boat near the Tapajós National Forest, where intense conflicts had taken place over the course of several decades between the populations living within the reserve and both IBAMA and the logging industry.

Informants agreed that the way this workshop was organized provided many lessons for how to motivate diverse sectors with conflicting interests to design a project together. The workshop was organized by an environmental CSO, IMAFLORA, which worked closely with government and World Bank representatives to coordinate the meeting. Participants were carefully selected to represent an even balance of representatives from environmental CSOs, local populations, the logging industry and government. An effort was also made to balance representatives from the different regions of the Amazon. Other people (representing local communities) who attempted to join the workshop were not allowed in the decision-making meetings, but were invited to meet informally with the group in the evenings. Holding the meeting in a boat turned out to play an important role in pressuring the group to achieve consensus. According to several informants, the fact that the participants could not leave the meeting made it necessary for the different sectors to confront their differences. The metaphor of the boat also served a pedagogic purpose: the phrase “we are all in the same boat” was repeatedly cited to express the need to come to an agreement.

The meeting was initially characterized by intense conflict, but over the course of several days, informants noted that the confrontation among groups diminished substantially. Several informants cite the evening discussions around the bar as an informal space in which tensions dissipated. This is not to suggest that the conflicts dividing groups with different interests were resolved, but rather that opportunity for an extended exchange of views help


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the participants develop some comprehension of and respect for other perspectives. The result was relative agreement about the design of the project which would include four basic components addressing the diversity of problems the forest management issue involved. The presence of community groups from the Tapajós national forest certainly helped ensure that one of those components would address the specific problems faced in that area. CSO participation also helped design a ‘Promising Initiatives’ component, along the lines of the PD/A project, which would include a funding line for innovative community management projects.

After the boat workshop, a series of other meetings were held in Brasília to refine the proposal, in which some of the most “committed” representatives present at the two earlier meetings participated. But all informants agreed that the boat workshop created the conditions for these more detailed discussions to take place.

The project encountered problems however, after the design phase, due to slow negotiations among the Brazilian government, World Bank and two donor countries to approve the project. Two years went by between the finalization of the proposal and approval, during which, according to informants, many of the negotiations established during the design phase broke down. For example, of 21 initial proposals suggested for the Promising Initiatives component, only four were viable by the time the funding came through since the implementing groups involved were no longer able to carry the sub-projects out. The most serious ramifications of this delay were in the Tapajós National Forest, where local communities had a great deal of distrust of IBAMA, which had for decades threatened to remove the population from the area. A delicate credibility built through discussions with the local communities, including through a number of planning activities financed by ‘pre-investment’ funds, was seriously shaken by the fact that the project failed to begin in a timely fashion.14

Rainforest Corridors

The Rainforest Corridors project also underwent fundamental changes during the design phase, during which the basic idea emerged of promoting the integrated management of different types of protected areas. Like PROMANEJO, the Corridors project affected a variety of interest groups, ranging from CSOs, businesses, and local, state and federal governments. The process of design was quite different from the PROMANEJO experience, however. In the initial stages of design, which began in 1996, consultations with CSOs and other sectors were carried out through a loosely organized process in which consultants developed progressive versions of the project, which were subsequently circulated to different groups for comments. According to one informant, four consultants were engaged in this process and twenty-nine versions of the project were ultimately produced. For this informant, the loosely organized process of consultation discouraged, rather than encouraged, consensus-building:

“The problem was that the Bank permitted an excess of debates. Corridors was the largest

project within the Pilot Program. It involves 50 million dollars. So each time the proposal

14 For a description of activities with local communities in the Tapajós National Forest, see Fatheuer (1998).


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was opened for discussion, different groups presented their criticisms. One can’t discuss

something for such a long time!”

In mid 1998, two workshops were carried out to discuss the proposal. According to one informant, the workshops served to collect opinions about the project, but they were “one- time events” with no posterior continuity. Furthermore, they involved a much larger group of parties than those who would take part in the actual implementation of the project. The result was that these workshops were unable to develop the kind of detailed consensus that the project was lacking. In July 1998, in order to give some closure to the discussion, the World Bank and the Ministry of Environment created an informal working group with a balance of government and non-government representatives, including only those sectors that would later have a role in the project’s implementation. This group had the goal of finalizing the project by the end of the year. According to informants, it was the creation of a closed, but representative group with a specific time limit to come up with a final project that allowed for the design of a project which would be accepted by all sides.

“In the workshops, all kinds of people were present, including many who would not have

any future responsibility. A ton of opinions appeared that would or would not be

incorporated. They were not people who would get involved in project implementation,

and for this reason it wasn’t real participation. The ones who would get involved in

implementation were IBAMA, the state governments, the CSO networks, and FUNAI. Its

these groups who were included in the Working Group. We created a group that would

take the proposal to its conclusion. Who would have responsibility. They were delegates

of their sectors that were going to sign the proposal together.”

Nevertheless, as in the PROMANEJO case, the project was subsequently stalled in the approval process and remains so to this day. None of the informants could provide a satisfactory explanation for this paralysis, although one suggested that the absence of donor representatives in the working group may have limited the potential for later approval of the project by donors.

General Conclusions about Participation in Project Design and Implementation

Despite the great diversity of experiences described above, a number of general conclusions can be made about the ability of CSOs to influence project level decision-making in the Pilot Program.

The Importance of Participatory Design for Participatory Implementation

Those projects that were designed with substantial CSO participation continued to be participatory throughout project implementation.


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• Design processes are more likely to motivate CSOs to participate both in the design and later implementation when those who participate in the design stage are given responsibilities in the implementation stage. This does not mean that funds should be allocated only to those institutions or CSOs that participate in design, but that the same actors should be involved in decision-making over the long term.

• The positive effect of participatory design on implementation is dramatically reduced when there are long gaps in time between the two stages.

• The design phase of the project cycle is a critical opportunity to develop a perception among those groups that the projects work with issues of their concern and thereby to motivate participation in implementation (this is what some refer to as “ownership”). This may fail to occur even when some representatives of CSOs are involved in design. For example, even though some CSOs were members of the commission that approved the design of the Science sub-program, many CSO informants criticized the project for not attending the needs of traditionally excluded groups and for not including CSO participation. The project was perceived as exceedingly technical, concerning issues distant from the everyday needs of local populations in the Amazon. A more intense effort during the design phase both to disseminate the objectives of the project and to define those objectives in conjunction with a broader selection of CSOs might have increased the sense of ownership on the part of CSOs in the implementation stage. Such a process of redefining the objectives occurred most dramatically in the case of PROMANEJO.

• Consultation processes are most likely to lead to a proposal accepted by all sides if they occur through an ordered process, with clearly designated representatives from each sector involved and a time limit for finishing. Open processes in which any group interested can suggest changes at any time can lead to endless discussion and little agreement.

• Although participatory design seems to be critical for insuring that project implementation is participatory, the relationship is not irreversible. The case of PPTAL is a good example in this respect. Indigenous groups were largely absent from the design of the project and there was no consensus among those government sectors that designed the project that indigenous groups should or could participate effectively in implementation. However, as noted earlier, over the course of the project’s implementation, indigenous groups gained a substantial amount of influence over project decision-making. This change reflects not only the capacitation of indigenous groups over the period, but also a relative opening of the government institutions within the Pilot Program to their participation (although some informants criticized some staff of FUNAI and the GTZ for continuing to resist indigenous participation at the project level). Perhaps most importantly, these changes were possible because of the commitment of the Technical Secretariat to indigenous participation. Parallel processes, unfortunately, did not occur within NRPP and the Science sub-program, where (at least until recently) the Technical Secretariats did not make extensive efforts to make the projects more accessible to CSOs.


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Other Conclusions on Participatory Project Implementation

We cannot expect all projects to have the same amount of influence CSOs because not all projects have as their objectives to solely attend the interests they represent. Where multiple groups are affected by a project, conflicts of interests are more likely to occur. The capacity of CSOs to influence decisions will, obviously, be weaker in these contexts. In this light, PD/A is unusual in that federal and state governments do not compete with CSOs for control over project funds (although municipal governments are eligible for funds, they have largely not taken advantage of that opportunity). Even those other projects that focus on benefiting specific local populations, such as RESEX and PPTAL are characterized by some amount of conflict over control of funds between government institutions and participants.

This means that the participation of all sectors in defining project objectives in the design phase is particularly important in those projects that involve multiple stakeholders. The more consensus about project goals among sectors, or at least about how resources will be divided among sectors, the greater the possibilities for mutually satisfactory negotiations among these sectors in later stages of the project.

Even where CSOs have been implemented in design, however, a series of conditions can limit their participation in the implementation stage. One problem that is often overlooked is that the capacity of CSOs to influence decision-making depends on the capacity of the government sectors to implement projects. Where projects face serious bureaucratic problems limiting implementation capacity, as in the case of NRPP, the extent of influence CSOs may have over the recommendations made by formally established commissions will not correlate with an actual influence over project actions, since the capacity of the project to implement such recommendations is limited.

Another problem repeatedly cited by CSO informants has to do with the way decision-making processes are timed. CSO representatives on committees and working groups are often requested to submit proposals and suggestions with very little time to do so in consultation with the groups they are supposed to represent. As one CSO informant noted:

“We work, preparing a ton of things. Then a long time goes by without a response. Then suddenly the answer: ‘We have a week to resolve this problem. Please respond urgently!’... So when everything is urgent, there is no time to make contact with the other organizations and ask for their opinions”. One informant suggested that the Pilot Program should make a practice not only of giving CSOs time to develop proposals, but also to give “mini-budgets” to them to fund small meetings to discuss specific project decisions to be made.

The above discussion of project design and implementation shows that CSO sectors have not always mobilized intensely on their own to demand participation. In the early stages of the program, where this demand was not made, CSO tended to be excluded from decision-making process. However, some of the cases presented suggest that pro-active efforts on the part of the government agencies can be effective in promoting that mobilization. As mentioned above, in the case of PPTAL, the Technical Secretariat, with the support of the Bank and donors, opted to respect the Consultative Commission’s recommendations, thus giving the commission more credibility and motivating indigenous groups to participate. It is also possible for government agencies to disseminate information about projects and organize activities in which CSOs are encouraged to participate. In the


39

case of the PROMANEJO design process, mobilization by CSOs around the project was in part a result of the efforts by government (and donors/World Bank) to encourage such mobilization. Unfortunately, such pro-active behavior has not been characteristic of all projects within the Pilot Program.

A final conclusion has to do with the formal deliberative status of decision-making commissions. While many CSO informants suggest that only deliberative commissions are effective, a comparison of the different commissions suggests that formally deliberative powers do not correlate directly with a greater CSO influence on project activities. Both PD/A and NRPP have deliberative commissions, but only the first has effective influence over decision-making. At the same time, PPTAL had, until recently, a formally consultative commission but its recommendations were implemented almost in their entirety. Other issues, such as those noted previously, seem to be more important than the formally defined deliberative power of those commissions for determining the influence that CSOs will have over them.


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CHAPTER III

Participation in Community-Based Project Design and Implementation:

Demonstration Sub-Projects, Extractive Reserves and Indigenous Land Demarcations

The Pilot Program involves two fundamentally different kinds of sub-projects. On the one hand are sub-projects that work directly with local community groups in efforts that directly attend their needs and interests. On the other hand are sub-projects that work with much a broader selection of stakeholders and deal with more general policy-making activities. This chapter will focus on the first group of sub-projects, while the next chapter will examine CSO participation in policy-making sub-project. Unlike the remainder of this report, this chapter looks not only at the participation of CSOs, but also of “beneficiaries” more generally, since in some of the sub-projects (especially PPTAL), participatory efforts do not involve formally established associations and in others the extent to which beneficiaries, and not just those who are members of associations, have access to decision-making is an important issue to explore.

A number of Pilot Program projects involve sub-projects that work with specific local communities. Of these, PD/A, RESEX and PPTAL have been implemented for a long enough time to allow for analysis. Two others, PROMANEJO and PROVÁRZEA, have community components which are too recent to evaluate. This chapter will, therefore, focus on the first three projects.

The basic presuppositions of each of these three projects with respect to how community groups should participate in decision-making are fundamentally different. There are two general aspects in which the projects differ: 1) the origin of the proposals that the sub-projects carry out and 2) the extent to which government or CSOs are responsible for defining the types of decision-making processes to occur. The participatory demarcation projects, which are the main emphasis of PPTAL, are largely government initiatives in which the Technical Secretariat determines what kind of participatory process involving indigenous groups will occur. It is up to the executing agency alone to decide if a demarcation process is to occur with more or less indigenous participation. PD/A, on the other hand, involves transferring resources to associations that implement projects of their own initiative in which they determine the kinds of decision-making processes that will occur. The role of the Technical Secretariat (through the project level participatory mechanisms discussed earlier) is to define general criteria for project management and to monitor implementation, but not to actually design the decision-making structure of sub-projects. RESEX stands between these two extremes: some of the initiatives of the project were proposed by the Technical Secretariat while others were proposed by local communities. In general, decisions made involved a detailed negotiation between government and association representatives.

Given these differences, it is difficult to come to general conclusions about these projects. Instead, a comparison of the three is useful for understanding the diversity of participatory mechanisms that can be used in community-level project design and implementation and to delineate some of the costs and benefits of each.

3.1 Participation in Indigenous Lands Demarcations

The demarcation of indigenous lands is a complex process, beginning with the identification of the area, going on to the physical process of putting up markers and trails on the borders on the area and finally involving a complex legal process of compensating land-owners residing


41

in the area and formally creating the reserve. PPTAL has for the most part involved indigenous participation only in the middle stage, of physical demarcation. Some activities also take place in the surveillance and protection component of the project, which occurs after physical demarcation. In very few cases have indigenous representatives been involved in the identification stage, even though this stage is of fundamental importance for effective demarcation.

Special Characteristics of Indigenous Participation

Before outlining how indigenous participation has occurred in the project, several general considerations should be made about the special characteristics of indigenous groups and the way they are organized.

• Indigenous participants come from entirely different cultures than the Western culture that has influenced the way the Pilot Program and the Indigenous Lands project has been defined. The most critical example in this respect has to do with the diverse way that different indigenous groups define “territory”, the demarcation of which is the object of the project. Many indigenous societies in Brazil do not rigidly define their territories in geographic terms. Put extremely simply, this means that the potential participants do not necessarily have the same objectives as the Project, since they do not define their territories as physically “demarcatable”.

• Although all the social groups that participate within the Program are characterized by internal differences and divisions, indigenous groups are particularly differentiated among themselves, since cultural differences among communities mean that there are not always any linkages or bonds of solidarity among them.

• Indigenous groups have complex political structures that are not necessarily adaptable to the concept of “project participation”. For example, where indigenous associations exist that are legally formed and organized according to western customs, these groups may not actually represent the leadership of their communities. In other cases, single indigenous lands may be inhabited by a number of groups, not all of which are organized in associations. The physical presence of indigenous representatives in PPTAL activities, therefore, should not be considered to be a direct indicator of effective indigenous participation. Other indicators should be developed that incorporate the representativeness factor.

During the four year period over which PPTAL was elaborated and negotiated (1992-1996) indigenous participation was always considered one of the central elements of the Project and constituted one of the formal mandates of the program. But in practice, there were few experiences with indigenous participation in prior demarcations conducted by FUNAI. This meant that PPTAL had to invent a methodology in order to fulfill this mandate. Perhaps one of the most important conclusions we can make about participation in demarcation processes is that the project showed a clear tendency towards methodological experimentation. This is explained in part because of the diversity of conditions in which the processes were taking place but also reveals an institutional preoccupation in complying with this mandate. One of the results of this experimentation is that the project tested a number of methods for demarcating indigenous lands with varying degrees of success. Four general models (each including a number of sub-models) of participatory demarcation have been applied over the course of the project.


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Self-Demarcations

Given the lack of FUNAI experience with indigenous participation in demarcation, cases of self-demarcation that began prior to the implementation of PPTAL and which never were directly under the project’s responsibility served as important examples for the project. Two cases – of the Waiãpi (see Gallois 1999) and of the Kulina (see Monteiro 1999) – served as pilot experiments from which several lessons were learned. In both cases, local indigenous groups were the principal actors in the demarcation processes. Unlike conventional demarcations, external companies were not hired to carry out the physical work of delimiting the area, although individuals were hired (especially cartographers) to help the indigenous groups in the demarcation tasks. The Waiãpi self-demarcation counted on the support of a indigenist organization, the CTI (Centro de Trabalho Indigenista) and with the technical and financial help of FUNAI and the GTZ. The Kulina self-demarcation received support from the indigenist organization OPAN (Operação Amazônia Nativa), from the missionary organizations CIMI( Conselho Indigenista Missionário da Igreja Católica) and COMIN (Conselho de Missão entre Ïndios da Igreja Evangélica de Confissão Luterana no Brasil) and from the indigenous organization UNI (União das Nações Indígenas).

The principal advantage of the self-demarcation model is that, since the indigenous inhabitants themselves take the initiative and carry out the physical labor, the land demarcated becomes part of the consciousness and action of the indigenous group itself. Since they are the “authors” and the “actors” of the demarcation, the process is internalized into their daily lives.

The principal disadvantage of this model is that it tends to take a long time (in the Kulina case the demarcation took seven years), which would certainly be incompatible with institutionally established deadlines and which would present problems considering the high demand for demarcations that the project faced. But the main reason that these self-demarcation experiences could not become models for FUNAI was that the legal sector of FUNAI determined that legislation on government contracting required that all demarcations taking place through the institution would have to incorporate a formal competitive bidding. This would prohibit indigenous groups from hiring the people that they wished.

In response to this experience, PPTAL established other models of participatory demarcation, which can be classified in four categories, following a scale that goes from minimum to full participation. For each model, we will briefly present one example. It should be noted that these examples are not intended to show “typical” cases, which would be difficult to do given the diversity of experiences, but to raise some of the problems and potential solutions presented by each the model.

The Minimal Participation Model

In the first model, indigenous groups monitor the work of a company contracted to carry out the demarcation. This model is used when no indigenous associations exist capable of taking on a more active role. Two meetings are held between the indigenous community or communities and the company, at the beginning and at the end of the demarcation. In the first meeting, the company explains its planned activities and discusses the work schedule and the indigenous groups determine the representatives who will monitor the activities. Formal meeting minutes are passed on to FUNAI. At the meeting that occurs at the end of the


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demarcation, the company must present the work carried out and hear complaints and differences on the part of the indigenous groups. These questions must be noted in a meeting minutes again turned into FUNAI. Recently, the obligation to carry out these meetings was incorporated into all demarcation contracts, with the first and final installments being paid to the company after the minutes are handed in.

Two complementary mechanisms are used by PPTAL in the implementation of this model:

• Short training activities for members of the indigenous community, who are supplied with basic information about the demarcation, the company and the norms governing the process.

• Financial support to the indigenous representatives selected so that they can effectively participate. This support covers expenditures such as fuel, tools, flashlights, food, etc. and has had the effect of reducing the dependence of the indigenous representatives on the companies.

This model was the first to be implemented and underwent various changes between 1996 and 1998 -- the years that it was used most intensely – due to the diversity of lands being demarcated and the lack of previous experience with participation on the part of FUNAI. Of the 38 indigenous lands demarcated, 14 can be classified in this first group.

One problematic example of this type of demarcation is the case of the Paumari do Lago Manissuã. Here, the demarcation was carried out by a company that arrived in the area and finished its work before having received the authorization of FUNAI (which may reflect both bureaucratic problems on the part of FUNAI and impatience on the part of the company). The community did not receive any preparatory training before the company arrived and there was no formal meeting with the community to present the company’s work plan and to consider indigenous demands (as noted earlier, this meeting is now required in contract). The leader of the community accompanied the company team during the entire demarcation process but never received clarifications about the work being carried out or about his role in the process. When the community members warned the company staff that they were demarcating an incorrect river, the company chose not to listen.

Institutional Articulation

The second model is designed to fill the gaps in the local organizing structure of indigenous groups and to supply technical support. The goal of this model is to make indigenous participation possible through articulation with an external organization. It is fundamental that the external organization understand well the regional context and that it have a history of working directly with the indigenous group. This articulation is carried out by three types of organizations; (a) indigenous organizations that operate at the level of ethnicity, such as the Conselho Indígena Mura; (b) regional indigenous organizations, such as COIAB, UNI-AC and UNI-TEFË; and (c) indigenist organizations. Of the 38 indigenous lands demarcated by PPTAL thus far, 15 can be classified as belonging to this model. Most of them are located in the Negro and Purus Rivers. Due to the lack of viable articulating institutions for most indigenous groups, this model is not applicable in all Amazon regions.

One example of this model is the demarcation of five indigenous lands in the Negro River. The Instituto Socioambiental (ISA) was hired by the Technical Secretariat of the PPTAL to serve as institutional articulator for these demarcations. They were carried out in direct


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collaboration with the Federação das Organizações Indígenas do Rio Negro (FOIRN) and received external financial support from the European Community. ISA has a long history of working in the area and had been instrumental in capacity building and training efforts among FOIRN leadership in the decade prior to the demarcations. In this context, ISA was responsible for monitoring the field work together with local indigenous representatives, for supplying technical data to the company hired to carry out the demarcation, and for cartographic surveys. ISA’s experience with and archival data on the area were critical factors in ensuring a good result of the demarcation project.

Anthropological Facilitation and Support

In the third model, the Technical Secretariat of the PPTAL works with the local indigenous organization to elaborate plans for monitoring the demarcations. These plans guide the work of an anthropologist or other specialist in the group who intervenes in the different phases of the demarcation process. Among the activities carried out are: (a) training indigenous groups in areas such as indigenous legislation, accounting, planning, using sophisticated instruments (such as GPS) and reading satellite images; (b) strengthening local indigenous organizations; and (c) disseminating information about the demarcation -- through maps, public talks, etc.) both among members of the indigenous community and at the regional level through schools, clubs, municipal assemblies, etc. In some case, regional dissemination is carried out by the indigenous people themselves, which helps build relations between indigenous and non-indigenous groups. Six indigenous lands have been implemented through this model, which only began to be used in 1999.

One example of this model is the demarcation of the Poyanawa Lands in Acre, which is being accompanied by the anthropologist, Marcelo Piedrafita. This example is particularly important because it shows some of the possible impacts of this model, including the appearance of conflicts between the company and the local indigenous organization (see Piedrafita 2000) In a preparatory phase, the local indigenous association was responsible for creating an operational coordinating group as well as teams to work with accounting, secretarial work, dissemination, registering and field work. The actual monitoring of the demarcation began with the first meeting between the company and the community. Although this meeting formally fulfilled the contractual obligations of the company, the community was not satisfied with it results. The community therefore organized two additional meetings to continue discussions about demarcation independent of the company. The most serious conflict occurred during the field work, when the Poyanawa representatives informed the company team that area being demarcated did not correspond to the actual borders. The team wanted to ignore these observations, but new mechanisms incorporated into the contract allowed the indigenous groups to halt the demarcation activities. In the meantime, it was discovered that the cartographic and descriptive data being used contained errors. The next step was a special meeting including the Poyanawa Association, the GTZ, PPTAL, the company and FUNAI. The result was that the company would continue to carryout the demarcation, but under new and more precise cartographic information that would incorporate areas that had previously been excluded.

Direct Partnerships

The fourth model, still in the experimental stage, is essentially a refinement of the third model, consisting of direct partnerships between the Technical Secretariat of PPTAL and


45

local indigenous organizations. The organizations elaborate demarcation plans prior to the competitive bidding process, ensuring that the groups are well prepared for the arrival of the company. This model may include the support of anthropologists in some phases of the demarcation. The goal is that the demarcation is incorporated by the indigenous group as a fundamental part of its identity. For it to operate effectively, the partnership must be with an association that represents all the ethnic or village groups of the area to be demarcated.

The demarcation of the Vale do Javari, an indigenous area of more than 8 million hectares, is one of the first cases in which this model is being implemented. Currently, the Technical Secretariat of PPTAL is working directly with the Conselho Indígena do Vale do Javari (CIVAJA) to organize activities prior to actual demarcation. At the same time, this partnership has the support of a permanent regional advisor. Dissemination processes related to the demarcation have been widespread, including, for example, the distribution of T-shirts with the map of the demarcated area. However, since CIVAJA only represents a sub-set of the ethnicities that live in the area, it was also necessary to establish other partnerships. In the southern portion of the area, OPAN is working as an “institutional articulator” with the Canamari groups. This means that this demarcation is in fact a hybrid between the third and fourth models. Two other cases of the fourth model are in the preliminary phases of implementation: the Munduruku indigenous land, in partnership with two local organizations and the Coalá Laranjal indigenous land.

General Considerations about Participatory Demarcations

Table 3.1 synthetically organizes these categories of indigenous participation in demarcation.

Table 3.1

Models of Indigenous Participation in Land Demarcation

Model Number of

Areas

Level of

Participation

Principal

years of use

1. Minimal Participation 14 Low 1996-1998 2. Institutional Articulation 15 ↓ 1997-1999 3. Anthropological Facilitation

and Support 6 ↓ 1999-2000

4. Direct Partnerships 3 High 2000

As the table shows, there is a clear tendency over time to replace less participatory models with more participatory ones, a result of the methodological experimentation mentioned earlier. On the other hand, this tendency does not mean that the less participatory models will disappear since cases may still exist in which their use is appropriate. That is, despite the fact that the Technical Secretariat of PPTAL has demonstrated an interest in using models permitting a greater extent of influence by indigenous groups, this is not always possible for a variety of reasons. There are two factors that should be taken into account in the choice of model to be used in a demarcation.


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1. It is necessary to consider the intensity of contact between the indigenous group and the dominant society. The possibilities for participation are diminished for more isolated groups for whom high levels of participation could lead to health risks due to the introduction of diseases through contact.

2. It is necessary to consider the time and budgeting limitations faced by the project, which can also present basic restrictions to the level of participation, since experience shows that more participatory methods tend to take substantially longer. Since there is an interest in demarcating the largest number of lands possible each year, small areas tend to receive less investment (and therefore less capacity training and fewer contracts with anthropologists to facilitate the work) than large areas and those of greater ecological concern (as is the case of the Alto Rio Negro and the Vale do Javari).

Even when more participatory models were used, the project was not always able to maximize indigenous participation. In a study of eight lands demarcated by PPTAL, Ayers (1999) shows a groups of problems that these experiences have confronted, mostly during the first years of the project. Among the principle difficulties and errors are :

• Deadlines were too short, limiting the capacity of indigenous groups to monitor the processes (as in the cases of Rio Biá, Igarapé Capanã, Inauini/Teuini; Jarawara/Jamamadi/Kanamati) ;

• There was not enough communication between the company, the indigenous communities and the local FUNAI office, so that in some cases the company team arrived without notice, which eliminated the possibility of planned indigenous participation (as in the cases of Paraná do Paricá, Rio Biá, Kanamari do Juruá, Inauini/Teuini);

• In some cases delays in the transfer of funds by FUNAI diminished substantially the capacity of the indigenous representatives to monitor the process (for example, Rio Biá);

• The absence of an anthropologist facilitating the process also complicated relations between the company and the indigenous communities in several cases (Paraná do Boá, Igarapé Capanã, Inauini/Teuini, Jarawara/Jamamadi/Kanamati).

In sum, it is certain that the Minimum Participation model predominated in the first years of the project, and that this model proved to have many failings. But the project was able to learn from these failing, generating later models that gave indigenous groups more participation.

PPTAL also involves a number of complementary actions in the demarcation processes that involve indigenous participation. The four most important types of activities involve capacity building, protection and surveillance of the demarcated lands, radio communications and the Demonstrative Projects for Indigenous Populations (PDPI) project, still in the design phase.

• The research and capacity building component of PDPI was recently reformulated, a result of three years of internal differences within FUNAI with respect to the question of capacity building. Initially, this component was under the responsibility of FUNAI’s Human Resources Department, without direct links to the Technical Secretariat. This department used funds principally to train non-indigenous people who work with indigenous groups. Only this year were the responsibilities for capacity building


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transferred to the Technical Secretariat, which intends to use the components funds to help indigenous groups themselves become more actively involved in the project.

• The surveillance component of PPTAL also evolved to included some participatory aspects. In some cases, surveillance plans are formally elaborated by the indigenous organizations in partnership with the Technical Secretariat. These activities tend to serve as a continuation of the participatory activities that took place in the demarcation case. This is the case of the surveillance projects on the Waiãpi and Kulina lands. The Tumucumaque land is initiating this process.

• Another activity that is being carried out by PPTAL, in partnership with Friends of the Earth, is a radio communication project. This project involves the acquisition of radios, training in their use and bureaucratic support in gaining access to airspace. Rapid internal communication is one of the greatest needs felt by indigenous groups. In addition to having direct application to surveillance of indigenous lands, it helps consolidate social networks within an indigenous land.

3.2 Participation in Extractive Reserves

Compared to PPTAL, the Extractive Reserves project, which works with only four areas in the Amazon region, involved a much more intense and long-term relationship with local organizations. Indeed, one of the objectives of the project is related to increasing the organizing capacities of the reserve populations. In this respect, unlike the PPTAL case, efforts to promote participation concentrated not only on carrying out specific activities with the participation of reserve residents, but on increasing organizing capacities more generally, both in order to make project activities function better and to give reserve organizations sustainability in the long run.

Building Organizing Capacities

The project began with the consolidation of existing associations of reserve residents and the creation of new associations where they did not exist previously. These associations would become the central interlocutor with the project, organizing all of the participatory processes that were involved. Indeed, the discussion of community participation in the RESEX project is inseparable from a more general discussion of how the reserve associations have developed in the context of the project.

Where associations already existed (in the cases of the Ouro Preto, Rio Cajarí and Alto Juruá Reserves), they were re-organized so as to work with the project. In the case of the Rio Ouro Preto reserve, the Associação dos Seringueiros de Guajará-Mirim, which had been created in 1991, was extinguished because of irregularities in accounting for the project. A new association was created in 1996 exclusively for the reserve population, the Associação dos Seringueirso da Reserva Extrativista do Rio Ouro Preto (ASROP). In this case, the creation of ASROP divided the membership of the earlier association, excluding extractivists outside the reserve (Irving and Millikan, 1997: 23). Completely new associations were only created in the Chico Mendes reserve, where three associations were established in the context of the project. The highest decision-making forums of the Associations are general assemblies of all members. In second place, there is a Deliberative Council formed of one representative of each seringal, chosen in the general assembly.


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As in the case of PPTAL, problems of the representativeness of these associations are important to note.

• It is difficult to consider the number of formal members as an indicator of the representativeness or capacity to mobilize of the associations, since it is relatively common that only one family member officially joins the association (usually male heads of households). Membership allows the family to have access to funding and credit and other benefits, such as maternity leave wages, social security, and the use of the equipment purchased through the project. But to receive such benefits, only one family member need join the association.

• Many families have not joined the associations. When asked why this is so, interviews with association and CNS representatives gave various explanations. In addition to the fact that the associations have not been able to convince all residents that membership is worthwhile, the long distances between residents and associations and the resistance in paying the annual fees (in addition to monthly fees to the local union) reduce association membership. Recently in the case of the Chico Mendes reserve there has been a significant increase in the number of members, a result, according to one association leader, of the increase in rubber tappers’ income as a result of new subsidies from state and government programs.

Historically, the CNS played an important role in promoting organizational capacities in the extractive reserves. However, since the project began, informants noted a clear distancing of that organization from reserve level. According to one informant who was among the founding members of the CNS:

“I think that the CNS became more absent from the reserves with the entrance of the Associations. Today, the CNS is very involved in policy discussions in Brasília but is more absent at the grassroots... With the creation of the Associations, the participation of the CNS and the GTA occurred mostly when specific problems arose, but in the day-to-day they were not present, so the work plans, the timetables of resource transfer, were made through a planning process involving the CNPT and the Associations.”

This comment suggests that the main role in promoting organizing capacities has moved from the CNS to the CNPT. Indeed, one of the main efforts of the RESEX project was to promote a number of training activities geared towards increasing the capacity of reserve residents to participate in project decisions and in the associations more generally. According to the RESEX Final Report, between 1995 and 1999, seventeen workshops related to building associations and cooperatives were carried out, involving 301 people. The objective was to teach the association leaders how to administer the organizations. Nine workshops on leadership building and community development were also offered to 189 people; twenty-two were held on organizing núcleos de base, including 347 people; twelve workshops focusing on management, administration and accounting included 129 people; and twenty-five workshops on financial monitoring involved 396 people. These workshops were carried out by the CNPT staff.

In addition to supporting the consolidation of the reserve level associations, the project also focused on developing smaller organizations bringing together groups of families, called núcleos de base. Training courses involving tree days of discussion with 20 to 30 community leaders to consolidate these organizations were carried out each year in each reserve. The role of the Technical Secretary of the project, a person highly experienced in community organizing, in promoting these training activities was cited by informants as crucial for their success.


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The project’s emphasis on promoting organizational capacity building came, according to informants, in contradiction with traditional relations between reserve residents and the government. This meant overcoming a political culture which affected both sides of the relationship.

• On the government side, the creation of the CNPT was an important advance, since it included a technical staff committed to building organizing capacities within the reserves, rather than ‘dictating’ decisions from above. Nevertheless, some CNPT staff-members were characterized by reserve informants as “paternalistic.”

• On the side of the reserve community, certain traditional conceptions of the government role were challenged by this approach. As one leader interviewed noted, early on there were people thought that the government should simply give money directly to the reserve residents, rather than make them work through the associations.

It is clear that the role of the CNPT in the organization of the reserves, at least in Chico Mendes, where most of the interviews for this study were carried out, had a profound effect on the organizations, as will be discussed in Chapter 5. This role was not always met with full satisfaction on the part of the reserve residents, and in several cases the associations requested that particular CNPT staff members be removed from the reserve. All of the interviews noted problems with the lack of experience of particular CNPT staff members who had difficulty working with the population. According to informants, in all cases that the request to remove CNPT personnel was made, the demand was attended. There was consensus that this problem has diminished over time.

Although the capacity building efforts of the project were commended by most informants, some problems were noted. For example, one CNPT informant suggested that better planning and more efficient allocation of plans could have had a greater impact on leadership construction:

“If the RESEX project had, in the beginning, been applied differently, many leaders would have appeared. The leaders were very preoccupied in spending the money... if some of these resources had been applied toward training more people, in a more efficient manner... the coordinators of the project had some failings with respect [to these issues]. Later on, things changed, the process developed, but by then there were few resources remaining”.

Reserve Protection Plans, Productive Activities and Environmental Management.

In addition to building organizing capacities, the project had three other specific objectives: consolidating extractive reserves, improving the management of environmental resources of the reserves and improving productive activities. All of these activities were carried out through the associations and have therefore involved resident participation.

Utilization Plans

CNPT officials cite the elaboration of Reserve Level Utilization Plans as among the greatest advances of the project. These plans are part of the effort to consolidate the extractive reserves and were approved over the course of 1994 and 1995 in response to a presidential decree that declared that the usufruct rights (Contratos de Concessão Real de Uso) in extractive reserves would only granted after the approval by IBAMA of such plans. The elaboration of the plans was based on the suggestions, criticisms, and opinions of the reserve communities in discussions promoted by the CNPT. During these discussions, 1476 regional assemblies were carried out in which 3,769 people took place. Seven general assemblies


50

approved the final plans, in which 960 people participated (CNPT/IBAMA, Relatório Final: 16).

It was difficult to evaluate the extent to which the content of the Utilization Plans were effectively assimilated by the reserve residents (a problem raised in the Mid-Term Evaluation of the Project – Irving and Millikan, 1997). According to the leaders interviewed in the Chico Mendes reserve, however, the process of discussion was highly participatory, resulting from dozens of meetings which involved not only leadership, but the general population. The responsibility for the execution of the plans belongs to the reserve residents, in particular to the Associations. A comment by the president of one of the Chico Mendes associations noting the importance of taking on this responsibility shows the extent to which at least the leadership have appropriated the Utilization Plans as their own creation:

“It was we ourselves, the reserve residents, that wrote the plan. Dozens and dozens of meetings were held in all the associations... We were the ones who wrote every point. If someone complains later on, we say: we are the ones who are guilty, since we are the ones who wrote it.”

Other Activities

Another planning effort that involved reserve residents were Annual Operational Plans which determined the specific activities to be carried out through contracts (convênios) between the project and the association. Initially, these plans were carried out principally by the CNPT technical staff. However, by the last year of the project, the Associations formulated their own annual plans, with consultations with the núcleos de base. Association leadership had more difficulty in learning to actually formulate and implement the contracts, which involved complicated bureaucratic requirements and decisions about resource allocations, material acquisition and construction projects, personnel contracting, and accounting.

The project also promoted a number of activities geared to improving productive capacities and quality of life on the reserves more generally, all of which involved participation in some way.

• Development Plans were elaborated with community participation through meetings in which attendees suggested alternatives for the sustainable development of the reserves.

• Reserve associations were also involved in the credit program, PRODEX, since candidates for credit must be formally approved the associations.

• In collective commercialization projects, the communities elected representatives to negotiate sales of rubber, brazil nuts, and other products.

• A number of other activities were geared towards improving the infrastructure of the reserves.

• The associations negotiated contracts and partnerships with institutions, such as state and local governments, universities, to improve transportation, school and health care construction and to carry out capacity building activities.

• The reserve population was heavily involved in collective construction projects, or mutirões, in which important infrastructure such as schools, warehouses, health posts, bridges and trails were built with the labor contribution of the residents. Collective work activities were used to implement over two thousand productive


51

projects, such as nurseries, agroforestry systems, common plantations, and the like. In all, these mutirões resulted in 937 buildings, 725 transportation projects, 2,118 productive projects, 694 health projects and 223 projects geared towards sports and leisure.

These activities were the subject of a diversity of criticisms on the part of the reserve leaders interviewed:

• Some informants noted that the project depended a great deal on the free labor supplied by the reserve residents, suggesting that the result was not “empowerment” but “exploitation”.

• Some local informants suggested that the CNPT had greater control over project activities than was appropriate, defining agendas, in some cases even manipulating decisions.

• Various informants complained that the CNPT spent too much money on consultants and travel.

• Others complained that certain CNPT staff members were not present enough in the communities.

• Another common complaint had to do with bureaucratic problems involved in the relations between associations and the project, especially delays in financial transfers and complicated bidding rules the associations had to follow in order to contract for services (This problem also is cited by Soares, 2000, 298).

In general, however, informants saw the project as a significant advance in terms of giving local people control over public funds. The impression of the CNPT’s work was also generally favorable. In particular, the Technical Secretary himself was repeatedly lauded for his capacity to work with the local populations. Nevertheless, demands for the second phase of RESEX focused on giving the associations even greater control over project funds. As one association leader and CNS activist noted:

“Everything was always guided by the CNPT, which decided what should be done. What we now want is for these activities to be the responsibility of the association. The CNPT can interfere by providing support. Before, the association would receive a ready-made package. ... The role of the CNPT should be to transfer the resources, but it is the association that should say what should be done with those resources”.

Expanding Participation

All of the reserve level informants interviewed noted that the RESEX project has been extremely open to their participation. Despite the above mentioned problems in extending membership to all reserve residents, the ability to motivate people to participate has increased over time, a result of the growing credibility project itself. As an informant from the Cajarí Reserve noted:

“An assembly today in the Cajári reserve is totally different from an assembly five years ago. ... Five years ago, everyone stayed quiet, only one or two spoke. We would have to do exercises to try to get people to participate. Today, my friend, there are some terrible fights”

The fact that most informants noted an increase not only in the size of assembly meetings, but also in the level of conflict within them is a sign that the project succeeded in expanding participation both in the qualitative and the quantitative sense, since as people grew accustomed to associational forms of decision-making, they learned to voice their opinions, including critical ones.

In general, informants attributed the capacity to expand participation to two factors.


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• Training and organizing efforts of the project helped build leadership (although according to some as much as would have been possible) and disseminate consciousness about the importance of collective organization.

• The material resources to which the associations gained access served to motivate participation. In this respect, the various infrastructure projects were considered particularly important, since they had a clear material impact on quality of life. Such activities had the effect of attracting people to the associations and the various collective work and decision-making activities involved.

It is important to note here the importance of combining these two sorts of activities: creating collective activities that benefit residents is a way to bring people together, but without consciousness and capacity building efforts, these efforts may stop short once the bridge is built or training course is finished. Activities that bring immediate returns are important opportunities for building interest in broader based activities, such as long term planning or environmental protection. Even so, informants noted that participation tended to be less intense in discussions of such abstract issues that did not bring immediate material benefits.

Despite the a general expansion of participation in the Associations, interviews showed a great deal of difficulty in promoting the participation of women in debates and decision-making. This was especially the case when participatory activities require long distance travel, since typically women would stay behind to care for the children. As one informant noted:

“It is easier for the men to get around. When we hold a meeting, people have to walk for six, eight hours. Imagine if a woman is going to be able to bring her children. Imagine if the men are going to stay home with the children!”

Some leaders interviewed noted that they are promoting special training courses, such as sewing and food preparation, but admitted that there are major obstacles to fostering women’s participation due to “patriarchal traditions’. Many men do not want their wives participating, either because they think it is not appropriate or because they think their wives are too busy. As one reserve leader noted:

“They always say at the meetings that the women have to participate. Then someone asks: ‘Is your wife going to participate?’. No, not mine! She has to take care of this or that, let someone’s else’s wife do it.”

In some cases, the wives of reserve leaders are trying to organize women’s groups, such as in Brasiléia, but this is still an incipient process.

With respect to youth participation, two problems were noted in the Chico Mendes interviews: the lack of education beyond fourth grade (with the exception of Assis Brasil), which drives young people to move to the cities to study and the lack of sources of income, which leads them to seek work in neighboring farms. The result is a process of migration of younger people from the reserves, which obviously diminishes their potential activism in the associations.

3.3 Participation in Demonstration Projects

It is possible to examine participation in the PD/A sub-projects at two levels. On the one hand, we can consider the extent to which the CSOs implementing the projects have influence over project design and implementation. On the other hand, we can consider the


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extent to which beneficiary populations with which the CSOs work have influence over those decision-making processes.

CSO Influence

The first level of influence is simpler to analyze than the second. Since PD/A involves the direct transfer of funds to CSOs to implement projects of their own design (or designed with the help of another CSO), CSOs can be considered to have almost complete control over design and implementation. There are, of course, limitations imposed by the project with respect to what the implementing CSO can do. The project defines what types of sub-project objectives are eligible. It also requires certain types of administrative and organizational characteristics (such as the amount of funds that can go to pay salaries and the involvement of beneficiaries, particularly of women, in design and implementation). Finally, the sub-projects are subject to monitoring by the project, must negotiate changes in initial project design with the PD/A technical personnel and present financial and technical reports. Given these conditions, which are basically the same for all projects (although the details have evolved overtime as the Project has modified priorities and has learned from errors made in the past) CSOs can be said to have more influence over PD/A sub-projects than any other component of the Pilot Program.

Beneficiary Influence.

The second level of influence varies a great deal among sub-projects. The character of decision making that goes on in each sub-project depends on the type of implementing organization, the type of beneficiaries with which the organization works and the sub-project’s goals.

• With respect to the type of organizations that implement the projects, thirty-one percent of the 158 sub-project approved by June 2000 are or were carried out by intermediary NGOs providing support to grassroots organizations, conducting research or promoting environmental agendas. Sixty-nine percent are or were carried out by grassroots organizations such as rural producer’s organizations, cooperatives, rural workers’ unions, indigenous organizations and quilombo organizations. These grassroots organizations vary substantially with respect to scale: some work with specific communities while others, such as CAPEB, are umbrella groups including a number of local extractivist community associations that seek to benefit all of the communities involved. Other sub-projects, are carried out by even broader-based organizations, such as FETACRE, a state-wide rural workers’ federation.

• The way beneficiaries are organized also vary substantially. In some cases, such as the APPNP agro-forestry sub-project in Brasiléia, beneficiaries are members of a local community associations. But even here, all community members are not involved in the project, but rather a selection of families. In some cases, the families live long distances from each other and do not always have organizational ties with one another (such as being members of the same association) prior to the project. In a number of cases, inclusion in the sub-project was based on self-selection. For example, in the Gambá and APREMAVI forest recuperation sub-projects, local farmers adhered to the project because they were interested in carrying out the activities involved. In other cases, specific families were selected by an association representing a particular community, extractive reserve, or municipality. In the Porto Dias forest management sub-project, the


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association leadership of the extractive reserve in which the project was located selected families in areas of greatest environmental degradation within the reserve to participate in the project. In the ACOPAMO agro-forestry sub-project, in Óbidos, families from throughout a large municipality, living in several communities, were selected to participate. Very different from these examples is the case of CAPEB, where all the families that produce brazil nuts that belong to any of the 30 member associations of CAPEB are potential beneficiaries of the project.

• The projects also vary with respect to the extent to which they require beneficiaries to work together. A few sub-projects, such as the case of ACOPAMO, bring together all beneficiaries to work together on a specific plot of land. Others works with small groups of families who collectively manage resources. For example, in the sub-project implemented by FETACRE, small groups of families manage fish ponds (açudes). In the sub-project implemented by CAPEB, local community associations manage mini-processing plants. A larger number of projects involve work on discrete plots of land owned by the beneficiary families. In some of these cases, groups of beneficiaries carry out mutirões (collective work activities) on the lands of each beneficiary. In other cases, each proprietor works alone, with the support of the project staff. In those projects where beneficiaries work together in some manner, the extent to which they actually participate in decisions about how those activities are organized can vary. In general, however, where people work collectively, participants must agree about what they are going to do, and this involves participation not only in physical activities but in decision-making about those activities.

Given this variety, the types of decision-making processes that occur are necessarily different depending on the organizational structure of the project. Sub-project design and implementation can involve several levels of participatory decision-making, including 1) design of the sub-project; 2) planning, monitoring and evaluation of all sub-project activities; 3) implementing specific activities collectively through activities such as mutirões, collective management efforts, and participatory rural appraisals. In order to better show this diversity, Table 3.2 presents the types of activities carried out by five sub-projects with significantly different characteristics.


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Table 3.2 Types of Beneficiary Participation in PD/A Sub-projects

CSO Sub-project Characteristics Beneficiary Participation

Project

Objectives

CSO

Character-istics

Territorial

Scope of sub-project

Beneficiaries Design Sub-project level

planning

Specific activities

CAPEB

Brazil Nut Processing and Commercial-ization

Umbrella group of 30 Community Associations

Two municipalities (Brasiléia and Epitacio-lândia) in Acre

Members of the associations who extract brazil nuts

Executive Commission representing all associations discussed and approved design formulated by technicians hired by the CSO

Executive Committee representing all associations discusses and approves all major project decisions.

Mutirões to build storage huts; member associations administer mini-plants; Executive committee contracted construction of and administers central plant

FETACRE

Agroforestry and Fishery Systems

State-level Workers’ Federation

Two river basins encompassing most of southern Acre

Small producers throughout the region

Carried out by CSO with some (decentralized) discussions involving associations in the region

Project management conducted by CSO

Small groups of families collectively manage fish ponds; mutirões to develop Agroforestry systems on individual plots

ACOPAMO

Agroforestry Systems

Municipal-level Community association

A large municipality in Pará (Óbidos)

Small producers throughout municipality,

Discussions among association membership

Monthly planning meetings including all beneficiaries

Mutirões and rotation in management of collective plot

Gambá

Recuperating Degraded Areas

Environ-mental NGO (located in state capital)

Five municipalities in Bahia

Predominately middle income rural proprietors throughout municipalities

Carried out by CSO Project management conducted by CSO

Land use activities are individual. Collective activities included Participatory rural appraisal and environmental education.

Sabiá

Agroforestry Systems

Socio-environ-mental NGO (located in state capital)

Two municipalities in Pernambuco

Small producers in one municipality.

Carried out by CSO Monthly and annual evaluations and planning meetings including a subgroup of beneficiaries. Only financial management is exclusive to CSO

Land use activities are individual, but some mutirão and other group activities.


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Sub-project design

According to the recent PD/A evaluation of 27 sub-projects, most were designed without extensive beneficiary participation. According to the evaluation, such participation in design was particularly difficult where the proposed agroforestry and fishery systems involved production models with which local families did not have previous experience (PDA 2000:45). For the most part, these projects were designed by the CSOs themselves. In the cases of CSOs with less technical capacity, proposal were often designed by hired technicians or with the help of other organizations. Some sub-projects did not involve the identification of beneficiaries until after the project was designed. This was the case of the reforestation project implemented by REBRAF in Rio de Janeiro state, where the implementing CSO did not even have prior experience with the beneficiary community (Fumo, 1998:33). Those projects implemented by community associations tended to involve a greater amount of beneficiary participation in discussion of project design, as was the case of the ACOPAMO project in Óbidos, Pará.

Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation of General Sub-project Activities

Of the five sub-projects presented in Table 3.1, three of them involve extensive beneficiary participation in general planning and evaluation activities. In the two projects that work with relatively small groups of families within a municipality, regular meetings took place to discuss on-going project management. In the case of ACOPAMO, where activities focused on the management of a collective plot, monthly meetings to discuss implementation were essential for the continuation of the sub-project. In the case of the Sabiá agro-forestry sub-project, where most of the activities occurred at the level of individual properties, a sub-group of beneficiaries that were more intensely involved in the project also participated in monthly planning meetings to coordinate plantation activities and determine the kinds of support the beneficiaries need from the CSO. All beneficiaries also participated in annual assemblies to plan and evaluate project activities. The CAPEB sub-project is substantially different from the first two, with respect both to its objectives and to the fact that it theoretically benefits almost 600 families that belong to the 30 member associations. Even so, this project was able to develop mechanisms for beneficiary control of project implementation. Sub-project decisions are made by the organization’s Executive Committee that includes one representative of each member association. There is also a commission of beneficiaries that advises the Executive Committee on matters related to the project and a Fiscal Commission of the organization that monitors financial issues.

The two sub-projects presented in the table that incorporated lesser amounts of beneficiary

participation in sub-project management involved beneficiaries that are spread out through

large regions. Like ACOPAMO and Sabiá, the Gambá sub-project involved a relatively small

number of beneficiaries and, similar to Sabiá, sub-project activities were carried out at the level

of each property. Few activities related to planning and monitoring were carried out that gave

all beneficiaries access to these aspects of decision-making. The FETACRE sub-project, which

involved 225 families throughout a large region also did not have specific mechanisms of

general management involving all beneficiaries. Like CAPEB, FETACRE itself is a

representative institution, with a coordinating commission elected by unions throughout the


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state, but unlike CAPEB, sub-project beneficiaries did not include all those who belong to

member organizations, but were , instead, a specific selection of families. Their relationship

with the CSO was not mediated by its member organizations and therefore the kind of

representative decision-making structure that occurred in the CAPEB case would not have

functioned.

Specific Activities

Most of the projects involved some form of beneficiary participation in specific activities, especially through collective work projects. Once again, how this participation occurred depended on the structure and objectives of the project. Many projects involved some sort of mutirão (collective construction) activity to build infrastructure from which all or groups of beneficiaries would benefit: nurseries, storage huts, etc. Some projects brought together all or groups of beneficiaries to manage collective resources, such as agroforestry systems on a collective plot (ACOPAMO) or fish ponds administered by groups of families (FETACRE). Others involved managing common infrastructure, such as the mini-processing plants in the CAPEB sub-project. Of the five projects described in the Table 3.2, the only one that did not involve such collective work projects was Gambá. Even this project involved all beneficiaries in a participatory rural appraisal early on in the project.

Given the variety of conditions in which the sub-projects are implemented, it is difficult to come up with general conclusions about how better to promote the inclusion of beneficiaries in decision-making. An in-depth study of a sample of PD/A sub-projects alone could come to more detailed conclusions about the difficulties encountered in promoting beneficiary participation.. Here we will only seek to point to some general problems encountered by those groups that sought to promote participation in decision-making by the beneficiaries of sub-projects.

Difficulties in Attracting and Maintaining Participants

A central problem that most of the sub-projects faced was how to attract people to participate and, over time how to keep them involved. As suggested in Chapter 1, ensuring that beneficiaries influence decision-making is not only a matter of creating opportunities to participate, but also of motivating them to take advantage of such opportunities. The types of activities developed by the PDA sub-project represented particular challenges in this respect

Most of the projects worked with experimental technologies and practices, the success of which was uncertain. Beneficiaries often had little prior experience with such practices. Even where material returns were expected, in most sub-projects, these would only come after several years. In this context, participant attrition was a common problem, especially where sub-projects involved impoverished beneficiary populations with few surplus resources to dedicate to activities of uncertain material returns. Where projects suffered from major technical problems, as was the case of a large number of those considered in the recent evaluation (as will be discussed in Chapter 5), the ability of the projects to maintain participants was even more severely tested.

Agroforestry systems represented particular difficulties in this respect, since in many of projects, returns were projected for only three to five years after plantation. In many cases, sub-project design failed to predict the immense amount of labor these systems would require to be maintained in the unproductive phase. This meant that the beneficiary families would


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have to contribute labor time related to the project on top of already existing activities that could generate income in the meantime. As the PDA evaluation noted:

“There was an increase in the demand for labor, which was considered one of the causes of abandonment in many projects. This problem was aggravated by the models and methods of management adodopted, since the mobilization of a considerable labor force in areas where economic returns would be obtained only after three years, becomes inviable when this [labor] is a scarce resource” (PDA 2000:44).

The costs of participating in the sub-projects were often increased in those that required extensive collective work activities, such as the case of the ACOPAMO agro-forestry sub-project, where participants managed a collective lot. Such collective activities were particularly difficult to organize where beneficiaries had to travel long distances to work collective areas. Even where returns were more immediately available, some sub-project representatives noted the difficulty of carrying out activities that required cooperation among beneficiaries over the long hall. For example, in the FETACRE case, small groups of families managed fisheries. The representative of this sub-project noted that the cooperative mechanisms could break down altogether if only one beneficiary family stopped participating. For example, if one family failed to feed the fish in their assigned time slot, others would be discouraged from continuing.

A number of projects discovered creative ways to maintain beneficiary involvement where material returns were not immediate. Many (but not all) of the Agroforestry Systems worked with mixing temporary and perennial crops on the same plots to ensure income generation while tree crops remained unproductive. Such activities occurred, however, without PD/A funding, since, according to one technical staff member, the project did not fund traditional agricultural activities which, it was argued, could be funded through other programs. Nevertheless, in some cases the technical extensionists hired through the project also helped beneficiaries increase productivity in traditional agricultural activities. In the case of FETACRE, a different alternative was found: participants who wanted to benefit from the more immediate returns of the fishery projects had to participate in agroforestry components as well.

Those sub-projects that were able to bring some material returns to the beneficiaries certainly had less trouble maintaining beneficiary participation. This was the case even when the economic analysis of the project was not satisfactory. For example, in the case of the Nossa Senhora de Fátima sub-project to collect native seeds, the implementing CSO did not, according to the evaluation, properly take advantage of commercialization opportunities (Urano de Carvalho, 2000). Nevertheless, according to the sub-project representative interviews, the sub-project brought enough financial returns to allow beneficiaries to see that the product involved had potential economic benefits. Likewise, in the case of CAPEB, the evaluation notes that although brazil nut prices received by producers increased during the project, this was not fully attributable to the project’s efforts, but to more general prices changes. Nevertheless, this positive context gave credibility to the project, which attracted increasing numbers of active participants (Kornexl, 2000). This suggests that complete economic viability is not required to promote beneficiary participation (although certainly desirable), but that some evidence that the project will bring some material returns is necessary.

Some projects, especially in the Atlantic Forest Region, did not have economic goals. Informants interviewed from both the Gambá sub-project in Bahia and the APREMAVI sub-project in Santa Catarina, both of which work with recuperating degraded areas, argued emphatically that their projects were “environmental” and not “economic”. In both of these cases, beneficiaries were attracted to the project for reasons other than material ones. They largely involved those who had a “predisposition” to environmental protection, that is who were motivated by ideological rather than economic reasons to participate. Even here, the Gambá representative interviewed noted that some beneficiaries were attracted by the


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consideration that reforestation would improve local water resources, with a positive effect on other agricultural activities.

Developing Organizing Capacities

Promoting beneficiary participation is not only a matter of providing evidence that sub-projects will bring returns. It also depends on the capacity of the implementing CSO to organize the communities with which they work. This involves capacities that are not within the immediate scope of sub-project implementation, such as communications, mobilizing techniques, methods of ordering discussions, conflict resolution, and leadership building, It also involves some of the legal and technical activities involved in creating formal organizations, such as formulating bylaws. Those organizations with greater organizing capacities were more likely to involve and maintain beneficiaries in the activities they implemented.

In Brazil and elsewhere, groups representing the traditionally excluded have often relied on the help of outsiders to organize. Hall refers to these relations as ‘strategic alliances” (1997:32). Catholic church organizations and intermediary NGOs have been particularly important in this respect. One way to examine how the PDA project has promoted beneficiary participation in project design and implementation to consider the extent to which it served as a conduit between locally based community organizations and broader-based, more experienced CSOs that can help them build these capacities

The PDA sub-projects studied vary substantially with respect to the extent to which they grew out of strategic alliances Many of the implementing CSOs were founded with the help of larger organizations. For example, CAPEB benefited from significant support, prior to the PDA sub-project, of the Land Pastoral of the Catholic Church (CPT). ACOPAMO was founded with the help of local Rural Workers’ Unions. The APPNP project was developed in conjunction with the FETACRE project, and gained substantial support from that larger organization.

Many of the sub-projects developed new connections with other organizations over the course of the sub-project. These ties to other institutions help the projects not only deal with technical problems, but also to learn organizing capacities and develop political maturity. For example, the Sabiá sub-project developed ties with the local university. A somewhat different case is the Nova Ipixuna sub-project implemented by the National Rubber Tappers Council (CNS). According to a CNS staff member interviewed, CNS efforts to build organizing capacities of the local associations over the course of the sub-project allowed the association itself to develop its own proposal to continue the sub-project after the first phase had been completed.

One way to examine how the PDA project has promoted beneficiary participation in project design and implementation to consider the extent to which it served as a conduit between locally based community organizations and broader-based, more experienced CSOs that could help them build these capacities One question asked in interviews with PD/A technical staff and sub-project representatives is the extent to which the project provided opportunities for building organizational connections among projects. In general, the response was that the project failed to take on such “network-building” role. The technical staff often put implementing CSOs in contact with one another to help resolve specific problems. But this occurred on a case-by-case basis and largely involved technical issues. Such activities were not systematically carried out, nor were resources allocated to promote meetings among sub-project CSOs that might have resulted, even if only indirectly, in the construction of strategic alliances. This failed to occur even in areas with a large concentration of sub-projects, such as Southern Acre, where, according to sub-project representatives, there were little connections among projects. There was also a noted lack of integration with PDA sub-projects and other PPG7 projects. For example, representatives of sub-projects implemented in the


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areas of the RESEX reserves noted that no formal efforts were made to share experiences between the projects.

Another way to consider how PDA has helped promote organizing capacities is to examine the role of the technical staff themselves in these activities. The project provides support to implementing CSOs both through visits by technical staff and by sending consultants to help projects with difficulties resolve specific problems. In both cases, the emphasis is on dealing with technical and administrative issues. No project-based mechanisms for helping CSOs organize or for promoting participation are systematically in place, although this may occur indirectly through technical staff and consultant visits.

The Participation of Women

One of the strongest conclusions of the recent evaluation of completed PD/A sub-projects is that very few make special efforts to include women and to address their needs. Comparing the evaluations of seventeen projects, the evaluation notes that only four included positive commentary about how women were included in the sub-project (PDA 2000: 18). It is difficult to tell from this statistic the actual role of women in the sub-projects, since the lack of positive commentary reflects not only the way the sub-projects functioned but also the concerns of the particular evaluators, not all of whom examined the question of gender. It should also be noted that the sub-projects evaluated were among the first to be funded by PD/A and that in this early period, the project did not require specific activities incorporating women. In later years, the application forms included specific reference to how both men and women would participate.

Interviews with representatives of implementing CSOs asked specifically how women were involved in each sub-project. Despite the above noted evaluation data, virtually all of the sub-project representatives interviewed noted that women participated intensely. When asked how women participated, however, the answers varied substantially.

Some sub-project representatives noted that the decision-making forums of the project actively seek to include women. Sabiá, for example, has “affirmative action” hiring policies and carries out specific projects (other than the PDA sub-project) on gender issues. Within the sub-project, five of the seventeen families actively involved in the main municipality of sub-project action (Bom Jardim) were headed by women, although even in this case, according to the evaluation of the sub-project, “”these women are not yet heading up project implementation” (Athias, 2000:13). According to the representative of the APPNP sub-project, men are only allowed to participate in decision-making meetings if they agree to bring their wives. According to the representative of FETACRE, that federation is governed by regulations ensuring that thirty percent of all leadership positions are held by women, although the lack of general participatory mechanisms for the sub-project itself (see above discussion) means that these regulations do not affect how women beneficiaries influence project decisions.

Except in the cases mentioned above, the projects largely made no explicit effort to create space in decision-making forums for women. As the representative of one sub-project noted:

“Its a patriarchal society. It was not among our objectives to deal with this question”

The main contribution of women in most of the sub-projects was in collective work activities. That is the women contribute with their labor, but less often participate in decision-making even at the level of specific activities in which, for example, mutirões are planned. The explanation given by most of the informants was similar to those expressed by the RESEX informants: the difficulty in changing traditions. Not only do men resist their allowing their wives to participate, but the women themselves do not feel comfortable in decision-making roles. As the representative of one project noted:


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“There is heavier work that is left to the men, but in the lighter work, the women participate as well. Many women participate. Now, when it comes to election time, they don’t want to take on a post.”

3.4 Comparing the Three Projects

The above discussions of participation in the three projects suggests that there is no single model for promoting the influence of CSOs representing traditionally excluded groups in project decision-making. The comparison of these projects can show us more about the diversity of participatory experiences than about a potential “best practice” since each approach has costs and benefits.

Two Levels of Participation

There are two levels of analyzing participation, which are often confused with one another. At a first level, projects can give greater or lesser influence to existing CSOs that include or seek to represent traditionally excluded groups. At a second level, projects can seek to include a broader range of beneficiaries, either seeking to increase their participation in CSOs or working directly with populations outside the CSOs. In both PDA and PPTAL, “who participated” was largely defined by the pre-existing organizational structures of the groups involved, while RESEX included extensive activities to increase the second level of participation.

• PDA involved transferring funds directly to CSOs. Beneficiaries were often limited to those individuals or families belonging to the CSOs (although many projects sought to expand membership). The responsibilities for how much beneficiary participation would take place was largely in the hands of the CSOs themselves (although as the project progressed, guidelines requiring some beneficiary participation were developed).

• In a different way, PPTAL also worked with “those who were previously organized”. Where more participatory models were used, they usually involved working with indigenous associations that did not necessarily represent even the chiefs of the communities to say nothing of the indigenous population as a whole. Of course, in this case, it is important to note that direct organizing efforts with indigenous communities, bypassing existing structures of governance, would be absolutely inappropriate. Such efforts would essentially involve promoting cultural changes by incorporating ‘Western’ ideals of representation. In this sense, working with the representative forms that indigenous groups themselves devise is essential for the cause of cultural preservation.

• Of the three projects, only RESEX worked intensely at promoting participation at the second level of analysis, that of beneficiary participation. RESEX could have worked similarly to PDA, transferring funds to pre-existing organizations (as in fact, some informants argued that it should have done). Instead, it not only worked to restructure those organizations (an issue that is discussed more in Chapter 5) but also develop beneficiary capacities.

Motivating Beneficiaries to Participate

As has been argued throughout this report, one critical aspect of ensuring that CSOs influence decision-making is designing projects in ways that motivate people to participate. At the project and Program level, this means objectives must somehow coincide with the general problems that CSOs involved in the program are seeking to resolve. At the level of local communities expanding participation is generally possible only if implementing institutions can convince people that the project will bring some kind of material returns. This raises


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problems where sub-projects seek to achieve results that are not related to economic benefits (such as those geared only towards environmental protection) or where material returns are long-coming (as in the case of many of the Agroforestry systems).15

Both the RESEX and PDA experiences show the difficulties of mobilizing community groups to carry out activities that do not bring such material returns. In the PD/A cases, numerous projects lost participants because they could not provide evidence that they would bring economic benefits. In this respect, the experimental nature of the project certainly put it at a disadvantage with respect to promoting beneficiary participation, since many of the sustainable development activities involved were untested and did in fact fail to be economically viable. Those sub-projects that did not have a productive component generally were even less successful in incorporating impoverished local communities, largely working with selected individuals with “environmentalist” ideologies. Typically, these were better off economically to start with, and therefore had surplus resources that they could allocate to non-income generating activities.

Project Investment in Building Participatory Capacities

In the case of the PD/A project, the “resource transfer” mechanism used implies that there is less intervention on the part of the Technical Secretariat in project implementation than in the other two projects examined in this chapter. What government intervention occurs focuses on technical issues, rather than community organizing. In this context, the extent of beneficiary participation largely depends on interests and organizing capacities of the CSOs that implement the sub-project. The project has been widely considered innovative for its role in strengthening civic associations (as will be discussed in Chapter 5). This institution-building occurs through resource transfers to certain critical areas, such as capital expenditures and personnel. But, unlike RESEX, the project does not include a component geared towards giving implementing CSOs organizing skills nor towards increasing the capacity of beneficiaries to participate. In this light, institutional strengthening may occur in the CSOs, but this does not necessarily result in greater beneficiary participation in the sub-projects.

In the case of PPTAL, the extent to which indigenous groups influenced demarcation processes largely depended on the demarcation model chosen by PPTAL. This decision depended in part on the prior organizational capacity of the particular indigenous and also on the stage of ‘methodological experimentation’ of the project at the time a particular indigenous land was demarcated. More participatory models included specific efforts at helping indigenous groups organize, such as using an anthropologist or NGO as facilitators.

These efforts, however, did not involve the kind of extensive capacity building effort -- occurring over a several year period and involving a wide variety of activities-- that characterized RESEX. RESEX is quite different from the other two projects in that it works with a much smaller number of sub-projects. The project also involved a much wider range of activities, ranging from land tenure to productive and quality of life issues. It is the only project to emphasize building organizing capacities, with extensive action on the part of the government staff involved in providing support for community mobilization and leadership construction.

In this sense, RESEX provides a partial model for how project investments can be specifically geared towards increasing beneficiaries’ capacities for participation. However, it also shows

15 This is related to Hall’s (1997) argument for what explains the success of community based collective action experiences in favor of environmental protection: they are almost always efforts that combine environmental activities with an economic component, what he calls ‘productive conservation”. See also Abers (2000) for a theoretical discussion of the “cost/benefit” calculation people make before participating, and of how government projects can better motivate participants.


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how both such efforts were linked to the particular nature of RESEX’s objectives and how costly intensive capacity building efforts are. RESEX promoted beneficiary participation through regular interchanges between beneficiaries and government-based support staff over a four year period. It relied on the presence of individuals within the CNPT who had a great deal of experience with community work, The fact that the project worked with a wide variety of activities provided numerous opportunities over a four year period for building organizing capacity in practice. This intensive and multi-faceted character was appropriate for the difficult task of developing organizational capacities since this is typically a slow process which comes out of repeated experiences.

Such efforts, however, involved enormous amounts of investment in time and financial resources that would likely not be feasible in projects that involve a large number of sub-projects or that have more specific goals. For such projects, participatory capacity building efforts would imply a reduction of spending in other areas, changes that may not be approved even by beneficiary groups. In the case of PPTAL, the project prioritized from the beginning an effort to demarcate the largest number of indigenous lands possible. More intense efforts at promoting indigenous participation would likely come at the expense of reducing the number of demarcations carried out. In the case of PD/A, groups involved in project design agreed that the project should seek to spend only a small portion of funds on central administration. The investment in greater technical and organizing support on the part of the project staff would reduce the portion of funds available to transfer to implementing CSOs .16

Nevertheless, the importance that such investments in capacity buildings had in the RESEX case do suggest that in order to expand participation to beneficiary groups that have little previous experience with influencing project decision-making, some kind of specific efforts at organizational capacity are worthwhile. Simply transferring funds to CSOs, as in the PD/A model, is not enough to ensure that beneficiary groups will influence project decisions. Some of the more participatory PPTAL experiences are useful models for situations in which the kind of investment in beneficiary capacitation that occurred in RESEX is not feasible. In these cases, the government sought out appropriate interlocutors with experience with the specific indigenous group to facilitate the process. Although these mechanisms were designed to deal with the particular problems raised by working with indigenous groups, such as cross-cultural communication and indigenous forms of representation, they showed the impact that carefully selected interlocutors can have in facilitating participation.

Collective Decision-making versus Collective Work

Community organizing often begins with collective work activities as individuals join together to resolve specific problems by building collective infrastructure, helping each other build individual structures, or joining together in income generating efforts. Studies of community organizations have noted that these types of activities have been critical towards promoting “collective self-empowerment” (Friedmann and Salguero, 1988). Community development projects throughout the world have also relied on collective work activities to implement projects, often as a mechanism of reducing costs. Local groups are given supplies and technical support, and contribute with their labor. Such activities have been the source, however, of extensive criticism, since often beneficiaries “participate” only in work, and not in decision-making. As Oakley and Marsden (1984) note, often participants are expected to cooperate with professionals and not only give little input into project design but are discouraged from criticizing project content. In light of these criticisms, it is worth considering

16 This problem is given substantial attention in the Midterm Review of the Project, although mostly focusing on the role of technical support (Santilli, 1997).


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the extent to which collective work activities which are very common in both RESEX and PDA sub-projects actually constitute participation in decision-making.

Since the study was unable to carry out in depth case studies of the sub-projects, it is impossible to come to firm conclusions in this respect. However, some comments by informants suggest that the lines between collective work and collective decision-making were far from clear.

One the one hand, both projects involved instances in which beneficiaries carried out work activities that they themselves did not design. In some PDA cases, such activities were defined in project designs in which beneficiaries had little participation. In the case of RESEX, several informants noted that activities were defined by technical personnel, in a “package” of mini-projects which they themselves did not control.

On the other hand, according to informants, both PDA and RESEX involved a number of collective work activities in which decisions about how those activities would be carried out could not be ‘dictated’ before hand.

• Numerous informants noted that promoting collective construction or agroforestry projects would be impossible if the members of the mutirão did not agree on what they were planning to do. This was particularly true where the collective activities occurred over a long period. Collective discussion of what is going to be done is a form of building commitment to the activities, without which long term implementation.

• The RESEX experience also suggests that even activities in which beneficiaries implement a project designed by others can serve the more general purpose of promoting participatory capacities. Such collective efforts can be opportunities for develop a sense of group identity and for people to gain experience working together. Often such activities have a great capacity to mobilize people because they bring immediate, concrete results. These experiences can be a starting point from which more extensive participatory processes can follow. However, if projects do not create opportunities for taking the step beyond collective work to collective decision-making, this sort of evolution is less likely to occur.

The possibility that collective work can lead to collective decision-making is more limited in the case of women’s participation. Women often have little decision-making power over the work they do and the case of collective work, when it is defined by men, is not necessarily an exception. Indeed, some authors have noted that development efforts to promote women’s involvement have only led to the exploitation of women by adding to their already heavy workloads (Hecht, 1994). It was evident from interviews on PDA and RESEX that these projects largely failed to deal with this problem systematically.


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CHAPTER IV

Participation in State-Level Policy Formulation: The Case of the Natural Resources Policy Project (NRPP)

4.1 Introduction

While the three projects discussed in the last chapter focused on attending the needs of specific groups, the Natural Resources Policy Project has much broader objectives, affecting the interests of a variety of groups within society and involving multiple government agencies. Likewise, while the issues involved in the prior cases are for the most part close to the everyday needs of local populations, NRPP deals with large scale, environmental planning issues. As the main Pilot Program project implemented to date with such "broad-based", the NRPP raises some important issues:

• If sub-projects discussed in the last chapter often faced difficulties in motivating local communities to participate, NRPP's focus on general environmental problems raises even greater challenges with respect to motivating civic groups representing local populations to participate, since such problems are often abstract and imperceptible in the short term and therefore can be perceived as irrelevant to those concerned with immediate survival.

• State governments and other institutions involved in project coordination may tend to consider participation of CSOs in such broad-based policy formulation as less necessary or desirable than in the case of community-based projects;

• The project deals with issues that are characterized by conflicts over rights to access and use of natural resources among CSOs, local communities, the private sector and government agencies. As such, the project raises questions about the possibility for in negotiating solutions among groups with conflicting interests..

The analysis presented in this chapter is based on field research carried out in the states of Amapá and Pará during the period of April-May 2000. These two case studies were chosen because of their different political contexts and because of their different approaches to promoting the participation of CSOs in NRPP activities. It should be noted from the outset, however, that neither of these cases can be considered “typical”, since the diverse political conditions of each Amazon state means that the project has been implemented in different ways in each case. Other states, such as Acre and Tocantins have also promoted CSO participation in innovative ways. Nevertheless, we hope that the examination of these two examples can provide some general insights into the problems and possibilities faced by the project at the state level.

4.2. Project Activities at the State Level.

As noted in Chapter 2, NRPP underwent major changes in its objectives and structure over the course of its implementation. Currently, the project focuses on two general sets of activities at the state level, the design and implementation of Integrated Environmental Management Sub-Projects (PGAIs) in target areas of each state and investing in the environmental policy-making and enforcement capacities of state environmental agencies.

The proposals for PGAIs in Amapá and Pará were approved in the second semester of

1997. Initial disbursements of funds for their implementation occurred in mid-1998. As

such, the projects had been in implementation for two years at the time of field research.


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In Amapá, the original PGAI priority area covers 25.246 square kilometers in the southern

part of the state, within the municipalities of Mazagão, Vitória do Jarí and part of Laranjal

do Jarí. Recently, the state government has initiated activities in a second area influenced

by the soon-to-be-paved BR-156 highway (Macapá-Oiapoque) within the municipalities of

Oiapoque, Calçoene, Amapá and Tartarugalzinho (See map in Annex 4).

In Pará, two priority areas were defined for the PGAI: a) Tapajós, covering 228.238 sq. km.

in the southwest, including eight municipalities: Aveiro, Belterra, Itaituba, Jacareacanga,

Juriti, Novo Progresso and Trairão, and b) Moju-Capim, covering 135.006 sq.km. in

northeast, including 22 municipalities: Acará, Aurora do Pará, Breu Branco, Bujaru,

Capitão Poço, Concórdia do Pará, Dom Eliseu, Garrafão do Norte, Goianésia do Pará,

Ipixuna do Pará, Irituia, Jacundá, Mãe do Rio, Moju, Nova Esperança do Piriá, Novo

Repartimento, Paragominas, Rondon do Pará, São DomiCSOs do Campim, Tailândia,

Tomé-Acú, Tucuruí, and Ulianópolis. Project activities in Pará are effectively focusing on

12 of these 30 municipalities (See map in Annex 4).

The official documents of NRPP consider the following to be direct beneficiaries of the project: i) state environmental agencies and other organizations responsible for environmental management, in the states of Acre, Amapá, Amazonas, Maranhão, Mato Grosso, Pará, Rondônia, Roraima and Tocantins; ii) federal agencies involved in the states in activities included in the project components, iii) municipal governments, iv) non-governmental organizations and v) the Ministry of the Environment, responsible for overall coordination of NRPP.

In each of the nine Amazonian states, the main inter-institutional forum responsible for project planning and implementation is the NRPP Working Group (Grupo de Trabalho - GT). The main responsibilities of this group include: a) coordination of the drafting and revision of a State Environmental Plan (Plano Estadual Ambiental - PEA) to be submitted to the State Environmental Council for formal approval;17 and b) coordination, preparation and monitoring of Integrated Management Sub-Projects (PGAIs) and Institutional Projects (PIs). At the state level, support units (Unidades de Apoio-UAs) for administration of the project were also created within each of the state environmental agencies. At the regional level, the institutional arrangements of NRPP include a Permanent Technical Working Group (Grupo Técnico de

17 According to NRPP's Operational Manual,(SPRN, 2000) the State Environmental Plan (PEA) should include an analysis of major environmental problems and their causes, as well as strategies for their resolution - including priority geographic areas for specific actions. The planning of NRPP's activities in each state should be based on its respective PEA.


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Trabalho Permanente-GTTP) composed of the nine coordinators of state-level working groups, responsible for project monitoring and discussion of issues of common interest to the states.

At the federal level, the implementation of NRPP is coordinated by a Technical Secretariat within the Secretariat for Amazonian Affairs of the Ministry of the Environment. The main responsibilities of the ST revolve around support for the states in planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of their respective sub-projects. The highest-level decision-making body in NRPP is the "Projects Commission", composed of representatives of the Federal Government, GT coordinators and CSOs (See Chapter 2 for an evaluation of this commission).

A comprehensive and participatory mid-term review of the NRPP was carried out during the period of November 1999 - May 2000. As a result of this process, major changes were made in the strategic directives and operational strategy of the project, with major implications for the participation of CSOs and other stakeholders (SPRN, 2000).

4.3. Participation in the Planning and Implementation of Integrated Environmental Management Sub-Projects (PGAIs)

Participation at the State-Level

Working Groups

As previously described, the main inter-institutional forum responsible for overall coordination, planning and monitoring of NRPP at the state level is a Working Group (Grupo de Trabalho - GT). However, in the initial project design of NRPP, civil society organizations were not envisioned as participants in the state-level Working Groups (although project documents mention CSO participation in State Environmental Councils-COEMAs and the Projects Commission-CP).

In both Amapá and Pará states, Working Groups were originally composed exclusively of state and federal government agencies, with no participation of civil society organizations and other stakeholders (business, municipal governments, etc.) (See Table 4.1). Only in the states of Acre, Rondônia, Roraima and Tocantins were seats on Working Groups originally opened to CSOs.


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Table 4. 1

Composition of State Working Groups in Amapá and Pará

State State Government

Institutions

Federal Government

Institutions

Amapá a • Secretaria de Estado do Meio

Ambiente, Ciência e Technologia; • Secretaria de Estado de Planejamento

e Coordenação Geral; • Instituto de Pesquisas Científicas e

Technológicas do Amapá; • Procuradoria Geral de Justiça do

Amapá; • Instituto de Desenvolvimento Rural

do Amapá; • Ministério Público do Estado do

Amapá; • Polícia Militar do Amapá; • Instituto de Terras do Amapá. (Total: 8)

• Ministério Público Federal; • IBAMA; • Fundação Universidade Federal do

Amapá; • FUNAI; • INCRA; • Departamento Nacional de Produção

Mineral • Departamento de Polícia Federal; • Departamento de Polícia Rodoviária

Federal (Total: 8)

Pará b

• Secretaria de Ciência, Tecnologia e Meio Ambiente;

• Secretaria de Agricultura; • Secretaria de Saúde; • Secretaria de Industria e Comércio e

Mineração; • Ministério Público Estadual; • Polícia Civil; • Polícia Militar-Companhia

Independente de Polícia de Meio Ambiente;

(Total 7)

• IBAMA (Total 1)

Source: SECTMA (Pará), SEMA (Amapá), Technical Secretariat/MMA (a) In recent months, the state government of Amapá appointed a local CSO to its NRPP Working Group: Instituto de Estudos Sócio-Ambientais (IESA) . IESA serves as Executive Secretariat for the regional affiliate of the Amazon Working Group (GTA). At the time of field research, IESA had not yet participated in a meeting of the Working Group. (b) The Instituto de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social do Pará (IDESP) was a member of the NRPP Working Group in Pará until it was extinguished as part of a state administrative reform in 1999.


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There appear to be several causes for the absence of civil society participation in the NRPP Working Groups at the state-level, including:

• The original project design of NRPP, which anticipated an extremely limited role for civil society organizations in the implementation of project activities;

• Lack of orientation from the federal government (ST/MMA) and the project's Operational Manual about the need for participation of CSOs in the Working Groups;

• Insufficient experience among technical staff of government agencies in processes involving civil society organizations in the formulation and monitoring of public policy related to environmental issues (see below);

• In the case of Amapá, a perception among project staff that local CSOs lacked human capital to effectively participate in the Working Group, and that civil society participation would be promoted through planning seminars and other ad hoc mechanisms, as well as during implementation of the project, giving priority to grassroots (see below); and

• Lack of pressure from CSOs to be included as members in the Working Groups, due to a variety of factors discussed below.

The functioning of the Working Groups was hampered by a number of difficulties, which would have diminished the influence CSOs would have had on project implementation even had they acquired seats in these forums:

• A lack of clarity about the Working Group's strategic role and relationship to other institutional forums responsible for public policy formulation, e.g. State Environmental Councils (COEMAs), State Zoning Commissions (CEZEEs), State Legislative Assemblies;

• Limitations in strategies to involve local stakeholders that are not members of state-level Working Groups in the planning and monitoring of project activities;

• Lack of consultations by project coordinators among Working Group members on issues they consider to be relevant (e.g. prioritization of activities as a result of federal cuts in the annual budgets of PGAIs);

• High levels of turnover among its membership, often associated with administrative changes in agencies such as INCRA and IBAMA; and

• The absence of an effective system of project monitoring and evaluation, with a clear role established for Working Groups.

In the conclusions of the NRPP mid-term review, specific recommendations were made regarding the state-level Working Groups, to the effect that they should become more representative of stakeholders (especially CSOs, municipal governments and business sectors) and assume more strategic roles in project planning and implementation, in a manner articulated with both State Environmental Councils and participatory processes at the local level (SPRN, 2000). The outcomes of such changes in the project's management strategy remain to be seen, and certainly warrant evaluation at a future date.

State Environmental Councils - COEMAs

One of the goals within the project design of NRPP is to strengthen State Environmental Councils (COEMAs), particularly in terms of their ability to formulate, supervise and provide overall guidance on strategic environmental policies.

In the states of Pará and Amapá, State Environmental Councils were created in 1990 and 1994, respectively. What is clear from a comparison of Tables 4.1 and 4.2 is that efforts have been


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made to include civil society organizations in the COEMAs, while this did not occur until only very recently in the state-level Working Groups of NRPP. Of particular note is the COEMA in Amapá, where 8 of 24 seats in Amapá are occupied by civil society organizations, including representatives of indigenous peoples, urban poor, workers' unions, Afrobrazilian communities, environmentalists, church-based human rights groups, etc.18 Such broad participation of CSOs contrasts with the lack of participation of organizations representing business sectors.

In Pará, where CSOs hold 3 of 14 seats on the State Environmental Council, participation includes the main federation that serves as an umbrella group for rural workers' unions (FETAGRI), the industrial workers' federation and an environmental CSO, Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazônia - IPAM. Business groups are represented by FAEPA (agriculture and ranching) and FIEPA (industrial).

In both states, COEMAs include professional associations. In Amapá, particular effort was made to include associations representing professionals active in the rural sector (agronomists, forestry engineers, etc.) and urban environmental problems.

18 The participation of CSOs in the COEMA in Amapá improved considerably in the mid-nineties, following the election of a governor with close ties to grassroots movements, João Alberto Capiberibe.


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Table 4.2

Composition of State Environmental Councils (COEMAs) in Amapá and Pará

State State Government Federal Government Business Sector Professional Associations

Civil Society

Amapá a

• Secretaria de Estado do Meio Ambiente, Ciência e Technologia;

• Secretaria de Estado da Agricultura, Pesca, Florestas e Abastecimento;

• Secretaria de Estado da Infraestrutura- Secretaria de Estado da Saúde;

• Secretaria de Estado da Educação; • Assembléia Legislativa; • Ministério Público do Estado do Amapá- (Total 7)

• IBAMA; • Universidade Federal do

Amapá; • FUNAI; • INCRA (Total 4)

None • Organização dos Advogados do Brasil-,

• Associação dos Engenheiros Agrônomos do Território do Amapá-;

• Associação dos Técnicos Agrícolas do Amapá;

• Associação dos Engenheiros Florestais do Amapá-;

• Associação Brasileira de Engenharia Sanitária

(Total 5)

• Associação dos Povos Indígenas do Oiapoque;

• Central Unica dos Trabalhadores;

• Comissão Pastoral da Terra; • Conselho de Associações de

Moradores; • Federação dos Pescadores do

Amapá;

• GTAc; • União dos Negros do

Amapá; • Movimento Verde Vivo- (Total 8)

Pará b • Secretaria de Ciência, Tecnologia e Meio Ambiente;

• Secretaria de Estado da Agricultura; • Secretaria de Estado de Saúde Pública; • Secretaria de Estado de Industria,

Comércio e Mineração; • Ministério Público Estadual; • Comissão de Meio Ambiente da

Assembléia Legislativa do Estado (Total 6)

• IBAMA (Total 1)

• Federação das Indústrias do Estado de Pará

• Federação da Agricultura do Estado do Pará

(Total 2)

• Organização dos Advogados do Brasil-Secção do Pará;

• Representantes dos Servidores da Secretaria de Ciência, Tecnologia e Meio Ambiente

(Total 2)

• Federação dos Trabalhadores na Indústria do Estado do Pará ;

• Federação dos Trabalhadores da Agricultura do Estado do Pará;

• Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazôniad

(Total 3)

Sources: SECTMA/PA, SEMA/AP. (a) Created by State Law No.165 of August 8, 1994; (b) Created by State Law no. 5.610 of November 20, 1990 (c) Represented by IESA-Instituto de Estudos Sócioambientais ; (d) IPAM - Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazônia – was elected by FAOR- a major CSO Forum in Pará to serve as representative of environmental groups.


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In both Amapá and Pará, State Environmental Councils have been active in issues related

to environmental licensing and enforcement. Examples of issues recently addressed by

COEMAs include the need for an environmental impact study for the Santarém grain

terminal in Pará, and arsenic contamination of the water supply by ICOMI, a large

mining corporation, in Amapá. As observed by the Assistant Secretary of the

Environment in Amapá, COEMAs can be important forums for “socializing

decision-making", especially when they deal with controversial environmental issues and

powerful economic interests. Civil society organizations have tended to be active

members in these councils, often working closely with the Public Ministry's Office

(Ministério Público).

On the negative side, representatives of civil society organizations in Pará noted that the Council has often been isolated from decisions about mainstream development policies, such as the “corridors for integration and development” planned by the state and federal governments. In such cases, there has been a tendency for the COEMA to be consulted after decisions about major infrastructure projects have already become a fait accompli.

Within NRPP's project design, a very limited role was established for the COEMAs in

project implementation, both in terms of strategic planning and project supervision.

According to NRPP's Operational Manual, the responsibilities of COEMAs would

include: a) approval of State Environmental Plans (PEAs) upon which project activities,

including the Integrated Management Sub-Projects (PGAIs) should be based, and b)

analysis of semester progress reports, prepared by project coordinators within the state

environmental agency.19

As previously mentioned, the elaboration of State Environmental Plans - PEAs under the

coordination of environmental agencies was treated essentially as a formality in securing

19 In the original project documents of NRPP, it is stated that CSO participation should occur within the State Environmental Councils.


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access to the financial resources of NRPP. Moreover, COEMAs have not routinely

discussed progress reports of the project, as mandated in the NRPP's Operational Manual.

The State Environmental Councils in Pará and Amapá, similar to other states, have not

been consulted on such issues as Annual Implementation Plans (PAIs) and external

evaluations of the project. As previously mentioned, there has been very little

articulation between the Working Groups and COEMAs in oCSOing project

implementation and related issues.

In short, the limited role of State Environmental Councils in oCSOing project planning,

monitoring and evaluation effectively limits this avenue of participation in the NRPP for

the few CSOs that participate in these bodies.

Seminars and Workshops

A critical issue for the influence of CSOs in the NRPP, especially when considering the above-mentioned limitations of state-level Working Groups, is the effectiveness of non-institutionalized forms of participation in the planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of project activities.

In Amapá and Pará, regional seminars in the priority areas of the NRPP were initially organized in 1997 to disseminate information about the project and to provide inputs for the planning of PGAI activities. Seminar facilitators, recruited among the staff of state environmental agencies, were trained in participatory discussion techniques by MMA and GTZ. Following the regional seminars and subsequent meetings with Working Groups, final versions of the PGAIs were drafted by consultants and state project coordinators.

Participation in the seminars varied considerably in terms of representation of stakeholder groups, but generally included municipal government officials, representatives of state government agencies, unions, cooperatives and other community leaders. Popular participation in these seminars tended to be more pronounced in Amapá, where the state government had closer contacts with grassroots organizations.

With regard to popular participation, a major difficulty encountered in the seminars was the identification of socio-environmental problems (e.g. resource use conflicts, urban environmental issues) and proposed actions, including educational activities, that could not be incorporated into the PGAIs, given the project's original design, which was based on economic-ecological zoning, monitoring and control activities, to be implemented through state-centered methodologies. In particular, the absence of project activities to promote sustainable economic alternatives among populations involved in problems of environmental


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degradation was a source of sharp criticisms among representatives of CSOs, local governments and other stakeholders.

According to the state coordinator of the PGAI-Amapá, "the project was elaborated by competent and dedicated technical staff, but with very little community participation.... there were practically no efforts at first in terms of conciousness-raising (conscientização), to get the public interested in the project and the environmental problems it deals with".

Given the NRPP's original "command and control" approach to solving environmental problems, possibilities for public participation in the early stages of project implementation were extremely limited. This situation has gradually changed, as a result of initiatives to incorporate alternative instruments within environmental management strategies (e.g. environmental education, economic incentives) and more participatory methodologies for implementing zoning, environmental monitoring and control.

Among recent activities supported by the NRPP, a promising example of non-institutionalized participation at the state-level has been the organization of the public seminars in each of the nine Amazonian states to discuss sustainable alternatives to deforestation. The "Agenda Positiva" seminars have been successful in establishing pacts between government, the private sector and civil society organizations, including those representing small farmers, extractivist populations, indigenous peoples' organizations, etc., on strategic directives for reducing deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, while contributing to the economy and well-being of local populations.

Participation at the Municipal Level Municipal Forums

In Amapá, Pará and other NRPP states, there has been growing interest in the decentralization of project activities to the municipal level. Such interest has been sparked, among other factors, by a wide recognition among stakeholders of limitations inherent to NRPP´s initial strategy which focused on the institutional strengthening of state environmental agencies. In Pará, support for municipal environmental management began with a group of employees of the state environmental agency who worked in environmental education. The technical cooperation of GTZ also played an important role in encouraging the state government in Pará to descentralize project implementation to the municipal level. In both states, recent strategies for decentralization of environmental management have included, inter alia, support for the creation and consolidation of Municipal Environmental Councils (Conselhos Municipais de Meio Ambiente – COMDEMAs).20 Moreover, efforts have been made to work with pre-existing participatory forums responsible for local development planning, reinforcing the incorporation of environmental concerns. These have included Municipal Commissions for Rural Development, linked to the National Program to Support Family-Farming (PRONAF)21and participatory forums responsible for elaborating a

20 In the municipality of Tucuruí, the PGAI is supporting a “Municipal Agenda 21 Forum” (FORTIN). 21 In Pará, GTZ recently initiated support for a project known as PRORENDA (coordinated through the State Agricultural Secretariat – SAPRI) that is aimed at promoting participatory methodologies in local development planning, with a focus on municipal rural development commissions (CMDRs). This project involves close collaboration with FETAGRI and FASE (Federação dos Órgãos de Assistência Social e Econômica), a church-based CSO that provides technical and organization support to grassroots organizations. Recently, discussions have been initiated in Pará about possibilities for collaboration with the PGAI and PRORENDA, with support from the GTZ on both sides.


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municipal Agenda 21, supported through the "Comunidade Ativa" program, an initiative of the federal-level "Comunidade Solidária" Council. Membership in such forums tends to vary, but typically includes rural workers' unions, church-based organizations, representatives of state and federal government agencies, and representatives of municipal governments.

In both states, project efforts have worked increasingly with municipal forums in the planning, implementation and monitoring of PGAIs. In the municipality of Santarém-PA, for example, a municipal commission was specifically created to monitor and evaluate implementation of the PGAI at the local level. In Amapá, project coordinators at the Secretariat of Environment expressed interest in the idea that such municipal forums could function informally as local-level Working Groups in the planning and monitoring of the project.

Although still incipient, the strategy of working with municipal forums in the planning and monitoring of PGAIs provides opportunities for participation of CSOs that do not exist in the state Working Groups. Several informants observed that to the extent that municipal forums operate effectively, with broad participation of and support from local stakeholders, PGAIs and similar initiatives tend to become less vulnerable to the uncertainties of local politics.

However, the effective functioning of participatory forums at the municipal level

includes number of potential obstacles:

• The decision-making capacity of municipal forums depends greatly on the political support of the mayor's office;

• The organizational and technical capacity of local CSOs is a critical factor for the functioning of municipal forums;

• The limited experience of state and municipal government staff with participatory methodologies is often a major difficulty, leading to planning and monitoring exercises with insufficient participation and technical quality;

• In some cases, the use of certain types of participatory discussion techniques in planning workshops has made it relatively easy for the "facilitator" to exercise a great deal of power over the planning process and for discussions to be centered around a small number of more vocal participants, to the point of inhibiting participation of CSOs;

• Private sector organizations (e.g. logging interests) are often resistant to participation in municipal forums, while preferring to maintain traditional patronage relationships with local politicians;

• Municipal forums have little influence over public policies at the state and federal level, that have major impacts on resource use at the local level (e.g. land tenure policy, rural credit policies, etc.)

• Municipal forums maintain a tenuous relationship to the state-level Working Groups, in terms of their input into overall processes of project planning, monitoring, and evaluation.


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Informal or Ad Hoc Mechanisms of Influence Particularly in the case of Amapá, personal contacts and ad hoc forms of participation have been important mechanisms for involvement of local communities within the NRPP. A particularly illustrative example is the Cooperativa Mista do Rio Iratapuru - COOMARU. Created in December 192, the cooperative represents 32 families that reside in the "Sustainable Development Reserve of Rio Iratapuru". The reserve was created by the state government in December 1997, covering an area of 806,184 hectares in the region of Laranjal do Jari.

The personal contacts between local leaders and Governor Capiberibe were instrumental for mobilizing governmental action for creating the reserve in December 1997. Subsequently, such relationships were helped secure support for community development initiatives through NRPP, PD/A and other sources of funds, including the state's own budget. The main customer for the cooperative's main product, brazil nut cookies, is the state government, which uses the product in its school lunch program. Within the PGAI-Amapá, the state government proposed an underwater tube-based hydroelectric facility on the Rio Iratapuru which would benefit COOMARU. The generating facility, with an estimated capacity of 120 KVA and budgeted at R$ 400.000, became a subject of controversy between the state government, ST/MMA and the World Bank, as the result of questioning about the project's environmental impacts and overall appropriateness for financing through NRPP.22

Although the case of COOMARU demonstrates the relevance of informal or ad hoc mechanisms of participation, it also raises concerns, such as: i) the tendency for ad hoc forms of participation to favor groups that are best connected politically, to the possible detriment of other communities in equal or greater need; ii) a tendency to downplay the importance of more systematic and institutionalized forms of participation, especially important in a public policy-based project, and iii) potential risks in eventually transforming NRPP into a PD/A-type project, in contrast to its original objectives.

Seminars and Workshops

Within initiatives to promote decentralization of environmental management to the municipal level, several forms of non-institutionalized participation have been promoted. In Pará, workshops are periodically organized to plan and evaluate activities of "municipal PGAIs". Promoted in twelve high-priority municipalities, the workshops are two-day events, normally facilitated by SECTAM staff members. Participation in these events has included, in addition to municipal government personnel, representatives of community associations, churches, rural workers' unions, women's organizations, urban neighborhood associations, schools , etc.

During municipal workshops in Pará, discussions about environmental problems have utilized such techniques as a "talk show", where a local government authority is "interviewed" about local environmental problems, then subjected to questioning from the

22 Other forms of NRPP support for the Rio Iratapurú Reserve include zoning activities in the southern part of the reserve (as part of a macrozoning project, on a scale of 1:250.000 in the priority area of southern Amapá), demarcation (planned), enforcement activities and a study on marketing alternatives for extractive products. Interesting, other potential areas of project collaboration, such as technical support in the elaboration of resource utilization and management plans, had yet not been discussed between COOMARU and the state government.


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audience. This technique for diagnosing environmental problems is followed by discussions about possible solutions among the group as a whole.

In Amapá, informal community meetings have been organized to discuss environmental problems and PGAI activities, especially in municipalities where formal institutions, such as Municipal Environmental Councils, do not yet exist. The idea is to begin with informal participatory forums, which may eventually mature into formalized institutions.

Instruments of Environmental Management

Within the original design NRPP, little attention was given to the participation of civil society (particularly of those representing traditionally excluded groups) in relation to the principal instruments of environmental management envisioned within the project: i.e. ecological-economic zoning, environmental monitoring and control.

In the ecological-economic zoning programs of Pará and Amapá, participation of CSOs has often been problematic, due to factors such as: i) the broad scale of macrozoning exercises (1:1,000,000- 1:250,000) that make it difficult for local populations to "find themselves" and the environments they occupy on zoning maps; ii) the absence of public discussions about the objectives, principals and purposes of zoning, as an initial step in planning, associated with a prevailing view of zoning as a technical instrument for government planning (Becker and Egler, 1997) and iii) a lack of educational campaigns about the content of zoning programs in the mass media (especially radio).

In response to such critiques, both Amapá and Pará are now supporting innovative approaches to zoning at the municipal and community levels. In Amapá, the project is supporting a participatory zoning process in the community of Lago de Curiaú, an ex-Quilombo near Macapá recently transformed into an Area of Environmental Protection (APA), as well as within a pilot area covering 2.500 sq. k near Laranjal de Jarí, selected because of various socio-environmental problems that the zoning program proposes to help resolve. In Pará, municipal zoning programs are being promoted in Santarém and Itaituba, as part of participatory initiatives to draft Municipal Sustainable Development Plans.

With regard to environmental monitoring and control, the initial view within NRPP was that these activities should be carried out exclusively by state environmental agencies, in collaboration with IBAMA and, in some cases, municipal governments. Notwithstanding the inalienable legal responsibilities of government agencies, there has been a growing recognition of potential roles for local communities, e.g. community involvement in preventative activities of environmental education, community monitoring of environmental problems, community collaboration in protection of Extractive Reserves. Such initiatives are still at a very incipient stage in both Amapá and Pará states, with still minimal CSO participation.

Alternative Instruments of Environmental Management

In addition to improvements in the existing instruments of PGAIs (zoning, monitoring and control), a recent trend has been to use participatory methods in the planning and implementation of a wider array of policies and instruments related to integrated environmental management strategies (e.g. environmental education, economic incentives). Such initiatives, partially in response to critiques from CSOs, have opened new possibilities for participation.


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An important example of this recent emphasis is NRPP's support for the state and regional-level Agenda Positiva seminars described above, in which government, private sector and civil society stakeholders have agreed upon key changes in sectoral policies (land tenure, rural credit, economic incentives, agricultural and forestry policies, etc.) with an eye towards reducing deforestation and promoting sustainable development in the Brazilian Amazon. Similar initiatives in participatory planning, CSOs and other stakeholders, may be found among initiatives to support the elaboration and implementation of a Municipal Agenda 21. .

4.4 Capacities and Motivations of Civil Society and Government

Civil Society Organizations As described above, there has been virtually no participation of CSOs in the planning, monitoring and evaluation of the NRPP at the state level, as exemplified by their absence as participants on state-level Working Groups (with the recent exception of IESA in the state of Amapá). To the extent that there has been participation in the project, this has occurred almost exclusively at the municipal and community levels, through the involvement of rural workers' unions, community associations and other local grassroots organizations.

In analyzing the profile of organized civil society in both Amapá and Pará, one encounters a relative scarcity of groups with stated objectives related to the incorporation of environmental concerns into public policies. The majority of CSOs may be categorized as either a) grassroots organizations and umbrella groups (e.g. rural workers' federations) or b) human rights and/or advisory groups to grassroots organizations (e.g. Pastoral Land Commission).

In the above cases, political agendas of CSOs have been oriented by the immediate demands of the rural poor (e.g. access to the legal system, rural credit, agrarian reform, etc.). Traditionally, environmental concerns have not figured prominently among the priorities of these groups. However, there are strong indications of an increasing combination of "red" and "green" agendas, as evidenced by the demands of the "Grito da Terra 2000", organized by the state Federation of Agricultural Workers (FETAGRI) during field work in Pará. One of the main demands was for the creation of a special line of rural credit, entitled "PROAMBIENTE" (Pro-Environment) that would link financial subsidies to commitments among small holders to adopting of sustainable agriculture techniques and forest conservation, supported by a strong technical assistance program. Such trends suggest that there is considerable untapped potential for grassroots involvement in public policy-related activities of NRPP at the state and regional levels.

The relative absence of CSOs active on environmental issues is particularly striking in the case of Amapá, given the ascension of a progressive state government that placed principles of sustainable development at the forefront of its political agenda. Moreover, the staff members of various CSOs, such as IESA, also work within government agencies (including the past and current Executive Secretary of the regional GTA). According to IESA staff, the lack of qualified personnel within state government agencies to implement the sustainable development proposals of the Capiberibe administration has created enormous demands on the already scarce cadre of CSO activists. Such over-commitment has made it even more difficult to participate in projects such as NRPP.


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In the state of Pará, a notable exception to the above-mentioned trend is IMAZON (Instituto do Homem e Meio Ambiente na Amazônia) an CSO with a high level of technical capacity that has been active in research and training in such areas as remote-sensing and forest management. Within the Pilot Program, IMAZON has been involved in both the Directed Research PROMANEJO projects, and has increasingly been contracted as a service provider to government agencies. Despite related activities (e.g. training of state government technicians in remote-sensing techniques for monitoring forestry activities), it has not formally participated in the NRPP.

As described above, there has been a striking lack of pressure among civil society organizations in both Pará and Amapá to participate actively in the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the project, particularly at the level of the state Working Groups. In addition to the overall incipient level of civil society organization around public policies related to environmental issues, this situation appears to reflect the following inter-related factors:

• The absence of participation of CSOs in the original design of the NRPP, which certainly decreased their knowledge and sense of ownership about the project;

• The "command-and-control" approach to environmental management that characterized the original design of the NRPP, leaving apparently little room for civil society participation, and in several instances, perceptions of the project among CSOs as being counter to their interests;

• An absence of educational campaigns to spark public interest in the project and the environmental problems it proposes to address;

• Among CSOs that were aware of the project's existence, perceptions of the NRPP as highly "technical" and "scientific", distanced from local communities and their direct interests, in contrast to projects such as PD/A;

• Perceptions of the precarious functioning of state-level Working Groups, especially in relation to State Environmental Councils, where CSOs have been able to more effectively participate in decision-making on environmental issues;

• A lack of discussions within GTA at the national and regional levels about strategies for participation in the NRPP, in contrast to the almost exclusive attention dedicated to projects aimed at meeting the immediate demands of local populations, i.e. PD/A, RESEX, PPTAL.23

Despite such limitations, there appears to be growing recognition among many state-level CSOs of the significance of NRPP as the project in the Pilot Program with the most potential to address larger issues of public policy, regional development and socio-environmental problems. Such recognition, in large measure, is due to advances in the decentralization and

23 In states such as Rondônia and Acre, GTA representatives have participated in the NRPP Working Groups. However, the regional GTAs have experienced difficulties in their ability to promote internal discussions about the NRPP, with an eye towards ensuring more proactive roles for organized civil society within the project, both within the Working Group and at other levels. Such difficulties often reflect, inter alia, problems in the functioning of CSO networks, in terms of their ability to define a common agenda among a diversity of local stakeholder organizations.


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"flexibilization" of instruments for environmental management (e.g. increased emphasis on educational activities, economic incentives, participatory zoning, etc.). Within such an approach, the dichotomy of environmental policy vs. community interests tends to be overcome, especially when issues of direct interest to local populations (e.g. land tenure, policies to support sustainable economic alternatives) are incorporated into discussions of environmental management. As observed by an CSO member in Amapá, such advances have begun to "spark the interest of civil society in the PGAIs".

At the same time, criticisms have persisted among environmental groups in Pará that the project has not adequately addressed the mainstream development agendas of federal and state governments and their socio-environmental impacts (i.e. transportation and development corridors, including the complex of roads and hidrovias along the Teles Pires-Tapajos and Araguaia-Tocantins rivers, and particularly, the expansion of mechanized soybean cultivation). In the case of the macro-zoning in Pará, critics have claimed that the PGAI has not dealt adequately with issues related to conflicts over land and other resources that have worsened as a result of land concentration and migration of Northeasterners, especially from the state of Maranhão. Similar criticisms are made about the need for the project to more actively support educational activities and sustainable alternatives for income generation and resource management among the rural poor.

State Governments In both Amapá and Pará, institutional capacity among state environmental agencies in the design and implementation of participatory policies is very limited. A major difficulty has been a historical lack of personnel trained in participatory methodologies related to policy monitoring and formulation, including techniques of consensus-building and conflict resolution. Given the traditional characteristics of many government institutions (centralization, bureaucratization, corporativism, clientelism, etc.) such initiatives within the PGAIs constitute a sort of "counterculture" to the mainstream of state policy.

According to the Assistant Secretariat of the Environment in Amapá, SEMA has experienced such difficulties both in terms of both the quantity and quality of human resources. A representative of the Instituto de Estudos Sócio-Ambientais (IESA) that also works for the state government observed that the strong political commitment of the Capiberibe administration to CSOs triggered a latent demand among these populations that contributed to the overburdening of public institutions.

While piecemeal efforts have been undertaken to train state government personnel in participatory discussion techniques, much more could be done within the NRPP to strengthen the capacity of staff within state environmental agencies and other key personnel in appropriate participatory methods. Given the increasing decentralization of project activities, the fragile institutional capacity of municipal governments is a question that deserves careful attention.

Clearly, the broader political context within states has had a significant influence on the possibilities for participatory policy-making. In this regard, an illustrative case-in-point is the current administration of Governor João Alberto Capiberibe in Amapá. Upon taking office in 1995, an immediate priority of the new governor was to provide political and


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financial support for community-based organizations. The state government's firm support for COOMARU in the region of Laranjal do Jarí, via the PGAI and other projects, is a salient example of the potential impacts of high-level political commitment to participation of CSOs.24

However, high-level political support is not a guarantee of effective. As described previously, the Amapá government stressed the importance of direct support for grassroots development projects, but has been timid in its support for participation of social movements and CSOs within the policy-related activities of the NRPP. Such trends appear to reflect, to a large extent, the problems of institutional capacity and culture described above.

The maxim that governments typically act only when provoked seems to be relevant to the NRPP. The lack of civil society pressures to actively participate in the design and implementation of the project, certainly contributed to the opinion of the state government that local CSOs were too poorly organized to effectively participate in the PGAI at the state-level.

As previously mentioned, the normative, state-centered approach to environmental management espoused in the initial design of the NRPP limited the potential of state environmental agencies to stimulate participation of CSOs in the project. The original structure of the project also had important implications for the amount of commitment of state governments to the project. Negative reactions to the original project structure among CSOs and, in some cases, business sectors coupled with pressures to support sustainable economic alternatives in ways not accounted for in the original design seem to have had an significant influence on state environmental agencies, in terms of their own efforts to revise the project's operational strategy, vis-à-vis the NRPP Technical Secretariat at MMA, the World Bank and donors.25

In Pará, the state government has incorporated concepts of sustainable development into its discourse, including the motto "desenvolver sem devastar". However, relatively few steps have been taken to open a permanent dialogue with civil society organizations and other stakeholders with regard to its strategic development plans, such as the corridors for integration and development. The most significant contribution of the NRPP in this regard has been support for the state-level Agenda Positiva seminar, promoted by SCA/MMA and the Government of Pará in April, 2000.

4.5 Conclusions

The Natural Resources Policy Project-NRPP has demonstrated both major problems and innovative approaches to the participation of CSOs in policy formulation projects. In this chapter, it has been demonstrated that major limiting factors in such participation have included:

24 The Capiberibe government did encounter difficulties with its strategy of providing financial support for grassroots movements, particularly during his first year in office (1995). For example, the allocation of significant funds to community organizations was often not accompanied by careful planning and training of personnel involved in project administration. 25 According to several informants, the original scope of NRPP activities contributed to perceptions of the Pilot Program among several politicians, ranchers, and logging interests as a conspiracy to "sell off he Amazon to the United States". Apparently, a more positive image of the Pilot Program did not emerge until initiation of the PD/A in 1996.


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• A lack of involvement of CSOs and other stakeholders in the design phase of the NRPP,

• An absence of civil society representation within institutional forums of the project (especially the state-level Working Groups), and

• A project structure initially centered around command-and-control instruments, institutional strengthening of government agencies and non-participatory approaches to ecological-economic zoning.

• The incipient level of civil society organizing both states with regard to public policies and environmental management, and

• A lack of strategies for promoting popular participation in the project within the Amazon Working Group-GTA, at both the national and regional levels.

In both states analyzed, CSOs did not actively seek to influence project design, largely because they did not perceive the project as benefiting their constituencies, even if such benefits could have theoretically resulted from state environmental policies. Such disinterest has been linked to perceptions of the NRPP as a “technical” and “scientific” project, unrelated to the direct interests of local communities (in contrast to perceptions of the PD/A and other projects in the Pilot Program that targeted those interests)

Given these initial obstacles, one of the striking characteristics of the NRPP has been the gradual emergence of innovative approaches to the participation of CSOs and other stakeholders. In particular, such experiences have involved efforts to encourage decentralization of environmental management strategies to the municipal and community levels, the use of participatory methodologies in the definition of “social pacts” for sustainable development at the municipal, state and regional levels (Agenda 21, Agenda Positiva, etc.) incorporation of alternative instruments (e.g. “environmental extension”, economic incentives, etc.) and revised approaches to zoning and land use planning at the community and municipal levels, emphasizing participatory methodologies. Such changes within strategies for project implementation highlight the importance of learning processes within the NRPP, in which CSOs (often through informal mechanisms of influence) have often made important contributions to the identification of problems and the search for alternative solutions.


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CHAPTER V

The Impacts of Participation on Decision-Making

5.1 Five Types of Impacts

It is not in the scope of this study to fully evaluate the outcomes of the Pilot Program (something that is only partially available through project mid-term and final evaluations, and also currently being undertaken in the Program Mid-Term Review), nor is such an evaluation feasible at this stage in time since most projects have not yet been completed. The research conducted for this study, however, does show that participatory decision-making processes had a series of positive and negative effects on projects. A review of the literature on participatory project implementation shows that beneficiary or CSO participation can lead to better outcomes both in terms of the increasing the capacity of projects to reach their objectives and in terms of having a longer term impact on efforts to reach those objectives after projects are completed. At the same time, participation can have negative impacts on projects both in the short and long terms. We can divide these types of impacts into five general categories, each which have positive and negative sides.26

Incorporating Specialized Knowledge and Capacities.

The presence of CSOs can ensure that projects benefit from the specialized knowledge these sectors have about issues related to sustainable development. CSOs can also provide projects with certain implementation capacities these groups have that are often lacking in government sectors, such as greater flexibility and the ability to work with local communities. Yet some critics of participatory processes suggest that the contrary can also be true: the lack of specialized knowledge of some CSOs, or their political bias, can lead to inappropriate recommendations. Likewise, some note that CSOs often lack administrative capacities necessary for project implementation Where CSOs have control over decisions in areas for which they do not have a comparative advantage in terms of knowledge or organizing capacity, technical quality may actually decline as a result of participatory methods..27

Reducing Costs.

The literature about participation suggests that involving CSOs in decision-making can both increase and decrease project costs. Costs can increase to finance meetings and to provide organizations with resources to participate. They can also increase as a result of the delays that occur when participatory processes lead to extensive negotiations that can take much time. On the other hand, participation can reduce costs by taking advantage of the voluntary, unpaid labor of CSO activists, by avoiding errors through incorporating the special knowledge civic associations have about local conditions and by making project implementation more efficient by taking advantage of the specialized capacities of CSOs

26 For a variety of views of the potential benefits of participation, see Abers (2000: 5-8); Bhatnagar and Williams (1992:177-178); Oakley (1991); Paul (1987); Stiefel and Wolfe (1994:3-5); and White (1992) 27 See Tendler (1996: 157-163) for a critique of widely disseminated views that CSOs are more efficient and effective at project implementation than government.


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Building Ownership and Political Support.

Projects do not only require appropriate knowledge, implementing capacities, and cost efficiency in order to be successful. They also work better if they are able both to foster a sense of commitment by those directly affected to ensuring that projects reach completion. Moreover, participatory processes can help garner the political support of those who are not immediately affected (such as in public opinion, among policy makers, etc.) by giving greater political legitimacy to projects. At the same time, however, some authors note that the broader the spectrum of groups involved in decision-making, the more conflicts that are likely to arise. Where participatory processes are perceived as involving unrepresentative members of civil society, they can foster the resentment of those who are not involved and can reduce a project’s broader-based legitimacy.

Attending the Needs of Groups Traditionally Excluded from Public-Decision-making.

One of the principles upon which the Pilot Program is founded is that sustainable development will only occur if local impoverished communities are provided with economic alternatives that avoid environmental degradation. In this sense, the Program seeks to benefit groups that have been traditionally excluded from influence over policy-making in ways that other development programs that focus on providing incentives to the industrial sector. The participation of CSOs representing traditionally excluded groups can help ensure that this actually occurs. However, where those who participate do not effectively represent traditionally excluded groups, that influence may bias decision-making in favor of certain sub-groups.

It should also be noted that not all environmental policies have as their objective to provide material benefits to local populations. For example, the creation of protection areas where economic activities would be prohibited would be of little immediate benefit to local communities. In these cases, the influence of CSOs representing those groups could potentially hinder the capacity of the project to reach its objectives, by creating pressures to allow for the use of environmental resources in such areas.

Building Social Capital.

Social capital is a complex concept, one aspect of which we will focus on here: the expansion of civic associations and the strengthening of their capacity to promote social and economic development, both on their own and by pressuring government. Some refer to these processes as “empowerment” (Abers, 2000; Friedmann, 1992; Oakley, 1991; Paul, 1987). World Bank documents on participation have suggested that “the Bank does not pursue empowerment as an end in itself” (Bhatnagar and Williams, 1992:178). However, an understanding of empowerment as related to social capital construction highlights the fact that this potential outcome of participation can have major benefits for reaching programmatic objectives in the long term.28 Even where projects fail to reach their immediate objectives, where they help

28 Fox (1997) notes that for some time the idea of promoting social capital construction has been “appropriated” by the world bank, but only recently have ‘Bank analysts [begun] to make the connection between the


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strengthen civic networks, it is more likely that they will be able to reach those objectives in the future. This is also the case, of course, where projects are able to increase the institutional capacities of governments (which is not the subject of this study). But research has shown that where social capital is strong, government institutions also tend to perform better (Putnam, 1993).

Participation in government projects can potentially have both positive and negative impacts on social capital development. On the positive side, by giving CSOs the chance to develop experience in project decision-making and by channeling resources to the CSO sector, participatory projects can increase the technical, organizational and administrative capacities of existing civic groups and foster the emergence of new ones. On the negative side, the creation of new organizations geared towards participating in government decision-making can dilute the strength of previously existing groups. Financial dependence on the state can weaken civic associations. When civic groups begin to focus on issues on the government agenda at the expense of issues that are not addressed by official projects, they can also suffer from a loss of autonomy. Furthermore, where projects in which they participate fail, civic groups involved can lose membership and credibility.

The remainder of this chapter will outline how participation CSOs in the Pilot Program have made impacts in each of these categories.

5.2 The Program and Project Levels

Incorporating Specialized Knowledge and Capacities.

Interviews and documentation identified numerous examples about how CSO participants brought information and perspectives that would have been missing in Program and project design and implementation had they been absent from decision-making processes. Few examples were provided showing the negative impact of their influence the technical quality at this level of decision making, although this was not the case at the sub-project level:

The participation of CSOs is critical for increasing the effectiveness of projects that work with CSOs themselves. For example, in the case of PD/A, participation in the design phase was important for recognizing the need to devise funding mechanisms (such as supporting capital and personnel expenditures) that would give associations the capacity to effectively carry out projects. In the implementation phase, CSO members of the Executive Committee helped recognize the need to simplify the operations manual to ensure better understanding and greater adherence to norms, identify the types of training and technical assistance needed and organize consultation and training workshops with the beneficiary population. The presence of network representatives on the committee also helps with the identification of the CSOs that apply for funding to ensure that they have authentic links to the communities they claim to represent.

CSOs also are the source of useful information and analytical perspectives about the projects that do not work exclusively with civic associations. Some of the larger CSOs have extensive experience with sustainable development alternatives and planning mechanisms (such as intellectual recognition of social capital’s potential contribution and actual institutional policies and actions”(963). The Pilot Program’s direct funding for CSO networks is an example of these changes, although a rather unusual one.


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zoning techniques) which are often lacking in the state sector. CSOs also tend to present a political analysis of the conditions in which the Program is being implemented that other sectors often overlook. For example, the CSOs have been the main sector to question the proposal to decentralize Program activities to the state level, arguing that most state governments in the Amazon region are ideologically opposed to sustainable development.

A number of examples can also be cited showing how specific CSO capacities for action have improved Pilot Program activities. The main examples have to do with the capacity for CSOs to disseminate information and mobilize local communities to take part in Program activities.

• The GTA and the RMA played a central role in disseminating information about the PD/A among civic associations.

• Local CSOs and rural union groups were important in promoting community participation in the design of PROMANEJO.

• The case of the implementation of PROTEGER, which was almost entirely carried out by the GTA, showed the capacity for that network to implement a fire control project effectively at the same time that government-implemented projects with similar goals stalled. This example of implementation capacity should not be noted without caveats, however, since the GTA did suffer from problems of administrative organization and oversight, although these were partially caused by delays on the part of IBAMA and the World Bank.

It should be noted, however, that at the project level there have been cases where government and donor sectors overestimated the potential of CSO networks to implement components of the Projects. For example, the presumption on the part of some government sectors that the networks could effectively disseminate information about the lessons learned from the PD/As was revised after the Midterm review of that project argued that the networks did not have the capacity to do so. Likewise, according to both government and donor informants, the GTA showed great difficulties in designing a proposal for continuation of the PROTEGER project.

Reducing Costs.

In a strict sense, the strategy of providing substantial institutional support to the CSO networks has increased costs. As an example, we can look at the PD/A project, considered by this report to be the project with the most effective project level participatory mechanisms. In 1998, that project spent 800,843 brazilian reais on administrative costs and 2.760 million reais on donations to sub-projects. As a percentage of administrative costs, only 2.8% (R$22,659) was spent on meetings of the Executive Committee and another 3.2% (R$25,457) was spent on training activities and workshops. These figures suggest that participation in strict sense decision-making only accounted for a small part of the project´s administrative budget (and an even smaller part of total project spending, which was heavily weighted towards sub-project donations). If we add to these figures spending on “dissemination meetings” more generally, which accounted for 9% (R$ 72,000) of administrative project costs in that year, the figure rises to a more substantial 15% of administration activities.

However, in all projects, expenditures such as these were at least partially compensated by the unpaid work hours provided by CSO activists as well as the in-kind support provided by


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beneficiaries (food, labor, transportation, meeting rooms, etc.), which are much more difficult to quantify. According to one World Bank informant, if these costs had been paid by the government, the costs of projects could easily increase by 20 to 30 percent. Since, as is discussed below, RESEX and many PD/A sub-projects depend on a great deal of voluntary labor, this is especially true for those projects.

In broader terms, it is virtually impossible to measure if network expenditures have been compensated by a more effective implementation of the Program since the benefits of this investment are diffuse. However, although criticisms are commonly voiced about the effectiveness of the CSO networks, most informants (from all sectors) agree that the Program’s investment in them has both made the Program more effective and has created greater potential for promoting sustainable development in the long term (as we will see below).

The main delays that have occurred in the Program were caused by the complex and not always compatible organizational and procedural requirements of the multiple national and international institutions involved, rather than lengthy consensus-building processes resulting from participatory decision-making. Indeed, the evidence suggests that CSO participation, where most effective, actually speeded up project implementation, rather than the contrary. With the exception of the Science sub-program, those projects around which the networks mobilized most intensely were the ones that got off the ground most rapidly. Although the exact impact of CSO mobilization on the speed of project initiation is difficult to identify, their power to generate political support for certain projects (as we will see in the next section) certainly added pressure to begin implementing them.

Building Ownership and Political Support

On balance, the participation of CSO networks has helped provide political support for the Pilot Program. The most dramatic example of this occurred in 1999, when across-the-board budget cuts by the Brazilian government nearly eliminated the Program altogether. The mobilization of Brazilian CSOs in support of the Program was repeatedly cited by both CSO and government informants as having been critical for reversing that decision. Numerous examples of how participation in the design and implementation of projects helped generate support for them were also cited.

On some occasions, however, CSOs have voiced intense criticism of the Program that has raised political problems. For example, at a recent meeting of Participants, some CSOs publicly criticized the Program leading to a some negative press. Nevertheless, some argue that such public criticisms serve to improve the effectiveness of the Program.

More importantly, where questions arise about the relationship between the Program and the CSO networks, the legitimacy of Program decision-making as a whole can come into question. As noted earlier, a number of concerns were voiced in interviews about the ad hoc and informal nature of decision-making at the Program level, in which personal contacts between network leadership and government and donor agencies predominate. For the most part, the networks are able to influence decision-making at this level only by obtaining access to key decision makers in processes that are far from systematic or transparent. This led many informants (from both government and CSO sectors) to suggest that Program decision-making appears to occur mostly behind closed doors, involving only those CSO leaders that have the contacts and skills to “negotiate the bureaucracy”. These criticisms


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effectively diminish political support for the Program by those organizations that do not feel that they have equal access to decision-making.

In some cases formal committees that approve documents give a veneer of legitimacy to those decisions, but the decisions are not actually implemented. This suggests such formal “approval” should not be confused with participatory processes in which the projects that are to be approved are the result of negotiation among sectors. These “weak” participatory processes may do no more than disperse responsibility and commitment to the decisions made, making it even more difficult to implement them.

With respect to project design, the analysis shows that where CSOs participate, they have greater commitment to seeing the projects through. The case of the Science sub-program and NRPP are examples of projects that have not received much support from the CSOs precisely because they felt excluded from their design. Building such a sense of ownership means that participation must involve more than one-time “consultations,” but rather an extended process of negotiation in which responsibilities for implementation are agreed upon. As one government informant noted:

“Why not involve the actors from the beginning. Because if you don’t, if you arrive with

the proposal already completed, they might not agree. It is as if I asked you to rob a bank

with me. I wouldn’t arrive with the plan already defined. We would have to go define the

plan together, beforehand. Otherwise, you would not agree to taking part in something so

risky.”

Attending the Needs of Groups Traditionally Excluded From Public Decision-making.

Many examples at the Program and Project level can be identified showing how participation has ensured that the projects attend the needs of traditionally excluded groups. Some of these examples have already been noted: designing PD/A so that civic associations would best benefit and ensuring that inauthentic organizations are not funded; redefining the objectives of PROMANEJO to include community-based projects. Many more examples can be given at the sub-project level, as will be discussed below.

At times, the demand that projects attend the needs of concerns of CSOs can conflict with some perspectives of the technical quality of the projects. As noted in Chapter 2, for example, one informant suggested that the CSO representatives on the PD/A Executive Committee tended to privilege supporting local civic associations at the expense of the broader goal of implementing “demonstrative” projects, at times supporting a number of similar projects rather than privileging project uniqueness. This criticism was, however, by no means consensual among informants (some CSO informants questioned the strict definition of “demonstrative” used by the technical personnel).

The main criticisms with respect to how the participation of CSOs helps promote the needs of traditionally excluded groups have to do with the representativeness of the networks. Some informants suggested, for example, that GTA influence over the PD/A project primarily benefited those organizations that were strongest within the network. For example, one


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representative of an CSO within the GTA network noted that training activities organized by the GTA to prepare associations for developing PD/A proposals were carried out earlier and more intensely in the regions of the Amazon where the GTA was strongest.

Another criticism less often voiced has to do with the relative absence of certain social sectors within the networks. For example, as noted earlier, few organizations representing poor urban populations (which can certainly be considered “traditionally excluded from decision-making”) are members of the GTA. How a greater presence of these groups would affect the Pilot Program is unclear, since many Amazon cities are economically dependent on environmentally unsustainable activities, such as timber extraction and gold mining.

Building Social Capital

There is strong evidence in the Pilot Program experience that social capital construction can help promote sustainable development in the long term. The fact that those regions of the Amazon where civil society was most intensely organized at the early stages of the Program (such as southern Acre and southern Pará) were precisely those that presented the largest numbers of proposals for PD/A funding shows that these civic organizations are important sources of sustainable development alternatives.

The Pilot Program is unusual among government and multilateral programs in that it sought to increase CSO capacity to participate in decision-making by directly transferring resources to CSO networks in order to promote their organizational strengthening. In this sense, the Pilot Program constituted a direct attempt to foster social capital. This is particularly true in the case of the GTA, which did not even exist prior to the Pilot Program. Since an evaluation contracted by the World Bank recently examined workings of the GTA (Almeida, 2000), this study did not seek to carry out an extensive evaluation of that organization. Nevertheless, some basic findings about the impact of institutional support for the GTA on its development, extracted both from that evaluation and from interviews carried out for this study, are worth noting here.

Undoubtedly, Pilot Program investment in the GTA has been critical for strengthening the capacity of civil society in the Amazon to participate in Program decision-making. Although not all informants interviewed were satisfied with the capacity of the GTA to represent all CSOs in the Amazon region, by all accounts it has become the most representative organization of Amazonian civil society. The GTA includes representatives of extractivists, indigenous groups, small farmers, fishermen, quilombo residents and environmental and social CSOs in the region. Despite the huge geographical area that it covers, the GTA has developed a transparent and democratic process of electing representatives through general assemblies every two years. The network has succeeded in becoming the central interlocutor between civil society and the Brazilian government (beyond the Pilot Program) for issues related to the Amazon. The existence of a central office in Brasília has been essential for transforming the GTA into “a sort of Embassy of [Amazonian] Civil Society in the Capital” (Fatheuer, 1999: 37).

A variety of criticisms of the functioning of the GTA were expressed, however by informants from all sectors as well as by the above cited evaluation. Some of these criticisms have to do with the organizational capacity of the GTA.

• A series of criticisms were raised about the organization of the GTA. The network is highly centralized in the Brasília office while many of the regional offices do not function


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effectively. In this context, participation in Pilot Program decision-making tends to be carried out by a reduced number of individuals and leadership does not rotate sufficiently (although the fact that the network holds elections every two years suggests that this continuity was a democratic decision). Often, participation in the name of the ‘network’ as a whole in fact is carried out by certain member organizations acting in their own interest. The network does not effectively communicate to its members all relevant information about the Pilot Program nor does it have effective mechanisms for organizing discussion “from the bottom up” about the issues discussed in the Program.

• Other criticisms focused on the representativeness of the GTA. The network has grown unequally among regions, continuing to represent most strongly those regions of the Amazon that were best organized at the time it was founded. Moreover, the GTA does not well represent certain sectors of “traditionally excluded groups” in the Amazon region, such as the urban poor.

• Other criticisms focus on the relationship between the GTA and the Pilot Program. Two criticisms were most commonly expressed. 1) The GTA has prioritized negotiating with the government, especially the Ministry of Environment, at the expense of organizing around grassroots issues that are not on the government agenda; and 2) The GTA is almost exclusively dependent on the Pilot Program for funding and has failed as yet to develop a strategy for diversifying sources of funding.

• Finally, although the network has developed a number of effective leaders capable of articulating proposals and organizing around them, the capacity of the GTA to analyze complex technical proposals, to propose alternatives, and to implement them remains limited.

Many of the problems the GTA has faced are at least partially the result of the ad hoc manner in which decision-making occurs within the Pilot Program, which was described in Chapter 2. For example, the fact that Program decisions are made through largely individual negotiations occurring in government and donor offices in Brasília encourages a centralization of the network in the nation’s capital. The importance of personal contacts in influencing decision-making also discourages leadership rotation, since those contacts could break down if new leaders were constantly involved. The above cited evaluation of the GTA also provides examples of how this ad hoc style has penetrated decisions directly affecting GTA funding, such as they way resources are allocated. According to that evaluation, decisions about resource transfer to the network funding are also often in an ad hoc fashion, attending requests for emergency funding prior to project approval or for changes in project objectives and timelines. Such decisions are made by World Bank and government personnel in response to specific requests, thereby increasing the tendency for individually-based negotiations. The effect is also to reduce the capacity of the network to plan its activities, including to plan its own sustainability in the future.

The Atlantic Forest Network has also benefited from Pilot Program funding, although this funding came much later than in the case of the GTA and never reached the same proportions in absolute terms. In 1997, the GTA received funding for the creation and maintenance of an office in Bahia, with some staff. In 1999, the Program funded the opening of a small office in Brasília to facilitate interaction between the Program and the RMA. this only began in 1990. Nevertheless, RMA informants note that such funding was very important for developing the


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institutional viability of the network. Like the GTA, the RMA currently depends on the Pilot Program for most of its funding. Interestingly, however, informants did not express much criticism of this financial dependence on the Program, as was the case for the GTA, perhaps because the network existed prior to this funding.

In both cases, however, it is important to note, that the problem of identifying alternative sources of funding is not a simple one to solve: it is faced by nearly all CSOs in Brazil, where a civic culture of donation does not exist as in the U.S. and Europe and where civic groups representing the poor do not have a constituency financially capable of supporting them.

At the Project level, participation in decision-making contributed to social capital construction in the case of PPTAL, although at the sub-project level, PD/A and RESEX made greater advances in this field, as will be discussed below. Even observers who did not believe that the Consultative Commission had a significant amount of influence over project decisions suggested that the meetings of the Commission constituted unprecedented opportunities for indigenous leaders to meet together, develop proposals on topics extending beyond the specific objectives of the Project, and build knowledge about the workings of government decision-making.

5.3 Community-Based Projects

Incorporating Specialized Knowledge and Capacities

Each of the three projects analyzed at the community level show how giving decision-making power to beneficiaries and locally based CSOs can improve projects by taking advantage of the specialized knowledge and implementing capacities of these organizations. However, the sub-projects analyzed also show some of the problems that can arise when projects depend on the technical knowledge and organizing capacities of CSOs.

Benefits of Specialized Knowledge

In terms of specialized knowledge, the case of PPTAL provides the clearest examples of how projects can improve with beneficiary participation. One of the main problems in demarcating indigenous lands resides in errors in the identification phase, so that the demarcation teams end up working with incorrect data. In one case, these errors were so large that FUNAI had to redo the identification process of an reserve already demarcated and officialized. Often indigenous groups noticed these problems while the demarcation was still underway. But as long as they had little influence over decision-making in demarcations, they were often unable to convince the companies to make the necessary changes. In the first years within PPTAL, there were numerous cases in which complaints by indigenous groups simply were ignored by the company. When the rules for indigenous participation were specified in the contracts, the communities acquired the power to have their complaints taken into account. Indeed, since the incorporation of these issues in the contract, the frequency of work stoppages increased substantially, showing that when there is effective participation by local indigenous groups there is also much more care in the way the projects are carried out.

Benefits of Organizing Capacities

PD/A and RESEX sub-projects show a variety of ways that working with local CSOs takes advantage of their particular organizing capacities, thus allowing for certain types of


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activities to be carried out which would be much more difficult to do were they promoted by government institutions. In particular, activities that required extensive collective work, which had to be negotiated with local communities would be difficult to carry out by institutions that did were not identified by beneficiaries as rooted in local communities. As noted earlier, many of the collective work activities, such as communal agroforestry systems, involved substantial contributions of labor time by beneficiaries. Only organizations with credibility among beneficiaries and community organizing skills can convince people that such contributions are worth making. Although theoretically, local governments could also have necessary connections to local populations, in most cases they do not have personnel skilled in community organizing and frequently lack credibility with impoverished communities.

Limitations of CSO Knowledge

Nevertheless, these experiences have also shown the limitations of many CSOs in designing and implementing experimental projects. The PD/A sub-projects are replete with situations in which projects implemented by CSOs suffered major technical problems. Often the “demonstrative “ objectives of the project were compromised by these problems, since basic errors in project design meant that the alternatives proposed were not effectively tested.

• For example, the economic viability of collecting native seeds used in the sub-project promoted by the Nossa Senhora de Fátima Association was not effectively tested, according to the evaluation of this sub-project, because of lack of knowledge about commercialization strategies (Urano de Carvalho, 2000).

• Numerous sub-project informants noted that machinery selection for project implementation proved to be inappropriate for the projected activities, as was the case of the processing plant used for the Rede Frutos do Cerrado sub-projects which was unable to attend the demand of the sub-projects. Such problems were cited in a large number of the completed sub-projects recently evaluated (PDA, 2000).

• The evidence also suggests that organizing capacity does not necessarily translate to technical capacity: Some experienced, long existing CSOs, such as CAPEB and FETACRE still lacked appropriate technical knowledge to effectively implement projects. The sub-projects that were most successful in the technical sense were those that involved CSOs with technical personnel trained in the area or in which they used project funds to hire specialized personnel, as was the case of the Sabiá and Gambá projects.

These problems lead to the conclusion that simply transferring resources to CSOs is by no means a guarantee that those CSOs will have the necessary information and expertise to reach their objectives. This means that, if technical objectives are to be achieved, projects that work directly with CSOs must find ways to ensure that appropriate techniques are being used. According to PD/A personnel and members of the Executive Committee, over time those involved in analyzing proposals learned how to identify well designed project. Many of the technical problems that plagued earlier sub-projects have been avoided, simply because non-viable proposals were rejected. But where problems did arise, many sources criticize the project for failing to develop effective mechanisms of technical advising. Technical staff do not have the time or resources to closely monitor most projects. A group of consultants exists, which can be activated to visit problem sub-projects, but many informants suggested that this group has not been effective at helping sub-projects deal with their problems These


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problems have been widely recognized, such that the project’s Mid-term Review recommended developing a greater capacity to provide technical support on the part of the PDA staff. Yet, the review also noted that this would only come by increasing the administrative costs of the PD/A, which was founded on the proposal that 90% of project funds would be transferred directly to implementing institutions (Santilli, 1997).

Reducing Costs

The above discussion suggests that the effect of participatory mechanisms on community based sub-project costs is ambiguous. On the one hand, the organizational capacities of CSOs often allow sub-projects to implement activities with a heavy reliance on unpaid labor, as in the case of the large number of mutirões carried out in the RESEX project. Certainly these activities cost less than they would if they had been carried out through standard sub-contracting mechanisms. At the same time, where community participation led to the avoidance of technical errors, as in several cases of indigenous participation in demarcation projects, the cost of redoing activities were avoided.

On the other hand, where participants did not have technical knowledge to carry out activities, certainly the result was an inefficient use of project funds. For example, in the CAPEB case, lack of information about industrial regulations forced the sub-project to rebuild major portions of the brazil nut processing plant because of hygiene problems. As will be discussed in further detail below, however, even where technical problems prevail, participatory forms of decision-making can contribute to building long-term technical capacities in the CSO sector and among local communities. This effect may not reduce costs of specific sub-projects, but can reduce the costs of project implementation in the future.


Ownership Numerous informants noted that encouraging discussion among beneficiaries about sub-project activities was critical for ensuring that people would support the sub-project over time. This was especially true in the cases where sub-projects depended on a great deal of collective labor. For example, in the cases of agro-forestry systems, several informants noted that beneficiaries would be unlikely to carryout the more onerous tasks involved if they did not agree to do so. More generally, informants from both the PD/A and RESEX projects noted the importance of beneficiary involvement in all stages of the projects for developing a collective sense of responsibility. As one PD/A sub-project informant noted:

“It is important that there be participation in the decisions, in part because if mistakes are made, everyone has to take on the responsibility for them.”

In the cases of PPTAL and RESEX, one objective of the projects is to create conditions in which the local communities have the capacity to project their reserves. Indigenous participation is expected to help promote the sustainability of demarcations, since by being involved in the physical definition of the boundaries, the communities become aware of where those boundaries are and are therefore better able to protect them in the future. It is still to early to tell whether or not this long term viability will result from indigenous participation, although according to one informant, there are already a number of cases in which indigenous groups contacted local police to deal with land invasions in border areas, an action they could only do because they had close knowledge of where those border areas


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were located. A similar sense of ownership is likely to result of the more intensive activities in the Extractive Reserves, especially the development of the Utilization Plans.

Political Support

Where local projects devolve power to specific beneficiary groups, the result tends to be the generation of support for the project by those groups. However, the effect of these processes on the generation of support by other local groups is less clear. By supporting local CSOs, participatory projects can give legitimacy and influence to those organizations, thus affecting the balance of power at the local level. The variety of experiences within the PD/A project show the diverse effects this can have. Informants repeatedly noted that, in most cases, local CSOs grow out of social and labor movements and are in political opposition to elites holding power in local and state governments. The mere fact that the organizations are able to receive relatively large grants helps increase their credibility with local populations. Sometimes the result is recognition by local governments. For example, an one PD/A sub-project informant noted that while prior to the sub-project, the implementing CSO was perceived as a group of inconsequential radicals, by the end of the project it was regularly invited to “sit at the table with the mayor” in decision-making discussions related to environmental issues. In the Porto Dias, case, the basic idea of the sub-project was appropriated by the Xapurí municipal government and implemented on a larger scale.29 This suggests that working with local CSOs promoting sustainable development can give broader credibility not only to specific projects, but also to sustainable development ideas more generally.

Most of the PD/A sub-project informants interviewed, however, noted that they were never able to gain support from local or state government. In some cases, this lack of support destabilized projects. The most extreme situation was described by PD/A technical staff: a local government had agreed to extend electric lines to a project headquarters, but later refused to do so, making the processing plant purchased by the sub-project inoperable. In the Sabiá case, local political conflicts raised problems for the sub-project when elections in the Rural Labor Union that was a partner in the project put a group in opposition to the sub-project at the head of the union, thus ending the partnership. In most situations however, local political conflicts did not have adverse effects on projects, but they did not help either.

In this sense, all three of the projects discussed in this chapter have been able to implement goals associated with sustainable development despite the fact that these objectives are not supported by a majority of local and state government. According to one World Bank informant, one of the main innovations of the PD/A project is that it bypasses local political structures, allowing for sub-projects to be implemented that would otherwise not be. But other informants suggested that the “disconnected’ character of PD/A sub-projects with respect to local governments is a limitation, since in most cases the projects are unable to lead to changes in local or state level policies.

The Pilot Program’s efforts to promote sustainable development through state institutions, through NRPP, could in this respect give greater political viability to the projects discussed in this section. State-wide programs to disseminate lessons learned from them and to give technical support and infrastructure to PD/A and RESEX projects, and others like them,

29 This case is unusual, however, in that the local government was held by a political group with close ties to the Rubber Tappers Movement.


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would be a form of not only giving these efforts better chances at success, but also give their “demonstrative” character greater impact. As discussed in Chapter 4, however, interlinkages between NRPP and PD/A projects have been lacking.

Attending the Needs of Groups Traditionally Excluded from Public Decision-making

One potential benefit of participatory processes of decision-making at the sub-project level can be to ensure that these objectives are effectively reached. But where participation gives greater influence to certain representatives of the targeted beneficiary groups, it can also raise new problems for reaching these objectives. Unlike the other Pilot Program projects, PD/A, RESEX and PPTAL are exclusively focused towards working with specific local communities. They largely do not involve negotiating investments among a variety of sectors, such as the business sector or state government institutions, although some of the funding for each project goes to the administrative costs each Technical Secretariat. In this context, the ability of participatory decision-making to help ensure that groups traditionally excluded from public decision-making benefit is much greater. Nevertheless, the problems of bias arise in each of the projects examined.

PPTAL

PPTAL provides the most simple examples for how participation can help projects effectively benefit beneficiary populations. Several cases were noted earlier in which indigenous participation in demarcations guaranteed that those demarcation actually conformed to the borders of the indigenous lands. At a more complex level of analysis, as will be discussed in the next section, the more participatory models of demarcation also contributed to a more general capacity building among indigenous groups involved. The question that must be asked, and which is difficult to answer in the scope of this study, is the extent to which this capacity building was biased toward certain members of the indigenous communities. As noted earlier, those who participated tended to be sub-groups, such as more acculturated groups or youth groups, with particular characteristics that led them to create associations. These groups did not necessarily represent the leadership of indigenous communities.

PD/A

With respect to PD/A, an analysis of the project’s impact on benefiting groups that are traditionally excluded from public decision-making must confront the fact that the project is characterized by dual objectives. Formally, the intention is not to directly benefit local populations, but rather to develop models which in future policy making could promote forms of sustainable development that would, among other goals, improve the livelihood of those groups. In this sense, ensuring that project resources go to representative CSOs is not necessarily a central focus of the program. Informally, however, as discussed earlier, the project has been seen by the CSO networks as an opportunity to strengthen their constituencies by channeling government resources to CSOs. Examining whether participation has promoted the interests of groups traditionally excluded from public-decision-making in the PD/A should be understood in terms of both these objectives and in terms of the contradictions between them.

In terms of the first objective, transferring resources to local organizations have contributed to ensuring that the “demonstrative” character of the project is particularly applicable to traditionally excluded groups, since typically the projects are designed by CSOs working


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with precisely those groups. With respect to the second, less official objective of the PD/A, to strengthen civil society, similar conclusions can be made. The next section will examine in more detail the ability of the PD/A project to strengthen CSOs. The general conclusions is positive: the project has served to build capacities in CSOs throughout the Amazon and the Atlantic Forest regions. In this sense, the ‘resource transfer’ form of participatory decision-making involved in the PD/A has reached the objective of strengthening CSOs representing traditionally excluded groups.

• The main question that must be raise to qualify generally positive outcome is: Which CSOs have been benefited? The fact that project selection depends on the success of CSOs in a competitive process means that this effect is biased in favor of those groups that have at least the minimal technical capacity required for defining a “competitive” proposal. Of the proposals received by the program by May of 2000, only 34% reached the minimum conditions for being considered for funding and only 16% were actually funded (PD/A 2000: 7). This suggests that although the PD/A contributed to capacity-building in the CSO sector, this only occurred among those CSOs that were already most “capable”. That is, the “most excluded’ sub-groups within the CSO sector continued to be excluded from the Project. A partial response to this problem came with the creation of a small grant fund after the 1997 midterm review.

RESEX

The case of RESEX is complicated in a different way. None of the informants interviewed disagreed with the conclusion that the project has benefited the populations of the extractive reserves. But the effect of participatory mechanisms on this impact is difficult to separate from the effect of intensive investments in the reserves more generally. One the one hand, the emphasis on mutirões was criticized by some informants as a form of exploiting local labor. Contracting external companies to do this work might have brought similar material benefits without participation, at less cost to reserve residents. On the other hand, as will be shown in the next section, the participatory activities developed by the project helped build capacities, particularly in the realm of community organizing

The problem of biasing benefits in favor of those groups that are best organized, which appears in both the PPTAL and PD/A cases was more carefully addressed in the RESEX case, where project efforts were geared towards increasing the representativeness of reserve organizations.


At the sub-project level, RESEX, PPTAL and PD/A show how different kinds of participatory mechanisms can help build the long-term associational capacity of local populations. At the same time, they also show some of the problems with strategies used in the Pilot Program for strengthening local level organizations.

Strengthening Local Organizations

Of the three projects, PPTAL gave the least emphasis to strengthening local associations, in part because indigenous participation involved carrying out a specific task over a relatively short period of time. However, even here, there is evidence that where more participatory models were used, they helped indigenous groups develop organizing capacities. The clearest examples are in the cases of the self-demarcations conducted outside the immediate


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sphere of influence of the project. In the two indigenous lands where self-demarcations took place, the groups later developed surveillance plans to protect the demarcated lands over time. This suggests that the participation in demarcation provided the ground-work for other efforts on the part of the organizations involved. In most other cases, it is too early to determine the effect of participation in the long term. But the fact that more participatory models of demarcation were only possible in cases where groups involved had prior experiences of organization provides evidence for the argument that participatory experiences have a cumulative effect. For example, in the Alto and Media Rio Negro case, participation by FOIRN in the demarcation processes was made possible because a strong indigenous organization had grown out of ten years of partnership with ISA and other organizations in other activities.

The PD/A cases provide repeated examples of how transferring resources to CSOs and giving them the opportunity to learn how to implement projects can strengthen those organizations. One aspect of this refers to the impact of receiving institutional funding. PD/A is unusual among social funds in Brazil in that it financed institutional costs, such as capital expenditures and personnel. In some cases, informants argued that the acquisition of permanent equipment and the ability to pay technical personnel over the period of the project allowed organizations to professionalize. Where this functioned well, the groups were able to develop special technical capacities which they could use to attract other funding after the sub-project ended. According to one PD/A staff member, such professionalization was most common among intermediary CSOs that used funds to develop technical capacities, rather than among community based CSOs where funding focused on benefiting as many community members as possible. In general, the analysis of PD/A sub-projects suggests that institutional funding is not enough to ensure that by the time projects end, CSOs will be strong enough to seek out other sources of funding. Especially in the cases of CSOs that were less technically capable at the beginning of the sub-project, CSOs were often unable to find other sources of funding to give continuity to their efforts. This suggests that there is a threshold that implementing CSOs must be able to reach during the project period which will allow them to have continuity. Only a much more in-depth study of PD/A sub-projects can understand what factors ensure that CSOs are able to reach this threshold.

The PD/A experience also leads to some interesting conclusions with respect to the relationship between project success and social capital construction. Clearly, where projects were able to bring returns to their beneficiaries, the implementing CSOs gained credibility among local populations. Some informants suggested that the opposite can also be true: where projects fail, CSOs lose credibility, although no concrete examples of this situation were provided. To the contrary, the PD/A evaluations suggest that even failed projects can result in increased technical and organizing capacities within CSOs that give them greater capacity to implement projects in the future. In the case of sub-project implemented by CAPEB, for example, the evaluation concluded that although the sub-project suffered from serious technical difficulties, the experience of dealing with those difficulties was a learning process that left members of the CSO with the capacity to develop projects in the future that are much more likely to be successful (Kornexl, 2000). A different example is that of the ACOPAMO project, which failed to bring productive returns during the project period, but gained credibility over time. According to the informant from that project, the mere fact that the CSO received a large grant helped give it credibility not only with the local population, but also with local government institutions.


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The RESEX experience provides insight on the impact of a different kind of participatory process on social capital construction, where specific resources were dedicated to building organizational capacity and where a government agency was much more present in project implementation. As already noted, the general consensus of informants was that the project had a positive effect on strengthening the reserve associations, which expanded membership, strengthened the local population’s capacities to carry out cooperative enterprises, and strengthened the technical and organizational capacity of association leadership.

There were, however, three problems cited by informants with respect to the project’s strategy for organizational capacity building.

1. Although the project contributed to the developing leadership, this was neither a rapid or easy process. According to informants, one of the obstacles to bringing new leaders to the associations is the lack of education. To be the director of an association, one needs not only to be literate, but also to be able to negotiate contracts and write technical and financial reports. Reserve informants noted that the RESEX Project did not seriously invest in education nor have the state governments invested in the area. For example, in the Brasiléia region, most school teachers have only primary education and teach only up to fourth grade. The only place in the Chico Mendes reserve where higher level schooling is available is the Assis Brasil area. Another obstacle to leadership development cited by the informants is that intense participation in the Association implies abandoning their work as extractivists. Association directors are unpaid, which create serious problems for the survival of the families of those who are elected as well as for the functioning of the associations.

2. Many informants interviewed in the Chico Mendes reserve noted that the strategy for consolidating the associations failed to give them sustainability. With project resources, the associations received a great deal of infrastructure, which when the project ended, the membership found that they could not sustain. The project created offices located in the nearby cities, and therefore distant from the place of residence of the association leadership, with computers, faxes, and telephones. When the project ended, the offices remained open only because the CNPT continued to pay telephone, electricity and water bills, but secretaries and accountants had to be laid off. Leaders of the three associations visited were unanimous in recognizing their inability to maintain the Associations without project funds. Perhaps in part because of the expectation that the reserves would soon receive funding through Phase 2 of RESEX, after Phase 1 ended, the associations largely failed to carry out other projects or to engage in partnerships. These problems suggest that, as in some of the PD/A cases, institutional investment in the Associations did not allow them to reach a ‘threshold” from which they could continue maintaining those investments after project resources were cut off.

3. On and off site informants noted that although the Associations and the smaller núcleos de base took on an important role in organizing reserve residents, the investment in these associations took place at the expense of other pre-existing organizations, such as the rural labor unions and the CNS, which had been extremely important in organizing the reserve populations. The emphasis on reserve-level associations was justified on the fact that these organizations would only represent reserve residents, and would therefore be most appropriate for working with RESEX funds. But informants suggested that with the creation of the Associations and the núcleos, these historical organizations became less active in the reserves.


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• Many leaders hold office in both association and the unions or the CNS, a sign that there is some interaction among these organizations. But this does not meant that they always work together. Many reserve informants were particularly critical of the CNS, which they argued was not active locally. CNS representatives largely agreed with this criticism, although one argued that it was not the role of the organization to organize the local communities. Others argued that one of the roles the CNS was supposed to play in the project was as a liaison between the project and the local populations, a role it has not played as well as hoped.

With respect the Rural Labor Unions, interviews suggested that there was a relative

weakening of these organizations as a result of the creation of the reserve. To receive most

benefits, reserve residents must be members of both the local union and the association. But

in practice, residents have increasingly resisted paying dues to both organization. In this

context, the unions have been the ones to lose out.

Scaling Up Social Capital Construction

While thus far this discussion has focused on the role of the projects in promoting social capital formation in terms of strengthening individual organizations, a different way to look at this question is to examine whether or not the projects have contributed to building organizing networks among associations. This is what Fox (1994) calls ‘scaling up’. Where projects have helped CSOs immediately benefiting from the project to build ties to other organizations, we can say that such an expanded development of social capital has occured. As noted in Chapter 3, some of the implementing CSOs built ties with other institutions, such as other CSOs and local universities as a result of the sub-projects. As the recent PD/A evaluation suggests, the most successful projects were the ones that developed such alliances (PDA 2000). These processes did not occur, however, in most cases. Furthermore, as noted in Chapter 3, most informants noted that extensive efforts were not made to build ties among the PD/A sub-projects and between them and other PPG7 projects.

5.4 State-Level Policy Formulation

Given the limited influence that CSOs have had over state-level NRPP projects, few conclusions about what the impact of such influence, had it occurred, are easily made.

Incorporating Knowledge and Capacities and Reducing Costs

Initially, the various factors that limited the extent of CSO participation (e.g. lack of participation in project design, lack of participation in state-level Working Groups) essentially precluded the possibility of contributions to the technical quality of the project. Moreover, the limited number of civil society organizations working at the state level with expertise in environmental policy also represents a limiting factor to their technical contributions to the project.

Despite the fact that the use of participatory methods is still at a relatively incipient stage, important contributions from CSOs to the technical quality of the PGAIs can be observed.


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This is especially the case among activities that have been decentralized to the municipal and community levels, using participatory methodologies (e.g. municipal planning and monitoring of PGAIs, elaboration of Municipal Agenda 21, Participatory Zoning, etc.). Considering that environmental problems are often politically delicate, especially when powerful economic interests that wield considerable influence over state governments are at stake, the presence of social movements and environmental CSOs in a “watchdog” role, ensuring that objectives are reached, tends to improve the technical quality of the enforcement.


The lack of participation of CSOs and other stakeholders in the design phase of the NRPP, as well as in decision-making forums such as the state-level Working Groups, constituted major limitations in building political support for the project. In this regard, CSOs representing traditionally excluded groups were among the stakeholders that pressured for changes in the original project design, which led to significant changes in the NRPP (i.e. decentralization to the municipal and community levels, incorporation of alternative instruments in environmental management and greater emphasis on participatory methodologies).

When CSO participation has been facilitated in the forging of political pacts for sustainable development (e.g. Agenda Positiva, Municipal Agenda 21) together with other local stakeholders (government, business, etc.) a positive impact on political support occurred. Such support is particularly important during periods of political transition, such as during municipal and state elections when political leaders strive to build support for their platforms.


The original design of the NRPP, based on government-centered initiatives in ecological-economic zoning, environmental monitoring and enforcement, did very little to attend the direct needs of groups traditionally excluded groups from public decision-making, reflecting the lack of civil society participation in the initial design phase, as well as in operational planning and monitoring.

Eventually, the combined impacts of critiques originating from state governments, CSOs and other stakeholders, regarding the structure and activities of the NRPP, led to significant changes, exemplified by the recent mid-term review of the project which has proposed numerous mechanisms to increase both CSO participation and to give more emphasis to sustainable development alternatives that would benefit local communities. Such changes demonstrate the potential of the project to attend the needs of traditionally excluded groups, despite its broader policy-based approach.


The factors that limited the extent of CSO participation of in the NRPP (e.g. lack of consultations in the design phase, lack of involvement of CSOs in state-level working groups, perceptions of the project as unrelated to the interests of such groups, etc.) also served as obstacles that inhibited the project’s potential contributions to the building of social capital.

Recent efforts to improve participation of CSOs at various levels (e.g. Agenda Positiva seminars at the state level, support for municipal forums for sustainable development) have


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opened new possibilities within NRPP to support the building of social capital. However, such advances are still at a very incipient stage. Most of NRPP´s potential in contributing to the building social capital remains to be realized.


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CHAPTER VI

Conclusions and Recommendations

The Pilot Program includes a vast diversity of mechanisms of CSO participation. The following comments will attempt to take account of this diversity in the attempt to explain why some components of the Pilot Program have given greater influence to CSOs than others. It will also present some general recommendations for how the Program could increase the influence of CSOs in ways that would better ensure that the impacts of such influence are positive.

6.1 Mechanisms of CSO Influence

The Pilot Program has involved almost all possible types of participatory mechanisms, some of which are more effective than others at giving CSOs influence over decision-making, and each of which has different costs and benefits. We can divide these mechanisms into the following groups.

Formal Meetings and Commissions

Theorists of participatory democracy have proposed that situations in which people meet together, face-to-face, to discuss problems and propose solutions are qualitatively different from other means of consulting citizens about government decision-making. A number of formal mechanisms of can be used to consult people about specific issues that affect their lives which do not involve face-to-face assemblies, such as referendums and opinion surveys. But face-to-face mechanisms are different from such individualized consultations because they allow for discussion and debate, through which participants can gain an understanding of other people’s positions and, potentially, change their own opinions (Mansbridge, 1980; Barber, 1984). A variety of types of face-to-face mechanisms were used in the Pilot Program.

First, a number of projects have been designed and evaluated on the basis of what we can label “one-time consultations”: a wide array of workshops and meetings in which people are invited to discuss their opinions and agree on recommendations. As was shown in the discussion of project design processes (Chapter 2), such workshops can be an effective form of generating consensus among groups affected by a project. However, this only occurred where such consultations had some continuity with later decision-making processes. In the case of Rain Forest Corridors, for examples, informants suggested that two workshops held with a wide array of stakeholders had little impact on the final project design since they were too short in length to build commitments and to analyze details. Only when groups were organized that had more continuity were the difficult goals of building consensus achieved. On the other hand, the PROMANEJO design process involved a series of workshops involving more or less the same group of carefully selected participants, allowing for negotiations over a longer period which led to a general agreement on the details of the project. In other cases, one time meetings had an impact on decision-making, because they were tied to later implementation processes. For example, at the sub-project level, meetings between indigenous groups and demarcation companies served to set the rules for a demarcation process which the indigenous groups themselves would monitor.

Second, the Pilot Program involves a wide variety of formally created groups with fixed representation, including of the CSO sector, that meet regularly. These include working


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groups to design projects, commissions to guide implementation, and the National Coordinating Commission and the Joint Steering Committee.

Sub-projects also involved a variety of “commission” mechanisms. For example, in the case of RESEX, the reserve associations took on this regular decision-making role, with general assemblies electing representatives. Some PD/A projects were also governed by formally created committees with clearly defined representation. The CAPEB sub-project was governed by an executive committee including representatives of all the associations belonging to the organization. Other sub-projects include regular meetings of beneficiary families to plan activities.

The degree to which these different types of assembly processes actually influence decision-making varies substantially, depending on the motivation and capacities of both government and CSO groups (see below). However, these mechanisms are different from other forms of participation in that when project implementing institutions call such meetings, they must make clear both how they chose the selection of participants and must set rules determining if the conclusions made by the group are to be considered final decisions or merely consultations.

Informal Mechanisms

Parallel to such formal mechanisms of participation, Pilot Program decision-making also has been exceptionally open to ad hoc contributions CSOs. Here the contribution occurs not during formal meetings with a declared consultative or deliberative decision-making role, but through a myriad of individual contacts between leaders and key decision-makers in government and donor agencies. The CSO leadership may bring to the table positions that were defined by formal committees within the networks, but the negotiation is typically carried out between individuals. Decisions can also be influenced less directly by lobbying efforts on the part of CSOs, such as presenting documents to key decision-makers or releasing information to the press. Some of the informal mechanisms used in the Pilot Program also involve face-to-face assemblies in which groups of people are invited to contribute to decision-making. For example, many of the PD/A sub-projects involved loosely organized meetings, in which project coordinators invited a selection of beneficiaries to discuss key decisions at certain moments over the course of the project.

These informal mechanisms are different from the formal ones described above because they are typically private and ad hoc. Usually there are no explicit rules for how participants will affect decisions and the decisions or recommendations made through direct contacts are not publicly documented. Nevertheless, such contacts between CSOs and government or between beneficiaries and project implementing institutions often have more influence over actual decision-making than the formal processes described earlier, usually because it is through such contacts that important decisions are made which never reach formal committees. For example, CSO lobbying may define how agendas are set . Regular contacts between government and CSOs may be where intermediary decisions are made. Lobbying efforts on the part of CSOs may also have the effect of “showing force”, pushing for decisions to be made which if made only by ‘consultative’ commissions might be ignored.

On-site Implementation Activities

At the sub-project level, the Pilot Program includes a variety of activities in which beneficiaries actually carry out some of the implementation activities. This kind of


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participation should be distinguished from the above categories in that it involves not simply approving plans and proposals that others will carry out, but actually being involved in the details of implementation. The projects vary however, with respect to the degree of autonomy that beneficiaries have over on-site implementation decisions. In the case of PD/A, the CSOs implementing sub-projects have virtually full autonomy, designing the projects themselves and controlling the resources that they have received through the project. Even here, however, the CSOs must not only adhere to the work plans approved by the project, but also to more general regulations such as procedures for contracting private companies. The few cases where CSOs implemented Directed Research Projects in the Science sub-program also allowed for almost complete autonomy over sub-project implementation.

In the case of RESEX, the reserve associations gained, over the course of the project, increasing control over project implementation. Over time, the associations developed, for example, the capacity to elaborate contracts with private companies and agreements with state and local infrastructure to build infrastructure on the research, as well as to carry out other activities. Nevertheless, project activities were always negotiated to some extent with government (CNPT) personnel, who played a much closer advising role in everyday project activities than occurred in the case of PD/A.

Finally, in the case of PPTAL, indigenous representatives closely monitor the work of demarcation companies, detaining the right to stop activities should they believe that it is being done incorrectly. Except in a few cases, however, they do not control the actual process of selecting the companies, which involves competitive biddings and writing contracts. Nor, in most cases, are the indigenous groups involved in deciding what model of demarcation will be used in the first place.

Many PD/A sub-projects and all RESEX sub-projects also include a variety of collective work activities, that is activities in which beneficiaries join together and build infrastructure or collectively manage resources (such as agro-forestry systems) or equipment (such as processing plants). In most cases, those who carry out the work are also involved in planning how that work is to take place, through planning sessions specifically geared toward the activity to be carried out. As noted, however, this is not always the case. In particular, women often participate in work without being involved in decision-making.

At the project level, there are also a variety of ways that CSOs have been involved in actual implementation, although this is less common. In several cases, the networks have received resources from the Program to carry out projects or components of projects. For example, the GTA received funding to carry out training workshops for CSOs interested in presenting proposals. It also received funding for carrying out the PROTEGER project in almost its entirety.

6.2 Factors Determining CSO Influence

Perhaps the most important lesson we can learn from examining participation in the

Pilot Program is merely having a formal mandate that projects be designed and

implemented with the participation of CSOs was not enough to ensure that those


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groups had influence over decision-making. Certainly, this mandate was an important

conditioning factor motivating the government agencies involved to invite CSOs to

participate at different phases of the project cycle, but the extent to which such

participation was systematic and the extent to which it actually influenced

decision-making varied substantially among the projects. In the early phases of the

Program, only RESEX and PD/A involved substantial participation in the design phase

and only these two projects sought to give direct control to CSOs. In the case of PD/A

this occurred both at the project level, by giving CSO representatives 50% of the seats

on the commission that decided which sub-projects would receive funding and at the

sub-project level, by directly transferring resources to CSOs. In the case of RESEX,

participation occurred mostly at the sub-project level, where the project concentrated

efforts on capacitating local organizations and giving them increasing control over

resource allocation and planning decisions. PPTAL is an intermediary case, where

indigenous groups had little participation in designing the project, but gained a

substantial amount of influence over implementation through a consultative committee

in which indigenous representatives held half the seats. In the Science Sub-program,

some CSOs participated in project design but for the most part, they had little

influence over implementation. NRPP also involved little CSO participation in design.

An executive committee included CSOs, but was ineffective at influencing

implementation decisions but these had little influence over project decision-making.

At the sub-project (state) level of NRPP, most cases involved little participation.

As Chapter 1 argued, to understand why CSOs had more influence over some projects

than others, we must understand both what motivates government to open the doors to

CSO influence and what motivates CSOs to take advantage of those opportunities. We

must also examine the capacities both sectors have to take part in participatory

decision-making. The analysis of the projects studied shows that a combination of

motivations and capacities on both sides are required in order for CSOs to have

influence.

Government Motivations

The analysis presented throughout this documents suggests that a variety of factors

also explain why government agencies pursued participatory strategies in some cases

more than others. We can place these factors into the following categories.

Pressure from CSOs

Mobilization by CSOs around certain projects encourages government to give them more influence in an effort to build broader public opinion support. CSOs in Brazil concentrated their lobbying efforts in the early years on PD/A and RESEX, certainly contributing to the fact that these two projects were the ones over which they had influence. Mobilization abroad around specific issues also has impact on government motivations. Mobilization by CSOs in Europe and the United States pressured donors to pay particular attention to demand that participatory mechanisms be put in place in certain projects. This added pressure on government to give CSOs influence over the PD/A and RESEX projects, but also to give indigenous groups greater participation in PPTAL.

The extent to which CSO mobilization motivates governments to give them influence over a project is conditioned by the level of mobilization of other sectors in society. In many cases,


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business sectors are strongly mobilized, making demands that contradict those of the CSO sector. In this context, government agencies must weigh the political benefit of giving greater influence to the CSO sector against the costs of alienating the business sector, which often provides important political support to governments. Where projects do not immediately affect business interests, this problem is less intense than in the cases of projects that affect a broader range of interests, such as NRPP, Rainforest Corridors and Promanejo.

A counterbalance to the influence of business sectors on government motivations can be public opinion. Where CSOs, or the demands they make, have the support of voters, they are more likely to gain influence over decision-making. In this context, growing national public support for the rights of rubber-tappers, indigenous groups and small farmers in the Amazon certainly helped motivate government to give the CSOs representing these groups more influence over public policy. Within the Amazon region, however, there is widespread public suspicion of CSOs and of environmentalism in general (a suspicion intensely cultivated by local elites). According to many informants, environmental CSOs within the region are largely perceived as working against economic development processes and as being controlled by foreign interests. These perceptions certainly contributed to the fact that at the state level, most NRPP sub-projects failed substantially to involve CSOs in decision-making.

Pressure from Donors.

From the beginning of the Pilot Program, donors demanded that decision-making include the participation of CSOs. Yet the analysis suggests that this demand was more intense in the case of some project than others especially in the first years when projects were designed. In the first place, donor agencies were themselves susceptible to CSO pressure. That is, where CSOs were mobilized to demand participation, they often gained the support of donors and the World Bank, especially when that mobilization was backed up by international CSOs and public-opinion more generally.

In the second place, donor agencies tended to perceive some projects as more appropriate for participatory mechanisms than others. Donor demands that projects incorporate participation were much weaker in the cases of projects geared towards policy formulation or technical analysis, such as NRPP and the Science Sub-program.

Political Relations between Government and CSOs

Where key government decision-makers perceived CSOs as political allies, they were more likely to give them influence. The Ministry of Environment was an unusual government agency in this respect, founded at the beginning of the decade (then only as a Secretariat) with the participation of environmental activists. In recent years, the close relations between the Secretariat of the Amazon within the ministry intensified when a historic environmentalist was nominated to head the agency and a number of CSO activists took jobs within it. The primary counter example are NRPP sub-projects implemented by state governments which perceived the CSO sector as part of the political opposition.

Most of the other agencies involved in the Program lie somewhere between these two extremes. The Ministry of Science and Technology, that implemented the Science Sub-program had a history of involving members of the academic community on decision-making boards, especially where to decide the distribution of research funds. However, it had little experience working with environmental and social CSOs and even less with local communities. IBAMA had some experience working with environmental CSOs


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and was during several periods of the decade headed by people that came from the CSO sector. But relations between the agency and local rural communities tended to be tense, since as an environmental enforcement agency, IBAMA was perceived with suspicion by local farmers and populations living in environmental protection zones.

Despite these general perceptions working against participation within institutions, most of them included sub-groups of individuals with different perspectives. Where those groups had key decision-making roles, they often sought to promote participatory mechanisms. For example, the department within IBAMA that was created to work with extractive reserves, the CNPT, included a group of people concerned less with ecological preservation and regulation than with benefiting traditional populations through sustainable development. Certain individuals within the CNPT were repeatedly cited by informants as having an ideological preference for participation. Likewise, groups within FUNAI that favored giving indigenous groups greater control over policy-making were brought together to administer PPTAL. In both cases, the particular role of the Technical Secretary in allowing beneficiary groups to have increased control over the projects were often cited as important for countering broader institutional tendencies.

Territorial Claims

The extent to which government agencies were willing to give CSOs influence over decision-making also depended a great deal on the issues involved. Some issues were perceived as fields in which CSOs were both legitimate participants and capable of contributing to decision-making. In other areas, government personnel tended to view CSO participation as both inappropriate and ineffective.

Where issues involved were considered to be “technical” or “scientific”, government agencies tended to perceive CSOs as largely incompetent to participate. Designing methodologies for environmental zoning for NRPP was not viewed as a field where CSOs could make a contribution. Likewise, the Science Sub-program was perceived as highly technical, the design of which might benefit from some reduced participation of a selection of (professionalized) environmental CSOs, but not from grassroots organizations more generally. In the case of PPTAL, an entrenched ideology within FUNAI that considered indigenous groups to be incapable of making decisions about indigenous policy also worked against giving those groups a role in project design.

Where projects dealt principally with building policy capabilities of government agencies themselves, participation was also largely viewed as inappropriate. Once again, the early emphasis of NRPP on strengthening the state environmental agencies was largely seen as an issue that only government agencies would be capable of deciding about. Science sub-program investments in building scientific centers of excellence was also seen as an area in which grassroots groups had no obvious contribution to make.

Other issues were seen as “too politically sensitive” to allow for the externalization of decision-making. The main example here is PPTAL which initially faced intense opposition to indigenous participation by government sectors that questioned CSO “meddling” in issues considered to be related to National Sovereignty.

Other projects were perceived to be the appropriate territory of CSO participation. PD/A was designed as a project that would principally benefit CSOs themselves. RESEX responded to


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a CSO movement to create extractive reserves. In this context, there was little opposition within government to promote participation in these areas.

Changes Over the Course of the Decade

As the 1990s progressed, government acceptance of CSO participation grew, incorporating a broadening spectrum of issues. As noted in Chapter 2, these changes were a result of both more general trends occurring in Brazil as a whole and as a result of the experience of the Pilot Program itself. On the general level, the level of estrangement between CSOs and the government declined. Over the course of the 1990s, CSOs gained legitimacy and recognition. In the context of fiscal crisis, government institutions increasingly began to rely on partnerships with CSOs to carry out many of the activities that had previously been conducted by the government alone. Convênios (a kind of contract) with CSOs were particularly common in the environmental sector (Bernardes, 1999).

On the specific level, the success of the more participatory Pilot Program projects helped build credibility among government sectors that giving influence CSOs can be good for project design and implementation. At the same time, the GTA and the RMA also gained credibility as legitimate representatives of civil society, largely supported as such by CSOs in general, including those that were not members of the networks. In this context, it became increasingly difficult for government agencies to make major decisions within the Pilot Program without consulting at least the leadership of these networks.

All this did not necessarily mean that the government agencies implementing the projects were willing to fully devolve power to CSOs, but that they increasingly believed that bringing those groups into the decision-making process to some extent was not only essential for maintaining political support for the projects but also could also help design and implement projects that were better able to account for the needs of those groups. The extent to which such interests translated into the creation of systematic mechanisms of participation varied, however, from project to project, depending on the degree of CSO mobilization demanding such mechanisms, the intensity of donor pressure, the specific interests of key decision-makers within the agencies (some of which had stronger ideological predisposition to participation and were more comfortable working with CSOs than others) and, as we will see below, the capacities of government agencies. As the analysis of NRPP projects at the state level showed (Chapter 4), even where government personnel recognized that participatory mechanisms may have improved projects and did not constitute a political threat, agencies tend to continue making decisions according to traditional mechanisms unless there is some pressure to motivate them to do otherwise.

Government Capacities

Even where projects were implemented by agencies with motivations to CSOs influence over decision-making, those agencies did not necessarily have the technical capacities to do so.

In the first place, government agencies must include personnel with skills and experience related to participatory decision-making. These skills go beyond the training in so-participatory methodologies. Agencies must have knowledge about the CSO sector, which CSOs exist that are interested in working with the issues at hand and what their technical and organizing capacities and limitations are. Those projects that involve work with local communities require different skills than those that work with technical CSOs, including a knowledge of local customs and history. Those projects that included technical


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personnel with long experience working with beneficiary communities had a greater capacity to organize participatory processes. This was most notably the case of the RESEX project, where informants repeatedly cited the community organizing skills of the technical secretary. Chapter 4 suggests that had the design of NRPP benefited from contributions of people familiar with the conditions within CSO participation can be most effective, the decision-making instruments defined would have been different. At the sub-project level, even in those states where governments were motivated to promote participatory processes, skills in participatory methodologies were lacking. In these conditions, even when upper echelon personnel seek to implement participatory mechanisms, the technical staff involved tend to continue working as they always have.

It is important to note that where participatory mechanisms were created, the capacity of government staff to coordinate the processes increased over time even if they did not have such skills initially. Furthermore, within the Pilot Program, there has been a certain amount of transfer of capacities among projects, so that a comprehension of the conditions in which participatory processes can be more effective has increased even in those projects that were not designed with participatory mechanisms in mind. Over the course of its implementation, for example, NRPP began to include new strategies for decision-making, such as working with local municipalities, which were more amenable to CSO participation, a reflection of increased understanding that smaller scale efforts are more likely to motivate local groups to participate.

Second, government institutions must have the resources to organize participatory processes. Organizing decision-making meetings and training workshops, producing and reproducing documentation appropriate for such meetings involve costs which must be covered. At the design stage, such funding was generally paid for through Rain Forest Trust pre-investment fund, which largely depended on ad hoc decisions by World Bank personnel. In the implementation, the projects all had funds to bring CSO representatives to Brasília for the formal meetings of project commissions. However, funds were not always available to ensure that CSOs were able to meet prior to the meetings among themselves to define positions, nor were there always funds available to arrange for informal meetings with CSO leaders outside of Brasília. Although the Program provided funding to the networks in part to organize meetings, several CSO informants complained that, especially in the early years of the Program, they were often asked to contribute to Pilot Program decision-making processes without receiving travel funds, making such participation impossible. At the sub-project level, those projects that were included with specific components geared towards organizing participatory processes were better able to involve CSOs and beneficiaries in decision-making. For example, of the three projects working with local communities examined in Chapter 3, only RESEX had substantial resources for government staff to actively engage in community organizing efforts.

Third, even where participatory decision-making mechanisms are in place, government agencies must have the capacity to implement those decisions. This capacity is determined by three factors. First, where other groups outside the government, in addition to CSOs representing traditionally excluded groups, have influence over decision-making, the extent to which the latter can have influence depends on the relative power of those other groups and on the level of conflict between them. The Pilot Program includes both projects that that principally focus on benefiting specific local populations and projects that affect a broad


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array of social interests. In the latter group, such as NRPP, Rainforest Corridors and Promanejo, government agencies must negotiate not only with CSOs but also with business sectors whose interests are often in contradiction with those of CSOs representing traditionally excluded groups. In this context, the influence of the latter over project decision-making is necessarily mediated by the extent to which business sectors are organized and also make demands on the project.

Second, the agencies must have autonomy over the decisions made. Where decisions are subject to the veto power of higher levels of decision-making, any decision, including those influenced by CSOs, can be overturned. The decision-making structure of the Pilot Program described in this study implies that the implementing agencies do not have autonomy over decision-making, especially in the design phase, when decisions are subject to multiple approvals by other government agencies and a variety of donors. Even in the implementation stage, many decisions must be approved by institutions. At the level of the Program as a whole, the highest level of decision-making only included CSO representatives after 1999.

Third, agencies must have the technical capacity to implement decisions made by

forums that include participation. The case of the NRPP Projects Commission,

discussed in Chapter 2, showed that where an agency has central management

problems, a commission geared toward project level decision-making has much more

difficulty influencing how the project is implemented.

CSO Motivations

Since CSO and beneficiary participation typically involves a substantial contribution of unpaid time by participants, even where travel costs are accounted for, they are only likely to join up if they believe that doing so will bring returns for the issue that concern them. In this sense, participatory mechanisms must have both relevance and credibility. CSOs are only likely to participate both if they identify the issues involved in a project as related to their concerns and if they believe that participating will make a difference in how projects are implemented. In this respect, it is not surprising that CSOs did not mobilize to participate in all Pilot Program activities.

With respect to relevance, among the early projects, CSOs identified PD/A and RESEX as responding to needs that they themselves had articulated prior to the creation of the Program. Except for a few CSOs with broader based goals (generally environmental CSOs), most are interested in improving the quality of life of specific local populations. In this context, both NRPP and the Science sub-program were viewed as technical projects geared toward abstract issues that had little immediate value to their objectives.

PD/A and RESEX were identified as relevant projects not only because they addressed issues of interest to CSOs, but because they promised help build their institutional capacities. This adds some nuance to the idea that CSOs participate in projects that they see as thematically relevant, since CSOs are not only interested in pursuing specific themes, but also in their own institutional survival. This means that where funding targets specific themes, it may encourage CSOs to work on those issues at the expense of others. This tendency can be viewed in different ways. A number of informants criticized CSOs for participating in government programs only to gain access to resources, rather than to promote broader ideological goals. Others suggested that the fact that the Pilot Program funds certain areas is


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a way to promote civil society interests and capacities in areas perceived by Program designers as important (e.g. sustainable development and environmental protection).

With respect to credibility, the Pilot Program faced problems in general in the early years. Indeed, as noted in Chapter 1, the first group of 13 CSOs to form the GTA in the effort to seek to influence Program decision-making were criticized by a number of other CSOs for working with a government that seen as largely contrary to CSO participation. Those that did participate were, according to informants, skeptical about the government’s capacity to transform decision-making patterns, but believed that the Program was based on different principles that earlier programs and counted on donor pressure in favor of participation. Once the more participatory projects got underway and CSOs received substantial support from the Program through network funding, these initial fears began to fade. Both NRPP and the Science sub-program continued, however, to lack credibility among CSO sectors as projects open to their influence. The fact that these projects were not designed with CSO participation was a message to these groups that they were not open to their contributions.

At the state level, CSOs also failed in most cases to mobilize to participate in NRPP. Once again, the project lacked both perceived relevance and credibility. On the one hand, CSOs expressed the views that the issues involved had to do with either funding government agencies or carryout out what were perceived to be exceedingly technical, even scientific tasks, such as zoning. One the other hand, most state governments were perceived by local CSOs as ideologically in opposition with the goals of sustainable development, in addition to being ridden with corruption, and characterized by closed-door decision-making.

In sub-projects that directly worked with local communities, the problems were somewhat different. For a large part, PD/A sub-projects were perceived as being both relevant and credible by the members of the CSOs that implemented them, since they were typically designed with the needs and interests of those members in mind. Indeed, many informants noted that the fact that they received funds to implement projects helped increase their credibility in the eyes of the membership and local communities more generally.

However, as Chapter 3 showed, often the sub-projects had difficulty mobilizing beneficiaries to participate over the long term. This was particularly true for projects that had long term economic objectives. While beneficiaries may have seen such objectives as relevant, since they had to do with improving their financial well-being, those sub-projects that only brought financial returns in the long term or that worked with experimental activities of uncertain success often had difficulty maintaining participants. Similarly, informants in the RESEX project noted that a large portion of reserve residents did not initially understand the objectives of the project, and were uncertain that participation in association meetings would be worth the high costs of traveling long distances and losing time doing productive work. This was especially true with respect to more abstract planning activities, such as the formulation of reserve utilization plans, which local residents did not see as relevant to their material interests. In both PD/A and RESEX sub-projects, success in mobilizing beneficiaries was usually a result both of intensive consciousness-raising efforts and the provision of shorter term concrete results. For example, RESEX funding of infrastructure construction on the reserves helped build credibility for the project as a whole.

In the case of PPTAL, the cultural differences between indigenous communities and those designing the project affected the extent to which those communities perceived the


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proposition of land demarcation as relevant to their lives. In some cases, indigenous groups that did not perceive their land as geographically fixed and therefore as demarcatable at all. Such problems were not always resolved, although where anthropologists and indigenist or indigenous organizations were employed to work with the communities, the possibilities for building recognition among them that demarcation was relevant to their needs increased.

CSO Capacities

The extent to which CSOs are motivated to participate is closely related to the extent to which those groups have organizing capacities that allow them to take advantage of opportunities to influence decision-making. Those groups or sub-groups able to identify projects as relevant or credible are typically the best organized, since these have more access to information about projects and about the institutions implementing them. At the same time, opportunities to participate in projects that will address the concerns of CSOs tend to motivate new organizations to form. For example, the GTA itself formed in response to the perception that the Pilot Program could address the needs of certain local populations and CSOs. The fact that CSOs representing poor urban populations never joined the GTA reflects the fact that the Pilot Program did not address their needs. Nevertheless, many informants have noted that even among the social sectors that are addressed through the Pilot Program (extractivists, indigenous groups, fishermen, etc.), some sectors and some regions of the Amazon are better organized than others. The Amazon continues to be characterized by “poles” of community organizing, such as southern Acre and southern Pará, that have a much larger number of CSOs affiliated with the GTA. Although this disparity in organization lessened over the course of the 1990s, a result of the social capital construction processes caused in part by the Pilot Program itself (see Chapter 5), it never completely disappeared.

At the sub-project level, disparities in organizing capacity also affect the extent to which CSOs and beneficiaries participate. In the case of PD/A, only those CSOs with enough administrative and technical capacities to elaborate proposals likely to be approved. In the case of PPTAL, many indigenous groups had no organizations prepared to work directly in project decision-making. Where associations existed, they often did not represent community leadership, but instead were founded by particular sub-groups. In the case of RESEX, a large portion of reserve residents were not active in associations or other organizations. This last project was the only one in which extensive efforts were made through the project itself to increase the representativeness of the CSOs that participated in project decision-making.

The CSOs that do exist also often lack capacities to participate effectively. In those cases where CSOs received resources to implement projects (PD/A sub-projects, network funding for training programs, PROTEGER, etc.), they often lacked of administrative and technical capacities to effectively administer resources and design projects. Where CSOs were asked to contribute to decisions about projects implemented by government agencies, they often lacked the technical capacity to analyze proposals and formulate alternatives. Often they also lacked the organizing and financial capacity to coordinate debates among their memberships to discuss the issues. Where such capacities were lacking, the result was often that participation involved only the opinions and views of a sub-group of the more organized and technically capable CSO leaders.


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6.3 The Impacts of Participation on Decision-Making

Just as the influence of CSOs varied within the Pilot Program depending on the factors discussed above, where they did have influence, the effect on decision-making varied substantially depending on the types of participatory processes involved and on the organizational and technical capabilities of the CSOs involved. Examining this diversity of experiences, we can verify that participatory processes can have both positive and negative impacts in each of the five categories presented in the last chapter.

Specialized Knowledge and Capacities

The last chapter showed a number examples in which participatory processes allowed for projects to incorporate the specialized knowledge and capacities that CSOs have, which are often lacking in government sectors. Where projects aimed to work with local communities or transfer resources to CSOs, participation by those groups in the design and implementation helped ensure that mechanisms used were best adapted to the specificities of the groups. CSOs also provided useful contributions to the design and implementation of projects that did not only work with their constituencies, with knowledge about local conditions, technical capacities and perspectives. Working with CSOs in project implementation also allowed for projects to take advantage of their specialized organizational capacities, such as disseminating information to other CSOs or mobilizing local communities. Nevertheless, particularly at the sub-project level, projects that relied on the technical capacities of CSOs for their implementation often failed to reach their objectives. The evidence presented in the last chapter warns against overestimating the potential for CSOs to carry out certain activities. If projects implemented by CSOs are to reach their objectives, technical capacities need to be carefully evaluated beforehand and, where they do not exist, a substantial amount of technical support needs to be provided.

Costs

Where projects implemented with participation suffered serious technical problems, it is likely that the costs of the project often increased, or at least, the efficiency of spending declined. However, since comparable projects were not implemented by government agencies simultaneously, it is difficult to assess whether or not similar problems may not have appeared were projects implemented without CSO participation. As just noted, this negative impact depended on the technical capacities of CSOs involved. Another way that participatory mechanisms can increase costs is through spending on participatory processes themselves: travel costs, per diems, meetings, etc. However, in other ways, participatory mechanisms tended to reduce project and sub-project costs. Where projects relied on substantial voluntary labor and the use of other unpaid inputs (such as meeting spaces, travel support, etc.), participatory mechanisms reduced costs.

Ownership and Political Support

At all levels of the Pilot Program, the study found that participatory mechanisms help build commitment by CSOs to the projects and to the Program’s objectives more generally. This is especially true when CSOs are involved in projects from the design phase on through implementation, since this allows them to contribute to the definition of objectives that they perceive as relevant. Nevertheless, some problems with respect to building political support for the Program can result from participatory processes. Societal groups that are accustomed to influencing decision-making can be threatened by an even partial transfer of influence to


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CSOs representing groups traditionally excluded from decision-making. Likewise, where only certain CSOs are able to influence projects, opposition can arise among those groups who remain excluded from decision-making. The ad hoc nature of decision-making that characterizes the Pilot Program raises ample opportunities for such questioning, since especially at the higher levels of decision-making, only a reduced group of civil society representatives effectively have influence over decision-making.


Where CSOs were able to influence decision-making, the study showed that they were able to increase the extent to which projects and sub-projects addressed the needs of the social groups and ideological perspectives (such as environmentalism) that they represent. This was the case not only in projects that were specifically oriented towards benefiting specific social groups (PD/A, RESEX an PPTAL), but also those in which the demands of a variety of sectors were to be addressed. Once again, this impact was particularly strong where CSOs had influence over project design. At the same time, in a number of cases, the study noted that where only sub-sectors of CSOs had access to decision-making, the benefit tended to be biased towards the concerns of those groups. Ultimately, the broader objectives of the Program contributed to the tendency for only sub-sectors of civil society to participate in the Program and hence to benefit from it. For example, the absence of projects oriented to urban areas led to an absence of CSOs representing urban communities in the GTA. Likewise, the emphasis of the PD/A project on promoting technical innovations (rather than on strengthening CSOs) meant that only CSOs with enough technical competence to get a sub-project approved were able to participate in the project. While this certainly reduced the frequency of technical problems, which even so were prevalent among sub-projects, the effect was also to reduce the extent to which the project helped communities represented by weaker CSOs.

Social Capital

The participatory mechanisms of the Pilot Program affected social capital construction in three ways. In the first place, the opportunity to participating in project and sub-project decision-making motivated civic groups to form when they saw the program as potentially responding to questions of their concern. The most notable example is the GTA, which formed precisely in order to seek to influence Program decision-making. Yet this impact was reserved only for those sectors of CSOs who perceived the program as relevant.

In the second place, the experience of participating helped build CSO capacities. Through participation, the groups involved gained political experience and developed technical knowledge. The analysis presented in Chapter 3 suggested that even where projects did not reach their objectives, the experience in decision-making tended to increase organizational and technical capacities. Yet the analysis also showed that certain forms of decision-making can have negative effects on the ways civic associations are organized. The Program’s centralization of decision-making in Brasília and the dependence on ad hoc, individually based mechanisms of influencing decisions promoted a centralization of the CSO networks and reduced participation to a select group of individuals.

In the third place, where the Pilot Program directly transferred resources to CSOs, they were able to gain much needed financial resources to strengthen their organizations. The impact of transferring resources to CSOs for social capital construction were not, however, always


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positive. As the examination of PD/A and RESEX sub-projects suggested, in many cases, organizations that received Program funding could not survive once funding ended. Only those that were able to reach a threshold of administrative and technical capacities, allowing them to obtain other sources of funding gained long term sustainability. Some critics also noted that CSOs tended to change their priorities in order to receive these resources.

6.4 Recommendations

Mechanisms of Influence at the Program and Project Levels. Although the informal mechanisms of influence that predominate, especially at the Pilot

Program, have given CSOs a significant amount of everyday access to decision-making

processes, these mechanisms are unsatisfactory for a number of reasons cited in this

report. What is lacking in the Pilot Program is a more systematic investment in creating

opportunities to participate, rather than relying on ad hoc factors such as the good will of

government and donor sectors and the contingent interest in specific issues on the part of

CSOs. In this light, the study recommends the following:

• Forums for discussion of Program-wide issues should be created that meet regularly

and that have CSO representatives identified through transparent processes. The recent

inclusion of CSO representatives in non-deliberative monthly meetings of the Technical

Secretariats of the Program is a step in this direction, establishing a clearly identifiable

space for CSO’s to seek to influence decision-making informally. Similar forums could be

created to discuss specific Program-wide issues in greater detail. Transparent processes

for designating which CSO representatives participate in such discussion groups, that seek

to broaden the scope beyond the network leadership, could be created. Even if such groups

have only consultative powers, they are likely to attract participation if CSOs are

convinced that they will actually influence Program decisions.

• Systematic efforts should be made to consult with CSO leadership beyond the central

Brasília offices of the GTA and the RMA.

• Informal mechanisms of influence, such as regular meetings between key

decision-makers and CSOs can allow for the flexibility of negotiations required for

everyday complex decision-making and should not, therefore, be eliminated. However, the

ad hoc character of these mechanisms, which depend a great deal on the political will of

the implementing institutions, should be avoided. Norms for who is invited to meetings and

what types of decisions should be the subject of consultations with CSOs should be

explicit. Documents registering the intermediary decisions that are made should be

publicly available. The biannual planning processes utilized by the PD/A are a good

example in this respect.

• Since often government personnel avoid working with CSOs simply because they do

not have experience with participatory methodologies, hiring professionals experienced in

participatory decision-making in all Pilot Program projects would help eliminate some

obstacles to participation. Such professionals could also serve to disseminate knowledge

about these techniques among staff.

• Systematic training of government, Bank and donor personnel in participatory

methodologies, social analysis and conflict resolution would also greatly increase chances

that they incorporate participatory mechanisms in the Program. This would involve not

only capacitating personnel in specific techniques, but also disseminating information


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about how CSO participation can improve project outcomes. Training activities bringing

together government, donors and CSOs would also promote trust and familiarity among

these actors and encourage the discussion of the “ground rules” for participation in

specific contexts, in addition to building skills.

• Where critical decisions are to be made, resources should be systematically provided to

the networks to organize discussions with their membership to develop positions.

Sufficient time should be provided for these discussions to occur. Rushed decision-making

severely limits the capacity of CSOs to have influence.

Project Design and Implementation

• Since effective participation in project implementation depends on CSOs believing that

projects address their concerns, all projects should be designed through processes aimed

at ensuring that project objectives are defined in ways that motivate CSOs to participate.

• Project design processes should also seek to define a clear role that those who

participate in design will have in the implementation process, without limiting

participation in the implementation phase to those groups.

• Since complex discussions such as occur at the design phase can be slow if large

numbers of CSO representatives participate, processes of defining a selected groups of

CSO actors to participate in design should be the subject of discussion among broader

groups of CSOs. As has been the practice thus far, the networks themselves should be

responsible for defining representatives, but they should be encouraged to further

democratize their decision-making by involving regional offices and local groups to a

greater degree. It would also be advisable to discuss with the networks themselves the

possibility of bringing into the design phase CSOs that do not belong to the networks, in an

effort to broaden representation.

• At the same time, resources should be supplied to allow those selected to participate in

design processes to dedicate the significant amount of time necessary to analyze the

complex issues involved. The reliance on volunteers severely limits the ability CSOs to

dedicate themselves to such activities.

• The creation of a data-base for the program, including information on project funding

and progress, indicators of success and failure, and documentation about the decisions

made over time would make it easier for CSO groups to present high quality, well informed

contributions to decision-making. It would also be beneficial for decision-making

processes more generally.

• Likewise, decision-making processes to avoid the “stop and start” rhythm that has

characterized much of the Pilot Program, with CSOs being called to present positions on

extremely short notice, often after long delays between opportunities to participate.

Although this problem is related to broader structural aspects of Program (such as the

negotiations among multiple national and international institutions) which are not easy to

solve, much of the “last minute decision-making” that occurs could be avoided if all

groups recognized the importance of giving CSOs (and other sectors) appropriate time

develop positions.

• There is no single model for project management mechanisms that best incorporate

participation. The appropriate structure of governing commissions depends on the


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decision-making structure of the project. The design of participatory mechanisms should

seek to identify the key points of decision-making in the Project and develop appropriate

forums that give CSOs access to those decisions.

• Participation cannot be mandated. Where government sectors resist having their decisions influenced by CSOs, they generally are able to bypass formal participatory structures. Informal mechanisms of CSO influence only function where key decision-makers are open to such influence. In this light, it is essential not only to disseminate information about the benefits of participation, but also to select key decision makers, such as Technical Secretariats, who are committed to giving CSOs access to decision-making.

• Where government or donors insist on having veto power over decisions in which CSOs participate, this should be made explicit. Legal agreements determining which decisions are reviewed by whom and which institutions have veto power over certain types of decisions should be widely disseminated. The alternative is to reduce the legitimacy of those decisions and at times to diffuse commitment to them. Occasional committees called to approve complex documents that they do not have time to actually analyze or discuss tend to ultimately weaken project implementation by giving a false impression that there is commitment to implementing those decisions.


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Network Support.

Although on balance, the institutional support for CSO networks provided by the Program has had a positive effect on promoting both effective participation in Program decision-making and on strengthening social capital for the pursuit of sustainable development in the long term, changes in the way this support is implemented would increase the effectiveness of the CSO networks.

• Heretofore, network funding has prioritized supporting centrally-based offices that have been important for increasing the access CSOs have to decision-making processes taking place in Brasília. Although this has given negotiations with CSOs a certain amount of agility, since contacts with leadership are easily made, future efforts to strengthen regional offices and to ensure that they are consulted in decision-making would improve the representativeness of network participation. However, it is important to ensure that funding for regional offices is sufficiently modest so that large amounts of continuous external funding will not be required to sustain them over the long term. Investments in durable, low maintenance equipment and training can have a long term effect on organizational capacities.

• Support for a broader-based technical and administrative capacitation of the CSO sector, especially in the Amazon region, would also increase the ability of a larger number of CSOs to define proposals and to implement alternatives.

• The networks often lack resources to hold broad-based discussions on the issues involved because of the enormous costs of travel, especially in the Amazon region. A systematic effort to provide civic groups with the opportunity to hold meetings and establish positions prior to negotiations with government sectors would improve their capacity to make contributions which represent the concerns of more than just a few individuals. Investments in developing network communications capacities would also be worthwhile.

• A more timely allocation of resources would improve the network’s planning capacities and likely help them organize efforts to diversify funding sources.

• Although it is important that the networks diversify funding sources, we cannot expect them to become “self-sustainable” as some observers argue should occur. In the Brazilian context, effective CSOs require external funding of some kind.

Promoting the Participation of Local CSOs and Beneficiary Communities

• Chapter 3 noted that the PD/A sub-projects vary substantially both with respect to the extent of beneficiary participation in decision-making and with respect to technical capacities for implementation. Mechanisms should be developed in the approval stage of the project for evaluating these capacities, so as to better designate the kinds of external support the projects need to receive.

• The RESEX experience of dedicating substantial resources to building the organizing and leadership capacities of local CSOs shows that where such investments are made, CSOs can broaden membership and include larger numbers of beneficiaries in decision-making. However, that experience also shows that such investment is costly. With these costs and benefits in light, discussions should be undertaken to consider how PD/A and PPTAL can provide greater organizational support to the groups involved to


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ensure greater beneficiary participation. Such support could be provided by government personnel skilled in community organizing, by appropriately skilled consultants (such as anthropologists) or by intermediary CSOs with such skills.

• Although the competitive nature of the PD/A project helps ensure that sub-projects have the minimum technical capacity to implement projects, repeated cases of technical problems suggest that simply transferring resources to local CSOs is not sufficient for ensuring that they are able to reach their objectives. Once again, providing greater technical support to the sub-projects is costly, and would necessarily imply a reduction in the number of projects supported. However, the evidence suggests that only with such support are projects likely to have a more consistent rate of success.

• Working with local CSOs requires specific organizing and conflict resolution skills. Once again, the RESEX experience shows the important contribution that government agencies can play in promoting local organizing capacities when they include personnel with these skills. Other projects that work with local communities should therefore seek to employ personnel with experience in community organizing or seek out systematic ways to provide such support through partnerships with intermediary CSOs, skilled consultants and the like.

• In order to increase the impact of participatory projects on social capital construction, projects should seek out ways to build ties between the CSOs participating in different projects within the Program. Specific efforts to bring together different sub-projects within the PD/A and to build ties between these sub-projects and the community groups involved in other Pilot Program activities would not only help exchange technical information and experiences, but help build organizational ties among groups.

• The evidence presented in this study shows that transferring resources to CSOs may help those groups organize in the short term, but often is not sufficient for ensuring that that impact have long term impact after project are concluded. This suggests that specific activities should be included within the projects themselves geared towards building organizational sustainability. Sub-project funding should include mechanisms to help organizations gain information and contacts about alternative sources of funding and to develop the relevant technical capacities for gaining access to such funds. A specific study examining why some CSOs implementing PD/A projects were able to gain sustainability after funding ended while others did not would help identify what CSOs need to reach the “threshold” of sustainability.

Promoting the Participation of CSOs in Policy Formulation Projects

• Systematic efforts in training of project managers and other key personnel (within state and municipal government agencies and CSOs) in participatory methodologies adapted to the characteristics of the NRPP, incorporating lessons from past experiences, would improve the capacity of state and local governments to promote participation

• Capacity-building among key members of CSOs in public policy formulation and environmental education on subjects relevant to the NRPP and their specific interests (e.g. alternatives for sustainable resource management, land tenure policy and agrarian reform, rural credit, fiscal incentives, etc.) is also necessary;


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• Civil society representation in the state-level Working Groups of NRPP should be improved and efforts made to overcome other limitations in their effective functioning as participatory forums (e.g. discussion of strategic public policy issues, articulation with State Environmental Councils-COEMAs and participatory forums at the municipal level);

• Revisions of the original instruments of environmental management of NRPP (zoning, environmental monitoring and control) should be consolidated with particular attention to the incorporation of participatory methodologies;

• Decentralized planning and implementation of project activities at the municipal and community levels, with support for participatory forums and methodologies, should be strengthened with due consideration to the institutional weakness of many local governments that can be an obstacle to the effectiveness of decentralized strategies

• Support should be increased for non-institutionalized mechanisms of CSO participation (e.g. participatory seminars for project planning and monitoring of project activities).

• Participatory processes aimed at defining social pacts for sustainable development, such as the Agenda Positiva and Municipal Agenda 21 projects, involving negotiations between government agencies, CSOs and other local stakeholders should have guaranteed continuing support.


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ANNEX 1

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Annex 2

List of People Interviewed

1. Adalberto Ianuzzi, RESEX, CNPT, IBAMA, Brasília 2. Ana Cristina Barros, IPAM, Pará 3. Ana Lang, SCA, Ministry of Environment, Brasília 4. Antonio Batista de Araújo (Tota), AMOREAB, Assis Brasil, Acre 5. Antônio Carlos Hummel, PROMANEJO, IBAMA, Manaus 6. Antônio Filocreão , Secretaria Estadual do Meio Ambiente, Amapá 7. Artur Nobre Mendes, PPTAL, FUNAI, Brasília 8. Aurélio Vianna, INESC, Brasília 9. Benedito Ferreira Gonçalves, Associação dos Produtores Rurais do KM 142 Porto

Grande, Amapá 10. Benedito Rabelo, Instituto de Pesquisas Científicas e Technológicas do Amapá 11. Carlos Aragon, Technical Secretariat for Coordination of the Pilot Program, Ministry of

Environment, Brasília 12. Carlos Henrique Schmidt, Instituto de Estudos Sócio-Ambientais, Amapá 13. Carlos Martins Leal, CNS, Brasília 14. Carola Kasburg, GTZ/PPTAL, FUNAI, Brasília. 15. Cecílio, AMOREX, Xapuri, Acre 16. Chico Genu, CNS/ Reserva Extrativista Alto Juruá, Acre 17. Claudio Cavalcante Ribeiro Secretaria Estadual de Ciência, Tecnologia e Meio

Ambiente, Pará 18. Claudionor Alexandre Barbosa da Silva, GTA, Brasília 19. Don Sawyer, Instituto Sociedade, População e Natureza, Brasília 20. Edmar Paulino Ferreira (Dimas), AMOREB, Brasiléia, Acre 21. Eduardo Martins, Mid-Term Review of the Pilot Program, Brasília 22. Elbano Paschoal F. Morais, Grupo Ambientalista da Bahia, Salvador 23. Elias Reis de Souza, Rede Frutos do Cerrado, João Lisboa, Maranhão 24. Elke Constante, Technical Secretariat for Coordination of the Pilot Program, Ministry of

Environment, Brasília 25. Ernesto Costa, Science Sub-Program, Ministry of Science and Technology, Brasília 26. Euclides Pereira, COIAB, Manaus 27. Farias, Secretaria Estadual do Meio Ambiente, Amapá 28. Feitosa, RESEX, CNPT, IBAMA, Brasília 29. Fernando Negret, Monitoring and Analysis Project, Ministry of Environment, Brasília 30. Flávio Alesio, Associação Nossa Senhora de Fátima, Brasiléia, Acre 31. Flavio Altieri, Secretaria Estadual de Ciência, Tecnologia e Meio Ambiente, Pará 32. Gabriel Ferreira, NRPP, Ministry of Environment, Brasília 33. Garo Batmanian, World Wildlife Fund, Brasília 34. Gatão, CNS/GTA, Brasília 35. Gert Wolfgang Antonius Jr., PD/A, Ministry of Environment, Brasília 36. Gilberto Salles, Rainforest Corridors Projet, IBAMA, Brasília 37. Guilherme Carvalho , AIMEX, Pará 38. Guillerme, AMOREX, Xapuri, Acre 39. Hugo Rodrigues da Silva, Secretaria Municipal de Meio Ambiente, Mazagão, Amapá 40. Imme Scholz, GTZ, Pará


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41. Isa dos Santos, GTA, Brasília 42. Isabel Coutinho, PD/A/DfID, Amapá 43. Ivanete Almeida Gomes, GTA, Amapá 44. Ivanildo, Secretaria Estadual do Meio Ambiente, Amapá 45. Jersing José dos Santos, Projetos Demonstrativos dos Povos Indígenas, Ministry of

Environment, Brasília 46. João Baptista Monsã, Ministry of Environment, Brasília 47. Joaquim Alves de Sousa, Rede Frutos do Cerrado, São Raimundo das Mangabeiras,

Maranhão 48. Joaquim, CNS/Reserve Extrativista Rio Cajarí, Amapá 49. John Garrison, World Bank, Brasília 50. José Aldo dos Santos, Centro de Desenvolvimento Agroecológico Sabiá, Recife 51. José Ayres Lopes Neto, Banco do Brasil, Brasília 52. José Maria Barbosa de Aquino, CNS/AMOREX, Xapuri, Acre 53. José Otavio Magno Pires, Secretaria Especial de Produção, Pará 54. José Pereira dos Santos (Zézão), AMOREB, Brasiléia, Acre 55. Joseilton Evangelista de Sousa, Centro de Desenvolvimento Agroecológico Sabiá,

Recife 56. Juliana Sellani, FUNAI, Brasília 57. Júlio Barbosa, Mayor, Xapuri, Acre 58. Juracir Pacheco de Moraes, CNPT/IBAMA, Assis Brasil, Acre 59. Kelson Freitas Vasques, Instituto de Estudos Sócio-Ambientais, Amapá 60. Laura Cristina Lima Caland, Science Sub-Program, Ministry of Science and Technology,

Brasília 61. Luiz Carlos Pinaget, World Wildlife Fund, Brasília 62. Manoel Conceiçao Santos, Rede Frutos do Cerrado, Imperatriz, Maranhão 63. Manuel Batista de Araújo, Governo Estadual do Acre, Assis Brasil, Acre 64. Márcia Maria Gramkow, FUNAI, Brasília 65. Marcio Santilli, Instituto Sócio-Ambiental, Brasília 66. Marcio Souza da Silva, Instituto de Pesquisas Científicas e Technológicas do Amapá 67. Marcos de Paiva Oliveira, CNPT/IBAMA, Brasiléia, Acre 68. Marcus Messala Silva Sales, TERRAP, Amapá 69. Miriam Prochnow, RMA, Brasília 70. Muriel Saragoussi, Fundação Vitória Amazonia, Manaus 71. Neila Soares, World Bank, Brasília 72. Newton Marcelo Nascimento dos Santos, Instituto de Estudos

Sócio-Ambientais/GTA/Secretaria Estadual do Meio Ambiente, Amapá 73. Nubia, Secretaria Estadual do Meio Ambiente, Amapá 74. Osmar Rigamonte, Federação dos Trabalhadores na Agricultura do Estado do Acre, Rio

Branco, Acre 75. Paulo Egler, Ministry of Science and Technology, Brasília 76. Paulo Tardin, Instituto de Pesquisas Científicas e Technológicas do Amapá 77. Rafael Pinzon Rueda, RESEX, IBAMA, Brasília 78. Raimundinha Monteiro, PD/A, Ministry of Environment, Brasília 79. Raimundo Cardoso de Araújo, Associação Comunitária de Pequenos Agricultores de

Óbidos, Pará 80. Ribeiro, INCRA, Amapá


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81. Ricardo Tarifa, World Bank, Brasília 82. Ricardo Verdum, PD/A, Ministry of Environment, Brasília 83. Roberto Smeraldi, Friends of the Earth, Programa Amazônia, São Paulo 84. Rogerio Mendes, Centro dos Trabalhadores da Amazônia, Plácido de Castro, Acre 85. Rosa de Oliveira Melo, CNS/Reserva Extrativista Chico Mendes, Acré 86. Rosildo Rodrigues de Freitas, Associaçào dos Pequenos Produtores de Novo Progresso,

Brasiléia, Acre 87. Sergio Alesio, Central das Associações de Pequenos Produtores Rurais de Epitaciolândia

e Brasiléia, Acre 88. Severino Patú da Silva Associação dos Produtores Rurais do KM 142 Porto Grande,

Amapá 89. Slowacki da Assis, FUNAI, Brasília 90. Sr. Aladin, Movimento dos Pescadores, Tucuruí, Pará. 91. Thomas Fatheuer, GTZ/PD/A, Ministry of Environment, Brasília 92. Tiberio Alloggio, ASBAC, Amazonas 93. Usio, Instituto de Pesquisas Científicas e Technológicas do Amapá 94. Vavá , Secretaria Estadual do Meio Ambiente, Amapá 95. Vitor Sucupira, PROMANEJO, Ministry of Environment, Brasília 96. Wigolt Shaefer, Technical Secretariat, PD/A, Ministry of Environment, Brasília