Poor countries are often characterised by weak government institutions, and weak civil society institutions. Poorer people tend to have weaker access to these institutions and the services they provide.
Supporting institutions to be more responsive to the needs of poor people is essential in order to ensure that the deep-rooted causes of poverty are addressed, and that strategies adopted are sustainable.
There has been considerable effort towards institutional strengthening and capacity building. However this has not always been addressed with an understanding of poverty. The main thrust of institutional support has been in strengthening the technical capacity of fisheries departments. Very often this technical capacity has little to do with the requirements of working with poor people, and does not address the management skills and procedures that may be lacking.
In order to address issues of poverty alleviation there is a greater need to understand the context in which institutions operate, and the relationships between government institutions, NGOs and civil society groups, poor people, and of course donors. As much as there is a need for understanding of the context of poor people's livelihoods, there is a need for a better understanding of the context of what institutions are, how they operate, and what they do. This requires the development of appropriate tools for institutional and policy analysis.
Institutions may operate according to diverse and competing interests and motivations, and according to contradictory policies. For example, fisheries departments may be involved in the promotion of export-oriented aquaculture that allow limited opportunities for poor people and may even have extremely negative impacts on the poor, while at the same time promoting small-scale poverty focused initiatives. The responsibilities of government departments may not always be clear, and there may even be conflict between competing departments. The relationship between central government and provincial and district authorities may also not be clear - even to those working within the institutions. This institutional context may place considerable pressures on those working within the institutions and as partners to projects. Without a working understanding of this context, no working strategy would be possible.
Most government institutions and individuals within the institutions have at least a rhetorical mandate of addressing poverty. While strategies adopted may not be clear, self-analysis may assist institutions to understand how they might be able to address poverty alleviation more effectively. Before this can be done the institution may need a degree of capacity building to enable them to perform this self-analysis and to measure their impact on poverty.
It is also recognised that there may be reluctance on the part of partner institutions to work with the poorest groups. Very often performance of partner institutions is based on such criteria as increasing production, and even for NGOs disbursal of funds may be the criteria by which credit schemes are assessed. In many cases the poor may be seen as high risk, with little likelihood of success.
Institutions are often weak in very fundamental ways. For example, pay structures, job descriptions, terms of reference, reporting lines and promotion pathways are often unclear or determined by factors outside the normal institutional processes. These difficulties are often accentuated by project interventions that have no long-term vision or exit strategy, and that adopt competing pay scales and job descriptions. Rather than strengthening capacity this may in fact lead to a draining of capacity as key individuals are taken away from their institutional routines to work on project activities.
Photo: G. Bizzari
Influencing institutions needs to be a core, mainstream activity with a clearly devised strategy. There are a number of elements of such a strategy:
::::The context of supporting capacity building varies considerable. Some thoughts on the experience of the Department of Fisheries in Bangladesh are presented in Box 13.
Working at different levels of government institutions requires modifications to approaches. The capabilities, responsibilities and needs of central government versus provincial and district are very different. In particular it is at the provincial and district levels that extension work is planned and implemented and that there is most direct contact with poor people. However, it is at these levels that skills and resources (even such as basic administration, and budgets for petrol for travel) are most limited and most under strain. These strains may be exacerbated by projects too intent on following their own agendas rather than building partnerships, and ensuring long-term institutional sustainability.
|
Box 13: Supporting extension services in fisheries departments Development of a well targeted, well planned, cost-effective, demand led, Department of Fisheries' extension service is vital. Weak management structures within DoF and not technical aquaculture knowledge of extension agents/departmental staff is now the key constraint to a successful extension service. Government extension services must be based on full participation of primary stakeholders (beneficiaries). The source of funds for these extension services must be defined (public/private/NGO/Donor/) and ideally include a component of cost recovery to ensure quality control and accountability. It should have the capacity to target (along with partners) specific geographic areas and social groups. Vulnerability indicators can be used to monitor outcome -such as access to food in lean season, number of months food insecure, nutritional status, access to and quality of housing, literacy, health status, community involvement, social mobility. |
A summary of lessons learned from many years working at provincial and district level in Lao PDR are presented in Box 14.
Poverty alleviation requires poor people gaining access to and control over their resource base - not merely their natural resource base but also over political resources and policy-making processes. One of the main reasons that poverty and the importance of aquatic resources in poor people's livelihoods have been neglected has been that poor people have been excluded from policy-making processes, and have limited rights and capabilities in expressing their interests. The capacity of poor people to organise themselves and represent their own interests must also be addressed.
Policy makers and development institutions must be more aware of poverty alleviation strategies, poor people's livelihoods, and the importance of aquatic resources in rural livelihoods. Advocacy work, including lobbying decision-makers, and improving direct contact between decision-makers and poor people (for example through field visits) is effective and necessary.
|
Box 14: Working with local development institutions - lessons learned · Develop a poverty focus within institutions rather an exclusion zone Provincial and district development institutions often have a wider remit than just the poor and they may have difficulty in focusing the majority of their resources on just the poorer groups. This may be dictated by Central Government policy, but it is also generally more difficult and costly to work with the poor and the personal benefits to staff are often less rewarding than working with more privileged target groups. When international development agencies work with local institutions as partners, it is often not practically possible to exclusively work with "the poor". It is however often possible to emphasis poverty related issues and gradually redirect an institutions intervention focus. Even if institutions are able and willing to exclusively work with the poor, a gradual movement of focus will still be required in order for individuals to gain experience and confidence in working more on poverty related issues. · Developing a sustainable poverty focus requires institutional success. A progressive and efficient provincial/district level development institution should have a portfolio of development interventions that are continually being modified and updated. The interventions will likely be in different stages of development, tested in some areas and not others and will not always work. Partnerships with international development agencies should seek to develop the portfolio, not a specific intervention and aim to create development successes that gradually refine the focus of the institutions' portfolio. The options available for generating successful interventions will at first generally not target only the poorest groups. However, an early success is required if local development institutions are to develop a sustainable poverty focus. · Measure the process of institutional change Possibly the best way of measuring how effective institutions are in working with the poor is to monitor poor communities and measure changes in their livelihood status. Often there are considerable pressures from donor agencies placed on local institutional partners to demonstrate their poverty focus at the community/household level. However, this is often difficult for local development institutions especially when beginning to develop a sustainable poverty focus. Like other aspects of rural development, appropriate strategies for monitoring and evaluation (M&E) have to be gradually developed and donor agencies should resist the temptation to impose externally developed M&E frameworks. Helping local institutions to more effectively target the poor not only requires appropriate interventions (social and/or technical), but also usually requires a considerable modification to the way things are done. This ranges from the methods used to train extension workers to methods of financial accounting. Monitoring how an institution works can say a great deal about what it is doing. Good institutional process indicators are also relatively easy to brainstorm and cost-effective to monitor. · Developing a poverty focus requires a long-term perspective Poverty focused development initiatives with two or three year funding horizons create an environment in which it is often very difficult to promote sustainable institutional change. Changes in the orientation and functionality of provincial/district development institutions require a long-term perspective as institutions change slowly and changes are often highly political. Developing strategies for an institution to improve the way it works with the poor often requires key individuals within that institution to reinterpret Central Government policy, re-orientate an institution's traditional focus or substantially modify established operational procedures. While such changes are often possible if managed correctly, they almost inevitably involve a considerable degree of political risk, especially for those individuals working at provincial/district level. Such individuals are unlikely to commit themselves to undertake substantial institutional changes if donor commitment is uncertain or likely to be short-term. · Build on existing systems, create ownership Improved institutional systems or procedures require a high degree of local ownership if they are to be sustainably adopted. In most cases there are always established ways of doing things, but these may be informal and undocumented. It is important to study these and as far as possible develop new systems out of the old ones. It is important that new systems provide institutions with new ways of delegating authority. Often local development managers are unwilling to delegate authority simply because they have no reliable system of monitoring. |
It is also important to strengthen poor people's capacity to organise, and to learn effectively from each other's experience. This should be regarded as both a means of ensuring more effective development, but also as a development end in itself.
There is still a need for a variety of data and evidence that demonstrate the importance of aquatic resources in poor people's livelihoods. However, this must be generated in such a way as to meet the needs of policy-makers, and to enhance the role of poor people in policy-making processes. Effective poverty-focused policy does not merely rely on availability of data, but on an open and transparent policy-making arena in which poor people are able to represent their interests authoritatively.
Current understandings of poor people's livelihoods and poverty alleviation illustrate the need for an integrated approach to address a range of interrelated dimensions of poverty. In order to make institutions more effective and responsive to poor people's needs it is essential to promote partnerships between government, NGOs and civil society institutions.
When promoting these kinds of partnerships it is important to consider the following:
Donors also have an important role to play in influencing policy, and in ensuring effective co-ordination when working with partner institutions.
Donor pressure is a strong influence on policy making processes. The recent donor emphasis on good governance and decentralisation should also create opportunities for policy dialogue. Supporting responsive government institutions, and securing poor people's access to and control over aquatic resources should also be seen by donors as governance issues.
Co-ordination of donor activities is also essential. Competing donor priorities and conflicting poverty alleviation strategies risks undermining progress in institutional strengthening. We should recognize that donors will not do this themselves - the institution must be in a position whereby it can foster this cooperation and coordination.
|
Box 15: Supporting communities to learn from each other - lessons learned · Language is a big hindrance to communities learning from each other, but this can be helped overcome by PLA visualisation tools that encourages communities to share their experiences and views; this process needs experienced community workers and translators · Community leaders are not the poorest of the poor, but their experience in community work, willingness and dedication helps ensure the interests/perspective of the poor are represented and that lessons learned are applied widely in their communities · As much as possible, community leaders who are literate should be asked to document their reflections (analysis of strategies observed) in writing or drawings. · Invest in lots of preparation in terms of participants and facilitators understanding the learning framework - agree on what we mean by "lesson", use of modelling - that demonstrates cause and effect relationships and simple "facilitating/hindering factors" analysis to draw out lessons |
