So how do your environmental programs contribute to democracy building and governance reform? How would you justify your budget for ENV programs if larger funding priorities shifted to democracy-governance and other activities? There are many rich lessons to be gleaned from USAID's experiences with the Indonesia-based Natural Resource Management Program - Phase 2 (NRM2) during the1996-2000 period. The "Checks and Balances" metaphor loosely frames the two stories in this case study. The first story (The Checks) explains how the NRM2 team shaped their strategies and arguments to convince USAID leadership to keep "checks" flowing to ENV programs during a democratic and decentralization transition. The second story (The Balances) helps the reader to understand two types of balancing: 1) how power was re-balanced between Indonesian civil society organizations and government as a result of NRM2 support, and 2) how civil society activities were structured under NRM2 to take advantage of political transitions. Our hope is that this case study can help both ENV and DG colleagues to better understand how NRM/biodiversity conservation programs can contribute to DG objectives.
In the summer of 1998, the NRM2 team learned that their program was likely to be cut. This decision followed Indonesia's severe financial crisis, political unrest, the resignation of President Suharto after a 32-year repressive regime, and a two-month evacuation of USAID expatriate staff. When it was clear that a democratic transition was underway, USAID leadership reversed prior USAID plans to "graduate" Indonesia in 2000 and re-thought the portfolio to respond to new needs and opportunities. Despite Indonesia's extreme dependence on natural resources for economic and political stability and high rates of environmental degradation, USAID made the decision to drop the NRM strategic objective and focus instead on other objectives related to democracy, anti-corruption, economic recovery and social safety nets.
How did the NRM2 team succeed in reinstating their program and budget and re-establishing NRM as a strategic objective after program cuts in 1998? During the last two years, the NRM2 team undertook a series of defensive measures. They used general concepts and early NRM2 results to carefully tailor persuasive arguments for different audiences. They were able to mobilize environmental allies with traditional environmental arguments related to biodiversity and global climate change. These internal and external partners asked USAID leadership to reconsider eliminating NRM2. However, the NRM2 team soon realized that to gain other allies, they would have to relate their early results and future plans to the new strategic objectives, particularly democracy and economic recovery. This re-packaging of the NRM2 relied on general arguments that: (1) linked natural resource rights and human rights; (2) showed democracy results via natural resource rights; (3) improved the rule of law by combating natural resources corruption; (4) built civil society and advocacy capacity through natural resource management (NRM) partners; and (5) stabilized the political and economic situation through natural resource management.
Civil society strategies were key to NRM2's survival and its on-going relevance during Indonesia's rapid democratization and decentralization transitions. Civil society support under NRM2 resulted in changes in the roles, relationships and rules associated with re-balancing environmental governance in Indonesia. NGOs and communities, through improved skills and tactics, have changed their roles in environmental governance and government bureaucrats are more often sharing authority and respecting community and NGO expertise. Civil society organizations (CSOs) are changing relationships of mistrust through accountability and dialogue. Rule-making processes and rules are changing in favor of community rights to sustainably managed and govern natural resources
The structure of the NRM2 program minimized the negative impacts of political transitions and took advantage of new opportunities to re-balance environmental governance. NRM2 worked on three rather than just one natural resource sector (forestry, coastal resources and protected area management) and supported more than one international partner for each sector. The program supported different types of multi-stakeholder processes that encouraged dialogue and mutual respect. Some national government partners were maintained but NRM2 expanded work with local governments to help decentralize NRM. To reform environmental governance locally and nationally, NRM2 built the capacity of national and regional CSOs already working on sustainable natural resource management and linked them together into mutual learning and advocacy networks. International expertise was accessed using an "off-shore" cooperative grant agreement to support reformist NGOs and a contract for maintaining mission flexibility for changing political circumstances.
To strengthen civil society, NRM2 used different approaches and mechanisms:
Assigning the primary responsibilities for comprehensive CSO capacity building related to advocacy to one partner (BSP-KEMALA) but building CSO strengthening into the work of the other partners (IRG-EPIQ, URI/CRMP-Proyek Pesisir).
Partnering with different types of CSOs (NGOs, NGO networks, universities, university networks and NGO-university-government networks).
Supporting both existing and new CSOs and networks.
Building relationships with CSOs with diverse agendas.
Planning for future political changes by focusing capacity building efforts on CSO skills, relationships, organizational development and visioning.
Adopting varied approaches to CSO capacity building (full-service grants, once-off grants or technical assistance) and various financial mechanisms to support CSOs (i.e., grants, purchase orders and sub-contracts).
The Biodiversity Support Program (BSP) focused on building the capacity of advocacy CSOs working for environmental governance reforms. Successful KEMALA approach features included:
Learning from experience - selecting an international partner with capacity in holistic grant-making, independence from government for CSO partner selection, local relationships and credibility and staff with CSO experience.
Relying on local expertise - supporting strong and self-directed local staff with only focused expatriate support in-country and from the United States.
Balance among partners - finding diversity topically and geographically; selecting partners because of their track records, stakeholder accountability and potential contribution to CSO partner networks; and linking national policy NGOs to local NGOs and communities.
Moving beyond one-time, short-term project-based grants - focusing on medium-term programs rather than projects, offering demand-driven capacity building support and linking partners via a network for relevant policy advocacy, exchange of best practices and peer learning.
Helping CSO partners take advantage of political space for environmental governance reform - rethinking the appropriate role for government in environmental governance and staying programmatically flexible to adjust to new opportunities related to political transitions.
In the future, Indonesia will continue to need support for civil CSOs, citizens and government to consolidate the democratic transition and ensure the success of decentralization. Through civil society support, citizens and NGOs can demand greater government accountability and transparency and can argue more successfully for community-based rights to resources. At the same time, management, operations and facilitation training for government can ensure that they fulfill their responsibilities to citizens.
The lessons from NRM2 and Indonesia are that environment and democracy-governance objectives are inseparable. Improvements in environmental management are dependent upon larger systemic changes in governance. In addition, environmental projects can make significant contributions to the initiation and consolidation of democratic transitions, including building civil society capacity for advocacy, promoting governance reform and accountability, advancing indigenous/human rights, promoting the rule of law and providing civic/legal education to citizens. ENV programs can play an important role in helping civil society organizations to re-think and re-balance environmental governance and develop checks on the powers of government institutions.
To maintain ENV program funds during political transitions, ENV program managers may want to consider:
Documenting how ENV programs can be vehicles for achieving DG and other mission objectives.
Make alliances beyond the environmental community, both within and outside their unit and agency.
Tailor program funding justifications for different audiences (e.g., the DG and economic relevance of ENV programs).
Focus on early results because cross-sectoral "spin" alone will not save your ENV program funding ("walk the walk and talk the talk").
To help plan for political transitions and re-balance the rules, roles and relationships associated with environmental governance, ENV program managers should consider structuring programs so that:
Help CSO partners promote environmental governance checks and balances, particularly protecting citizen rights, monitoring environmental management and institutionalizing transparent resource decision-making.
Promote checks and balances at different scales and in different natural resource sectors by working with a diverse set of CSO partners that have some accountability to communities.
Work with "best bet" NGOs with track records of leadership & accountability.
Prepare civil society partners for leadership and cooperative endeavors through programmatic grants, technical assistance and networking rather than just stand-alone grants and contracts. Technical assistance and networking should improve skills in advocacy, analysis and program administration.