Support government strategies for a sustainable wood energy value chain
Success lies beyond the project
During the lifespan of the project, activities are usually going well. Everybody is happy. But this is normal because the system on which the project operates is injected with external expertise and resources: it is boosted.
The real efficicency of the intervention can only be measured after the end of the project.
Donors need to account for this monitoring aspect.
Measure the intervention success one, two or five uears after the end of the project.
Community processes can only emerge from individual commitment to shared interests.
An individual will only invest the required knowledge, time and energy if they perceive the process as resonating with their inner self.
The most difficult part is to provide room for this inner self to express itself in a meaningful way to build trust and agency in the transformation process and contribute to the collective objective.
Pathways to sustainable and healthy systems probably depend more on the respect of that inner self than on the level of information and capacity production.
Project, especially aiming at technical innnovation (such as agricultural production) seldom take into consideration local culture.
However local culture that includes local knowledge, systems based on specific values and worldviews is at the basis of livelihoodsn including agricultural production.
Co-designing interventions using multiple sources of knowledge
External innovations are always perceived as a threat to local practices and culture and are met with scepticism by local stakeholders, a priori.
Interventions should favour local knowledge and practices and/or promote the emergence of innovation by the local stakeholders themselves, instead of them being imposed.
A ‘local community’ represents a heterogeneous group of people, characterized by their ethnic origin, political orientation and shared history, defining (dynamic) power relationships between it`s members.
Each community possesses therefore a ‘social capital’ that can be described as its capacity to respond to an external intervention (e.g. a project).
A blue print approach would therefore not be suitable.
No ´One solution` for all approach on different sites.
From the project teams` perspective, it means that the same approach used to engage and work with different communities will not produce the same results and that a good understanding of the local power relationships and governance systems will help in adapting the approach to the local context.
Donors need to change the way they fund project and project implementers should not accept anymore 3-years projects that address complex systems.
Complex systems need time and resources to have a chance to be successful (an inception phase of 6 months is far too short to understand a new network of stakeholders).
Time & resources
Speficic skills (e.g., social sciences and humanities)
Time, specific skills and well sequenced application of mixed methodologies and dedicated means are necessary to build trust and mutual respect with local stakeholders before any concrete intervention can take place, but should not take too long to compromise stakeholders’ expectations.
Skipping the first steps, usually to respect a project timeline, is counterproductive and compromises outcomes (i.e. positive results beyond the lifetime of the project). This ‘inception phase’ is therefore necessary and needs to be negotiated with the donor, the consortium members and the final beneficiaries.
Most project aim at introducing technical innovation in the system (e.g., produciton system). If this was so simple, development projects would not be needed anymore.
More important than technicnal innovations are process innovations that target how people, institutions interact, negotiate and share a collective objective. Thoses processes are crucial for the sustainable management of natural resources.
Governance system specialists.
Particpatory approaches.
Understanding the difference between ‘technical innovation’ and ‘process innovation’ and why the former needs the latter to succeed, especially for the sustainable use of natural resources.
The project team needs to acknowledge that they may not necessarily be introducing novel technology, but just a different way of implementing existing technology involving inclusive governance systems
ProSuLi being a development project implemented by researchers, we wanted to test if a full transdisciplinary project could make sense for the benefit of TFCA.
No activities were imposed on final beneficiaries beside the participatory approach (that was flexible adapted ot each of the four sites' contexts).
The project’s hypothesis was that collective action supported by targeted capacity building and co-designed governance systems could result in a better appropriation of one’s livelihood and more sustainable use of natural resources for the benefit of the whole social-ecological system.
Strong multidisciplinary project team, many of us already knowing each others and with many social science colleagues.
Time for trust building between project members and local actors / final beneficiaires (usually a 3-years project would not have enough time for such trust building).
Resources for mulitple interventions/missions that cannot be listed at the beginning of the project as the apporach needs to adapt to the local context (e.g., power-relationships between local actors).
Such a transdisciplinary project challenges all stakeholders, including academic principles and dogmas, because it demands embracing more complexity and accepting complex courses of action that are not ‘simple solutions’.
The project team needs to be transparent and willing to learn any existing lessons from previous and ongoing development interventions and to source additional expertise along the way.
