Abstract
Challenges of governance often constitute critical obstacles to efforts to equitably improve livelihoods in social-ecological systems. Yet, just as often, these challenges go unspoken, or are viewed as fixed parts of the context, beyond the scope of influence of agricultural, development, or natural resource management initiatives. What does it take to get governance obstacles and opportunities out in the open, creating the space for constructive dialogue and collective action that can help to address them? We respond to this question by comparing experiences of participatory action research (PAR) in coastal and floodplain systems in four countries (Zambia, Solomon Islands, Bangladesh, and Cambodia) with a focus on understanding how to build more equitable governance arrangements. We found that governance improvement was often an implicit or secondary objective of initiatives that initially sought to address more technical natural resource or livelihood-related development challenges. We argue that using PAR principles of ownership, equity, shared analysis, and feedback built trust and helped to identify and act upon opportunities to address more difficult-to-shift dimensions of governance particularly in terms of stakeholder representation, distribution of authority, and accountability. Our findings suggest that the engaged and embedded approach of researcher-facilitators can help move from identifying opportunities for governance change to supporting stakeholders as they build more equitable governance arrangements.
Highlights
In Africa, Asia, and the Pacific approximately 500 million people live in and depend on aquatic agricultural systems (AAS); approximately 138 million of those people live in poverty
We argue that using participatory action research (PAR) principles of ownership, equity, shared analysis, and feedback built trust and helped to identify and act upon opportunities to address more difficult-to-shift dimensions of governance in terms of stakeholder representation, distribution of authority, and accountability
We organize our results into three key areas of learning: (i) using PAR with stakeholders to identify and pursue windows of opportunity for governance change, (ii) the facilitation challenges of building equity into the PAR process to enable more inclusive governance outcomes, and (iii) engaging across scales to influence the political climate beyond a specific locality
Summary
In Africa, Asia, and the Pacific approximately 500 million people live in and depend on aquatic agricultural systems (AAS); approximately 138 million of those people live in poverty The current status of many AAS is illustrative of a governance crisis, where natural environments are degrading, people remain highly dependent on those environments, and the inequitable distribution of environmental costs and benefits perpetuates poverty (Barret et al 2011). Addressing this crisis, and realizing improved productivity and more equitable outcomes in these systems, is a major challenge to global development commitments, such as the achievement of the sustainable development goals concerned with poverty, food security, nutrition, and environmental management (Griggs et al 2013)
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