Enabling negotiation and conflict resolution for area wide planning: the case of collective action for watershed management

An increasing population, land fragmentation and soil erosion have put a very big strain on land productivity in the African highlands. An eroding cultural fabric has had the negative effect of removing cultural safeguards on land that dictated sustainable utilization of natural resources. The land market has equally contributed in further degradation through action of absentee landlords, while the leasing of land is a disincentive to investments in Land management. Successful natural resource management at watershed level calls for an area wide approach to conservation planning and this is also stringent upon an active collective action process. The paper highlights conservation efforts in East Africa and more specifically in Uganda where Landcare is practiced, where evolving land tenure arrangements, unclear property rights regimes and differences amongst farming community members have created barriers resulting to natural resource management based conflicts. It illustrates the role of collective action in developing bye laws for negotiating a local level conservation agenda and for the legitimization of the conservation process. The paper discuses the application of Participatory Action Research (PAR) in creating understanding amongst community members and other stakeholders, developing a clear agenda for negotiation and conflict resolution with the good health of the Land as a bottom line. It enumerates PAR’s various advantages in bye-law development, and the scaling-up of good practices. Further, it describes the development of lessons and scenarios for application at higher levels i.e. the district and regional levels.

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