Dynamics of conflict in participatory forest management in benin a framing perspective

Abstract

This thesis aims at contributing to a better understanding of the emergence and evolution of conflict in participatory natural resources management in Benin, West Africa. Chapter one provides the background to the study. It starts with a description of protected areas management in Benin, which forms the context of the case studies on participatory forest management that are presented in this thesis. It sketches the creation of the protected areas between 1940 and 1960, and how these were initially managed by the government by means of force and repression vis-à-vis the local communities, until the idea of participatory management was introduced in the early 1990s. After a seemingly promising start of participatory management efforts, conflicts have re-emerged in many protected areas. This makes it relevant to gain a better understanding of why and how such conflicts emerge. Subsequently, the chapter discusses the conceptual background to participation and conflict in natural resources management, and proposes the use of a framing perspective in order to develop a better understanding of conflict in such settings. The choice of this perspective is justified by the starting point that realities are socially constructed in people’s conversations and discourses, in which framing (i.e. the selection of certain aspects of a perceived reality) plays an important role. This holds equally for processes of participation and negotiation in natural resources management. In order to better understand the emergence and evolution of conflict, the central question in a specific case setting then becomes: what frames do stakeholders construct and mobilize in participatory natural resources management, how do these frames change in interaction, and how do they affect the process and outcome of negotiation and conflict management? The chapter concludes with some notes on the interpretative research methodology used in the study, and on the selection of cases. This approach provides us with a variety of methods for data collection and data analysis, several of which were used in this study. Chapter two presents a conflict that emerged during the participatory restoration of the Agoua forest. An interactional framing perspective was used to analyze the emergence of the conflict that ended in an impasse. The Agoua forest conflict revealed the role of discourse in the emergence and evolution of conflict in participatory management of protected areas. The participatory management of Agoua forest started without a major clash among the stakeholders involved. Farmers thanked the Management Project for building infrastructures in their region and even praised the government for choosing to implement the project in their region. However, conflict emerged when the Management Project started talking about implementing a zoning plan that would deprive some farmers of their lands. They framed the decision to implement the plan as a threat, and this triggered a framing shift on their part. Their new frames consisted of blaming, stereotyping and stigmatizing, resulting in divergence and distancing from the project management. These frames were constructed and expressed in wegroups, whereas in we-versus-they interactions the stakeholders used denial and disapproval to attack one another or to start bargaining, depending on their framing of power positions and interdependence. The conflict was thus constructed, interpreted, enacted and maintained in stakeholders’ discourses through which they emphasized different realities and developed a different sense of themselves and their world. The conflict was constructed in conversations between the stakeholders both in we-groups and in negotiation with all the stakeholders. Despite the negotiation meetings organized to resolve the conflict, no reframing happened. The conflict resulted in distrust, accusations and even threats, with the project ending in an impasse. Chapter three examines a conflict in the participatory management of the Ouémé Supérieur and N’Dali forests. The results of this study show the importance of social cohesion and institutions in such a process. At the beginning of the process, the local communities and the forest rangers had built social cohesion through the development of informal institutions on which interactions and relationships were based. Conflict emerged when the forest rangers in the villages were replaced by new ones who had a different interpretation of participatory management and rejected the informal institutions built by their predecessors. In participatory management, formal institutions are often set up at the beginning of the process that enable and constrain the interactions and relationships among the stakeholders. However, these formal institutions were in this case gradually transformed into informal institutions that became more important than the initial formal rules. The co-construction of informal rules went together with the gradual development of social cohesion among the stakeholders, and this contributed to the implementation of participatory natural resources management. Conflict emerged when an attempt was made to break some of these informal institutions. This study shows that participatory natural resources management is a process of building social cohesion in terms of trust and constructive relationships as this motivates stakeholders to collaborate and to develop informal institutions for effective cooperation and organization. Chapter four examines the conflict in the participatory management of the Pendjari National Park (PNP) in Benin. The objective of the study was to understand how and why the issue of trust building between the park direction and the local communities gave way to conflict in the participatory management of the PNP, and how it was resolved. The study shows that conflicts over natural resources are not always open confrontations among the stakeholders that attract public attention and that they sometimes require the involvement of third party for their management. Conflicts in this management process were silently embedded in the everyday activities and routine of the work setting. The study shows the importance and role of trust and distrust in such conflicts. We discovered that trust building in this management process started with calculusbased trust, characterized by different parties weighing the costs and benefits associated with their trusting behavior before making their decision. However, the study confirms that calculus-based trust is inherently unstable and vulnerable to erosion in the changing context. As it is instrumental and built with rewards, such trust needs to be constantly sustained through the supply of promises. The interpretations of calculus-based trust by the parties involved in its building evolved over time. Dysfunctional trust developed when one party became overconfident about his position, asking for more rewards and threatening to break the relationship. It is therefore concluded that calculus-based trust needs to be counterbalanced with deterrence-based trust that enables the different parties to set the boundaries of their relationships and the punishments in the event of the trust being broken. Functional distrust is thus needed to monitor calculus-based trust as it motivates actors to put deterrents in place that support calculus-based trust. However, dysfunctional distrust is liable to emerge. The rise of dysfunctional distrust is the manifestation of conflict between parties. When it arises, the parties involved start to develop strategies to protect themselves and reduce their vulnerability, instead of considering the interests of the other parties. In other words, each party in conflict uses dysfunctional distrust as a form of agency to protect themselves and act against the behavioral strategies of the other party. In chapter five, a cross-study of the three cases is presented. Here the role of identity construction in the emergence and escalation of conflict in the participatory management of the three areas is highlighted. The study revealed that participatory management of natural resources often involved different stakeholder groups with different social identities. The mere social categorization of stakeholders is an inevitable source of conflict. De-categorization, re-categorization and dual-identity models were used to analyze the role of the social identities of the different stakeholders involved in negotiations. The study shows that conflicts emerged in the three cases studied because the identities of the subgroups became salient due to the stakeholders framing contextual factors as a threat to their identity. The salience of the identity of a stakeholder group affected the behavior of the group members and triggered collective action to react against the threat to their identity. The group members thus strengthened the cohesion among them, built coalitions and struggled against the perceived threat. The analysis shows that identity conflicts often escalate when the stakeholders frame the decisions made to resolve the conflict as unilateral. It is concluded that the salience of social identity is dynamic and relates to the emergence and escalation of conflict in negotiation processes. This dynamic is triggered by the stakeholders’ framing of the contextual factors, which affects the intensity of the conflict. When decisions and actions are framed as threatening the identity of the stakeholders, it triggers social identity salience and leads to conflict. It becomes clear that dealing with social identity in negotiation is a continuous and permanent endeavor. In chapter six the cross-cutting conclusions of the thesis are presented and discussed with regard to their contribution to understanding the emergence and escalation of conflicts in participatory processes. In addition, the chapter discusses practical implications for participatory and community-based natural resources management. The various cases studied show that the idea that conflicts in natural resources management occur when there are disagreements and disputes regarding access to, and management of, the natural reet al.s is only one side of the story. The thesis indicates that conflict about natural resources management are not only about bio-physical resources; symbolic resources, including social status, moral values, trust and other identity-related issues, play decisive roles as well. In this line of thought, the thesis shows that the co-construction and the dynamics of the social identities of the stakeholders involved in natural resources management tended to reinforce conflicts in the different cases. In addition, the thesis demonstrates that trust is an important variable in the participatory management of natural resources. It makes clear that trust is not a static state or a given characteristic of a relationship, but must be regarded as highly dynamic and constantly negotiated over time. In all the cases studied, trust was built at the beginning of the process. However, this trust was calculus-based and thus vanished progressively when the fulfillment of promises and incentives was seen to be undermined later in the process. The thesis also makes clear that formal institutions provide the initial framework for legitimate action and become intertwined with informal institutions that become decisive in the achievement of the objectives of the process. However, although formal and informal institutions are both important and can reinforce each other, the intertwining of formal and informal institutions may result in problems and conflict, especially when there is discontinuity and turn-over with regard to participants. A final cross-cutting conclusion is that conflicts are gradually co-constructed by stakeholders in discourse. In everyday conversation, people create realities that become a source of conflict. An important practical implication of the study is that those involved in facilitating community-based forest management should develop better concepts and strategies to ‘manage’ and facilitate inter-human processes. To strengthen this facilitation dimension of participatory processes, it is useful to think about an active and effective strategy to actually monitor and discover emergent tensions, unproductive dynamics and disturbed relationships by carefully listening to the formal and informal conversations between actors involved, especially those of the different ‘we’ groups. The thesis ends with the conclusion that framing analysis helps to identify inter-human processes and dynamics that are easily overlooked but are critically important in shaping the course and outcomes of participatory processes.