District and Village Planning Moves Forward

Last week we had a District Resource Planning Workshop in Navave Village. This was the second workshop of a series designed to help communities come together to discuss environmental issues, think about possible solutions, and work toward a solid governance structure/plan for sustainably managing natural resources in our district. 

The first workshop was held in June, after general awareness sessions about eco-system based management principles had been completed in each village. Every village was asked to elect a few representatives to attend the district workshop. It was advised that there should be a mixture of men, women, and youth. Most villages came and there were a few women and youth. At that workshop we identified targets, threats to achieving them, causes of those threats, and potential strategies for addressing them. This exercise is called conceptual modeling.  It was divided into 3 habitat types: terrestrial, freshwater, and coastal/marine. 

After the workshop, the team from our village took the initiative to form their own Yaubula, or environment, committee. They gathered at my house on a Sunday afternoon and planned how to share what they learned at the workshop during the next village meeting. 

At this recent workshop, we revisited the outcomes of the first workshop, because some new people and villages that weren’t able to participate the first go-round were in attendance. We talked more about management rules and strategies, but some of the focus was on building the capacity of the attendees to go back and be agents of change in their communities.

Wildlife Conservation Society, with the help of Seaweb, facilitated the workshop. I was there to provide general support and work with the team from my village.

Some days it can feel like two years of work hasn’t amounted to much because things happen so slowly. And some days it’s all you can do not to give up, especially when some gossipy ol’ lady in your community asks your boyfriend what you’ve been doing all this time. That hurts. But when we attended this workshop we were actually an example for the other villages. My fellow community members were standing up on their own and sharing ideas and strategies for good practices and tips for problem solving. I felt so proud of them!

Real change doesn’t take place over night. But change is happening on Fiji time. 

One lesson that I’ve learned is the importance of building a team in the community. It’s something we’ve learned together. It has taken a lot of trial and error, various projects and committees, building relationships and trust, and just a lot of time learning how things work behind the scenes in a rural village to get to where we are now. But I’m happy to say that we are on our way to writing our own village natural resource management plan. We intend to seek funding for implementation, which will also include some income generating projects. And I’m not doing it alone.

I’d say our biggest advice to other communities wishing to “develop” would be to first take a hard look at your community and the way you work together. There is both the traditional and administrative structure to consider.  There can be a lot of other dividing lines to reach across. If you can identify a few key people to stand up and keep fighting to knock down those divisions -- that’s the best place to start. There’s not a whole lot of use rushing into having any type of community-wide or district-wide plan, if there isn’t a strong foundation for people to work together to implement it.

The more I’m involved in NRM planning activities in Fiji at the various scales (community, district, provincial, national), the more I’ve realized how the key to sustainable resource management is with the communities. They are the ones who are going to be ones on the ground doing the work in the end. 

But the scale at which to do NRM planning is a hot debate. Neither government or NGOs can target every community, there aren’t enough resources. And we must always consider the scale at which ecosystems function. It’s much larger than a village. 

If we can’t engage all communities from the bottom up, the district level isn’t a terrible solution. It can focus on building the capacity of key individuals who can then facilitate the trickling down of information and processes. Taking what they learn back to the communities and being an agent of change. 

One of the best outcomes for me to see at the workshops was communities discussing amongst themselves their unique issues and really considering ways that they could work better together, as a pre-cursor to what will be a later conversation of how the various communities can join together.

That’s not going to be an easy task, to create a working governance structure at the district level. There are subtle rivalries getting in the way. There are sensitive traditional issues people do not like to talk about. I’m akin to some of them, but it is not my place to speak up about them. Our Yaubula Committee is working to build a stronger relationship with our Bose Vanua, or the elders, in our village as a place to start. 

Workshop participants at the Navave workshop. Can you find me? :)