It was suggested earlier that when a forestry initiative is described as having run into a "tenure problem," what is really being said is that the project was not properly designed for its socio-economic environment. This paper has emphasized the need to take tenure into account. The tenure diversity which often exists so abundantly within a given community--the three types of tenure niches and all the particular niches within those broad types--represent opportunities. Our list of tenure niches, it has been suggested, should be seen as a tenure "menu" (Murray 1987: 328), a smorgasbord from which one can pick a tenure niche suited for a forestry initiative which meets our objectives. This selectivity applies to tree tenure as well as land tenure, and a project may prefer one candidate species over another because of the tenure rights recognized in that species. The excerpt from Chavangi et al. which follows indicates how a project in Kenya has targeted women as beneficiaries through species selection. This author suspects that few intractable tenure problems would assert themselves if there were, from the beginning, a "dialogue" between the local land tenure system and the forestry technologies considered.
How far can one understand these tenure issues in a rapid appraisal? As noted earlier, it will vary with the length of the appraisal, the previous experience of team members in the locale, the available literature on local tenure, and the ability of team members in the local language. The procedures suggested are not very demanding in terms of time: several small group and key informant interviews at the outset, a half-dozen or a dozen household interviews, and a return to key informants for clarification. At a minimun, an appraisal team can identify opportunities and potential problems related to tenure. However, the team will usually be less able to gauge with confidence whether a given tenure factor will have a minor or major impact on the initiative. It will be possible to get hypothesized tenure strategies but these will need further study before implementation. Further investigation is likely to be necessary, and the appraiser must in this case urge longer, more intensive research to flesh out tenure strategies and test their viability.
What is meant by a "tenure strategy"? Forestry initiatives need to have strategies about how tenure can accommodate or generate incentives for tree planting. In an excerpt which follows, Raintree proposes a phased approach to the introduction of agroforestry to accommodate what is likely to be gradual change in tenure patterns. Thomson (1987: 216) suggests that such a strategy may not necessarily involve providing a solution, but_ instead "offering local resource users a series of options regarding the kinds of organizational structure and legal. regimes they might adopt in order to acquire greater control over their local resources," and then monitoring progress under the various options.
What will usually not be useful is to propose legislation to alter the tenure system concerned. National legislation is unlikely to be possible in time to affect the project. The assurance in a project proposal that "government is formulating legislation to deal with this problem" is usually an empty promise. Nor is the development of national tenure policy well served if it is driven by too narrow a set of concerns, as from a particular project. There are, however, possibilities for more localized tenure change:
1. COMMUNITY LEGISLATION. There is a prevalent misconception of "customary" rules as being deeply internalized, observed by ancestors from "time out of mind." It is often believed that such rules change only through what might be called "snowballing deviance," in which particular instances of deviance eventually become pervasive and are recognized as the new custom. But "traditional" communities also legislate, acting purposefully to change rules to meet new circumstances. Projects can encourage such change in several ways, including preferential treatment of those communities which have taken the desired steps.
2. CONTRACTS. Because projects have benefits to offer, they can sometimes be traded for changes in land tenure arrangements. Contracts can be used as a tool for regulating tenure arrangements between groups or individuals, or between the project and groups or individuals.
3. PROJECT ECONOMIC LEVERAGE. Projects can affect behavior with economic leverage exerted through preferences, subsidies and a wide range of other actions, used independently or in connection with community legislation and contracts. Such leverage should not be used, however, to create incentives which will disappear when the project is over.
4. "THE LAND LAW OF THE PROJECT". Where projects are to be created on state-owned or appropriated land, as in many settlement schemes, the state creates a land tenure system for project beneficiaries as it defines the terms of their access to land. This is a challenging task under any circumstances, and such authority needs to be used with great restraint when working with communities long-established in a project area.
It must be emphasized in conclusion, however, that a rapid appraisal is not normally an appropriate vehicle for the development of such strategies beyond the hypothesis stage. This is social engineering and as such, needs to be approached with humility and caution. To devise viable strategies along these lines requires a greater knowledge of the local socio-legal system and processes than can realistically be obtained during a rapid appraisal. The critical task will in most cases be not the adjustment of the tenure arrangements but utilization of the information gathered in the appraisal to design a forestry technology appropriate to the community and its tenure patterns. By technology design here is meant not just species selection, but species use projections and integration into the farming system. This is an interactive process between potential groups of beneficiaries, their tenure and other incentives and opportunities, and the candidate forestry technologies. There are important policy decisions, value-laden decisions, involved in this process. They can be difficult even with the best of information. This is an interactive process that will proceed as the project progresses. While farmers will ultimately decide how they will employ the forestry technologies concerned, it is the responsibility of project designers to ensure that the technologies are offered in ways which facilitate rather than obstruct their adoption.
Preparation
-Take care to understand the proposed forestry technology well -Select a representative appraisal area
-Review:
-relevant ethnographic and other studies
-project design or evaluation reports from prior projects in the locale
-real property law and forest code
-Mobilize maps, aerial photography for field use -Develop rough models of question schedules
Fieldwork
-Small group and key informant interviews to establish land and
tree use patterns, tenure niches and tenure terminology
-Organize the local landscape into the three broad tenure niches--holdings, commons and reserves--using topographic maps and low aerial photography as communication tools
-Formulate rough typology of households for selection of households for interview, including (as appropriate to the case) representative households, target beneficiary households, female-headed, poor and other vulnerable households
-Develop question schedules for household interviewing, organized in terms of household access to and tenure in land and trees in the several tenure niches
-Household interviews to explore impact of tenure arrangements on incentives for tree planting
-Organize the household's tenure in land and trees by niche, using sketch maps as communication tools
-Examine incentives, not just for the household as a whole, but for particular household members, especially women, and their degree of autonomy in management of tree resources
-Examine incentives by tenure niche, according to land rights in each niche
-Examine incentives in terms of tree rights, by species and by land tenure niche
-Go beyond land rights to relate incentive information to alternative tree technologies under consideration
-Key informant interviews (follow-up round)
-Share perceptions of tenure and other incentives
-Discuss relationship between various incentives, candidate forestry technologies and particular tenure niches
-Ask for key informants' perceptions and suggestions
Interaction: Socio-Economics and Candidate Technologies
-Review potential adopting and beneficiary groups
-Consider opportunities and incentives of those groups in terms of tenure in trees and land
-In an interactive process, select and develop forestry technology which will mesh with tenure and other incentives and opportunities for targeted groups