Effectiveness of Training
Poaching and Bushmeat Trafficking
Institutional Structure and Providing Support ADMADE Communities
Field Patrol Movements and Search Tactics
Cultural Forces in Conservation
Validity of Informant Data
Training is an attractive option as an intervention for CBNRM projects because it is attainable, serves an important need in the management of the program, and is popular with participants. A review of documents of CBNRM projects reveals that references to 'capacity building' frequently translate to training as the principle, and sometimes only, intervention. It is easy to fall into the perspective of viewing training as a panacea activity in any project which desires to devolve management responsibility to the community level.
Measuring the effectiveness of training, however, is a difficult task grappled by CBNRM programs. Like evaluation activities in general, assessing the impact of training may be a low priority for project staff, and if it occurs at all may very well be initiated by a donor agency for accountability purposes. However projects like ADMADE, which have made a heavy investment in training, have much to gain from conducting a comprehensive review of their training activities. Aside from accounting for donor resources, an evaluation on training will likely lead to ways of making it more effective, efficient, and better targeted.
There has never been a comprehensive external review of ADMADE's training program, although more than one evaluation of ADMADE has recommended this (e.g., Mano Consultancy, 1998). Specifically, there is a need to examine Nyamaluma's methodology and accomplishments in training, focusing on questions such as:
What motivates people for training?
Participants who attend workshops and courses at Nyamaluma are most likely motivated by a variety of factors, including:
How are people selected for training?
Another determinant of the effectiveness of training is the method for selection of participants. In general participants are selected for courses by their host community, although increasingly Nyamaluma has set minimum qualifications for courses. The criteria community leaders may use to selects participants for training falls along a theoretical continuum. At one extreme, participants may be selected purely on the basis of their connections with the local power structure, such as being a relative to the Chief or a headman. At the other extreme, participants may be selected based solely on their experience, character, and skills. Most participants are probably selected based on a combination of factors. However no one has tried to study the continuum of selection of participants for courses at Nyamaluma, another factor which likely impacts the effectiveness of training programs even before the course starts.
How are participants' performance/behavior altered by training?
There are plenty of stories of participants returning from training highly motivated, better equipped, and more confident, and subsequently improving their job performance. However there are a similar number of stories of participants returning from a course, packing their papers in their house, and never sharing their knowledge or improving their interest or performance in their job. Two reasonable questions are what percentage of participants fall into each of the above categories, and what are some of the factors that cause training not to have any perceivable impact on some participants? Perhaps the material for the course was not relevant or not understood. Perhaps the person's reason for attending the course had nothing to do with an interest in their job. Or perhaps there were other barriers in the community that no amount of training could have overcome. These questions have yet to be studied in a systematic manner, and could illuminate more effective strategies towards training.
Do the course offerings at Nyamaluma cover all the needs of local communities?
Nyamaluma has developed a wide range of courses. Some offered nearly every year, and others have only been held once during the life of the project. A simple question that has yet to be studied empirically is whether these courses cover the topics and skills needed by community members, and what percentage of the potential beneficiaries in ADMADE areas have been reached.
What is the perceived value of training in communities?
As CBNRM programs such as ADMADE strive to become more and more independent of donor input, a pertinent question is how do members of communities perceive the benefits of training programs, and to what degree are they willing to invest in their own training. The experience of many development projects has demonstrated that in general there is a strong correlation between the perceived value of an activity and willingness to invest one's time and/or resources.
With its long history of training in CBNRM, ADMADE probably represents one of the 'high water marks' in terms of developing interest in training. ADMADE communities, which have training opportunities for ten years, have had ample time to gauge the number of benefits that are likely to result from attendance at courses. The questions of perceived benefit and willingness to provide more input into training can be studied. Although most courses held at Nyamaluma require participants to fund their own transport, for the most part training operations for the first ten years of ADMADE were made possible by donor funds. Many courses pay daily per diem as well, allowing participants to earn money while attending. During lapses in donor funding, communities did subsidize some of the operational expenses of courses, however the time is right for a study on whether communities perceive training to be valuable enough to the degree that they're willing to increase their contributions.
What are alternatives for delivering training?
To a degree, education is a part of all community gatherings, including presentations by theater groups and community meetings. ADMADE relies heavily on personnel at the units, such as the Unit leaders, to organize and deliver the messages, with mixed success. However the vast majority of formal training in ADMADE is based at Nyamaluma. The strategy of centralized training is partly due to limited skilled manpower and financial resources, as well as the need to develop and test new course material. However centralization can also partly be traced to ADMADE's historical roots and management style.
There is a need to study the advantages and disadvantages of providing training for the whole country through a single institution, compared with alternative delivery mechanisms such as regional extension networks which are used by many other projects providing services to rural areas. Variables to consider include cost, effectiveness, and the number of participants that can be reached with each approach. Other training strategies worth evaluating include placing a greater emphasis on a training of trainers approach, and supporting community-initiated training activities in the GMAs.
The most appropriate method for delivering training is of course also dependent on the topic and type of training. Certain types of training, such as the large, long village scout courses, have different needs than shorter more specific courses such as financial management or agro-forestry. Some topics and audiences may require more follow-up in the field, while others are more site-specific or require more educational resources such as manuals and presentation aids. Recognizing its own limits as it tries to expand into new areas of service, Nyamaluma/ADMADE would benefit from an evaluation on the best way to support communities.
Poaching and Bushmeat Trafficking
Poaching activity is commonly grouped into three categories: subsistence poaching, commercial meat poaching, and commercial ivory poaching. ADMADE's collection of law enforcement records is a potentially useful resource is studying trends in the composition of poaching in Zambia. Other interesting questions include: What types of poaching are the ADMADE anti-poaching strategies most effective in reducing? and, What types of poaching pose the greatest threat to wildlife and the safari hunting industry?
Even within the three broad classes of poachers, additional research is needed to shed light on the deeper motivations for poaching. For example, "subsistence" poachers may be poaching because they need meat to eat, need meat to sell for food, need meat to sell for farming inputs, need meat to sell for beer, or because they come from a lineage of traditional hunters and their social standing is tied to being successful hunters. Consequently, certain types of interventions (such as creating opportunities for income generation) may be quite effective against certain types of subsistence poachers, but do little to address the needs of other poachers.
Similarly, interventions targeted at the second largest group of poachers, commercial meat poaching, will be most effective if the commercial meat poaching industry is understood better. Commercial meat poachers can be anything from small scale struggling city dwellers with aspirations for a better lifestyle, to larger operations organized by influential and wealthy businessmen or politicians, to groups tied to police and/or military networks and financed by non-Zambians. In some areas, commercial meat poachers conduct well-equipped expeditions into protected areas to hunt game. In other areas they mostly buy bushmeat from a network of local "subsistence" poachers. The effectiveness and efficiency of anti-poaching operations and other campaigns to reduce illegal hunting will have varying impact depending on the nature of the commercial meat trade, which in many areas is not well understood.
Institutional Structure and Providing Support ADMADE Communities
ADMADE has recently undergone something of a transformation in the way communities are organized and serviced. A few years ago, there was essentially one body at the community level to deal with (the sub-authority), and a relatively small number of management and development activities. Today, the sub-authority has been replaced with an elected Community Resource Board, supported by a Financial Management Committee, Resource Management Committee, Community Development Committee, multiple democratically elected Village Area Groups, and peer groups. Activities in ADMADE areas no longer include just annual quota setting exercises and planning infrastructure projects, but developing and implementing co-management agreements, facilitating participatory decision making, conducting democratic elections, agro-forestry and family health counseling, drama presentations, and developing land-use plans. Services being provided to communities by Nyamaluma have expanded to include technical assistance in organizing elections, electric fence projects, family planning services, agro-forestry extension, bee-keeping, family planning instruction, small business development, and training theatre groups. In addition to this expansion in community structures and types of services, Nyamaluma is also trying to strengthen its presence in the Kafue area GMAs as well as enter new areas where the introduction of ADMADE is desired by traditional leaders.
This growth is a tangible sign of ADMADE's success, but also raises several questions about the appropriate institutional structures needed to service a CBNRM program like ADMADE. In the past Nyamaluma has been almost the sole provider of services to ADMADE communities and direction of the program as a whole. This was primarily due to the lack of a strong presence of NGOs or other government agencies in the areas where ADMADE operates. However, the situation has also not changed much over the last ten years, in part because ADMADE has not made it a strategic objective at the program level to develop partnerships with other service providing government units or NGOs. This is partly due to the fact that ADMADE has until recently lacked a presence "in town" to cultivate partnerships with other organizations, but also partly due to a desire of ADMADE's leadership to keep the program autonomous and disentangled from other missions.
However the issues of partnerships with other organizations, the capacity of Nyamaluma and ZWA to provide the new array of social services to communities, and ADMADE's leadership structure, are among the issues which need to be reviewed as ADMADE expands both programmatically and geographically. ADMADE has always been distinctive among CBNRM programs in southern Africa because it is relatively donor independent (an estimated 70% of operational costs are covered by safari revenues). However can ADMADE fulfill its vision as a holistic conservation and development program and still remain relatively financially autonomous? Can a single facility such as Nyamaluma adequately provide such a diverse array of services to such a large operational area, and even if it could is this an efficient or cost-effective way of operating? Can ADMADE's leadership structure, which almost completely lacks middle-level management, cope with the new responsibilities and complexities of a program which seems to be growing exponentially every year? These are some of the institutional issues that will continue to surface, either directly or indirectly, over the next few years of ADMADE.
Field Patrol Movements and Search Tactics
One piece of the puzzle that would help make field patrol monitoring data more rigorous is detailed information on scout movements and search strategies on anti-poaching operations. Currently, there are a number unknown questions about field patrol data, such as:
Cultural Forces in Conservation
Even a cursory tour of ADMADE areas or observation at community meetings will reveal that there are dynamics at work in ADMADE that don't easily fit into a traditional development framework that predicts outcomes based on patterns in economic growth, ecological sustainability, improved household livelihood, institutional capacity, etc. While these elements are certainly important and in the long run probably the biggest determinants of success or failure, there are without a doubt other "social" or cultural forces at work in ADMADE communities. These other factors, which can greatly affect community attitudes and behaviors, include a perceived sense of empowerment, the comfort of being a member of a group, feelings of righteousness, cohesion developed by fighting for the common good, and encouragement/coercion from traditional leadership.
Cultural forces have always played an important role in ADMADE. Indeed in some ADMADE areas, the material benefits of the program are so scant for the average household, it would be difficult to ascribe support for the program as a result of development activities alone. Other aspects of the program, such as "support groups" for reformed poachers, and ubiquitous messages about the virtues of helping the Community, are also manifestations of the important role that cultural forces have played and continue to play in ADMADE.
ADMADE offers a good opportunity to study the influences of social and cultural forces in conservation programs. Exploring the non-material factors which influence people's support for conservation could result in more effective targeting of communication and education messages, determining the minimal amount of material benefits required to win hearts and souls, developing frameworks for introducing CBNRM into depleted areas - where communities must initially bear the costs of restocking wildlife - and determining the pace at which communities can accept change.
Validity of Informant Data
ADMADE has for years recognized the value of field experiences of scouts, professional hunters, and trackers in monitoring wildlife trends. These sources of information have been used on an informal basis for quota setting and identifying potential threats to wildlife. While "human sensors" who spend a lot of time in the bush no doubt are rich sources of information, it is difficult to evaluate data quality issues such as bias, accuracy, and interference in informant data. Studies from other fields have revealed that in general human memory is not terribly accurate and informant recall is of questionable value (e.g., Bernard 1984).
Nyamaluma has recently introduced a new method to more rigorously collect informant observations. The Population Trends Survey is a questionnaire on wildlife trends that is designed to be administered individually and consistently to scouts, professional hunters, and trackers. Once a sizable dataset is collected, analyses will be possible on agreement between observers, and consistency of answers for the same observer.
If informant data is to take its place as one of the standard tools of wildlife monitoring, further study is needed on the validity of this method. There are many potential confounds and biases in this method, including hearing stories from other observers, basing opinions on limited field experience, non-representative experiences in the bush, interference effects from the interview, or the unwitting interference from hidden agendas. The Population Trends Survey is a good start, but the results would be more meaningful is data was also collected on independent variables such as the amount of time spent in the bush, spatial distribution of the observer's experiences, and the nature of their activities in the bush.
Some information in Nyamaluma's database already exists on variables that could influence a scout's response to a questionnaire, such including the number of days on patrols, average duration, and location. Similar measures would be helpful for professional hunters and their trackers. Once sufficient data has been collected, correlations could be noted between scout's opinions and other variables, and between the opinions of different informers. Ideally, informant data could also be compared with other, more rigorous monitoring results, such as ground transects, aerial surveys, or hunting statistics. The study could also be expanded to include other people who spend a lot of time near animals, including honey gatherers, local hunters, and firewood collectors . Results from the study could be used to identify which factors are likely to result in reliable observers, and how informant data can be best analyzed.