Garba Tula Governance Assessment Final Report ... - Land Portal

Garba Tula Governance Baseline Assessment, April 2011
1. Legitimacy: This includes aspects such as: adequate participation of all stakeholders; subsidiarity of
power and decisions to the lowest appropriate level; and consensus orientation on what is in the
best interest of the group.
2. Direction: This relates to issues such as: a strategic vision of broad and long-term objectives of good
governance; and the coherence and contextualisation of governance mechanisms in line with
existing instruments, at a variety of levels.
3. Performance: This principle is concerned with mechanism: effectiveness and efficiency to produce
results that meet needs while making the best use of available resources; responsiveness to the
changing needs of stakeholders; and the capacity of stakeholders to engage at various levels.
4. Accountability: This relates to qualities regarding the: accountability of decision-makers in
government, the private sector and civil society organisations to all stakeholders; and transparency
built on the free flow of sufficient and easily accessible information.
5. Fairness: This final principle relates to: equality of opportunities for all sectors of society to improve
or maintain their wellbeing; equity in the distribution of costs and benefits between stakeholders;
and the impartial enforcement of the law, particularly the laws on human rights.
These five principles provide the benchmarks against which each of the three types of governance
mechanisms can be assessed. In this regard, Table 2 overpage sets out specific aspects of the five good
governance principles as applied to each of the governance mechanism categories.
At the Garba Tula Governance Assessment Workshop, stakeholders identified and then assessed some
of the Garba Tula key governance mechanisms using an assessment form based on the application of
the five good governance principles. The governance mechanism assessment form is provided in Annex
2, and attempted to translate the good governance principles into a set of easily understood and userfriendly
questions that Garba Tula stakeholders could apply in a participatory workshop setting. The
outcomes of the governance assessment according to the assessment form for governance mechanisms
that stakeholders had prioritised is given in Annex 3, according to the three governance mechanism
categories: laws and policies, institutions, and processes. The results of the assessment provide an
overview of the strengths and weaknesses of the most important governance mechanisms in the area.
2.4 Governance assessment approach
One of the challenges facing this study was the need to find a way of identifying the natural resource
governance mechanisms that are crucial to the conservation and sustainable use of natural resources in
Garba Tula, and to the optimisation of natural resource-based livelihoods in the area, amongst a large
cohort of governance mechanisms at national, regional and local levels, all of which have some bearing
on natural resource and livelihood values in the area. A method was also needed to also understand the
key issues relating to these priority governance mechanisms that are influencing their effectiveness and
relevance in achieving natural resource conservation and livelihood goals. Lastly, it is important that key
gaps in existing governance mechanisms can be pinpointed, in order to focus future interventions
designed to strengthen governance. The approach used by the study to meet these requirements was as
follows:
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