Poverty Dimensions of Public Governance and Forest Management ...

59
6. This information should also be available to the District Assembly members and the subcommittees,
and should inform their deliberations.
7. It should then contribute to the formulation of a district profile which informs the planning
process and is also conveyed to Regional Coordinating Councils.
8. These information systems need to be built from the community level upwards to achieve
responsiveness to changing conditions and the interests of people.
4.2.7 The Proposed Project
Improving the quality of the information systems at the local level, and improving the
communication linkages between District administration, District Assembly, unit Committees and
farmer/natural resource user groups are thus critical to environmental democracy, and central to
the aims of the proposed project.
The dual role which the project can make is to generate and disseminate research findings of
value to local resource users, and to thereby reinforce the incipient structures for environmental
management which exist to serve their needs.
Tasks
The major tasks of the project proposed here should be to:
a) Identify and work with the interest groups at different levels in the system of decentralisation
from the localities with their Unit Committees through the District administration up to the
regional level.
b) Identify their information needs and the major constraints which limit their ability to collect,
process and communicate information.
c) Strengthen and facilitate their information-generating and communicating processes
d) Utilise the capacities of the research team to generate information which can in turn be used
at the local and district levels (this would include access to research services findings,
national databases, remote sensing information, geographical information systems, etc.)
e) Strengthen the institutional context for environmental decision-making at local and District
levels
f) Bring all of [a-d] together to improve the quality of environmental action within decentralised
government.
59