Growing the Wealth of the Poor - World Resources Institute

W O R L D R E S O U R C E S 2 0 0 8122which has since banned all fishing, bird hunting, and harvestingof edible water plants (MACH 2007:47). By 2007, amidwinter census recorded more than 7,000 water birds inBaikka Beel, including such rare species as the Pallas’ FishEagle and Greater Spotted Eagle (MACH 2007:38), andMACH had built a watch tower to accommodate an influx ofecotourists. The Bangladesh government is now applying forHail Haor to receive international protected wetland statusunder the Ramsar Convention (MACH 2007:vi).Land-based habitat management has also brought conservationdividends. Communities planted more than 600,000trees from 48 native species to restore swamplands and wetlandborder forests and to counter erosion on the banks of rivers andstreams. Over the long term, the tree planting program willalso bring economic benefits to communities. While the swampforests will be preserved, tree branches can be lopped for fueland for brushwood that is placed in the water to attract fish.MACH also estimates a healthy return from the first fellingcycle of non-swamp trees at US$1.04 million in today’s pricesbetween 2015 and 2020. Through benefit-sharing agreementsa substantial part of this will go to community organizations,with the rest reserved for landowners and local government(MACH 2007:14-15; 53).Sustaining Success:Lessons and ChallengesCareer fisherman Jamir Uddin struggled to survive as once bountiful catches declined acrossSherpur wetland in the 1990s. To make extra money he began collecting and selling peanuts,and in 2001 he took out a MACH micro-loan to start his own shop. Three loans later, hisexpanding general goods store makes 30,000 taka (US$428) a year in profits, a sum hedescribes as unimaginable in his former occupation: “I saw that if I quit fishing and devotedmyself to a shop full time I could make more money,” he says as he greets customers. “Thisshop has changed my life.” (MACH 2005d)Two clear advantages help to explain the MACH program’ssuccess as a conservation and anti-poverty initiative: the largesums of donor money invested and government support fordecentralizing wetland management. But there were severalother key elements that reflect the framework laid out earlier inthis book and that have wider resonance.First and most important, the program was built on communities’self-interests. Villagers were granted rights and powers to usenatural resources and responsibilities to manage and protect them.If they failed, their livelihoods and investment (of user dues andtime volunteered) were at stake. Second, because of the co-managementarrangement with local administrators, these new institutionswere not isolated; they worked well within the existing governanceframework. Third, the implementing NGOs worked effectively asintermediary organizations—acting as a bridge betweenvillagers and local and national governments to developdemocratic, equitable, and effective community-based institutions.Fourth, effective networking, outreach, and organizationalscale-up over the nine years of the program prevented theproject villages from being meretemporary islands of goodpractice. Instead, the newinstitutions were left on a goodfooting to prosper after donorfunds and NGO expertise beganto be withdrawn in 2007.Fifth, endowment funds forRMOs and revolving creditfunds for resource user groupsprovided financial security oncethe project funding dried up.As a result, the communityinstitutions nurtured byMACH are now self-sufficientenough not only to survive butto prosper. So concluded theteam of consultants sent toevaluate the program in 2006,reporting that most resourcemanagement organizationsand user groups “appearcapable of managing thefishery resources and incomegeneration activities respectively[and] should be able tosustain themselves financiallyfor the indefinite future”(Whitford et al. 2006:27).The slow project phaseouthas also helped community