Strategic Issues for the Bais Bay Basin Development Action Program: Looking Back and to the Future

Abstract

The Bais Bay Basin Development Action Program sought, during its first eighteen months, to strengthen local government and community capacities to manage natural resources. The program applied the “‘watershed”’ as a unifying planning concept. The implementation strategy, was based on specialized action teams or components, each employing different strategies for mobilizing community participation. The overall program strategy is both efficient and flexible. It has been difficult,
however, to maintain program integration at the watershed-level. There has also been a tendency for individual components to over-specialize along disciplinary lines, weakening their ability to effectively address the inter-disciplinary problems faced by communities. Specific community mobilizing strategies varied considerably between and even within individual action components. Some were focused on mobilizing specific communities whereas others aimed to reach a wider population in the
project area. Institutional collaborations with government and non-government agents have been used successfully and are seen as an important area of emphasis for the future to ensure local program sustainability and a broader overall impact.