Co-management meeting in Mo O

Co-management establishment in Mo O, Tran De
Step 3: Implementation and Monitoring
22nd meeting of the start-up group and sub-group leaders

Date: 10.05.2013

Place: Mo O Village, Trung Binh Commune, Tran De District

The aim of this meeting was to talk about implementation and monitoring as next steps for co-management. Since the agreement was signed in April, it should be implemented in Mo O and people should start following what it is written in it. The task to make resource users familiar with the agreement is very important. In order to do it, project staff suggested a monthly meeting schedule between leaders and their members to discuss the agreement (including members’ roles, rules for different zones, dealing with violations) as well as other future co-management supporting activities. Leaders agreed that at this end of this month they would have their first monthly meetings with their members to gradually tell them about the agreement.

It was mentioned that during the implementation step, monitoring is very important as co-management is adaptive management. The results of the monitoring will be evaluated and play as inputs for future negotiation of the regulations. Monitoring which was simply explained as a means to check if we are doing right or wrong and if there is any room for improvement consists of several aspects such as monitoring of violations, resource use monitoring and monitoring of general issues. The leaders and start-up group members were asked to do a small exercise by thinking about issues of Mo-O co-management which needed to be addressed. And it was quite obvious that leaders and start-up group already had their own observation – or a primary form of monitoring. Therefore, it was suggested that they should keep a record of what they observe so they can compare or discuss solutions for example number of violation cases. Same principle will be applied when it comes to resource use monitoring as we want to know if resource in our forest is decreasing or increasing. In order to do it, people should keep a good record on how much they can collect.

In the end, there are three types of monitoring that the group need to focus on:

· Monitoring of violation -> it was suggested that the leaders write down every violation case for record keeping and reports;

· Resource use monitoring;

· Monitoring of stakeholders’ capability to do their tasks -> this is a result of the discussion that there is a need to have internal monitoring so that stakeholders can help each other to improve their tasks which are assigned during the co-management implementation step.

As required by leaders, they would have their first capacity training for leading their monthly meetings. Start-up group will organise half-a-day training for leaders before this month meeting so that they can present the topic more fluently and easy to understand. It was suggested that the project should contribute to this training.

The resource use monitoring has not been covered in the meeting this time. However, it will be the main topic in the next meeting and it would be more interesting to see how resource users comment on it when it is introduced to them in the monthly meetings.

(Adapted from AD’s report)