10. A PLANNING PROCESS

Management’s task is to make ecological systems productive in satisfying people’s needs within the biophysical and socioeconomic limits imposed in sustaining the ecological system being managed. Planning is one of the most important functions of management (Drucker 1986, Hanna 1985). In small enterprises with simple goals and objectives to be achieved in short periods of time, the organization of human, capital, and natural resources to carry out the necessary tasks can require relatively little formal planning. However, some type of formal planning is necessary in larger enterprises with large amounts of diverse human, capital, and natural resources and multiple goals and objectives to be achieved over a long time period.

In this chapter, we present a process to help people in preparing a plan of action for the implementation of development projects in arid and semi-arid ecosystems. It is from such a process that project planning for specific forms of management activities evolves. Development projects are sets of practices that are undertaken on lands for which the management activities are suitable to achieve the specified goals and actions (Gregersen and Contreras 1992)

Planning involves an integration of three major sets of elements (Brooks et al. 1991, Bryson 1988, Jakes et al. 1989, Pfeiffer et al. 1989). First, the objectives are established on the basis of a problem analysis for the proposed project area and directives from higher-level authorities. Second, consideration is given to the various physical-biological, social, cultural, financial, and political constraints associated with the specific situation confronted. Third, the techniques for carrying out the alternative management activities that are necessary to satisfy the objectives are delineated. Management planning requires organizing, analyzing, and integrating the objectives, constraints, and management techniques in such a way that decision making and implementation are done more efficiently and effectively than if an unplanned approach had been used.

Many of the constraints to management activities in arid and semi-arid ecological systems are physical (e.g., climate, land form, and soil conditions). But, just as many constraints are likely to be social, economic, and institutional in nature (Brooks et al. 1991); these constraints include cultural limitations, political acceptability, and available budget. A challenge for the planner is to bring all these factors into an efficient planning process using appropriate datasets where available and estimates in other cases.

In relatively few instances will a planner and manager, with whom the planner should closely work in the planning process, have enough information to make risk-free decisions concerning actions and reactions. Therefore, planning requires judgment and flexibility. If people have learned one thing from past experiences, it is that development projects seldom unfold as originally planned. Those who are ready to adjust to changes in conditions are further ahead than those who rigidly follow an original plan despite changes in conditions. The purpose of this chapter is to present a process so that the planner and manager can be better prepared to anticipate these needed adjustments, identify critical information and concepts, and work cooperatively on the inevitable changes in constraints and opportunities that will take place as planning and implementation proceed.

Each development-related problem that confronts a planner and manager has its own unique set of technical elements and characteristics. Therefore, each development project requires a different technical approach (such as identification and design of vegetative manipulations) in terms of physical planning; the same does not hold for the planning process itself, however. A similar planning process can be used regardless of the type of development project in question. Only the relative emphasis placed on each step in the process will differ, not the steps themselves. This chapter outlines the basic steps in planning. A fine-tuning of the planning process is discussed in terms of adjustments in emphasis and content needed to deal with particular problem types.

Management activities are undertaken to produce benefits to people and sustain, to the extent possible, the functioning of the managed ecological systems (Drucker 1986, Stuth et al., 1991). For example, people do not necessarily plant trees and shrubs as an end objective in itself. Rather, people plant trees and shrubs to obtain benefits that have direct value to them, such as reducing soil loss from agricultural lands or increasing fuelwood supplies for a village. Therefore, planners, managers, and (importantly) the local people must understand the potential flows of effects and benefits, both on site and off site. Three major elements are considered in the framework of producing benefits for people through management activities:

1. management practices (inputs) and costs associated with them;
2. biophysical effects and environmental changes associated with the management practices; and
3. socioeconomic changes (both benefits and costs) associated with the biophysical effects and environmental changes (e.g., changes that can be associated with direct economic value to humans).

The relationships between management activities (inputs) and their physical effects (outputs) are discussed throughout this book.

Effects and benefits are defined as changes with and without implementing the management activities being considered (Gregersen et al. 1987). For example, by "increased productivity," we mean the differences in productivity between conditions and without the development project. Productivity can still be declining after the project has been implemented but it may be at a slower rate than without the project. Nonetheless, there is a higher level of productivity (an increase) over what it would have been without the project, and this increase represents a benefit that can be valued.

The planning process presented in this chapter (Brooks et al. 1991, Bryson 1988, Ffolliott and Thames 1983, Hanna 1985, Pfeiffer et al. 1989) includes the following steps:

• monitoring and evaluating past activities and identifying problems and opportunities;
• determining the main characteristics of the problems and opportunities identified, setting objectives necessary to overcome the problems or take advantage of the opportunities, developing strategies for action, and identifying constraints;
• identifying alternative actions to implement strategies within the defined constraints;
• appraising and evaluating the impacts of alternatives, including environmental, social, and economic effects, and assessing uncertainty associated with the results; and
• ranking the alternatives and recommending action when requested.

Therefore, a planner and manager are concerned with the questions:

• How do we decide that we want to do something?
• What is it that we want to do?
• How do we decide what alternatives we have available to do it?
• How do we decide which alternative(s) is (are) best given the circumstances?

Planning is an iteration of successively refined approximations in which people learn from past experiences and incorporate that learning into the ongoing planning process (Brooks et al. 1991). Management planning, therefore, involves an incremental learning experience. It is often difficult to get immediately to the details of a project design, however. Rather, through a series of iterations, we move from a rapid, low-cost assessment of the situation through progressively more detailed design and appraisal stages until we arrive at the point where we have all the necessary, desired, and affordable information needed to make a decision.

This iterative process makes sense since one purpose of planning is to help decision makers and managers reject unsuitable options at an early stage. An experienced planner can focus almost immediately on an appropriate strategy and viable, suitable options for dealing with a given situation. In essence, the purpose here is to discard unsuitable options with a minimum expenditure of time and effort and then to spend more time studying the alternatives that experience has taught are the best ones in a given situation.

People often point out that, by only following rules of thumb and past experience, one risks missing more efficient or effective solutions to a particular development-related problem. It is frequently argued that better solutions might be identified if more time and resources were devoted to the effort. This possibility certainly can exist in many cases. However, funds, skills, and time are scarce in most situations, and, as a consequence, most planners and managers have time constraints and limited resources to devote to problem analyses, project designs and evaluations, and comparisons of alternatives. The optimum solution to the development-related problem is defined and constrained by all these factors.

The steps in the planning process are discussed in more detail in the following sections of this chapter. In keeping with the orientation of the chapter, we will attempt to emphasize the practical and avoid the impractical.

The process of planning has no beginning and no end. Nevertheless, the manager-planner team must start somewhere. A logical starting point is at a point before a problem or opportunity has been identified (Brooks et al. 1991). Therefore, we will start the planning process with monitoring and problem identification (fig. 10.1). People are continuously collecting data and creating knowledge about ongoing changes in biological, physical, and socioeconomic environments throughout the world. We suggest that this information can be used in planning to determine whether a management problem exists and what might be done to resolve it.

Figure 10.1. Steps in the planning process ( move from box to box and then repeat by going to first box.) .

The types of information needed to identify problems are numerous. For example, information needed to describe arid and semi-arid environments includes that related to climatology, aridity, soils, vegetation, and hydrology. In general, people collect data on both a long-term and continuing basis to define major problems and on a onetime basis to provide information to solve a particular crisis. Long-term monitoring activities ideally allow people to observe and analyze resource responses through time and thus help identify problems. To illustrate this point, precipitation and stream flow data must be collected on a continuous basis for many years before we can characterize drought, soil erosion conditions, and flooding probabilities. In contrast to long-term data acquisition, information is often collected on a onetime basis to analyze a known specific problem. Analysis of these data is undertaken to quantify the severity of a particular problem and to evalu ate whether or not the implemented corrective actions are solving the problem.

Different types of data and the levels of detail and accuracy for their collection are needed in different situations, depending largely upon the intensity of land use, the rates at which problems appear to be developing, the severity of an already identified problem, or combinations thereof. Often, no formal measuring or monitoring system is used to produce the information that leads to an identification of management concerns and eventual action. Rather, problems are observed directly after they have occurred. For example, when it becomes increasingly apparent that a reservoir is silting up rapidly, the scars of erosion begin to appear on the upstream landscape or floods become more frequent and serious.

Regardless of how problems and opportunities are noticed, their definition becomes one of the first steps in management planning. More than one solution to a problem is possible in many instances. For example, limited water supplies might be enhanced by either developing water harvesting schemes or reclaiming wastewater. In other cases, solutions can be mutually exclusive. Increased cultivation of agricultural crops or agroforestry practices to enhance the production of food can require that the livestock grazing in the area be discontinued entirely.

Not previously discussed in this chapter are the nonproduction-oriented objectives of management activities in arid and semi-arid ecosystems, such as enhancing scenic beauty or maintaining wildlife habitats. In many parts of the world, people set aside land as preserves that have unique wildlife habitats, landscape beauty, historical significance, or other amenity values. The establishment of these set-aside areas can be valid objectives and, as a consequence, must be considered in a planning effort together with adjacent or nearby lands that are managed for different purposes.

The types of problems that are important in management are many. In some cases, planning evolves into the implementation of actions to prevent a problem from occurring. In other instances, a problem may already exist, and the planning task involves the development of a course of action to alleviate the problem or ameliorate the conditions that have caused it (Hanna 1985, Pflaum and Delmont 1987). While the managerial actions will likely differ in each case, the basic planning process should remain the same. The importance of monitoring and problem identification in planning cannot be overemphasized. The resultant problem statement will set the focus and orientation for the rest of the planning activity.

The next steps in the planning process involve setting objectives, developing strategies to solve the problems or respond to the opportunities presented, and identifying constraints to these strategies (Bryson 1988, Gregersen et al. 1989, Mager 1972, Pfeiffer et al. 1989). Objectives usually flow directly from the problem analysis. In their most general form, statements of objectives merely indicate that there is a need to develop a means of overcoming or preventing the identified problem or ameliorating the conditions causing it, eventually leading to the desired benefits. With greater levels of specification, objectives are translated into targets that are constrained (e.g., in terms of the riskiness of approaches taken, level of cost applied, and level of achievement of other objectives).

A single objective is not too difficult to deal with in the planning process, even when it is constrained in a number of ways. In most instances, where people are dealing with a single objective, clear decision criteria can be developed for determining the extent to which alternative project designs are acceptable and even how they rank relative to each other. As stated earlier, ranking is a common step in the decision-making process.

Difficulties arise when more than one objective exists and, as a result, multiple objectives have to be considered, a situation commonly encountered in the management of arid and semi-arid ecological systems. Decision-support systems have been developed to deal quantitatively (in theory at least) with multiple objectives (Cohon 1978, Dykstra 1984, Hof chap. 12, this volume, Loucks et al. 1981, Pickup and Stafford Smith chap. II, this volume). However, the use of such systems has not always been successful. For decision making purposes, it can be easier to focus on one main objective, with the other objectives then expressed as constraints on the main one. For example, a major objective of a development project might be to increase fuelwood production in a given area. Additional objectives, such as improved wildlife habitats and enhanced amenity values, might be expressed as constraints on the main objective. Within a specified budgetary level, therefore, the objective could be to maximize fuelwood production subject to an associated maximum improvement in wildlife habitats, enhancement of amenity values, and, in all likelihood, maintenance of environmental quality.

Planners can often avoid the problems of dealing quantitatively with multiple objectives by developing an array of statements on the effects of alternative project designs for various objectives. The decision maker then has to provide subjective weightings to compare different alternative combinations of outputs related to the various objectives.

Once objectives have been established and agreed upon by all concerned, possible strategies to achieve the objectives must be developed (Hanna 1985). Here, strategy is used to describe the general direction taken to satisfy the objectives. A plan further includes the magnitudes or targets to be achieved and timing of the actions to be taken to achieve them.

One might think of a number of alternative strategies to reduce soil erosion by looking at the problem statement, for example. Identifying acceptable and cost-effective land-use practices that decrease the rate of erosion can be one strategy. Regulations against land uses that, in all likelihood, intensify the erosive process with appropriate enforcement might be suggested in an autocratic environment. In other situations, the best strategy could be to leave the situation alone because the independent nature of the local people might preclude any chance for a successful intervention; this being the case, it would probably be better to spend scarce resources elsewhere. There are likely other scenarios that could be developed and transformed into strategy statements. The problem, therefore, is deciding upon feasible strategies to meet the set objectives within the framework of the constraints confronted.

We can arrive at a logical strategy by looking systematically at information on constraints and the conditions that surround the problem (Brooks et al. 1991, Pfeiffer et al. 1989). For example, constraints that might have been considered in developing a strategy to reduce soil loss include:

1. Land form and soils may be such that only certain types of changes in land-use practices would have a good chance of success in the area.
2. There may not appear to be cultural constraints that stand in the way of changing land-use management practices, although tradition is important to the local people. Incentive mechanisms might have to be considered, at least initially.
3. Financing mechanisms available for long-term agricultural crop and livestock management may currently be inadequate. Since some tree or shrub cover will likely have to be established on steep slopes, improved credit mechanisms, alternate incomes, and other ways to support the establishment of trees or shrubs and other long-term management activities may be needed.
4. The literacy rate of the local people may be low, and mass communication facilities might not exist in the region. Furthermore, there may be no current extension organization in operation.
5. The political structure may be such that effective regulation and enforcement would be difficult. Therefore, an approach using incentives is likely needed.

Many other questions could be asked in this strategy formation stage. However, the idea is not necessarily to formulate precise courses of action, for example, how many hectares have to be treated with a certain treatment, how much of an incentive payment and what kind will be needed, and so forth. Instead, the planner should move quickly through the entire context of the development project in developing a strategy to:

• eliminate some approaches that would not work given the constraints identified;
• determine which constraints need to be addressed to have a reasonable chance for success; and
• identify the points that should be taken advantage of in project design and implementation.

Once an acceptable strategy has been developed, the design of alternatives to implement the strategy becomes the primary focus of the planning process. The need here is identifying the various actions that could be used to implement the strategy and produce desired results (Brooks et al. 1991, Bryson 1988, Hanna 1985). This is where the technical expertise of agronomists, foresters, soil scientists, hydrologists, engineers and other specialists comes into play. The expertise of social scientists, economists, politicians, and others dealing with social, economic, and cultural elements also enters the process at this time.

The types of actions that may be needed in different instances include:

• biological actions such as planting trees, shrubs, agricultural crops, or combinations thereof;
• physical and engineering actions (e.g., building terraces, dams, or gabions);
• regulatory measures to control specified actions including the harvesting of wood, controlling the grazing of livestock, and regulating water use;
• actions to create incentives, that is, providing free goods and services, subsidies, credit, outright cost sharing, and so forth; and
• educational activities including the preparing informational materials, presenting demonstrations, and offering training activities.

The task at this point in the planning process is to identify the options that are available given the constraints and conditions surrounding the development project. The manager should be familiar with a number of different managerial techniques and potential actions that are available to solve various types of problems. Remember, to do nothing, that is, not to implement a development project of any kind, is a valid alternative to be considered in the planning process.

While alternatives are being developed, they should also be undergoing appraisal. Appraisal is an ongoing activity in the planning process in most instances. In its broadest meaning, appraisal refers to the process of identifying, defining, and quantifying the likely or expected impacts of a practice, project, or program (Gregersen and Contreras 1992, Gregersen et al. 1987). Some of these impacts will be positive and some negative.

Possible impacts of management activities, grouped into environmental, financial and economic, and social effects, are presented in table 10.1. Note that the groupings presented relate to different viewpoints of the impacts of a given change.

Table 10.1 Possible Impacts of Management Activities

Environmental effects on:
Soil protection
Ecological functioning, stability, and diversity
Water yield, timing of flow, quality
Wildlife protection

Financial and economical effects on:
Allocation of resources
Stability and distribution of income
Local, regional, and countrywide levels of production
Public-and private-sector budgets

Social effects on:
Local, regional, and countrywide employment
Migration flows
Cultural traditions
Political stability

Appraisals of alternative development projects are useful only if they provide to decision makers relevant information in a way that they are comfortable with the information (Gregersen and Lundgren 1986, Gregersen et al. 1987). This means distinguishing between the technical analyst’s considerations in choosing a good appraisal approach and the decision maker’s view of what characterizes a good, acceptable, usable appraisal. The task of a planner is brining these two sets of considerations together into the final appraisal product. Integration of perspectives of technical personnel and decision makers is a key to successful planning.

Appraisals should support the objective of spending the minimum amount of resources needed to reach an acceptable decision on how best to achieve an objective. This point is attained after a quick appraisal in some cases; that is, the supporting evidence and political agreement are so clear concerning the best alternative that one need go no further to reach a decision (Brooks et al. 1991). In other cases, a more detailed and thorough second-stage appraisal is needed because the evidence is not clear enough after the first-stage appraisal to make a judgment. A formal feasibility study is likely to be necessary to arrive at the point where a decision can be made in situations involving major commitments of resources. Sometimes a formal feasibility study is also required by the involved institutions (donors, management organizations, local community groups, etc).

A question to ask in any appraisal is: What criteria of acceptance are we going to use? Suffice it to say that there are many criteria that can be used in most decisions. No single set of criteria will be enough to judge the applicability of a proposed project in most instances. Regardless of the criteria, appraisal results can be, and often should be, presented in different ways, depending upon the nature of the planning situation (Gregersen et al. 1987). In general, it is preferable to present a ranked set of alternatives or several rankings utilizing different evaluative criteria. However, the decision on which alternative is chosen ultimately can be made only by the responsible decision maker.

One typically faces a situation of uncertainty rather than risk in most development projects to be undertaken in arid and semi-arid ecosystems. The distinction is simply that, in the case of risk, one can apply probabilities to various outcomes while quantitative measures of probabilities of occurrences can not be generated in the case of uncertainty. In a situation of uncertainty, one might develop subjective probability estimates for different aspects of a project that are of highest interest. However, such estimates often do more harm than good since subjectivity in the planning process should not be hidden. Therefore, the use of a straightforward analysis of how the measures of project worth (net present values, internal rates of return, benefit-cost analyses, etc.) or desirability would change under different assumptions concerning the values of key parameters is suggested.

RECOMMENDING ACTION

The planner’s tasks often stop after the alternatives and implications of risk and uncertainty for the different options have been evaluated. However, in some cases, the planner is asked to make recommendations on which of the alternatives should be undertaken and the timing and approach of implementation (Brooks et al. 1991). To make these recommendations, it is necessary to establish criteria of acceptance against which the alternatives can be evaluated. It is likely that no single set of criteria will be sufficient for evaluating the applicability of the proposed alternatives. However, any criteria of acceptance can be based on:

• ecological guidelines, including providing sustained benefits while meeting the needs of the people, conserving and protecting the ecological systems, maintaining or improving soil productivity, or furnishing a range of multiple benefits;
• economic objectives, such as maximizing benefits, maximizing the returns on an investment, or achieving a specified production level at least cost; and
• social and cultural considerations (e.g., ensuring that livestock grazing patterns will not be disrupted in a way as to encourage hostility among the members of a community or making people available to plant agricultural crops or control the poaching of animals).

Criteria of acceptance that reflect the principles of appropriate technology should also be considered (Ffolliott and Thames 1983). These criteria may require a project to:

• make optimal use of locally available human resources, materials, and marketing opportunities;
• increase the potential for people’s self-reliance in both the short and long terms;
• be compatible with available funding;
• make use of and, when appropriate, adapt traditional technologies and approaches to problem solving;
• have the potential for being maintained and sustained by the local community; and
• have a reasonable time frame for people to take responsibility for the project activities.

What has been presented in this chapter is a simplified planning process, moving from problem identification through design to recommending action for implementation. In point of fact, the planning process is an ongoing, continuous process in most instances (Brooks et al. 1991, Hanna 1985, Stuth et al. 1991). As mentioned above, planning is also an iterative process, with information concerning the results of actions and emerging problems constantly being fed back into it (fig. 10.1). This information is frequently used to suggest incremental changes in the ongoing project. More formally, the process of collecting and disseminating information on ongoing projects is part of the monitoring and evaluation task referred to earlier. There should be continuing feedback of information on project activities that is synthesized, analyzed, and placed into the development of alternative strategies and suggestions for actions that are passed back to project management. This type of continuous process leads to useful interactions among planners, technical personnel, and managers of development management activities.

There are frequently gaps in information that hinder planning and, as a result, should stimulate an investment in research (Gregersen and Lundgren 1986, Jakes et al. 1989, Rose et al. 1982). In deciding what information is needed and, therefore, what research should be undertaken, one might develop a conceptual model of the ecological and cultural setting in which the development project will be implemented to define the system in question and specify the information needed to fill the informational gaps. Very simply, a model is a representation of how that part of the world in which the development project will be implemented operates. A model can be in various forms, such as:

• simple statements;
• network diagrams; and
• sets of detailed mathematical expressions.

It is important to remember that the conceptual model should be as complete and accurate as possible. Information in the model, which can serve as a baseline when the project is evaluated, should include:

• ecological characterizations;
• cultural and social descriptions; and
• economic and, when appropriate, marketing conditions.

After developing a conceptual model, one can identify those processes that cannot be quantified with the information on hand, pointing to gaps in knowledge and the need for research (Brooks et al. 1991). The information needed to operate a predictive model that quantifies the impacts of a proposed project defines the data collection needs.

While the discussion presented in this chapter makes the planning process appear neat and orderly, planners and managers with even limited experience know that it is anything but that. Therefore, the steps presented here must be adapted to suit specific situations. Other procedures may be more appropriate or may be used to supplement the planning steps discussed in this chapter. Regardless of the quantitative techniques employed or the checklists used, the key to effective planning is to achieve flexibility within the established guidelines of acceptance.

Nevertheless, the principles behind the planning process presented can be important in most developmental situations. These principles are relevant to the development worker who is either present when the planning is just beginning or who arrives in the middle of implementing a project. While the specific steps can be changed, the principles of the planning process endure.