Towards Wellbeing in Forest Communities: A Source Book for Local Government

Tool 4: Communicating communities’ needs through scenario-based planning

Scenarios are pictures of a desired future. They are useful for exploring and communicating expectations people have about the future. Scenario-based planning can help people develop a vision, develop plans to meet that vision and communicate their plans to other people, including local government.

Why is scenario-based planning useful?

Scenario-based planning can help local governments understand communities’ needs. It also helps communities:

Make individual expectations, goals and future desires more explicit;
Identify differences, unrealistic assumptions and common ground among participants;
Reach agreement about a shared agenda—goals to work towards, priorities or pitfalls to avoid;
Develop a plan broken down into steps defining how and when each step will be carried out and who is in charge of doing it;
Develop skills for collaborative planning;
Create ownership and accountability for implementing the plan;
Document changes in people’s visions.

Decision makers in local government need a clear understanding of people’s needs and expectations in order to be responsive to poverty. One way to reach this understanding is to have people communicate their needs better to local government.

Communication often does not occur effectively where there has been a poor history of citizen involvement in government and difficulties in communication due to distance, cost or lack of infrastructure. Typically, communities lack the means and experience to create proposals that represent the interests of their whole group. People sometimes lack information or misunderstand their role in government planning and may react counter-productively or not act at all. Because of these weaknesses, when communities do communicate with government officials, their input can unintentionally:

Reflect the narrow self-interests of a few individuals;
Exclude some stakeholders, particularly minorities, the powerless and the poor;
Lack documentation crucial for transparency and accountability;
Be divorced from long-term or strategic thinking.

Scenario-based planning can overcome these issues by enabling a community to collectively define its proposals and present them for local government planning.

Box 36. On the ground in Bolivia: Problems with the municipal planning process

In Bolivia, representatives from local government complained that rural communities did not participate actively in or fully understand the municipal planning process. At municipal planning meetings, elected community leaders were often absent or, when they did appear, frequently came unprepared or with proposals that were not based on public consultations. Because most residents were not engaged, municipal authorities felt their work was not acknowledged and that it was almost impossible to completely satisfy the shifting expectations of community members. On the other hand, community members argued that they did not commonly hold meetings and were unsure how to overcome apathy and internal conflicts to develop collective proposals. Furthermore, they argued that it was difficult to prepare for the municipal planning meetings since they rarely received advance notice and scheduling was chaotic. Communities often did not appreciate municipal projects because they did not address their priorities.

Abandoned municipal projects, such as this unfinished well, are common when communication is poor between communities and local governments.

< back

next >