While there exists a variety of high-quality tools for assessing community-led governance, many are very complex or theory-oriented. Seeking something more simple and practical, we mixed and matched aspects from existing frameworks, our knowledge of community-led conservation, and principles for community-led governance (see IUCN’s framework, Elinor, the IIEED SAGE initiative, and Ostrom’s work).
We finally landed on 25 indicators covering different aspects of governance, ranging from transparency to financial capacity (see Table 1), each featuring a straightforward yes/no question, and a description of acceptable supporting evidence. The percentage of indicators achieved translates into a “governance index” that categorizes CCs into four levels, from “basic” to “independent”. This index allows us to track and analyze how different institutions develop over time.
The tool is adaptable for either desk-based completion by field staff and site managers or through field-based focus group discussions with community members and CC leaders. The tool is also designed to adapt to local contexts and aspirations. For example, indicator #25 on rules for profit distribution may not apply to a CC without business units. In that case, we simply ‘silence’ such indicators to not reduce an institution’s overall score simply because an indicator isn’t relevant.
