What the heck is PEC?

"Have you heard about that 'primary environmental care' or, what do they call it…. PREC?"

"PEC, they call it PEC. Yes, I've heard about it; it is official policy of UNICEF and endorsed by IUCN, IIED, Oxfam, other non-governmental organizations and even some aid agencies. Interesting stuff, isn't it?"

"What do you mean, interesting - aren't you sick of all this development jargon? And then, what's new about it? I bet it is a way of shuffling some concepts around Primary Health Care and making it seem like a new discovery…"

"Well, the term PEC is a sort of package, and it is easier to say than 'community-based sustainable development' or 'sustainable livelihood security'. The meaning is also richer than you think. It condenses some key lessons from decades of field work - stuff that you and I have discussed for years. For instance, one of the few things on which we always agreed is that caring for local environments is essential for national environments and economies."

"What a discovery! Local is the dimension of real meaning, it is the place where activities must be carried out, where complexities, conflicts and knots come out to ruin all the nice dreams that the planners concoct in air-conditioned offices. Besides, local environmental problems are the ones that people understand. They have immediate and often severe consequences for their health, well-being and daily income."

"So, you agree that we should help communities to do what they can to conserve their environment today, with simple means and immediate benefits?"

"Yes, but even an environmental utopian like you cannot deny that many communities do not care a bit about conservation!"

"That is because they have more pressing needs; they can't see how to link the satisfaction of those needs with conservation. There must be ways to support them to find out, and that is what governmental agencies and NGOs should be doing!"

"Wait a minute… There are innumerable local environments in the world, and for each of them 'conservation' means a different thing. In my home village we need to restore the pasture, which is almost all gone. In the villages in the mountain district, they should make sure that some trees are left standing to keep the soil in place, and that the paper mill does not pollute water so much that I'll never be able to catch a fish in the river again. But do you believe that people are willing to pay the price of conservation, to invest labor and money, to stop getting a good income from timber and to give up their jobs at the mill? I am not talking of a small price, nor of people who have a relatively sure pay-check at the end of the month, like you and me…"

"Yes, some people are willing to pay the price, but only when conservation makes sense, when in return they get something they need and value. If you think about what you have seen with your own eyes working in this area I am sure you can find heaps of examples. That 'something' may be income, food, health, jobs, cultural value, pride, recreation or whatever else they like. It should also last, not disappear at the first gust of wind or change of administration. This is the real challenge of sustainable development: finding those ingenious solutions - unique for every environment and society - that meet the needs of the people while meeting the needs of the local environment. Some people call it PEC. But it could as well be called a 'thriving human culture'."

"What are you proposing? That someone like you or me is parachuted from outside to define the local culture of this or that community?"

"Not at all, and this is another key point of PEC: a culture cannot be defined by outsiders. The residents of your village, the people living in the mountain district, the people of this community here - they should get organized, look at their resources, figure out their problems and decide what to do. But 'experts' with a job and a salary in development and conservation - people like you and me - should help them out."

"You'll never change. You will remain a dreamer all your life. What you say is obvious, but clashes against reality. I am barely recovering from my last trip to evaluate a multimillion-dollar program that went completely astray. The supposed 'beneficiaries' didn't co-operate - they knew how to get the work going but didn't lift a finger!"

"I bet your 'beneficiaries' were never involved in deciding about the initiative. They were expected to be grateful for something they didn't request and in exchange forego something they cared for. Why should they have? I know of initiatives of the beloved environmental organizations we work for that put 'participation' as their first objective. Look at this project document, for example. The term 'community participation' appears at least once on every page. But when you look at the planned activities you find that people (actually only a convenient sample of them) will be merely 'consulted'. Not a word clarifies what methods will be used to consult them, not a word describes what local groups and institutions will be taken as project partners. Most of the budget goes for cars, uniforms and salary incentives for governmental staff and to get our 'expert advice' in development and conservation. The willingness may be here, but there is still a long way to go to meaningful practice…"

"One day you should clearly explain to me what you mean by 'participation'."

"I mean something very close to participatory democracy, i.e., a sound measure of local control over resources and the process of so-called development. The 'participation' likely to be most effective for environmental care is security of access to resources - security of tenure - the most powerful incentive to invest for the long term. Control means both authority and responsibility, and we know that these are best taken up by local institutions, in particular the ones that represent local residents and resource users. Governments don't need to let go of their rights. There are a plethora of regulations, leases, joint management agreements, rights of resource extraction and so on that can maintain governmental supervision but also create a sense of security and responsibility for the people."

"I'll be damned, you got me interested. So what is this PEC exactly then?"

"One definition is here, in this booklet dated 1990, look: 'Primary environmental care is a process by which local communities organize themselves and strengthen, enrich and apply their means and capacities for the care of their environment while simultaneously satisfying their needs'."

"…What?"

"Imagine a little monster with three legs. One is 'protecting the environment', the other is 'meeting people's needs' and the third is 'empowering the community'. This is what PEC is all about. Integrating these three objectives, tapping the willingness and ingenuity of the people themselves. Of course, a variety of obstacles need to be overcome, and some conditions need to be present. That is where external support can be crucial. Political conditions include freedom to organize, capacity of influencing decisions about 'development', access to information, transparency about who controls what and so on. People like you and me may not always be able to help about those, but we can support on the matter of technical conditions, we can recognize that communities have valid claims of knowledge and skills, we can provide our 'expert advice' on the basis of a dialogue with them, building upon and integrating what already exists. I am sure you have heard about participatory approaches to research, assessment, planning and evaluation. We can encourage governments to adopt those approaches and to decentralize services, to respond to felt needs rather than try to command and control from above, and…"

"Slow down, please! Perhaps I am a bit old-fashioned, but I still believe that what really counts is the economy…"

"You are absolutely right. Some key economic conditions must be there for PEC to work. The costs and benefits of conservation ought to be allocated fairly, and communities should have access to financial means - such as loans they could obtain using as collateral the natural resources they have effectively safeguarded. They should have access to regulated markets - markets that use incentives and disincentives to value environmental care, public health and the local culture - and to reliable information regarding the conditions of such markets…"

"Sure, wait for that! And then, would that be enough?"

"No, people should have time to discuss what they want and can do, to manage conflicts (which are always there), to organize among themselves and to develop specific agreements and 'contracts' in partnership with other social actors. No more quick and dirty projects!"

"You have not yet mentioned one of your favorite development subjects: women!"

"Yes, and I am at fault, because women are central to PEC. They are in practice the environmental managers of most rural communities in the world, yet they are too often excluded from decisions about allocation and use of resources, and deprived of the benefits of their own labor. If PEC will succeed it will be because women will be fully empowered for themselves, their families and their communities. And a crucial component of that empowerment is their capacity to control their own fertility."

"Fertility? What the heck has fertility to do with development and the environment?"

"Nobody can deny that fertility - stuff like the total number of children a woman has in her lifetime, birth spacing and the like - has a tremendous influence on the health of women and children. And also, when fertility can be controlled, families and communities are more in control of their own destiny."

"Give me a break! This is the kind of rhetoric I would expect from a nurse at a health clinic…"

"Well, first of all there is not yet a good clinic around here, and people must walk for more than two hours to reach the closest reproductive health services. You also know as well as I do that every plot of land in this community that can be cultivated is already under the plough. The elders have been complaining for some years that the fallow is getting too short and the soil is losing fertility. Have you noticed how many young men have already left for the capital? All this would not need to happen if the population here could remain stable - let us say, at the level that it was ten years ago. I bet if the people would have a choice, they would choose not to migrate - they would stay on their land, have smaller and healthier families, remain where their forefathers lived for generations."

"My dear friend, all this is lovely in theory. But you have not yet given me a hint on how we make it a reality."

"That is what practitioners in public health, conservation, development and the whole bag of good intentions in the world are discussing to the point of losing their voices. But, if there is one thing we need to agree on, it is that the 'beneficiaries' should sit in the driver's seat, and that the time of pre-cooked, expert recipes is gone forever! The people who live with the resources, the women who bear the children, the families who suffer the poverty - they should define the problems, the goals and the ways to reach them. Professionals like us can only help and support, which is what I have decided to do. I know you are skeptical about tools and bags of tricks, but there are some processes, some methods, some ideas that I am beginning to use in my work. Some people call it 'participatory action research' but the name, as for PEC, is not at all important. What counts is how you interact with people, and whether and how you manage to be of some help. Have you seen this manual, what is it called…yes, Our People, Our Resources. It contains some theory and some practical information on participatory action research for population and the environment. Why don't you give it a look? You might even discover some of those hints you are looking for…"