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Knowledge and Policy Learning in Capacity Building: Environmental Movements in Post-Socialist Europe.
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ABSTRACT
This paper argues that efforts by international donors, in particular the EU, to build the capacity of environmental NGOs across post-socialist Europe, has less to do with fostering democratic stability and civil society, and more to do with establishing new epistemic communities. Amongst critics, the technocratic, apolitical and rather benign term ‘capacity-building’ has become code for the transformation and undermining of ‘local’ knowledge, the disregard for existing ‘capacities’, the construction of new networks of experts, and the importation of rationalities based on west European discourses and constructions of ecological risk, sustainable development and policy responses. Not surprisingly, the weaker the post-socialist state – legacies of ethnic conflict, the severity of economic collapse – the greater the extent to which capacity-building assistance seeks to transform policy communities, actors and networks. From the perspective of Bosnia-Herzegovina it is argued that the limitations of environmental capacity building assistance are due in large part to the failure of donors to distinguish between different ‘capacities’, and their insistence on prioritising the development of project grant expertise and organisational management know how over and above other developmental needs. The paper illustrates the extent to which environmental movement organisations either require very basic developmental assistance, or need more bespoke support that will enable them to engage effectively in political and legal contestation with the state. However, assistance for the development of such ‘capacities’ is rarely available from donor agencies.The paper concludes that whilst aspects of environmental capacity building assistance are clearly having a positive impact, the rigidity of donor aid, and the framework of project grants as the mechanism for delivering assistance, are limiting the impact to a narrow elite of organisations, of which some are neither non-governmental, nor linked to indigenous local environmental networks within civil society.
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ABSTRACT
This paper argues that efforts by international donors, in particular the EU, to build the
capacity of environmental NGOs across post-socialist Europe, has less to do with
fostering democratic stability and civil society, and more to do with establishing new
epistemic communities. Amongst critics, the technocratic, apolitical and rather benign
term ‘capacity-building’ has become code for the transformation and undermining of
‘local’ knowledge, the disregard for existing ‘capacities’, the construction of new
networks of experts, and the importation of rationalities based on west European
discourses and constructions of ecological risk, sustainable development and policy
responses. Not surprisingly, the weaker the post-socialist state – legacies of ethnic
conflict, the severity of economic collapse – the greater the extent to which capacity-
building assistance seeks to transform policy communities, actors and networks.
From the perspective of Bosnia-Herzegovina it is argued that the limitations of
environmental capacity building assistance are due in large part to the failure of donors to
distinguish between different ‘capacities’, and their insistence on prioritising the
development of project grant expertise and organisational management know how over
and above other developmental needs. The paper illustrates the extent to which
environmental movement organisations either require very basic developmental
assistance, or need more bespoke support that will enable them to engage effectively in
political and legal contestation with the state. However, assistance for the development of
such ‘capacities’ is rarely available from donor agencies.
The paper concludes that whilst aspects of environmental capacity building assistance are
clearly having a positive impact, the rigidity of donor aid, and the framework of project
grants as the mechanism for delivering assistance, are limiting the impact to a narrow
elite of organisations, of which some are neither non-governmental, nor linked to
indigenous local environmental networks within civil society.
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