"By 1993, it had become clear to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) that increasing awareness among the general population was not sufficient in itself to resolve environmental and natural resource problems in many developing countries. As a result, USAID decided to replicate its successes in the health sector, where communication and social marketing had been used to effectively generate positive change in people's behavior, by applying those disciplines to environmental challenges in Africa, Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean. This represented a new approach to environmental and natural resource management that put people at the center of all interventions. The vision that emerged became a global initiative called GreenCOM."

This 48-page document evaluates the strategy described in the above-quoted excerpt. As explained in the introductory section of the report, through a contract awarded by USAID in 1993, the Academy for Educational Development (AED) spearheaded an initiative centred around the conviction that people must actually participate fully in the planning process for new environmental initiatives and then be supported in their pursuit of solutions. By working together, USAID and AED - as well as government agencies, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and hundreds of other entities - implemented projects in more than 30 countries on 3 continents; this report focuses on the impact that GreenCOM organisers contend they had in 5 of them: Tanzania, El Salvador, Egypt, Indonesia, and Panama.

Below please find an excerpt from the report, which provides a brief look at some of the communication strategies - and the impact - of one of these initiatives:

"In 1998, USAID/Tanzania invited GreenCOM to develop a strategy that would help coastal communities share their needs and concerns about local resource management with national policymakers....GreenCOM initiated a dialogue with community leaders, boat makers, youth, housewives, teachers, and people who earned a living from fishing. These stakeholders taught GreenCOM and its partners about the challenges, problems, and opportunities they believed coastal communities faced. Their perspective was documented in a video called 'Voices from the Coast' that was distributed to members of the Tanzanian parliament and to technical committees charged with creating an integrated coastal management strategy for the country. In this way, the community perspective reached people in positions of power.

...USAID [then] asked GreenCOM to continue its work in Tanzania by employing a social mobilization tool that it had used with success several years earlier in The Gambia. That tool was known as the Community Environmental Awards Scheme (CEAS). Awards schemes are a simple concept that often can produce startling impact because they take a positive approach to tackling difficult environmental problems. Unlike other methods that attempt to halt harmful environmental practices by imposing fines or penalties, the CEAS approach is to reward positive treatment of the environment. The initial objective...was to energize people in coastal communities to get involved in sustainably managing their local resources and reward them for their efforts, both with modest prizes and recognition among peers....[One] of the original projects...included seaweed farming as an income-generating alternative to harmful practices such as dynamite fishing. The response was immediate and community leaders jumped at the chance to introduce an alternative livelihood option. In one community, for instance, local officials were so impressed with people's new activities that they established a period of amnesty during which dynamite fishermen could turn in their explosives without prosecution. More than 300 fishermen complied....

In 1998, 13 coastal communities participated in the awards scheme. By 2005, 20 communities on the coast and in the country's interior had active environmental awards programs. The number of individual participants also increased. In the 2001-2002 awards cycle, for example, 273,875 individuals were actively involved in CEAS projects. By the 2004-2005 cycle, that number had increased to 412,865. Through CEAS, Tanzanians from all walks of life began to reshape their environments and their livelihoods. Whether they were schoolchildren instituting schoolyard clean-up programs, or farmers building ponds for fish farming, CEAS was mobilizing communities for much-needed change. In addition to these benefits for participants, community leaders who managed the awards schemes also reported a marked increase in their own skills in organization, communication, and monitoring and evaluating environmental programs. In some cases, these improved professional skills led to job promotion..."

[Editor's note: To learn more about GreenCOM's many projects, click here, and/or view the report whose URL is provided below.]