Linking resource monitoring to multilevel governance Once the resources to be monitored and monitoring tools were chosen we discussed, with villagers, representatives from the district and from the kumban, about how to integrate the monitoring tools into the district land management and reporting system in a way relevant to all stakeholders. BI 2536 purchase The decision was made to use the existing administrative structure, present at the district level, to avoid adding administrative complexity to the existing one and to facilitate the acceptance and ownership of the system from government stakeholders. The existing structure requires regular reports from households to the heads

of village units, then to village heads, from village heads to kumban and then to the district government. Figure 4 shows our proposal for incorporating the monitoring activities into the structure. Fig. 4 The monitoring system as part of Viengkham District administrative structure. In black the administrative structure and in grey the proposed monitoring system Implementation

tools for NTFP monitoring With the kumban being a new institution in Laos we had to decide what its role and functions in the monitoring system would be. Discussions with villagers, Torin 1 kumban representatives, and district authorities helped to identify three potential key roles of the kumban in monitoring in the future: Data collection and training: one of the recognised functions of the

kumban, through its TSC, is to provide further forestry and agricultural techniques to improve local LOXO-101 supplier livelihoods. Its interest in collecting data related to key NTFPs harvested in the wild or domesticated makes it a key institution for regularly checking the logbooks with villagers, and collecting aggregated CYTH4 data. Data management and storage: villagers and district officers identified storage and utilization of information as an important issue. So far, there is no appropriate archiving of the data collected from villages, resulting in the loss of the villages’ data for LUP. The kumban, an institution closer to the village level in which village representatives play a vital role, could be used for archiving information reported by villagers and facilitate data sharing with other users (e.g. development agencies at the district level). Reporting: the kumban has to report to the district authority. This represents a natural step in the sequence of aggregation, recommendations and reporting of the monitoring system. The villagers should receive feedback and a report on decisions made, based on their reports. Figure 4 also shows the frequency and level at which the collection, aggregation and reporting was decided by each stakeholder. Regular data collection would be made at the household level, summarized monthly at the village unit level, providing a 3-month aggregation at the village head level, with inputs from the village units.