**4. Discussion**

#### *4.1. Influence of History of Protected Area Establishment on Perceptions*

In our results, and particularly in the community feedback process, we saw that in both areas, but notably MEL, there were negative aspects of governance associated with conflict over land and boundaries. In some stories, respondents noted a change in their ability to collect natural resources, reducing their livelihoods in many cases. Some of these issues could be explained by the history of the establishment of each area, and changes in its status and managemen<sup>t</sup> over time.

A forest reserve at first, Mount Elgon was gazetted as a national park in 1993. Management shifted from the authority of the Forest Department to a much stricter UWA [67,68]. The evictions, displacements and resettlements that followed the conversion from forest reserve to national park status were involuntary, poorly planned, uncompensated, and violent. In gazetting the national park, local people were barred from accessing the park, generating conflict with the park authorities. Sentiments around these issues remain strong [82]. In one example, 65 per cent of the respondents in one study noted that the change in managemen<sup>t</sup> status from a forest reserve to a national park a ffected their cultural life negatively [68], perhaps explaining why only 24% of the MEL respondents felt that decision-making was fair.

In order to address these conflicts and to improve people-park relations in MEL in 2003, UWA introduced a Multiple Use Program to communities bordering the park. As noted in the community feedback process, a key positive aspect in MEL was the presence of this program. The Ugandan conservation legislation for collaborative use of resources within national parks guided the process. Although UWA handed over some rights to the use of some forest resources to the Resource Use Committees (RUCs), and allocated responsibility to the RUCs to monitor and control the level of resource use by community members, it did not gran<sup>t</sup> power to the resource users to decide on products they could obtain from the forest [83]. In the perceptions of many MEL community members, although the Multiple Use Program was viewed positively, in the community feedback process, the poor governance of the program led to negative perceptions. In many cases, despite the existence of a process to guide negotiations to access resources, in some cases, resource users did not understand which resources were regulated by permits [83]. Management decision-making power lies with the park managers and extraction of resources from the park is based on mutual understanding between UWA and the park-adjacent groups. This explains why only 24% of respondents in MEL respondents felt that decision-making was fair. Most Resource User Groups lacked valid agreements since the UWA stopped issuing new agreements and renewed old ones [83].

In MEL, confusion over park boundaries was reported in the community feedback process. UWA has also made several attempts to stop encroachment on the park. After extensive consultation with the Ministry of Tourism, Trade and Industry, as well as the communities and the district leadership, UWA proposed to provide ownership rights. These rights were allocated to the local people who were currently residing in sections of the national park through boundary re-alignment to leave out the agreed-upon areas in the hope to reduce community-park conflicts in the area. The total area covered by these families is estimated at 29.6 sq. km (out of the total area of 1,121 sq. km of park) [84]. However, the recently demarcated park boundary from 2017 appeared to have created further confusion by entering community land in some places. In 2017, the Ministry of Lands, Housing and Urban Planning re-surveyed and re-opened boundaries of Mount Elgon National Park, which the communities viewed suspiciously as an exercise meant to evict them from their lands [83].

The Uganda Wildlife Act [85] (Section 2.1 parts a, b, e, and h) states the contribution of wildlife to the welfare of the people of Uganda and emphasises the need to enhance socioeconomic and social benefits from wildlife conservation and management. In this regard, the UWA, is obliged to share 20 per cent of its park entry fees with the local governments surrounding the PA from which the fees were collected. Under the Multiple-Use Resource Access Program/User Right, communities have regulated access to some key resources that may not be found outside the PAs, such as medicinal herbs, papyrus, etc. The implementation of these legal provisions implies benefit sharing of conservation efforts between the governments, the communities and their families neighbouring Mount Elgon National Park. However, as perceptions from Sensemaker ® demonstrate, there is a perceived lack of transparency in the revenue sharing program in terms of procedures and funds disbursed to the districts, causing mistrust. Communities also felt that there was a lack of information on the benefit-sharing mechanism, including who is involved, how much revenue is generated, and a lack of clarity on procedures to access revenue or forming groups to access funds. Communities felt strongly that the funds should be disbursed directly to the sub-counties for service delivery and not to the districts, as it is currently the case. Moreover, the communities felt that the revenue shared should be a fraction of the total revenue generated by the PA and not only the park entry fees [83].

In AAL, perceptions were very di fferent. Overall, perceptions were very positive. Negative perceptions, particularly from the community feedback, revealed conflict around unclear boundaries and cultivation and settlement in the forest reserves. These perceptions could be explained in part through the fact that communities are just rebuilding themselves after an extended period of displacement due to armed conflict that lasted for about two decades. Many communities are still settled in camp-like situations with limited infrastructure and encroaching households. Due to the civil war, AAL's population, eager to align with the rest of Uganda in terms of development, is willing to embrace conservation and development initiatives. Therefore, the population has been more forthcoming in respecting and implementing conservation policies, laws and regulations, making the working relationships between the local communities and PA managemen<sup>t</sup> authorities more cordial. This conducive and positive environment between the managemen<sup>t</sup> authorities and the communities, with a willingness to collaborate in promoting conservation and development opportunities, could be used as a catalyst to introduce short-term initiatives and projects.

In AAL, the main and key conflict area between the NFA and the communities has been unclear, and un-demarcated forest boundaries caused by many years of lack of proper managemen<sup>t</sup> due to insecurity, resulting in uncertainty of tenure rights. Forest boundaries had not been maintained since their initial placement in the 1930s and 1960s. Later, some of the Internally Displaced People's Camps were located within the forest reserves. Local politicians do not want remaining people in the former camps (even after their demobilisation) to vacate the forest reserves. As such, the eviction of these people has been polarised by local politics. The blame has been placed on the NFA. For example, in Lamwo district, the actual location of Lokung CFR is contested. One community thinks that the CFR is in the area of Ocula, Nora and Wigot villages in Lokung Sub County, while the other community thinks that the CFR is around Loticodokogwok and Storebor in Padibe West Sub County. The actual location of this CFR is now being clarified; resolution of associated issues will take time, and it will require in addition to current local governmen<sup>t</sup> activities, intervention at the highest level of government, as the confusion on the demarcation is becoming politicised. Overall, no concrete engagemen<sup>t</sup> processes have started to resolve this issue despite its identification.

Since the 1990s, the Government of Uganda (GoU) has been promoting a development agenda that has led to a reduction in poverty nationally, with a visible improvement in many of the welfare indices. However, the welfare indices for Northern Uganda have not improved at the same pace as the rest of the country. Income poverty remains significantly high, literacy rates are low, and access to basic services is poor. In AAL, just like the rest of northern Uganda, the communities perceive the resolution of natural resource access and use related conflicts, as well as the rebuilding of lives and livelihoods after years of armed conflict, insecurity and neglect, as the government's responsibility.

#### *4.2. Influence of Current and Past Relationship With Governmental Authorities on Perceptions*

A returning theme in the analysis in both areas was whether communities were positive or negative towards managemen<sup>t</sup> e ffectiveness and whether their voices were heard in decision-making. In AAL, there is a more positive view of managemen<sup>t</sup> practices, which di ffers from a negative perception in MEL. Over the last year, two major e fforts lend support to optimism in both landscapes (1) the consultation of communities (and documenting their views) on how the PAs are managed during the managemen<sup>t</sup> planning processes; (2) the benefit-sharing of conservation with neighbouring communities.

Overall, as highlighted in Figure 5, the managemen<sup>t</sup> of Mount Elgon National Park is still characterised by high levels of mistrust and conflict between the UWA and local communities, as noted in the stories collected. The key factors appear to be the high dependence of the local communities on the park resources for their livelihoods and the way in which the park was created through the dispossession of land [47]. The park retains important values to society at all levels beyond local resource dependence and tourism. These relate to the park's ecological and cultural values, and are important to its provision of the wider ecosystem services such as the functions of the mountain water catchment area for the region, as a carbon sink to mitigate climate change, soil conservation and global aspects of biodiversity conservation. The managemen<sup>t</sup> authority has to influence a sustainable arrangemen<sup>t</sup> to protect these values, and so work in a more inclusive way with society.

In AAL, CFM agreements have been recently developed and implemented between NFA and the communities. In these CFM agreements, the community benefits include income from forest-related activities such as modern beekeeping and a commercial tree nursery, improved legally recognised access to resources for livelihoods and employment opportunities. On the other hand, benefits to NFA include future global benefits such as better managed and conserved forest and revenue from licensed activities and reduced managemen<sup>t</sup> costs saved for improved public relations. This appears to have influenced communities' attitudes and perceptions more than anything else as they had not seen such initiatives before.

In the AAL, communities heavily rely on natural resources. Conflicts have been experienced mainly between the NFA sta ff and forest resource users when the latter did not comply with the terms and conditions governing their activities in CFRs. In other cases, there are people who enter and operate in CFRs without a license or any other authority from the NFA, ye<sup>t</sup> such activities are contrary to the National Forestry and Tree Planting Act 2003. All the above conflicts resulted from the long insurgency in northern Uganda and a lack of close supervision on the part of NFA. Most Internally Displaced Persons Camps are situated either within the CFRs or very close, and the NFA did not make enough e ffort to deploy adequate and skilled sta ff to e ffectively handle the challenges in the region.

The above-mentioned good relations between the NFA and the AAL communities and the e fforts of the NFA to provide further development opportunities to the AAL could explain the NFA and communities' openness to use the landscape approach in the Agoro-Agu managemen<sup>t</sup> plan revision process, which fostered inclusive decision-making [86], and why the majority of respondents from AAL feel that the current managemen<sup>t</sup> of the Forest Reserve works well.

In the preceding discussion, we see that for MEL, the communities' dependence on natural resources in the park is perceived negatively, while in AAL, this dependence is seen positively. This di fference is due to the collaborative nature of CFM with high levels of decision-making authority for communities, as noted in the community feedback process.

The feedback from the workshop was critical to enable stakeholders to have their perspectives heard by the relevant managemen<sup>t</sup> authorities. These meetings also created a forum for dialogue amongs<sup>t</sup> the stakeholders to identify solutions to some of the landscape governance issues that emerged from the study. Without the collection of stakeholder perceptions in the landscape, and the following presentation of these perceptions back to mixed stakeholder groups, a space for dialogue would not have been opened. In some cases, it may be the only way for issues, such as rights or justice, to emerge at a landscape scale and to enable action [87,88]. Although it is only the initial step for identifying actions, beginning dialogue is a crucial first step.

#### *4.3. Critique of the Method*

The ability of the respondents to interpret their narratives clearly stands out as one of the most interesting and useful features of Sensemaker ®. By limiting the introduction of outside bias, the tool provided direct access to robust evidence-based data that could then be actionable and shared with stakeholders. The ability to move between the quantitative and qualitative elements of the data and easily visualise and examine patterns enabled deeper data exploration and allowed for a better understanding of the respondents' sentiments about the governance mechanisms in place in the two landscapes. It allowed access to perspectives in a complex system by bringing together and making sense of information that is normally fragmented. By contrast, the process of translation back and forth between the various languages, as well as the selection of participants could create some biases in the dataset. SenseMaker ® does not provide the capability to analyse the narratives themselves; however, the stories may be searched and examined independently, as noted in another study using Sensemaker [80]. In order to fully understand the stories, one normally needs to confront the findings with other studies in the same sites and on the same topics, which currently, to the author's knowledge, do not exist [89]. However, rather than do that, we conducted an in-person sense-making process that provided an opportunity for further discussions and analysis of the stories with the community themselves. This is innovative and is rarely done in studies. It provides a richness to contextualise the stories while identifying actions to improve, in this case, landscape governance. Furthermore, this method allowed us to gain insights into the perspectives, attitudes, values, needs and concerns of communities that influence governance issues in the two landscapes. To more precisely answer our research question, one could have extended stays in the communities studied in these landscapes, using ethnographic methods, including interviews and participant observation.

Using SenseMaker however comes with a cost (approximately USD 50,000 in this case), and its unique structure and approach imply to have su fficient understanding of the tool to make the most of it [89]. It is, thus important to ensure that adequate funding is available to source the many steps of the process and to allow the participation of the necessary stakeholders in each of them. Not having a good understanding of these di fferent steps and their implication may result in falling short in delivering the expected outcomes.
