ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to characterize and assesses key aspects of the pilot implementation of a collaborative ecoregion-based planning process called AGERAS, in Toliara, Madagascar. The AGERAS process uses participatory planning committees made up of representatives from local, communal, and regional levels to analyze environmental problems and identify and implement strategies and actions capable of responding to those problems. The chapter highlights some of the key lessons that have been learned concerning the facilitation of the process, the use of planning committees to implement the process, and the role of action-research as a tool for learning. Conflict management skills that are sensitive to traditional cultural approaches to conflict are essential to the facilitation role. The facilitators often found that the only way of progressing from one step of the process to the next was by sorting out and dealing with the conflicts that were blocking progress.
