**3.4 Collaborative agreements**

Collaborative agreements were drafted with the help of a neutral facilitator and taking the inputs of the villagers into account. Based on the results of this process the local authorities decided to generate one uniform collaborative agreement in the form of a district by-law, including benefit-sharing arrangements based on customary rights. The district by-law went through several meetings and due diligence processes involving legal government offices before it was officially approved by the Boualapha District Governor. The final version was disseminated to all 18 villages and also in the adjacent Phong Nha-Ke Bang National park in Vietnam.

#### **3.5 Local people as additional protected area management manpower**

The Hin Nam No collaborative arrangement involves local villagers actively in the management of the protected area. First of all the villagers were willing to participate and secondly their knowledge about the area is invaluable. This formed a cost-efficient addition to the limited resources provided by the government. In total there were 87 democratically elected co-management committee members, spread over 18 villages and five village clusters, involved in participatory planning and reporting. Village rangers coming from the 18 villages were compensated for making regular trips into the protected area to record wildlife sightings and threats and to be involved in patrolling for law enforcement. Fees for the village rangers were agreed through negotiations and based upon fair compensation for the hard and dangerous work of climbing in the mountains.

A total of 110 villager rangers were trained in the use of GPS equipment and in recording sightings in coded booklets. Data and information collected by the village rangers were inserted into the Spatial Monitoring and Reporting Tool (SMART) system on a quarterly basis. The database unit analyzed the data and presented the main wildlife sightings and threats to the District Co-Management Committee and the Hin Nam No Director in quarterly reporting and planning meetings by using maps.

At the end of 2016 about 35 households in four villages were involved in the provision of eco-tourism services such as guiding, boating services as well as guesthouse and home-stays. The local service providers were trained to ensure a certain standard of services. The collaborative arrangement between the Hin Nam No management authority and the local service providers was captured in a conservation agreement to ensure the protection of the environment and benefiting the local people at the same time.

#### **3.6 The way forward: Hin Nam No National Park**

After the establishment of Hin Nam No as a national park in 2020 the resources for effective management have increased. However, in August 2016, Hin Nam No still had very low human and financial resources and therefore effective management needed to be improved. To address the challenges, the Hin Nam No management authorities and GIZ developed an innovative collaborative system in which technical and administrative agendas were mixed (socializing protected areas), in line with relevant legislation on decentralization and based on customary rights. This increased the political and local support for collaborative governance and management and was different from previously tested approaches in Laos.

The description of the building blocks and their interlinkages enabled a relatively simple and structured write-up and subsequent communication of the three-year process that was followed to set up the multi-level collaborative system. The collaborative model brought positive results (increase in management effectiveness) with opportunities to the entire protected area system in Laos, up to now often referred to as a 'paper park' system [27]. More work on 'sustainable financing' and 'adaptive management' through actual implementation is required to sustain this model.
