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Increasingly, social capital, defined as shared norms, trust, and the horizontal and vertical social networks that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutually beneficial collective action, is seen as an important asset upon which people rely to manage natural resources and resolve conflicts. This paper uses empirical data from households and community surveys and case studies, to examine the role, strengths, and limits of social capital in managing conflicts over the use and management of natural resources. We inventoried over 700 cases ranging from conflicts between multiple resource users to supracommunity conflicts between local communities concerns for better livelihoods and national/international concerns for environment conservation. Results show how different types of social capital are used in preventing and managing conflicts. Endowment in certain dimensions of social capital significantly decreased the occurrence of conflicts and played a significant role in managing them. However, social capital mechanisms have some limits, and are not always effective in resolving some types of conflicts. For such conflicts, people rely on formal mechanisms for arbitration and adjudication. In many cases, these have resulted in exclusion, coercion, and violence. Results show that policies or social capital alone do not possess the resources needed to promote broad-based and sustainable conflict resolution strategies. Rather, people use a range of conflict management strategies of different types and combinations of social capital and local polices. This synergy between social capital and local policy is based on complementarity and embededness: mutually supportive relations between local government and local communities, and the nature and extent of the ties connecting people and communities and public institutions. Better understanding of how this synergy between social capital and local policy can be strengthened is crucial to minimize natural resource management conflicts.

This paper presents lessons from applying an innovative action research approach for linking smallholder farmers to markets, in eastern and southern Africa. The Enabling Rural Innovation (ERI) approach aims to strengthen social organization and entrepreneurial capacity in rural communities. It focuses on fostering community‐based capacity for the inclusion of rural women and the poor in analyzing and accessing market opportunities. Using case studies from Malawi and Uganda the paper assesses the outcomes of ERI on rural communities with a focus on human capital, gender issues and investment in natural resource management. Results show that households are benefiting significantly from linkages to markets in terms of increasing household incomes, and accumulating assets. Skills in analyzing markets and in negotiating with traders have increased among smallholder farmers. The integration of gender in the approach has led to changes in gender decision making patterns at household and community level towards a more shared decision‐making process. The results however show a difference in skills between men and women, with women showing lower levels of skills acquisition. Farmer participatory research has increased investments in improved technologies such as fertilizer applications for soil fertility management.

Despite increasing interest and support for multi-stakeholder partnerships, empirical applications of participatory evaluation approaches to enhance learning from partnerships are either uncommon or undocumented. This paper draws lessons on the use of participatory self-reflective approaches that facilitate structured learning on processes and outcomes of partnerships. Such practice is important to building partnerships, because it helps partners understand how they can develop more collaborative and responsive ways of managing partnerships. The paper is based on experience with the Enabling Rural Innovation (ERI) in Africa programme. Results highlight the dynamic process of partnership formation and the key elements that contribute to success. These include: (i) shared vision and complementarity, (ii) consistent support from senior leadership; (iii) evidence of institutional and individual benefits; (iv) investments in human and social capital;(v) joint resources mobilization. However, key challenges require coping with high staff turnover and over-commitment, conflicting personalities and institutional differences, high transaction costs, and sustaining partnerships with the private business sector. The paper suggests that institutionalizing multi-stakeholder partnerships requires participatory reflective practices that help structure and enhance learning, and incrementally help in building the capacity of research and development organisations to partner better and ultimately to innovate.