Changing Views on Change: Participatory Approaches to Monitoring the Environment

THIS DISCUSSION PAPER draws on published literature and experience from the field to review participatory approaches to monitoring environmental change. It points to the many advantages of including multiple perspectives in this process and discusses the tensions that are assumed by many to exist between scientific rigour and the involvement of local partners, and between the information requirements of various stakeholders. Rather than accepting the need for either/or compromises in this regard, the authors see these tensions as a potentially constructive challenge for the development of new and more broadly useful standards.

The book’s initial sections provide background material on environmental monitoring in general and on the particular opportunities provided by participatory approaches. Different degrees of participation are discussed, as well as the issue of developing indicators that can meet the needs of different stakeholders. This section includes a discussion of the possibility of doing away with indicators altogether.

The authors acknowledge that a wide range of approaches to participatory monitoring have been identified. They focus their attention on three approaches, which are not necessarily mutually exclusive: PRA-based monitoring, oral testimony and ecological approaches. Each is illustrated by case studies, ten in all, which cover a range of agricultural and natural resource management projects. The book includes, as an annex, a brief presentation of each of these projects, which makes it possible to compare them in terms of units of analysis, sequence of methods, the process and the indicators used. There is also a table which compares the different methodologies and provides a framework for choosing a suitable approach. The book concludes with a brief assessment of findings and of the gaps in current knowledge.