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Participatory assessment, monitoring and evaluation of biodiversity (PAMEB): the art and the science

A background paper for the
internet workshop 7 - 25 January 2002, and policy seminar 21 May 2002
convened by the Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford
by Anna Lawrence and Bianca Ambrose-Oji, December 2001

Download as Word (223 kb) or pdf (119 kb)

Summary

  1. The purpose of the paper is to catalyse discussion in the ETFRN Workshop on Participatory Assessment, Monitoring and Evaluation of Biodiversity, 7-25 January 2002.
  2. Increased demand for biodiversity assessments comes from the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), changes in impact assessment practice, and community resource management. All of these changes are supported by the CBD but also by parallel trends supporting decentralisation of resource management. Scientific assessment is a huge task alone; biodiversity assessment by and with non-scientists is also increasing for a range of reasons:
    1. They may provide short-cuts to scientific assessments
    2. The data from participatory assessments may be uniquely useful to local resource managers in a way which scientific assessment is not
    3. Such assessments may provide ways of linking in to scientific information which is relevant to local needs
    4. They may provide a means to enhance inclusivity of decision-making.
  3. The actors in participatory biodiversity assessment include: local communities; development practitioners and project managers working with rural communities; local and national planners, particularly those preparing Biodiversity Action Plans; national and international advisers and policy-makers, including international NGOs, donors and members of the CBD secretariat; researchers; the conservation lobby and representatives from the private sector. They have different reasons for, and approaches to, participatory biodiversity assessment, and varying information needs. It is therefore helpful to analyse who is doing what, how, and why.
  4. Assessment is affected by considerations of what is 'important', i.e. by value judgements. While conventional approaches have focused on species numbers, or species indicators, attention is moving to ecosystem approaches to assessment. These approaches emphasise the ecological processes and functions of biodiversity and are advocated in scientific assessment and through the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. They may also be of particular relevance to rural communities - although to date local assessments often focus on selected useful species rather than on biodiversity as a whole.
  5. The research focus on local assessments also focuses on useful species, and ethnobotany has made a major contribution to knowledge. However it is unclear to what extent such assessments are participatory in the sense that the 'researched' use the results. Research has been developing methods of understanding values other than utilitarian and species specific. There appears to be a gap between the types of method considered suitable for researching biodiversity values in developed and in developing countries; and in any case there are few examples of such research being initiated among the 'researched' (e.g. 'the public', local forest communities, etc.). There is a scarcity of methods and tools documented in the literature. Those that are mentioned tend to build on PRA (participatory rural appraisal) methods, especially mapping, ranking and transect walks. Methodologies associated with participatory monitoring and evaluation have become widespread in the last few years but biodiversity is not a conspicuous focus of such approaches and there is potential to look at how they can be adapted to the special requirements of biodiversity assessment. In particular, methods linking local and scientific assessments or values are scarce, and will probably benefit from building on ethnobotanical methods.
  6. Different stakeholders are convinced by different kinds of information. Most decision makers expect, and scientists supply, information in quantitative species-based form. Participatory processes may not supply this so readily (or efforts to quantify may distort local perceptions) but may provide qualitative information of different and complementary value. There is a need to distinguish more clearly between the kinds of information needed by different people according to their objectives, and to clarify how different types of information can be communicated.
  7. The potential for real synergy between different actors and their assessments of biodiversity depends not only on such communication, but also on realistic understanding of the costs and benefits of involving different actors in such assessments. An important focus of the workshop will be discussion of the effect of participation on the participants, and potential for enhancing areas of mutual learning not only between participants but also across different geographical areas.
  8. The workshop also needs to focus on the enabling policy and institutional factors, in order to communicate to decision makers ways in which policy and institutional structure can enhance the participation of different actors, information flows between them, proper recognition of the value of such information and equitable results from such participation. This will enable us to consider priorities for capacity-building.
  9. In this background paper we have attempted to cover a representative range of experience available through the internet and published papers, but we are limited by space and time. We perceive in particular the following areas which would benefit from discussion in the workshop:

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