| European
Tropical Forest Research Network |
Internet workshop
7 - 25 January 2002, and
policy seminar 21
May 2002
convened by the Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford
| Izabella Koziell |
Day 2 resulted in more challenging comments on 'Why participatory biodiversity assessments? Or how to adapt our approach to our objectives? Some criticism was targeted at the concept and use of 'participation'. That, implemented by outsiders, it has often been used to endorse the ideas and preferences of these 'outsiders' (e.g. academics, development practitioners and bureaucrats). Techniques have often not been suitably scrutinised or adapted to ensure that they are sensitive to other cultural forms of communication. As a result the information they generate may not necessarily reflect 'on the ground' realities.
This was demonstrated by a participatory biodiversity conservation project in Cameroon, which after 7 years of implementation, was still a source of confusion to the local people: they were still wondering why some species attracted so much more attention to the (outsider) professional conservationists over others. This raises some important points relevant to the conference theme: participatory approaches must move far beyond rhetoric if such approaches are to generate truly inclusive processes that can, in turn, generate more equitable outputs from biodiversity assessments (i.e. where all stakeholder views are incorporated).
Whilst this has already been heavily discussed in various fora, it is not always happening in the field. Why is this? It may be that there is concern that participatory biodiversity assessments, as they are involving different peoples, with different cultural attitudes and backgrounds, will undermine the relative importance of the species and ecosystems are currently considered by western biological science to be of greatest conservation priority? So, in such cases, whose values count most?
The case was made that rural people tend to value species and habitats for their usefulness and will also have in depth knowledge of any harmful species. Their knowledge pertaining to this is detailed and regularly updated, e.g. they will know exactly when and where certain fruits might be disappearing. However this tremendous human resource remains untapped and unused in many parts of the world - it is also fast disappearing. Further still, information has been extracted from rural people mainly for 'outsider's' benefit, sometimes even leading to generation of economic enterprises by outsiders, which could have been developed and instigated by local people, had they had adequate information from the initial assessment. There has been often been little direct benefit for participants arising from such biodiversity assessments.
There is therefore, in some cases, a disconnect between what rural people might value and what outsiders might value. The latter focusing on aesthetic-scientific objectives the former on use values (or risk factors) in their assessments of biodiversity. Thus, this presents many challenges for seeking out comparable units or objectives of assessment. But the importance of seeking out synergy and consensus on areas of high conservation remains, and this is what well managed, well informed and culturally sensitive participatory approaches might help achieve. But such approaches will obviously not yield the results that one group alone espouses. They are more likely to identify necessary trade offs. This also does not mean that there are not places where local communities may value certain species for spiritual purposes and this species may also be an endemic, that is of interest to western scientists.
But, is such coincidence not rare? And, perhaps it might be worth considering that certain approaches may be more appropriate in certain areas over others? There was also concern voiced over the declining capacity in systematics. However, we must ask ourselves to what extent this a reality that we must face, given the rapid decline in the availability of public funds for such activities in both the North and the South? Will lobbying governments really provide the vast additional resources required to reverse this decline? Should we not be looking towards alternative methods of biodiversity assessment that are lower cost?
The Centre for Ecological Sciences provided a list of 17 useful references collated under the Western Ghats Biodiversity Network - a group of about 20 undergraduate science colleges that are involved in monitoring of biodiversity across the Western Ghats hills in peninsular India. These articles include methodological debates on biodiversity assessments as well as reviews of biodiversity status and sacred groves as conservation methods within this region. Other information provided included reference to the People's Biodiversity Registers - a programme of work that is documenting rural communities' understanding of the current status of biodiversity, ongoing changes, forces driving change, patterns of utilisation, winners and losers and management options for biodiversity. This methodology has been particularly successful and has contributed towards the sub-global Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. Publications on this topic can be downloaded at http://ces.iisc.ernet.in/hpg/cesmg/workshop.htm.