European Tropical Forest Research Network

Participatory assessment, monitoring and evaluation of biodiversity (PAMEB)

Internet workshop 7 - 25 January 2002, and policy seminar 21 May 2002
convened by the Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford

Summary of Day 5 and 6, 11th and 12th January 2002

The introductory paper, , presented by Jenny Wong, John Healey and Oliver Phillips, set some provocative questions concerning the way in which 'community' values might not be readily assessed, that communication formed an important part of the assessment development and implementation process, that assessment and analysis based on local perspectives and data need to be set in a wider context but not at the expense of flexibility in methods.

In a posting on Saturday 12th, Herbert Tushabe from the National Biodiversity Database in Uganda very clearly felt that there were very different livelihood related priorities affecting values attached to the species components of biodiversity. As he pointed out, conservationists consider gorillas a very valuable species, because their values as a group of stakeholders are structured by their global viewpoint, which indicates that the gorilla is both an internationally rare and threatened species. However, local communities do not value the gorilla in the same way, for them this species has local importance as a pest of farm crops which gives it a negative value; what they might perceive as being important amongst their biodiverse environment are much more likely to be medicinal plants.

How can we bridge these local and global perspectives? Should we assume that this expression of gorillas as a pest species, necessarily means that there are no other positive cultural or spiritual values that communities might attach to gorillas if we sought to uncover them? Or do we need to accept that the local perspective of value will always be coloured by immediate livelihood and use concerns.

Winfred Thomas considers these questions and lists a set of criteria that might make biodiversity 'valuable' to local communities. He believes that once value has been made explicit and attached to species, habitats or landscapes, serious challenges over ownership of that value are bound to bring conflict between groups of stakeholders, who will want to control the management processes of those valuable resources.

Adrian Newton urged participants to think about the importance not of the details of peoples values whatever stakeholder group they belong to, nor of the development of assessment procedures that might be more complicated than they need be, but rather to concentrate on using assessments to feed into indicative spatial comparisons of high, moderate or low biodiversity value. He believes that this kind of indication of values, might better suit the needs of decision makers and planners.

Richard Howorth (see case studies, theme 1) representing Raleigh International, outlined their evolving approach to biodiversity assessment, and described their approach to including both internationally accepted ecological and conservation factors, as well as community use (actual or potential) of specific species. As well as recognising that local use values are important, Richard also emphasises the importance of promoting effective dialogue between local communities and those involved in promoting the conservation of biodiversity in neighbouring protected areas. For him, this means moving beyond schools based 'environmental education' and finding more innovative approaches that make biodiversity conservation issues more relevant to local circumstances and the way in which local communities understand and perceive biodiversity in their own locales.

It is quite clear that community values are perceived mainly in terms of use values, although it is still not clear whether that is because this really is the only set of values attached to biodiversity by local communities, or is a result of the difficulty of accounting for other values as Jenny, John and Oliver point to in their introduction.

Participants used the term 'community' throughout their contributions, but this did not answer questions set by Jenny, John, and Oliver, over whether there are ways to express shared values, or if assessments would need to uncover values held by different groups of people within a particular community. Perhaps we will return to some of these issues in Theme 3 which looks at methods and tools for assessment.