| 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
| Anna Lawrence |
Theme 3 has the greatest number of downloadable documents associated with it. Some of these discuss and analyse approaches to conducting participatory biodiversity assessments, while others provide tools which have been tested by contributors to this workshop. Of particular note, among the many wonderful documents made available by Madhav Gadgil (India) is the Methodology Manual: Participatory Local Level Assessment of Life Support Systems. Another set of methods, developed through a collaboration between the Mount Cameroon Project in Limbé, Cameroon, and Bangor University, UK, can also be found under the case studies for theme 3: Ambrose-Oji et al. Obtaining local values for biodiversity: Protocols used by the ERP Mount Cameroon project. Vu Ngoc Long-Truong Quang Tâm (Vietnam) has contributed a novel PRA method which involves the participatory recording of sounds, as an indicator of biodiversity; and Winfred Thomas (India) has contributed a paper outlining an approach to monitoring agro-biodiversity through observations and measurements in local marketplaces.
Participation is about more than just the use of particular methods, and several contributors have highlighted the need for appropriate processes to ensure genuine participation. A new contribution has arrived from Joost Foppes (Lao PDR). Joost addresses a fundamental point, that participatory processes can overcome information barriers, if different stakeholders work together in local knowledge networks. Another paper contributed by him provides some valuable support on how to put the 'ecosystem approach' into practice. This is particularly helpful - when writing the background paper we could find little evidence of practical applications of the ecosystem approach, and it can seem hard to pin down. Clearly, if participatory approaches to biodiversity bring with them a greater emphasis on ecological processes and functions, we need further guidance on how to include these aspects in assessments.
Alan Thomson also sent in valuable references to tools and papers. He highlights the fact that biodiversity is not the only issue of interest to indigenous communities, and that work relating to this ties in with both wider participatory processes, and also with policy. A very interesting method reported by Alan Thomson is the use of the 'virtual workshop' to overcome people's inhibitions about presenting information in a formal, 'real' workshop. He suggests we look at his paper: Thomson, A.J. 2000. Knowledge elicitation tools for use in a virtual Adaptive Environmental Management workshop. Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 27: 57-70, (abstract, the full version is available on the publisher's website after payment), which gives technical background on how such a workshop might be run (even where there is no internet access - an aspect which might be of interest to some of our participants!).
Alan's work is linked to the 'Criteria and Indicators for sustainable forest management', which have been developed by CIFOR and its collaborators. See CIFOR's website, and in particular some valuable tools in their Criteria and Indicators toolbox on http://www.cifor.cgiar.org/acm/pub/toolbox.html. A wider range of methods, including participatory mapping, is also listed at http://www.cifor.cgiar.org/acm/methods/.
It is good to see contributions from both north and south to the theme of methods and processes. One clear trait in this theme is that the methods and tools reported here, are being developed with communities. There are other methods, for example those being used by volunteers who are collecting data on behalf of scientific monitoring; and it would be valuable to hear from participants who are involved in developing such methods.
In moving on to theme 4 (clarifying the information needs of different participants) we will be able to see more clearly, how such methods contribute to the requirements of different stakeholders, and where there is a need for further method-development. All participants are invited to contribute a brief outline of their information requirements; in particular, those who work with government and international organisations, could make an important contribution at this point.