Participatory Environmental Monitoring

"Participatory Environmental Monitoring" can be defined as monitoring approaches that develop partnerships of multiple stakeholders for efficient, effective and socially inclusive monitoring.

In this evolving field, three forms of participatory environmental monitoring can be distinguished, although there are overlaps:

- methods based on the visualisation techniques of Participatory Rural Appraisal
- methods that use oral testimony to uncover patterns of environmental and social change
- the adaptation of methods of ecological assessment to make them more accessible to local people.

There are several common key principles:

- monitoring objectives must be clear
- the expectations and information needs of all stakeholders must be understood
- the end-users and uses of the information must be identified
- the monitoring process must provide real benefits for local people
- participation should extend beyond indicator identification into design of data collection methods and decision on information uses
- negotiations between different categories of local people may be important

There is a serious tension between "participation" and "rigour" in participatory monitoring; can participatory monitoring data be compared across sites or be formed into valid time-series, if there is local definition of indicators, which can also change with changing perceptions of local people? Many of the answers to these problems will lie in the objectives of the monitoring process itself, and where, by whom and at what level information is seen as being used. Different users will have different definitions of "rigour". It may also be useful to move gradually to externally valid monitoring, rather than endanger participation in the early stages.

Key References

Abbot, J. and I.Guijt. 1998. Changing Views on Change: Participatory Approaches to Monitoring the Environment IIED-SARL Discussion Paper No.2. IIED. London. http://www.iied.org/pdf/sarl2.pdf

Marks, S.A. 1996. Local Hunters and Wildlife Surveys: An Assessment and Comparison of Counts for 1989, 1990 and 1993. Journal of African Ecology, Vol.34 pp 237-257.

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