Participatory research is relevant in many contexts. Our context here is research for management of natural resources when this research is part of a learning process shared by multiple stakeholders, including the state, non-governmental organisations, community-based groups, private individuals and research organisations, and when the natural resource management (NRM) agenda is embedded in a social agenda of poverty alleviation. Participatory research for NRM encompasses a broad collection of approaches with the goal of enabling participants to develop their own understanding and management capacity.
Participatory natural resource management involves the management of resources by the relevant stakeholders. It requires the negotiation of goals and acceptable tradeoffs among multiple stakeholders, who may include researchers and other communities. It also involves participatory visioning, problem definition, and building a shared agenda for action. Agreeing upon rules of resource management and encouraging knowledge sharing among stakeholders to build a common analysis of a problem or opportunity are both characteristic of participatory resource management. Some of this knowledge may need to be generated through research, but this is often not the case. In many cases, the knowledge exists in a stakeholder group, but it may need to be shared.
Participatory learning aims to socialize knowledge from discovery-based learning, which assumes that learning is most effective when people uncover facts and principles for themselves. Participatory learning often evolves into participatory research because questions arise that none of the stakeholders can answer satisfactorily. Participatory learning that changes people's fundamental understanding of resource management processes, including their own behaviour, may be a means of empowering stakeholders, in particularly the underpriveleged, to take more control over resources important to them. Participatory learning processes need to be designed with awareness of how they may affect and be affected by power relations since it cannot be assumed that they will definitely provide benefits to the less powerful.
In adaptive, participatory natural resource management participatory knowledge sharing and generation are integrated in an NRM process. Iterative learning and research loops are a major feature of the adaptive approach to management and they involve changes in social institutions as well as in environmental conditions. This is not just a question of degree, as participatory management often stops short of operationalising these feedback loops, and as a result is unable to self-correct or to scale up. The importance of learning lessons is to limit mistakes and create new ways of looking at resource management challenges. Successful adaptive, participatory NRM usually involves a process in which one or more stakeholder groups combine their efforts to understand environmental feedback, do participatory research and use the results to inform the learning process, intervene jointly in resource management, monitor the status of the ecosystem including its people, and learn from this experience in order to adapt the next management intervention. Adaptive, participatory NRM revitalises and institutionalises many practices common in successful local resource management systems.
Adaptive, participatory NRM can be viewed as a form of participatory action research applied at the landscape level with the added objective of enabling participants to analyse and act more effectively based on their own improved understanding. Action research combines intervention in the process being studied with investigation of the changes produced by the intervention. Findings emerge as approaches are developed, tested and improved upon. These cannot be firmly fixed ahead of time given the interactive nature of the inquiry process and the adjustment that is required. Participatory action research involves stakeholders in a cycle or spiral process of intervention, analysis though monitoring of indicators, troubleshooting and reflection on what worked, what didn't work and why. The response of the system to the methods in relation to the objectives determines whether the intervention has been successful or not, and in turn generates knowledge for subsequent cycles of planning and improvement for adjusting actions to better meet objectives. Finally, principles may emerge from analysis and synthesis in the form of research findings on how to best accomplish an envisioned outcome in a given context.
Gendered, adaptive, participatory natural resource management is explicit concerned with ensuring that both men and women are included in participatory processes, and that attention is paid by researchers to understanding gender differentiation in terms of ability to participate. Efforts are made to reduce barriers or obstacles that preclude or debilitate equitable participation within stakeholder populations. Gender is explicitly included as an analytical variable in studying how resources are understood locally and how they are management by local populations. Gender differentiated interests in projected outcomes are included in the construction of resource management alternatives to be tested via participatory processes.
Participatory monitoring and evaluation helps to make NRM more accountable to stakeholders and to give participants greater confidence in the results. Easily understood criteria and indicators are developed by local communities, researchers and other stakeholders. These provide a framework for later monitoring and for assessing key factors and their direction of change. This monitoring process creates the opportunity to feed back information and learning into the management process.
Natural Resource Management (NRM) is a main thematic area of the PRGA's work. The PRGA's research suggests that participatory and gender-sensitive methods are most commonly applied in technology-oriented NRM research oriented towards improved management of soils, water, forests, and biodiversity. While the projects in the PRGA's NRM inventory exemplify a broad range of modes of participation in resource management, participatory research in NRM remains relatively scarce, while a large volume of work is geared towards participatory adaptation and extension of existing technologies to farming communities. That is, farmers are involved in a variety of ways at the later stages of research, but seldom in the actual technology development process. Another important conclusion is that farmer-led research is not being effectively mixed with participatory research led by scientists. Even when projects use gender analysis or particpatory research, this does not mean they are targeting women or the poor as beneficiaries. (For more information see the PRGA's 5-year synthesis report)
Most of the NRM-oriented projects conducted by CGIAR centers seek multiple objectives such as increased productivity, food security, soil fertility, income, and nutrition. Few, however, explicitly pursue improved agroecosystem health as an objective despite their focus on on watersheds and landscapes rather than on single resources. Although many of the projects have involved farmers and other stakeholders, and have observed how priorities and impacts differ among groups, they have rarely conducted stakeholder analysis nor addressed differing needs and priorities among stakeholders. The CGIAR cases in the inventory show the need to further stimulate multistakeholder learning approaches, and to delve deeper into the possibilities of user involvement in NRM research. Other promising areas for future work are the valuation of ecological services and the management of complexity.(For more information see Equity, Well-being and Ecosystem Health).
A working group on Participatory Natural Resource Management (PNRM-wg) was established in 1996 by the PRGA to give more visibility to innovative participatory research in Natural Resource Management, to attract more donor and management support and broader recognition in the scientific community, and to add value to collaboration. PNRM is the sister group to Participatory Plant Breeding and is open to all practitioners and developers of participatory research approaches for Natural Resource Management. The group interacts through an email discussion list, meetings and seminars, and via small, self-organising subgroups that form to undertake specific projects. To join the group contact the facilitator.
The PRGA's working group on Participatory Natural Resource Management has made a significant contribution to establishing and reflecting on the state-of-the-art in NRM research in a book entitled: Managing Natural Resources for Sustainable Livelihoods: Uniting Science and Participation. Published in 2003, the book presents innovative approaches for participation and decision-making at all stages of NRM research, identifies common problems and weaknesses, and identifies priority issues for future research. More information...
The PNRM-wg has also developed a Resource Center on Participatory Natural Resource Management. This searchable collection includes:
The PRGA has compiled inventories of projects that use participatory research methods natural resource management and thein plant breeding. Our goal is to provide a systematic assessment of the impacts resulting from the use of participatory research and gender analysis and to make this information available to researchers, practitioners, farmers, donors, and any others interested in the field.
Cases included in these inventories were collected at different times and information was provided by researchers themselves. Many of the projects were still underway at the time of data collection. If you would like to submit a new case or provide updated information on an existing case, contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
Project InventoryCopyright © Participatory Research and Gender Analysis 2003-2005. All rights reserved.
The PRGA gratefully acknowledges the support of Bellanet, CIAT and Juliana Aristizábal in the development of this website.