Allen, W. 2001. Working together for environmental management: the role of information sharing and collaborative learning. PhD Dissertation, Development Studies, Massey University, New Zealand.

Pound, B., S. Snapp, C. McDougall and A. Braun (Eds). 2003. Managing Natural Resources for Sustainable Livelihoods: Uniting Science and Participation. Earthscan/IDRC.Management of local resources has a greater chance of a sustainable outcome when there is partnership between local people and external agencies, and agendas relevant to their aspirations and circumstances. Managing Natural Resources for Sustainable Livelihoods analyses and extends this premise to show unequivocally that the process of research for improving natural resource management must incorporate participatory and user-focused approaches, leading to development based on the needs and knowledge of local resource users.Drawing on extensive and highly relevant case studies, this book presents innovative approaches for establishing and sustaining participation and collective decision-making, good practice for research, and challenges for future developments. It covers a wide range of natural resources – including forests and soils, and water and management units such as watersheds and common property areas and provides practical lessons from analysis and meta-analysis of cases from Asia, Africa and Latin America. It offers insights on how to make research participatory while maintaining rigour and high-quality biological science, different forms of participation, and ways to scale up and extend participatory approaches and successful initiatives.This book will be invaluable for those professionally involved in natural resource management for sustainable development, and an essential resource for teachers and students of both the biophysical and social science aspects of natural resource management.

Indigenous Water Initiative: The purpose of this site is to promote better understanding of indigenous perspectives on water and development among non-indigenous water professionals, and to enhance dialogue between indigenous political and spiritual leaders on one hand, and the agents of water resources development on the other. This website is a project of the Indigenous Water Initiative of the Center for Respect of Life and Environment (CRLE), and several partner organizations (click on "About Us" for details).

AN OVERVIEW OF PARTICIPATORY RESEARCH AND LEARNING PROCESSES AND THEIR RELEVANCE TO WATERSHED MANAGEMENT AND DEVELOPMENT CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food. 2003. An overview of participatory research and learning processes and their relevance to watershed management and development. Paper commissioned to the working group on Participatory Natural Resource Management of CGIAR System wide Program on Participatory Research and Gender Analysis. 30 p.

Vaughan, K. and Katjiua, J. 2002. An Overview of Community-based Natural Resource Management and Rural Livelihoods in ≠Khoadi //Hoas Conservancy. Kunene. WILD Working Paper 5.Peoples’ livelihoods within the ≠Khoadi //Hoas conservancy area comprise a dynamic mix of using and accessing a variety of resources and dealing with complex and diverse transforming processes (for example, different kinds of localised power relationships, rules, and institutions and the effects of national policy and legislation) People are critically dependant on the natural resource base, with drought being seen as the major influence on vulnerability. Water and grazing are the most critical assets and are directly related to livestock keeping activities. The importance of these assets varies depending on people’s primary livelihood strategies and their location within the conservancy. Some people live in population centres and can therefore be considered more urban based, and reliant on formal employment. Others live in the more rural areas and rely primarily on livestock farming. The numbers and types of stock owned differentiate people. Wildlife utilisation ranging from insects to small mammals plays a critical role in sustaining livelihoods, with some types of wildlife being seen as beneficial whilst others cause conflict with existing livelihood activities (for example predators killing livestock).The impacts of the conservancy programme on household livelihoods are both positive and negative with costs and benefits associated with impacts. Whilst the broader community appears to support the conservancy initiative the majority see little if any direct benefits and are in some instances still incurring costs associated with living with wildlife such as predator and elephant threats and damage. The community has so far seen limited and few tangible and direct benefits. At present those benefiting most are either directly employed through the conservancy, or are closely linked to conservancy employees and committee members. Greater levels of localised control on illegal hunting activities may have reduced hunting or made hunters change their behaviour away from commercial to more subsistence forms of hunting. Poorer and marginal households who have traditionally relied on wildlife utilisation to secure their household livelihoods especially in times of vulnerability and stress may have been unduly or adversely affected.

Groenfeldt. D. 2004. Water Development and Spiritual Values in Western and Indigenous Societies. Indigenous Water Initiative.The spiritual connection to water that indigenous societies maintain as an integral aspect of their culture is a basis for countless water conflicts with outside, predominantly Western forces of development. While Western cultural values do give some attention to a spiritual dimension of water, it is very much a minority view. The dominant value system determining how water is utilized in Western culture is basically an economic one. In indigenous societies the situation is reversed. The dominant cultural perspective places great importance on spiritual aspects of water and water bodies. Internal debates revolving around development options nonetheless often reflect economic considerations promoted by the outside dominant society. More explicit understanding of indigenous value systems by the Western world would help relieve cultural pressure on indigenous societies, and, to the extent the West might emulate indigenous notions of humanity's role vis a vis nature, could benefit the cause of sustainable development worldwide.

Kanyama-Phiri, G.,S. Snapp, B. Kamanga and K. Wellard. 2000. Towards integrated soil fertility management in Malawi: incorporating participatory approaches in agricultural research. IIED Series on Managing Africa's Soils. No. 11.In order to effectively develop integrated soil fertility management strategies and disseminate the resulting technologies, we need new approaches that will enable farmers and researchers to build working partnerships. Participatory research is one option, but it is often considered too time-consuming and criticised for not generating quantitative data. Researchers in Malawi have taken up the challenge to overcome these constraints, and have developed both a short-term and a longer-term approach to participatory research. This paper describes the various steps followed in two case studies that followed each approach. The short-term approach tested and disseminated ‘best bet’ technologies in target villages in four different agro-ecological zones. Over three years researchers developed a ‘mother & baby’ satellite trial that was designed to meet both their own and farmers’ requirements. They used innovative trial designs and consultative methods, and in many sites obtained promising results from on-farm trials with intensified cropping systems incorporating legumes. Biological performance was measured against the farmers’ assessments of the new technologies, and farmers also stressed the importance of testing a range of options, such as a wide range of legumes grown with small amounts of mineral fertiliser. The longer-term programme was implemented over a period of more than five years. This involved a participatory, community-oriented approach to work in a watershed located in a densely populated area of southern Malawi. The research addressed the problem of eroded slopes used by farmers with limited access to resources. It was difficult to make progress on these degraded sites: maize generally performed very poorly on the steep slopes, and without nitrogen fertiliser the legume-based technologies were not very productive. In flatter areas and valleys the Sesbania sesban inter-crop system produced the highest yields, but the drawback of this system was that it required the highest investment in terms of labour. We believe that it is important for researchers and farm advisors to have a long-term commitment to working with farm communities, particularly for problematic areas such as the eroded, degraded sites and small land holdings typified by the Songani watershed in Southern Malawi. Our findings indicate that there is considerable scope for using participatory research methods to develop more appropriate technologies. These two case studies show how farmers’ input can be incorporated regularly into the early stages of research. Policy makers may need to be drawn into this work as well, as there appear to be no easy answers to the problems posed by degraded sites. Dissemination of ‘best bet’ technologies for other, better-endowed sites may also benefit from policy interventions.

Oberthür, T., E. Barrios, S. Cook, H. Usma, H. and G. Escobar. 2004. Increasing the relevance of scientific information in hillside environments through understanding of local soil management in a small watershed of the Colombian Andes. Soil Use and Management. 20:23-31.This article explores the question of how scientific information can improve local agronomic management using concepts of uncertainty classification and uncertainty management. Information and data on local management of soil fertility based on a local classification system of soil quality were collected from a small watershed in Cauca (Colombia). The analyses suggest that farmers hold local knowledge about soils at two levels. The first is based on empirical observations and refers to local knowledge about soils and landscape, which shows that the classes identified in the local soil quality classification are consistent with results obtained using measured soil parameters. At the second level, farmers have some awareness of ecological processes and the appropriate use of relationships between key soil characteristics and management options. It is argued that local knowledge is not sufficient to cope with uncertainty introduced by a rapidly changing agriculture, including, for example, increasing land pressure, unpredictable market forces and climate change. We have suggested how scientific knowledge can contribute to the solution, based on an analysis that relates Cohen's (Heuristic reasoning about uncertainty: an artificial intelligence approach. Pitman London, 1985) and Rowe's (Risk Analysis 14, 743-750, 1994) uncertainty concepts to local knowledge.

Gupta, A.K., S. Chokkakula, R. Sinha, K. Patel, S. Muralikrishna and D. Koradia. 2001. Harnessing Wisdom for Managing Watersheds:Honey Bee Perspective on Innovations, Institutions and Policies for Marginal Environments. SRISTI.Household survival in marginal environments such as mountains, dry lands, and flood prone regions requires tremendous creativity. As was noted in Alice in Wonderland, you have to move very fast and work very hard even to remain where you are. The choice for large number of households is to sustain the livelihood support systems such as the catchments, biodiversity, other natural resources, etc., in a manner that they do not get trapped in downward spiral of erosion of resources, self-esteem, and of course, economic opportunities. The fact that despite various odds, including lack of policy support, so many communities and individuals manage not only to conserve resources but also augment them is something that this monograph is all about. The Honey Bee perspective builds upon what poor people are rich in i.e. their knowledge, creative potential, and institutional heritage. The discourse on participation often is restricted to the concept of either physical participation in terms of labour or social participation in implementation of externally designed policies and programmes. In this study, we draw attention to the scope of intellectual, moral, and institutional participation of local communities in reconceptualizing the watershed approach and implementation process. The greatest irony of watershed projects is that they founder after they are ‘handed over’ to the people by the project implementation authorities. If the watershed projects are designed, owned and implemented by the people, why should the question of handing over arise at all. Unless we, the external facilitators, learn to participate in peoples’ own plans, the possibility of building upon peoples’ knowledge is very remote. It is extremely opportune that international and national institutions are recognizing the need for incorporating indigenous knowledge and institutional heritage in the design and implementation of modern watershed projects. This blending of traditional knowledge and contemporary innovations developed by people without outsiders help will not take place unless we understand the policy and institutional context of technology generation and diffusion for rainfed, mountain, and dry regions. The macro policy and the framework for organizing incentives to ensure peoples’ participation in design and implementation of watershed are discussed in part one. In part two of the paper we critique the formal models of technology development and transfer. We argue that technology development process in highly ecologically heterogeneous environments cannot take place in the classical lab to land framework. The last part three deals with the framework for institution building in watersheds. In part four, we provide illustrations of more than fifty technological and institutional innovations from Himalayan region as well as western Indian dry regions.

Guijt, I., Berdegue, J.A. and Loevinsohn, M. 2000. Deepening the Basis of Rural Resource Management. Proceedings of a workshop, February 16-18 2000, The Hague. ISNAR and RIMISP (Red Internacional de Metodologia de Investigaciones de Sistemas de Produccion,. 222pp. Also published in 2002 as a  Special Issue of Agricultural Systems:The workshop brought together researchers working in diverse situations and with resources of different types -- natural, human, and economic -- who are developing innovative methods aimed at enabling farming communities to adjust their decision making in the face of rapid and significant change. The workshop sought to throw light on four main questions:1. What are the features of methods that are effective in supporting farmers’ decision making where resource systems are undergoing such change?2. How do the features of effective methods vary in different types of resource management situations?3. What approaches are available to assess the impact of these methods?4. What institutional factors have favored or hindered the development of effective decision support methods and their use over wider areas?The articles in this Special Issue include a critical review of the key issues emerging from the workshop, five diverse case studies and one of two theme presentations, on the state of the art in decision support in rural resource management. The other theme paper, on learning theory and its relevance for rural resource management, can be found in the workshop’s proceedings, as can the other nine case studies.

Caldwell, J.S., S. Sukchan, W. On-Ok, N. Kabaki, C. Ogura, M. Prabpan and P. Rattanaprom. 2003. A Farmer Participatory Approach to Development of a Research Agenda for Water Management Priorities in Nong Saeng Village, Khon Kaen Province, Thailand. JIRCAS Working Report No. 30. pp. 33-41.Farmer participatory methods were used to develop a research agenda for water management priorities in a small watershed in Nong Saeng village, Khon Kaen Province, Thailand. A farmers’ meeting was held in March 2001 to determine placement of two transects to assess effects of water shortages and soil erosion. These transects were then surveyed with farmers over three days. Results indicated that soil erosion and pond water shortages during the rice growing season were primary farmer constraints. On transect 1, with less soil erosion, availability of supplemental pond water increased the number of years with normal or greater yields from 2 to 4 years, whereas with lack of access to pond water, normal yield was achieved only 1 out of 5 years. On transect 2, soil erosion, dike breakage, gully formation, and sand deposits resulted in normal yields achieved less than 1 year out of 10. To address these constraints, a menu of five technologies from on-station research was presented to farmers in a second farmers’ meeting February 2002: 1) pond reinforcement to reduce water loss; 2) dike strengthening to reduce water loss; 3) agro-forestry tree-crop strips to reduce soil erosion; 4) subsoiling to increase water infiltration; 5) no-till to reduce surface water runoff. Farmers considered lack of capital to be an impediment to use of equipment developed for technologies 1), 4), and 5). They considered potential conflicts between off-farm employment and tree management to be the most important impediment to agro-forestry technology 3). Farmers proposed testing dike strengthening to prevent breakage, as an entry-point technology to start watershed management research.