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

Pye-Smith, C. and G. Borrini-Feyerabend with R. Sandbrook. 1994. The Wealth of Communities. Earthscan, London.The story of ten communities making intelligent and sustainable use of the world around them.Overview of Contents:1. Calcutta: The Mudialy Fishermen’s Cooperative Society2. Nepal: Annapurna Conservation Area Project3. Zimbabwe: CAMPFIRE4. Uganda: Pallisa Community Development Trust5. Mauritania: Second Livestock Project6. Krakow: The Green Federation7. Los Angeles: WATCHDOG8. Costa Rica: San Miguel Association for Conservation and Development9. Ecuador: Licto and Salinas Communities10. The Philippines: The Hook and Line Fishers’ OrganizationConclusionsAnything New?What Makes a Difference?What Next?Notes and references

Colfer, C.J.P., Brocklesby, M.A., Diaw, C., Etuge, P., Harwell, E., McDougall, C., Porro, N.M., Porro, R., Prabhu, R., Salim, A., Sardjono, M.A., Tchikangwa, B., Tiani, A.M., Wadley, R.L., Woelfel, J. and Wollenberg, E. 1999. The Grab Bag: Supplementary Methods for Assessing Human Well-Being. C&I Tool No. 6. CIFOR, Bogor, Indonesia.The Grab Bag: Supplementary Methods for Assessing Human Well-being is designed to complement The BAG. The Grab Bag is designed for use by social scientists who may find The BAG overly prescriptive. The eight methods presented are either more difficult for non-social scientists to use or, in a couple of cases, can substitute for one or more method presented in The BAG. Again, The Scoring and Analysis Guide provides the user with help in making an actual assessment of the social criteria and indicators, based on the results of these methods.

Humphries, S. J. Gonzales, J. Jimenez and F. Sierra. 2000. Searching for sustainable land use practices in honduras: lessons from a programme of participatory research with hillside farmers. AgREN Network Paper 104. ISBN 0-85003-486-8Participatory Research in Central America (Investigación Participativa en Centroamerica, IPCA) is a project established by the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture, and coordinated through the University of Guelph, Canada, to support farmers in community-based agricultural research in the region. Local agricultural research committees, known by the Spanish acronym CIALs (comités de investigación agricola local), are found in eight Latin American countries at the present time. The IPCA project has been monitoring the development of CIALs in Honduras for the past five years. This paper presents the results of the evaluation to date and considers these in light of current debates around farmer participatory research.The experience of IPCA shows that teaching formal research methods to poor hillside farmers is viable and has served to link farmers to formal-sector researchers in innovative technology development programmes that directly meet users’ needs. Farmers have not only benefited through access to new technologies, but they have also learnt new ways to manage their environments and have been empowered in the process. However, evaluation of the project has shown that unless research has relatively short-term payoffs, farmers are apt to lose interest. Thus, complex research – in particular research involving natural resource management – needs to be framed within the context of social programmes that can provide more immediate benefit to farmers. Technology-led development must be supported by other development initiatives that aim to build social capital as widely as possible across the community.

Cárdenas, J.C. 2003. Rethinking Local Commons Dilemmas: Lessons from Experimental Economics in the Field. A shorter version of this paper was published in Isham, J., T. Kelly and S. Ramaswamy (Eds). Social Capital, Economic Development and the Environment, Edward Elgar Publishing. 2002. Northampton. Related papers in English and SpanishA rather recent development in economics is the formal study of how human groups device ways of governing the coordination of actions that produce externalities without the need of a Leviathan with perfect information and costless ways of enforcing rules, or without the need to individualize the property rights over the resource to allow the invisible hand to coordinate choices and results. Social Capital is one of the terms proposed by leading authors like Putnam (1993) to explain those mechanisms (e.g. norms or rules) that groups use to govern themselves. Self-Governance Institutions has been an alternative notion proposed by others like Ostrom (1990). Or a synonymous, Community Governance (Bowles, 1999) which also conveys the same notion. In general, economic analysis is now recognizing that individuals may put in place selfgoverned material and non-material incentives, which induce changes in behavior from self-oriented actions to group-oriented ones, which may produce social outcomes that are superior than those resulting from the purely selfish and short-sighted behavior of individuals. Usually these institutional arrangements achieve the result of correcting the failures of externalities without the intervention of an external agent or the rearrangement of property rights. In particular, the academic debate over the best prediction about the behavior of people that use a Common-Pool Resource (CPR), and the recommended policy approaches to the CPR dilemma have undergone a very interesting evolution throughout the last 3 decades of the past century, since the emergence of at least two seminal contributions; Garret Hardin’s “Tragedy of the Commons” (1968) and his reflections on the lack of individual property rights over resources under joint access; and Mancur Olson’s Logic of Collective Action (1965) on the difficulties for large and homogenous groups to achieve the voluntary provision of a public good. The empirical evidence on groups using common-pool resources, dating back for centuries, and still today remaining inconclusive, supports in many cases and rejects in many others the different hypotheses available today. Why in some cases groups succeed collectively in managing a resource for which they have joint access, while in similar situations other groups drive the resource closer to exhaustion and socially undesirable results? Why some individuals do act in these situations according to the theoretical prediction of the homo-economicus while others do not? Further, why do the same individuals do confirm the self-regarding maximizing behavior in competitive market institutions while showing other-regarding preferences under situations that generate outcomes that affect negatively others? The fact that these questions remain unsolved should challenge the way the problem of commons dilemmas is taught and studied in the economics profession, and in how it transpires to policy making debates. However, much of the teaching of this particular problem is done without much of the new theoretical, empirical and experimental contributions that have emerged since Hardin’s tragedy prediction. Today the problem of the commons is still presented to students as a free-rider problem where the individual rationality of those extracting the resource and the lack of private or state ownership of the resource would drive the common-pool to yields that are socially sub-optimal, and eventually to exhaustion. At best, some authors seem to acknowledge the difference in rights and rules between open access and common property. Nevertheless, the introductory level teaching ignores in most cases the possibility of groups devising endogenously institutions for self-management and control, or the possibility of human preferences that involve the welfare or actions of others inducing people to act more cooperative. Further, much of the policy textbook recipes still remain within the two orthodox approaches of assigning individual property rights to the resource (market approach), or transferring all property and control to the government for (state approach) a socially efficient management to emerge. However, a long and rich path has been covered by many social and natural scientists that explore the factors that drive human behavior when facing a CPR dilemma. This paper wants to respond to this concern in two ways. One, by providing in sections 2 and 3 elements from recent advances in the analysis of CPRs that could be easily introduced into the teaching and policy design regarding the social dilemmas arising from the use of commons. In particular, it will highlight the lack of importance given to community governance solutions and the focusing on the state and the market solutions, at least in the teaching and policy design arenas. The second contribution to the concerns mentioned is a set of results (Section 4) from field economic experiments conducted in actual CPR settings in rural locations; the results provide empirical evidence of some of the new developments in the literature, questioning much of the conventional views about these dilemmas and human behavior. Further, the methodological approach of applying experimental economics in the field and in the classroom might bring to the economics profession some lessons and challenges about participatory research and teaching techniques where the participants (villagers or students) become active part of the analysis and not mere subjects that produce data, as usually seen in the conventional literature, teaching and research.

Allen, W. NRM-Changelinks.Net. Links for developing Change in Natural Resource Management: an on-line resource guide for those seeking to improve the use of collaborative and learning-based approaches. Manaaki Whenua - Landcare Research, New Zealand and Natural Resource Management Programme, 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.

Verma, R. 2001. Gender, land and livelihoods in East Africa: Through Farmers' Eyes. IDRC. ISBN 0-88936-929-1 280 pp.In rural Africa and the Middle East, many ecosystems are on the verge of collapse. The interplay of social, ecological, and political-economic forces has compromised the ability of farmers to sustain their precious soil. As a result, farmers, and especially women farmers, face a constant daily struggle to survive.This book illustrates in rich detail the complexity and diversity of women’s lives in Maragoli, western Kenya, as they work to sustain their soils and negotiate a plethora of competing demands and constraints in an increasingly stressful economic environment. With extensive use of personal narratives and photographs from the farmers of Maragoli, this book demonstrates that soil degradation is not simply a function of population pressure and ignorance; rather, it is embedded in gender relations and complex struggles at the local level.

Ritchie, B., C. McDougall, M. Haggith and N. Burford de Oliveira. Criteria and Indicators of Sustainability in Community Managed Forest Landscapes. CIFOR.This guide is intended to make a contribution to the larger efforts worldwide at improving forest management, human well-being, and the sustainability of natural resources. Three points should be noted by anyone intending to use the Guide:1. As with any such tool, everything in this guide needs to be considered in, and adapted to, the local context in which it is to be used.2. Successful implementation of the approach suggested in this guide relies on adequate understanding of, commitment to, and skills in participatory approaches and processes.3. This is a work in progress. CIFOR and collaborators are continuing work in this area, and we welcome input and feedback on this guide.

Borrini-Feyerabend, G. (ed. with D. Buchan). 1997. Beyond Fences: Seeking Social Sustainability in Conservation. (2 volumes: a process companion and a reference book. IUCN, Gland, Switzerland and Cambridge, UK.

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.

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.

Vaughan, K., Kuvare, U., Long, S.A. and Murphy, C. 2002. The Khaibasen Participatory Research Group Livelihoods Workshop Report, 3rd to 8th December 2001. Grootberg multi-purpose training centre ≠Khoadi //Hoas Conservancy. Kunene. WILD Working Paper Series 2.As part of the WILD project’s first phase of field research, a participatory research workshop was held with community and conservancy members from the ≠Khoadi /Hoas conservancy. This report provides details on the findings of the PRA workshop. The workshop was held at the Grootberg MET Multipurpose Training Center between the 3 and 8 December 2001. The findings of this workshop aim to inform the further development of household-level research focused on the impacts of changing Natural Resources (NR) use and management for The purpose of the workshop was to conduct a livelihoods PRA with community and conservancy members to provide an understanding of local livelihood priorities in the context of changing natural resource use and management practice (including an understanding of existing institutional arrangements to support various aspects of peoples’ livelihoods). Additionally, the workshop aimed to establish and develop the PLA research-working group for ≠Khoadi /Hoas community and implement the first phase of the community-level livelihood research activities.

Van Mele, P. and A.K.M. Zakaria. 2002. The Innovation Tree: A new PRA tool to reveal socio-psychological factors influencing the innovation adoption process. CABI Bioscience and Rural Development Academy, Bangladesh.A new PR A tool nam ely th e Innovation Tree h as been developed. It h as helped people to visualise and analyse th e w ay in w h ich an innovation is spread over tim e betw een community m em bers. Not only did we find it to be a very useful tool to distinguish betw een innovators, early and late adopters, but also to h elp both outsiders and the community to understand some of the social and psychological dim ensions that influence th e adoption of an innovation within th a community. The Innovation Tree also allowed for investigating how different personalities or types of innovators play a different role in promoting the technology to their colleagues, wh ich is of direct relevance for developing farmer-to-farmer extension activities.

Colfer, C.J.P., M.A. Brocklesby, C. Diaw, P. Etuge, M. Günter, E. Harwell, C. McDougall, N.M., Porro, R. Porro, R. Prabhu, A. Salim, M.A. Sardjono, B. Tchikangwa, A.M. Tiani, R.L. Wadley, J. Woelfel,. and E. Wollenberg. 1999. The BAG (Basic Assessment Guide for Human Well-Being). C&I Tool No. 5. CIFOR, Bogor, Indonesia.The Basic Assessment Guide for Human Well-Being (or The BAG) focuses on the social criteria and indicators for sustainable forest management, a topic that has been the subject of considerable controversy and uncertainty. It is designed for people interested in assessing sustainable forest management, but who do not have a high degree of expertise in social sciences. The six simple methods described in this manual are designed for use by biophysical scientists with a college education. They can also be used by assessors with higher levels of expertise in social sciences, but they are presented in a ‘cookbook’ format. The Scoring and Analysis Guide, meant to be used with The BAG, provides additional help in making assessments of human well being, including a specific scoring method. It also provides increasingly detailed levels of guidance in analysis.

deGrassi, A. and P. Rosset. Public research: which public is that? This article is based on the manuscript for Aaron deGrassi and Peter Rosset’s forthcoming book, A New Green Revolution for Africa? Myths and Realities of Agriculture, Technology and Development (Food First Books, 2004).Public research theoretically offers considerably more potential than the corporate, gene-focused approach to generate crops that meet the needs of farmers. But in practice, much public research, especially that undertaken by the world’s international research centres, has also been blinded by the gene. Aaron deGrassi and Peter Rosset assert that farmers need to be returned to centre-stage to re-assume their central role as custodians of the world’s agricultural resources and the directors of research and innovation.

Vincent, L. 2003. Participatory Research, Natural Resource Management and Rural Transformation: More Lessons from the Field. IN: B. Pound, S. Snapp, C. McDougall and A. Braun (Eds.O Managing natural resources for sustainable livelihoods: Uniting Science and Participation. Earthscan/IDRC.The word ‘lesson’ can refer to a teaching exercise that is structured to provide facts, skills and information, or to the meaning and awareness that is extracted from an experience. By reflecting on what we are doing and why, we can hope to limit our mistakes and create new ways of seeing, negotiating and resolving problems and opportunities. Lessons are important to the future of participatory research, as the recent critique of participatory development as a ‘tyranny’ shows (Cooke and Kothari, 2001). They call for a critical review of participatory development approaches and research methods – to study the controls on the processes behind ‘participation’ paradigms, and to demonstrate why it should be preserved as an approach. However, even ten years ago, Fals-Borda and Rahman (1991) were also warning of the take-up of participatory methods by agencies as a requirement and new form of control and social engineering, that would bring criticism of the role of participatory research methods. They emphasized the need for reflection to counter such outcomes, going on to stress instead how the importance of participatory research might increase in the future. This is through its demonstration of the complexities and stresses of local joint action in changing social and political conditions, at the same time as showing the changes achievable by people in such joint action – to continue to understand the commitment, understanding and support their ever-changing context might require. Although participatory research may also provide better ‘knowledge’ for more enlightened action by planners and policy-makers, or create more local civic action, the changes it achieves are part of a more profound self-awareness about the taking of action for change. This chapter aims to show that this critical review and personal reflection is taking place for participatory research, in both methodological and personal practice, to make it better placed to meet the challenges and critiques of research for transformation in natural resources management (NRM) (see also Hobart, 1994). It illustrates why and how people at the Chatham workshop have continued learning with participatory processes in research supporting development, despite the many stresses in their conduct. Chapter 6 has already reviewed certain key ‘good practices’ from the case studies, emphasizing ‘the field’ as a critical alternative to controlled, narrowly focused pilot trials and models of conventional scientific agricultural research. It showed how to build bridges between different research methodologies, both for better work with stakeholders and new learning possibilities for users of natural resources and for those researching NRM. This chapter brings together lessons from the wider range of practitioners at the Chatham workshop, and the wider field of development-related and action-oriented research they represented. These lessons reflect on why participatory research was being done, why collegiate research was important and difficult, how new frameworks help those involved to rethink the relations between action and knowledge, and what ‘ownership’ means in research terms, going well beyond a ‘restatement of methodologies’ (Biggs and Smith, 1998). It thus looks beyond the ‘learning’ discussion of Chapter 6, to look at the complex questions of action if research is to have real transforming power. Much of the recent effort and critique of participatory research has been about recognition and sharing of different knowledge to enable action to be planned, and giving local people a clearer voice However, there is a wider effort and critique within participatory research – to bring understanding and confrontation of social relations and dynamics into the design of action, beyond just those experienced in knowledge and its synthesis. This chapter tries to look at the impact of these new lessons on action, learning and knowledge as presented at the Chatham workshop.

Barton, T., G. Borrini-Feyerabend, A. De Sherbinin and P. Warren 1997. Our People, Our Resources: supporting rural communities in participatory action research on population dynamics and the local environment. IUCN, Gland, Switzerland. Available also in French and Spanish) This handbook illustrates concepts, methods and tools for primary environmental care, an approach that seeks to empower communities to meet basic needs while protecting the environment. In particular, it focuses on how population size, structure, growth (or decline) and movements relate to the quality of the environment and the qulaity of life. Emphasis is placed on a community-led process of participatory action research in which local knowledge and skills and fully utilized. The main purpose is to promote the effective, integrated management of environment and population dynamics for the benefit of local people in rural communities.

Meinzen-Dick, R., A. Knox, F. Place, and B. Swallow (Eds.) 2002. Innovation in Natural Resource Management The Role of Property Rights and Collective Action in Developing Countries. John Hopkins. University Press.International agricultural research is expanding beyond the development of annual crop technologies for individual farms to the development of longer-term natural resource management techniques for entire landscapes. But technologies or practices with a long lag time between investment and returns are unlikely to be adopted by farmers unless they have secure rights to the underlying resources (property rights). Similarly, technologies that span multiple farms are unlikely to be adopted unless neighbors and groups work together (collective action). But little is known about the way property rights and collective action in developing countries mediate the adoption of technologies by farmers and groups. To address this information gap, this volume brings together international experts in economics, sociology, and natural resource management to examine the links among property rights, collective action, and technological change for a variety of technologies across a range of community contexts in the developing world. Authors focus on the reciprocal relationships between community institutions and technologies, the role of property rights in conflicts between crop and livestock production systems, and the way that collective action differs across landscapes. A conceptual framework, methodological approaches, and "best bet" practices are presented to help guide future research.Researchers, policy analysts, and students interested in the links between environmental sustainability, economic growth, equity and poverty alleviation, and technology adoption will benefit from this volume.

deGrassi, A. 2003. Genetically Modified Crops and Sustainable Poverty Alleviation in Sub-Saharan Africa; an assessment of current evidence. Third World Network-AfricaThis paper recasts the debate over biotechnology by moving past overly general hyperbole and instead empirically evaluating current experiences with genetically modified crops in Africa. The debate is moved from hypothetical risks to actual results. The 'appropriateness' of GM cotton, sweet potatoes and maize is evaluated using six criteria widely accepted in crop breeding: [whether the crop is] demand-led, site-specific, poverty-focused, cost-effective and institutionally and environmentally sustainable. I conclude by examining potential reasons for considerable attention to these three crops despite their generally inappropriate nature for poverty alleviation in sub-Saharan Africa.

deGrassi, A. 2003. Constructing Subsidiarity, Consolidating Hegemony Political Economy and Agro-Ecological Processes in Ghanaian Forestry, Environmental Accountability in Africa. Working Paper No. 13, Washington, DC World Resources Institute.Despite proliferating claims that Ghanaian forestry is collaborative and community-based, most powers over forestry remain concentrated in an unrepresentative and unaccountable centralized forestry administration. In ways that presage current negotiations over the principle of subsidiarity, various regimes in Ghana throughout the twentieth century have, when challenged, misconstrued agro-ecological processes in order to justify centralized and violent control that, although conducted in the name of the public good, allowed forest resources to be appropriated by select state agents, traditional authorities, and domestic and international firms. Recommendations are given to help pry the concept of subsidiarity away from abuse by hegemonic elites: participatory empirical studies of forest agroecologies and management, and inclusive processes of formulating and interpreting policies and laws.

Borrini-Feyerabend, G., Farvar, M. T., Nguinguiri, J. C. & Ndangang, V. A.: Co-management of Natural Resources: Organising, Negotiating and Learning-by-Doing. GTZ and IUCN, Kasparek Verlag, Heidelberg (Germany), 2000.

Van Mele, P. (ed.) 2003. Way Out of the Woods: Learning How to Manage Trees and Forests. CPLPress, Newbury, UK, pp. 143.The Way Out of the Woods is an account of how the success of forestry and agroforestry projects in Nepal, Kenya and Bolivia depends on understanding biological, social and cultural diversity and applying this knowledge to meet the needs of rural people.The solutions to sustainable management lie in using local and scientific knowledge. ISBN 1-872691-67-6