Monitoring, indicators and community based forest management in the tropics: pretexts or red herrings?

García, Claude; Lescuyer, Guillaume

doi:10.1007/s10531-008-9347-y

Cited by 58 publications

(56 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…The main strategies adopted in EBS and HIL, i.e., marketing the monitored resource and integrating the system into an education program, respectively, continued beyond the initial funding available because communities realized benefits from these systems. Using multiple strategies to achieve diverse empowerment dimensions, however, increases costs to outsiders and to locals from the onset (Garcia and Lescuyer 2008), whereas benefits may not be promptly realized. Monitoring, therefore, becomes an expense for everyone and may fail before inciting significant social transformations.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Empowering Local People through Community-based Resource Monitoring: a Comparison of Brazil and Namibia

Constantino¹,

Carlos²,

Ramalho³

et al. 2012

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ABSTRACT. Biological resource monitoring systems are implemented in many countries and often depend on the participation of local people. It has been suggested that these systems empower local participants while promoting conservation. We reviewed three wildlife monitoring systems in indigenous lands and sustainable development reserves in Brazilian Amazonia and one in Namibian Caprivi conservancies, analyzing the strategies adopted and conditions that facilitated local empowerment, as well as potential impacts on conservation. This provided insights into potential avenues to strengthen empowerment outcomes of monitoring systems in Latin America and Africa. We assessed four dimensions of empowerment at individual and community scales: psychological, social, economic, and political. The conditions that facilitated local empowerment included the value of natural resources, rights to trade and manage resources, political organization of communities, and collaboration by stakeholders. The wide range of strategies to empower local people included intensifying local participation, linking them to local education, feeding information back to communities, purposefully selecting participants, paying for monitoring services, marketing monitored resources, and inserting local people into broader politics. Although communities were socially and politically empowered, the monitoring systems more often promoted individual empowerment. Marketing of natural resources promoted higher economic empowerment in conservancies in Namibia, whereas information dissemination was better in Brazil because of integrated education programs. We suggest that practitioners take advantage of local facilitating conditions to enhance the empowerment of communities, bearing in mind that increasing autonomy to make management decisions may not agree with international conservation goals. Our comparative analysis of cases in Latin America and Africa allows for a greater understanding of the relationships between resource monitoring systems, local empowerment, and conservation.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Empowering Local People through Community-based Resource Monitoring: a Comparison of Brazil and Namibia

Constantino¹,

Carlos²,

Ramalho³

et al. 2012

E&S

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“…Weinbaum et al (2013) suggest that learning how to manage under uncertainty is fundamental to achieving sustainable bushmeat hunting and requires putting in place efficient monitoring processes. The creation of participatory monitoring systems often triggers a process of collective action, which can be included in any strategic action aimed at managing bushmeat resources (Garcia and Lescuyer 2008). The hypothesis stating that the information generated by the system is inserted into the decision-making process so as to approach sustainability is only possible when resource management is completely decentralized and when a direct link is established between the monitoring results and the management decisions taken (Garcia and Lescuyer 2008).…”

Section: Implications For Sustainable Bushmeat Use In Practicementioning

confidence: 99%

Managing hunting under uncertainty: from one-off ecological indicators to resilience approaches in assessing the sustainability of bushmeat hunting

Vliet¹,

Fa²,

Nasi³

2015

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ABSTRACT. Despite the fact that sustainability of bushmeat hunting in tropical areas is of major concern for conservation and development practitioners, we still know very little about how to measure sustainability and how to put in place sustainable bushmeat hunting systems. We review the current limits of traditional methods used to investigate sustainability of bushmeat hunting, discuss the need to incorporate the characteristics of complex systems into sustainability assessments, and suggest how resilience theories could assist in understanding bushmeat sustainability and more effective conservation of wildlife in tropical areas. Traditional methods used to assess the sustainability of bushmeat hunting include demographic models of population growth, one-off biological indicators, population trend methods, harvest-based indicators, and comparisons of demographic parameters between sites. These traditional biological sustainability indices have proved inadequate for measuring the impact of bushmeat hunting because sustainability is treated as a static, binary (yes or no) question, thus ignoring stochastic processes, the inherent variability of natural systems, and the complexity of hunting systems. We suggest that bushmeat hunting systems in tropical areas should be regarded as social-ecological systems in which the impacts of hunting on prey populations are not the only focus. Instead, the analysis of resilience aims at understanding the complex and dynamic relationships between the hunting ground, its resources, the stakeholders, and the different exogenous drivers of change that affect the components of the system at different scales. The main implication of using the resilience theory in the context of bushmeat hunting is the shift from the need to assess stocks with imprecise measures to the incorporation of the uncertainty and stochasticity inherent to complex systems in participatory and adaptive management processes. As such, the resilience analysis provides an unprecedented opportunity for the sustainable use of bushmeat and allows the identification of strategies to strengthen resilience when the system is found to be close to a given threshold, instead of reinforcing fortress conservation.

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“…Use of participatory methodologies helps communities to develop indicators that are meaningful to them and can be implemented in an adaptive learning process (Ritchie et al 2000, Reed et al 2005, Reed et al 2008). In the case of joint management, development of indicators by both the members of the community (Aboriginal Traditional Owners) and staff from the management agency makes it less likely that the monitoring system will be left out of the decision making process (Garcia and Lescuyer 2008).…”

Section: Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation And Joint Managementmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Leaving the monitoring system to local communities has proven to be unsuccessful (Garcia and Lescuyer 2008) and capacities and skills often need to be transferred if the partners involved in joint management are to be sufficiently prepared and skilled to participate effectively (Guba and Lincoln 1989). However, a simple transfer from one partner to the other can emphasize the power disparity, necessitating support from outside sources and an independent facilitator (Evans and Guariguata 2008).…”

Section: Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation And Joint Managementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Developing Indicators for Monitoring and Evaluating Joint Management Effectiveness in Protected Areas in the Northern Territory, Australia

Izurieta¹,

Sithole²,

Stacey³

et al. 2011

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ABSTRACT. Joint management of protected areas is promoted in many countries around the world. It is considered a means to provide local communities, including indigenous people, with recognition of their cultural practices in the use and management of the natural resources within a protected area, while working together with governments to achieve conservation goals. However, implementation of effective joint management has often been difficult because capacities and expectations among partners differ. Here we explore the potential of using a participatory monitoring and evaluation approach as a means of not only agreeing among partners on the objectives of joint management but also of measuring progress toward those objectives. In particular, we first describe the process used to develop criteria and indicators for measuring joint management effectiveness of a protected area in the Northern Territory, Australia, involving the park's Aboriginal Traditional Owners, their legal representatives, government, and researchers. We then analyze the process of applying a participatory approach to developing indicators and its contribution to improving equity among the partners. We consider the effectiveness of a participatory process within the context of the relationships, capacities, skills, communication, and cross-cultural information sharing. We found that at the early stages of joint management, the partners mostly identify process indicators related to human and social capital assets. Cross-cultural engagement in the early stages of the monitoring and evaluation cycle is challenged by issues relating to communication, institutional and community capacities, representation, and flexibility in ways of working together while learning by doing. We conclude, however, that a participatory monitoring and evaluation approach in which partners agree equally on the identification of criteria and indicators to measure agreed management outcomes has the potential of improving equitable participation, decision making and working relationships, which in turn will lead to improved park management effectiveness and community outcomes.

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Monitoring, indicators and community based forest management in the tropics: pretexts or red herrings?

Cited by 58 publications

References 45 publications

Empowering Local People through Community-based Resource Monitoring: a Comparison of Brazil and Namibia

Empowering Local People through Community-based Resource Monitoring: a Comparison of Brazil and Namibia

Managing hunting under uncertainty: from one-off ecological indicators to resilience approaches in assessing the sustainability of bushmeat hunting

Developing Indicators for Monitoring and Evaluating Joint Management Effectiveness in Protected Areas in the Northern Territory, Australia

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