Pimbert, Michel

This article comments on the e-forum on participatory processes for policy change concerning the Deliberative and Inclusionary Processes which grew out of a citizen jury and scenario workshop in southern India. The process drew on participatory action research to allow for scrutiny and critical analysis, and resulted in producing new knowledge and the possibility of transformative action through research.

This chapter presents an introduction to Prajateerpu - a citizens' jury/scenario workshop on food and farming in Andhra Pradesh, India. It was a six-day exercise in deliberative democracy involving marginal-livelihood citizens from three regions of the state, which took place in 2001. Prajateerpu was devised as a means of allowing those people most affected by the government's Vision 2020 for food and farming to shape a vision of their own.

This paper reflects on the questions of how and under what conditions can the democratic potential of Deliberative and Inclusionary Processes (DIPs) be enlarged to include more people and more places. The author concludes that enabling government policies, organizational change and professional reorientation are all necessary preconditions for the widespread use for DIPs in all aspects of life.

This article gives an overview of deliberative democracy and citizen empowerment. It describes the reasons for the recent interest in Deliberative and Inclusionary Processes (DIPs). These are given as; political changes; a lack of trust in professional expertise and science; high levels of uncertainty and complexity (e.g. in the realm of the environment and technology) that are an integral part of living in a modern world and the notions of human rights, social justice and empowerment.

As part of the special 50th edition of PLA Notes, this article highlights key lessons from experiences on livelihoods and natural resources.

Integrated pest management (IPM) emerged in Indonesia in the late 1980s as a reaction to the environmental and social consequences of the Green Revolution model of agriculture. A cooperative programme between the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the Indonesian Government centred on Farmer Field Schools (FFS), which are schools without walls. The FFS aimed to make farmers experts in their own fields, enabling them to replace their reliance on external inputs, such as pesticides, with endogenous skills, knowledge and resources.

In this Feedback section, barriers to the institutionalisation of PRA in NGOs in Nepal are discussed. Concerns are raised about the quality and follow-up of PRA training, in particular that PRA is not used on a systematic basis within organisations that have received PRA training. The lack of process-orientation of many PRA trainers may be a possible cause. Suggestions are made as to how to improve this situation in order to ensure more effective use of PRA in Nepal.

This paper provides a brief critical analyisis of a Bulgarian experience in participatory forest management, in which initial PRA planning and local adaptive planning for forest management was not followed up. The lack of an enabling national forest policy for decentralised forest management was a major factor in the 'failure'. However, professional and institutional challenges in partner NGOs were also important, many of which centred around issues of behaviour and attitudes.