Community Forestry: Participatory Assessment, Monitoring and Evaluation

The important role of rural people in the management of forest and tree resources is increasingly acknowledged, and the methods and approaches have evolved to stimulate people's participation. A participatory development strategy that can be applied to community forestry projects, and to other sectors as well, is presented in this paper: Participatory Assessment, Monitoring and Evaluation [PAME] is an on-going process of information, identification, information gathering, information analysis, and information feedback, which involves the following methods: "community site selection", "community problem analysis", "participatory baselines", "participatory monitoring and on-going evaluation", and "information analysis and communication of results. A range of participatory tools that can be used to gather, synthesize and analyse information needed for each PAME activity is detailed.