This document is the result of collaboration between two FAO participatory natural resource management initiatives: the Forest, Trees and People Programme (FTPP) of the Community Forestry Unit and the FAO/Italy Inter-regional Project for Participatory Upland Conservation and Development (PUCD project) The PUCD project was designed to experiment on a wide scale with the adaptability, effectiveness and impact of participatory methodologies for natural resource management.
This case study is the result of a systematic review of the PUCD project over the last five years. It organises and interprets the project's field experience in an Overview and then moves on to present three major phases of PUCD project experience:
À the building of a support programme for collaborative watershed management;
À the provision of support at selected sites by facilitating iterative participatory appraisals, planning, implementation, monitoring, evaluation and replanning cycles, and;
À the process of withdrawing support, still an ongoing process in the PUCD project's field components
In the context of the PUCD project's special focus on sustainable upland and mountain development, this document examines participatory and integrated watershed management as a specific example of collaborative natural resource management. It will be of interest to those involved in mountain development as well as a wider audience, as many aspects of this experience and of the lessons learned from it are highly relevant to other collaborative natural resource management contexts.