Introduction

Helen Hambly's introduction focuses on the key viewpoint behind this book: that conventional approaches to the monitoring and evaluation of research and development projects have been dominated by Euro-American scientific perceptions of environmental and development change, using "top-down" approaches to data collection and analysis. The objective of the book therefore is to draw attention to grassroots indicators i.e. measures or signals of environmental quality or change formulated by individuals, households and communities, and derived from their local systems of observation, practice and indigenous knowledge. Looking first at the different motives for such indicators, the author goes on to introduce concepts of desertification and development, and grassroots indicators and desertification in Eastern and Southern Africa .