Resources

This article is a case study from communities on the island of Leyte in the Philipppines where farmers were found to be using a wide range of technologies to try to stop environmental degradation. The article reports on how visual mapping methods were developed and used to study the role of the agricultural information system in helping farmers to cope with change and improve sustainability.

Drawing on case studies from six countries, this report examines recent innovative applications of PRA in research, development and impact analysis of irrigation and water resource management programmes. The case studies are taken from different socio-technical contexts and range from the use of PRA to examine water user's perspectives of irrigation performance to watershed management planning. Lessons learnt from the examples are outlined and finally challenges and opportunities for the use of participatory methods in water resource management are summarised. Issues considered include, confusion over definitions and objectives, the degree of importance placed on methods, confusion over the role of professionals, the influence of politics and power, measuring of impacts, complementarity between conventional research methods and PRAand finally the challenge of institutionalising participatory approaches in government bureaucracies.

This paper describes how the combination of chemical soil and water analyses and PRA exercises were found to be complementary methods in assessing the magnitude of the pollution problem caused by the tannery industry in Kamtchipuram village, Tamil Nadu.

Drawing on the experience of Anil Shah in facilitating participatory irrigation management in Gujarat, this paper explores how policy can be influenced to facilitate the spread of participatory approaches.

This case study presents examples of field uses of participatory tools for monitoring and evaluations of community-based resource management. The study is based on the premise that analytical tools developed through the rapid and participatory appraisal process (PRA) have applicability for monitoring and evaluation. It further builds from the assumption that by helping local communities select and monitor indicators, devise and record baseline data systems, there is a greater likelihood that local projects will increase sustainability, productivity, and transparency. Data is derived from field work carried out in 1996 in three communities in Kenya. Findings of the study concluded that participatory methods can help identify community-based indicators to measure impacts of resource management effectively and at low cost, which can have meaning both for the local community as well as for regional/national policy and decision makers (such as NGOs or government units). A summary of indicators used in all three communities is provided, including the tools used, where and how they were applied, and their effectiveness. The study further concluded that participatory methods were useful in developing effective baseline data which may be used by the community to inform district and regional policy and planning staff about more effective ways of implementing local development. The study highlights the need for building and strengthening two way linkages of information based on partnerships between local and national institutions, viewed as essential for achieving sustainability in livelihood production and resource conservation. Final sections discuss the factors that seem most influential in the adoption of resource management practices, and identify key areas for future research.

This paper reports on a participative research process, in which farmer knowledge was integrated with standard research techniques, to develop a method for irrigation farmers to estimate paddock water use efficiency (WUE) and accessions to the watertable. Facilitating farmer trust and involvement in the research process was seen to be particularly important given the sensitive nature of the issue of WUE.