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This article describes research carried out using PRA methods to examine how and why farmers use different markets to sell their products and to investigate how their profits can be maximised.
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The farm management tool described in this article has been used over a period of 18 months with ovr 250 farmers in Zimbabwe. It is based on a traditional board game called "mancala" and uses eans, seeds or symols to identify resources and activities. These are laid out in a calendar form, which allows the farmer to make plans, estimate profits, assess resource inputs needed for given farm activities.
A key activitiy in promoting sustainable development is a revitalised rural investment strategy. This would include intensified production to meet growing demands while concurrently ensuring conservation of natural resources and promotion of sustainable land management. Important componants in this stategy include development of indicatiors and procedures for monitoring impacts of projects, programmes and policies on the productivity and quality of land resources. Whereas in the past, projects were evaluated by their performance using mainly quantitative indicators, today it is increasingly required that projects be assessed by their impact, ie the sustainability of their results, but the difficulty is still how this can be measured. These guidelines are intended to address this problem and to promote more direct identification of land management objectives in rural development projects.
See also associated "Guidelines for impact monitoring : toolkit" D:Environment and resource management, 3356.
This diary comprises part of a participatory mionitoring and evaluation system called an internal learning system for grassroots livelihoods and micro-finance programs. The diary is bsed on a pictorial record of the development experiences of a poor woman who is a member of a self help savings and credit group and enables the user to collect information on changes in livelihood variables such as health, education, savings etc using symbols. The accuracy of data entry is carried out using simple cross checks with fellow group members in a mutual learning process. The diary enables the direction and reasons for change in the data to be analysed and facilitates the making of plans based on the findings.
A document of the process and methodologies proposed for the Somali Natural Resources Management Programme for local level environmental interventions. These include international influences from relevant pastoralist and conflict affected situations elsewhere in Africa and a set of ideas generated by the author and his Somali colleagues.
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A summary of some of the findings of a workshop on participatory research and geographic information systems, with a case study from South Africa. The article describes GIS as a computer-based technology and discusses its potential as a participatory planning and policy tool. The authorse emphasise the challenges of local politics, updating and ownership. They conclude that there is valued to participatory GIS if it can help to inform process and relationships rather than simply extracting patterns from large volumes of data.
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CAMPFIRE is a Zimbabwe project which seeks to place the proprietorship of natural resources with the poepl living most closely with them. The game discussed in this article is based upon the board game "Monopoly" where the participants each have a sum of money and their objective is to develop the wildlife potential and manage visitors. The game allows participants to practice the mechanics of book-keeping, analyse their sources of income and practice developing budgets.
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This article describes a participatory business planning tool involving seveal steps: mapping land ownership, pinboarding important ideas to isolate the aims of the business, resource mapping and land use mapping, business modelling and related budgeting and finally an action planning matrix.
Translations from English of ten articles on agriculture and informal research methods, including, formal and informal data collection;emergence of RRA and its application to irrigation; the Sondeo approach; rapid rural appraisal; wealth ranking; using a traditional african system for measuring farmer attitudes; and choosing methods for analysing production systems.
This report discusses three agricultural devlopment projects in Africa, their participatory approaches and their implications at policy level. The analysis was carried out in the context of donor consultation on agricultural extension services in Africa and includes underlying principles of participation, methods to make participation work and ways for shaping conditions favourable for participation.
This issue, devoted to participation and sustainable development includes:
* Introduction. Neela Mukherjee
* Participation, learning and sustainability: emerging challenges for agricultural development. Jules N Pretty.
* Participating in the planning process - a must for sustainable development. Nira Ramachandran and Anil K Dimri
* Poverty and well-being: rural community views and policy implications for socio-economic and natural resource development. Neela Mukherjee
* Forests under people's management in Orissa. N. C. Saxena
* Sustainability of joint forest management in India. Abhijit Ghose
* Training on human resource development and people's participation. S. K.Ghosh
* Evaluation for social change. Mitali Sen-Gavai
* Participatory Rural Appraisal's (PRA's) first generation: making sense of lessons from the field. Richard Ford
* A select bibiliography on "people's participation and sustainable development. Neela Mukherjee
This workbook is an output from TSEMPRAA Activity (Towards Sustainable Environmental Management Practices in Refugee-Affected Areas) and arose from UNHCR's concern for the environment. With a policy based on the principles of integration, prevention before cure, cost-effectiveness and benefit maximisation, and local participation, the challenge for UNHCR is to translate these principles into practice in planning and management of refugee situations. Intended for use primarily by field staff working in refugee situations, this self study workbook aims to raise awareness of environmental issues, introduce planning tools to identify potential environmental impacts and provide guidance for further information.