Resources

This study focuses on sustainability in relation to people's visions of the future in Tamil Nadu, South India. The farmers' environmental awareness and ideas about resource use, as well as their visions for the future were analyzed. Information was gathered using various methods including transect walks, semi-structured group and individual interviews, and mapping. The methods used and the findings of the study are presented and discussed. The villagers perceived that the present system of land use was neither environmentally nor socially sustainable. Suggestions are made of ways to encourage local people to integrate environmental concerns into their agricultural and social planning.

Based on training excercises carried out in four different countries and brought together in Thailand, at Khon Kaen, the aim was to discover if there were common patterns in wood use throughout the region, and to examine implications for sustainability and policy. While the focus is singly on the "problem" of wood use for energy, generalisations are made across country, and the methods used are entirely within the arena of RRA (predominantly informal interviewing), this is a comprehensive study of the energy situation in these countries. For each country, a brief background is given to the area and to previous studies and commercial implications of energy use are examined including supply, transportation and processing. The emphasis is on the movement of wood, particularly rural - urban flows, in both wood and charcoal forms. There is little emphasis on methods used.

The United Mission to Nepal (UMN) Animal Health Improvement Project (AHIP) has been training Village Animal Health Workers (VAHW) in Pokhara, Nepal for the last decade. During this time approximately 350 VAHWs have been trained. This article outlines some of the techniques that were used to evaluate the subsequent progress of the trainees. General village-level information was gathered using various participatory methods, including mapping, wealth ranking, production information, labour diagrams, proportional piling and annual disease calendars, transect walks and progeny histories. Semi-structured interviews were also carried out individually with male and female farmers and VAHWs to find out how the VAHWs assessed their own work and how the farmers viewed the service they received.

The Aga Khan Rural Support Programme supports soil and water conservation work on private land, a priority identified by villagers, as part of a watershed management project. Villagers suggested that monitoring should look at: erosion controlled; land reclaimed; moisture retention in soil (as inferred from crop growth); and productivity and income generation. The article goes through the process of participatory impact monitoring, illustrated by real results. The benefits of such monitoring are listed, most of them related to increased farmer understanding of processes and control over further experimentation.

This 10 minute film looks at the use of video in raising awareness of environmental and health issues in the remote Ladakh region in north-east India. It suggests that video is a powerful tool which can be used to enable people to participate in the development process. In 1993 the Ethnographic Audio Visual Archive (EAVA) ran a two-day participatory educational workshop using video with representatives of the six villages in the Markhor valley. The workshop aimed to increase local people's awareness of the fragility of the Ladakhi environment, which is threatened by planned road construction schemes, and to develop measures for its protection (03). The villagers mapped out their locality and made a detailed model of the valley which clearly showed the impact of the road (04). It also highlighted the deforestation that had taken place over time (05). Role-plays were facilitated to enact traditional stories and the video footage was played back in the evenings (06). After the workshops policing committees were formed to prevent further deforestation. The second part of the film focuses on East Ladakh, nomadic herders among whom vitamin deficiency is common (07). A matrix ranking was carried out to identify local ideas on health problems. A simple method was devised of making berry juice rich in vitamin C from a local plant (08). The group discussions about the berries were recorded and played back to those who had not attended the workshops (09). The final part of the video looks at a student video project which investigated the pollution of local streams and the resulting conflict between women and men (09).

This film demonstrates a participatory approach to crop research which has been developed by the International Crop Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) in India. It aims to bring researchers closer to farmers through on-farm evaluation of pest-resistant varieties. The approach was developed to overcome the limitations of the transfer of technology approach, which is often innappropriate to the complex, risk-prone agriculture of the semi-arid tropics (07). It recognises that farmers and scientists perform complementary activities, and advocates a decentralised and participatory approach in which scientists perform a facilitating and support role (08). The research was carried out in collaboration with women farmers, who play an important role in maintaining biological diversity. First, the pest problem was diagnosed and the different varieties grown by farmers were analysed (09). In the second stage the characteristics of the farmer's varieties were matched with those of the scientist's pre-release lines. On-farm trials were then conducted in different villages (11). After harvesting the farmers carried out their own evaluation of the genetic material (14). The different varieties were ranked to elicit the farmer's preferences, according to their own criteria (16). The scientists learned that a mosaic of varieties better suit the diverse situations faced by farmers in these complex dryland environments than the uniform introduction of a standard seed (23).

Activists for Social Alternatives (ASA) is an NGO working in the rural areas of Tamil Nadu in south India (01). This video records a four-day PRA run by ASA which focused on the watershed in two villages, and also acted as a training workshop for NGO activists (03). During the first day of the workshop time lines and maps were drawn to illustrate the social composition and health aspects of the village (05). The findings of each group were presented to the other villagers at the end of the day so the accuracy of the information could be cross-checked (09). The second day focused on seasonal calendars (11), matrix ranking (15), wealth ranking (16), venn (or chapati) diagrams (18) and trend analysis (19). On the third day the physical features of the village were investigated through transects and models of the watershed (20). A land use capability map was then prepared which proposed land use options and land and water management practices (21). The last day focused on identifying problems and solutions. Steep slopes, lack of rainwater percolation, landslides and soil erosion emerged as some of the problems. Solutions included tree planting and water and soil conservation (22). A budget was then worked out with local, government and donor agency contributions. The exercise generated information and ideas with the villagers as resource persons, and demonstrated their capacity to plan and budget for themselves (23).