Participatory Natural Resource Management 26 - Participatory Natural Resource Management Research: A New Integration Domain in the Agricultural Sciences: International Development Research Centre

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Participatory Natural Resource Management
26 - Participatory Natural Resource Management Research: A New Integration Domain in the Agricultural Sciences

Document(s) 29 of 34

Kirsten Probst and JÜrgen Hagmann

Over the years, the focus of agricultural science has evolved. Some experts say this is because agricultural science is a "quasidiscipline": research topics are not defined by the internal state of the field (as in physics or mathematics), but rather by problems defined outside of the field. Problems in real life are best solved through a multi-disciplinary approach. If new problems arise, different disciplines might be integrated to solve the problems.

The emergence of new domains depends on two critical factors: 1) an understanding of the interrelations between problems and the ability to deal with these interactions in the research methodology; and 2) public concern about major issues. Indeed the emergence of natural resource/ecosystem management (NRM) as a domain in international agriculture research is paralleled by the appearance of new tools and instruments for data storage and processing such as geographic information systems and modelling. At the same time, worries about food production and global hunger have been amended by an increased public concern about the rapid deterioration of the Earth's ecosystems (particularly since the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio) and increasing levels of poverty.

Adapted from: Probst, K. and J. Hagmann with contributions from Fernandez, M. and J. A. Ashby. 2003. Understanding Participatory Research in the Context of Natural Resource Management--Paradigms, Approaches and Typologies. ODI-AGREN Network Paper No. 130. http://www.odi.org.uk/agren/

In the last 30 years, different integration domains have been pursued in agricultural sciences (Table 1). This paper particulary discusses participatory natural resource management as a new integration model.

Table 1. Different Integration Domains Evolving Through the Years
Time Period	Integration Domain (Focus of Agricultural Sciences)
Early 1960s	farm management which includes farm economics, engineering, planning and home economics
Early 1970s	crop ecology including physiology, pathology, entomology, genetics and agronomy
Mid-1970s to mid-1980s	Farming system research
Mid-1980s	sustainable production, later sustainable natural ecosystem management which includes geography, meteorology, ecology, hydrology and sociology
2000	Integrated natural resource management

What is Natural Resource Management?

Definitions of NRM or integrated NRM are still evolving.

INRM can be defined as the responsible and broad-based management of the land, water, forest and biological resources base - including genes - needed to sustain agricultural productivity and avert degradation of potential productivity (TAC 1997).

INRM is an approach to research that aims at improving livelihoods, agroecosystem resilience, agricultural productivity and environmental services. It aims to augment social, physical, human, natural and financial capital. It does this by helping solve complex real-world problems affecting natural resources in agroecosystems (CGIAR Inter-Center Working Group on INRM, 2000).

NRM involves not only agronomy, but also spatial and temporal scales and interdependencies, on-site and off-site effects, trade-offs of different management options, the need to involve a wide range of stakeholders - often with conflicting interests - in collective action (Probst, 2000).

In short, NRM involves technical skills and knowledge about biophysical processes as well as the social component, i.e., negotiation of rules and sanctions, policy formulation, organization development, land use planning, conflict and information management.

While international agricultural research centers (IARCs) acknowledge that NRM is multifaceted, these centers cannot deal with all issues. They tend to focus on improving production of specific commodities (crop, livestock, forest and fish outputs) that have impacts on poverty reduction and food security, like integrated water and watershed management, social forestry, living aquatic resource management, and soil management.

There is a growing belief, however, that local people's perspectives need to be in the center of research efforts for development. In order for these research initiatives to have an impact, the innovations need to be "owned" by local users. To achieve ownership, the people should be part of the development and implementation of the innovation.

Over the last decades, a wide variety of participatory research (PR) approaches, concepts and methods has evolved. However, it is still not yet well understood which types of approaches are useful for what kind of research questions, goals and contexts. Especially in the field of INRM, participatory research is conceptually and operationally still in its infancy and a wide range of distinctly different activities are labeled 'participatory research'.

Current Practice in NRM Research

Over the past 30 years, the international agricultural research community has significantly contributed to raising agricultural productivity, particularly through its commodity research and germplasm improvement. Their research goals have also expanded to include efforts towards poverty reduction, food security and environmental sustainability. Reductionist commodity research can no longer deal with this complexity and a reorientation towards NRM and farmer participatory research is gradually being accepted. This change was also fostered by donors who demanded more visible impacts through development-oriented research, especially in smallholder farming.

The focus of the current practice in this relatively young NRM research domain may be summarized into four major issues.

Impact Orientation What kind of impact do NRM research projects strive for?	Research Focus What is their research focus and who are the intended beneficiaries?
Pathway/Strategy to Impact What is their pathway or strategy to achieve an impact at the local level?	Role of Participatory Research What is the role of participatory research in the project strategy?

The following description and assessment of the state of the art is based on a review of literature and internet sites, insights gained from conceptual workshops and project evaluations and a study of 53 research projects within the Consultative Group of International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) and its partners.

The projects within CGIAR included participatory research projects covering a broad range of topics in NRM (e.g., soil and water management, crop/livestock management, agroforestry, integrated pest management, conservation of biodiversity, watershed management, etc.). The project was carried out in 1999 by the CGIAR Program for Participatory Research and Gender Analysis, using a questionnaire which was responded to by projects, mostly while attending international workshops on the topic.

Impact Orientation

International agricultural research centers face an apparent paradox with regard to impact. Some donors want to see impact at the level of the resource poor farmers, while others emphasize that the mandate and comparative advantage of the IARCs is to conduct 'strategic' research and to produce 'international public goods' that can be extrapolated to other locations at the regional and global level. Basically all centers have incorporated highly aggregated development goals such as poverty alleviation, increased income, food security, and sustainable resource use into their overall research objectives.

Some projects started engaging in larger scale extension and development activities (e.g., capacity building, organization development, etc.), without necessarily integrating research functions as a continuing part of these development activities. Some actors, however, see strategic research as an 'upstream' phase in the research-development continuum. International researchers need not be involved in participatory processes at the field level.

When formulating goals, NRM research managers tend to put different impact levels into one sentence without necessarily clarifying what exactly they want to achieve. Some projects put the natural resource system and technical improvements into the center of perspectives.

Other initiatives put more emphasis on changes in the management strategies of local resource managers. These projects focus on research impacts that build local capacity for collective action, and foster people's own efforts to improve management systems (adaptive capacity). This includes their ability to articulate interests and demand, to manage conflicts, etc.

Though most IARC projects show strong impact orientation, the goals and objectives defining the desired impact are rather unclear as to what the research can realistically contribute. This is a general pattern observed in many research projects – participatory or non-participatory.

Example

"Enabling communities and organizations to plan collective action aimed at better management of resources in hillsides." (CIAT: Community Management of Hillside Resources)

"Enabling local communities to achieve more sustainable and equitable management of forest resources and human well-being in a multi-stakeholder environment. Enhancing the ability of forest management systems to be self- improving, which will require strengthening the process of management and policy making. The emphasis is on institutionalizing conscious learning." (CIFOR: Adaptive Co-Management of Forests)

'Hard' impacts related to physical, natural and financial capital and 'soft' impacts related to social/human capital are not clearly separated, even though they would require different strategies. This often results in a diffuse and unclear strategic orientation which defines the connection between the research outcome and the development impacts. Unfortunately, participatory NRM research particularly requires a strong impact orientation to guide a flexible and dynamic process of socio-technical development. The research products need to be derived clearly from the strategic orientation.

Research Focus

While covering a broad range of topics, the analysis of NRM research projects revealed three major research foci.

Basically, all Centers work on the three research foci, and some projects address more than one aspect. Though most projects focus on technical innovations (improved varieties, farming practices, etc.), organizational innovations and local capacity building has increasingly gained importance as a focus of NRM research.

Pathway/Strategy to Impact

To disseminate the results of their research, most IARCs collaborate with 'adaptive research and dissemination partners', such as National Agricultural Research Systems (NARS), extension services, non-government organizations (NGOs), development agencies and farmers' groups. These partners are forming the focal mechanism through which IARCs attempt to reach out to farmers in pilot development projects.

Even though the linear 'transfer of technology' model to spread innovations is a concept which has been questioned from many sides, it is still widely assumed within the scientific community that research outputs just need to be fed into an existing and assumingly functioning research-development continuum.

Role of Participatory Research

Participatory approaches in international agricultural research are mostly utilized at the level of applied and adaptive research or even technology transfer, i.e., 'downstream' applications. Participatory research is primarily seen as a means to obtain (qualitative) data about local people's knowledge and demand to assimilate and consider this information in scientific research; and a better approach to technology transfer and adaptive research, which is, however, not considered to be the task of IARCs (Becker, 2000).

Some scientists think that participatory research should be done by other bodies like extension services, NGO and NARS, and not by IARCs. In fact, NGOs report they have more participation of local people in their projects.

While many researchers might be familiar with the concept of participation, scientists with actual, long-term field experience in participatory research processes are still a minority.

Did you know that...

Most IARC projects utilize consultative participation; most non-IARC projects report collaborative participation. Women and marginalized groups are brought into the research process at a relatively late stage, when technologies have already been identified and are ready for dissemination (Johnson et al., 2000).

There are only few examples of partnerships between formal researchers and local stakeholders in which the latter are driving the research process at local level, seeking solutions for constraints they have identified.

Most researchers perceived their role as facilitators that would strengthen local innovation development and strengthen local peoples' self-help capacities. About 70% considered local people as equal partners in a joint innovation process, however 54% regarded the role of local people as receiving innovation packages that the latter could adopt, refuse or adapt (Fernandez, 1999).

Epistemological Assumptions, Values and Beliefs

Two frequently cited epistemological perspectives surrounding participatory research are positivism and constructivism.

Positivism is an endeavor to obtain an objective view of reality. Positivist science is based on direct empirical evidence that can be observed and measured through scientific methods (Crotty, 1998). Through appropriate research methods, one can discover the true nature of that reality. From a positivist viewpoint, objects in the world have meaning prior to, and independent of, any human consciousness. It is assumed that there is an objective, value-free, external reality driven by natural laws controlling cause-effect relationships.

Constructivism refutes this. Meaning or truth is not discovered but is constructed. Through communication and learning processes, different social groups develop an inter-subjective system of concepts, beliefs, societal and cultural norms, or a set of theories that they consider to be reality. There is no 'objectively' best solution to a problem because different actors have different sense of what is needed and what can be achieved.

In designing a research approach, these epistemological views have to be considered. It is critical to be aware about the assumptions one is making. These assumptions have implications on the definition of objectives, roles, methods, etc.

For example, it might be assumed that there is a 'stock' of uniform, systematized body of local knowledge available that can be incorporated into any research conducted by 'outsiders'. In contrast, this knowledge might be seen as multi-layered, fragmentary and diffuse, and as something that can only be generated as a result of interaction and joint-learning among different actors with complementary contributions.

Another example would be an assumption that innovations, because they are successful in some areas, might be successful everywhere, and that these innovations will easily spread among the users. On the other hand, innovations might be needed in diverse and complex social and natural environments. Actors might have different interests, relationships, values, power and access to resources which are conditions in which rapid and widespread dissemination of a particular innovation is unlikely.

Thus, the underlying paradigms will imply the choice scientists make in their investigation – whether they work for, on or with their clients (e.g., farmers). Paradigms will influence whether systems are seen as a real, existing thing that can be studied from the outside, or as an 'abstract concept' which is socially constructed. The choices will determine whether the research process is through experimentation or organized as a system of learning.

Challenges

Based on these preliminary analysis and experience, the major challenges to increasing the effectiveness of the IARCs' NRM research can be summarized as follows:

Greater impact orientation and strategy. Many development-oriented research projects define highly aggregated overall goals, but in reality lack a clear strategy of how to achieve these impacts and induce changes through research. The focus is frequently on a technology or land use practice without considering that changes are required at the level of individual and collective resource users to achieve a development impact (i.e., the link between the desired impact and produced output is missing).

Less discipline-driven and supply-led research agendas. The research focus and products are more derived from a supply-led and discipline-led perspective rather than from a strategic orientation.

Greater integration and operationalization of 'interdisciplinarity'. Even though NRM is supposed to be looked at from a more holistic perspective, research projects hardly achieve a true integration of different disciplines and stakeholders from different levels. Projects tend to address many compartments of the whole system, rather than the system as a whole and the interaction of its parts.

The NRM challenges to be addressed through research are rather diverse. Inappropriate technologies and methodological approaches, organizational deficits, limited social capital and capacities are challenges to be dealt with at the local level. In the external environment, structural problems like policies, land tenure, institutional environment, information management, etc. need to be addressed. Depending on the challenge, different kinds of innovations are required: technical, social/organizational innovations and new methods and approaches. To most of these challenges, research can only contribute, but not deal with the entire development dimensions. The expected research outputs might be applicable at different geographical levels and be targeted to different users.

Revising the assumption of a functioning research-development continuum for scaling-up. It is still widely assumed that the sharing of tasks within a linear research–development continuum functions and can be taken for granted. In reality, however, there are fewer and fewer cases and countries where this continuum is really functional. Alternative scaling-up strategies are still rare.

Use of participatory research beyond 'downstream' applications. Participatory research is, to a large extent, considered as a means to improve the conventional technology development process. The role of research institutions as providers of solutions and expert knowledge for local people is rarely being challenged. The potential of facilitating longer-term participatory learning and action research while pursuing strategic research has hardly been explored.

References

Becker, T. 2000. Participatory Research in the CGIAR. In: Proceedings Deutscher Tropentag. "International Agricultural Research – A contribution to Crisis Prevention", October 11-12, 2000. Stuttgart, Germany: University of Hohenheim.

Crotty, M. 1998. The Foundations of Social Research. Meaning and Perspective in the Research Process. London/Thousand Oaks/New Delhi: Sage Publications.

Fernandez, M. 1999. Field Study of 53 Cases On the Use of Participatory Research in International Agricultural Research. Study Commissioned by the CGIAR System-wide Program of Participatory Research and Gender Analysis. Results of the SPSS Analysis. Unpublished paper, Cali: CIAT.

INRM-Group. 2000. Integrated Natural Resource Management in the CGIAR. A Report on the INRM Workshops held in Penang, Malaysia, 21-25 August 2000. http://www.inrm.cgiar.org/documents/workshop_2000.htm [31.10.2002]

Johnson, N., N. Lilja and J. A. Ashby. 2000. Using Participatory Research and Gender Analysis in Natural Resource Management: A Preliminary Analysis of the PRGA Inventory. PRGA Working Document No. 10. Cali, Colombia: CIAT.

Probst, K. 2000. Success Factors in Natural Resource Management Research. Dissection of a Complex Discourse. In: Lilja, N., J.A. Ashby and L. Sperling. (eds). Assessing the Impact of Participatory Research and Gender Analysis. CGIAR Program on Participatory Research and Gender Analysis. Cali, Colombia: CIAT.

Probst, K. and J. Hagmann with contributions from Fernandez, M. and J. A. Ashby. 2003. Understanding Participatory Research in the Context of Natural Resource Management--Paradigms, Approaches and Typologies. ODI-AGREN Network Paper No. 130. http://www.odi.org.uk/agren/

TAC. 1997. Priorities and Strategies for Soil and Water Aspects of Natural Resources Management Research in the CGIAR (AGR/TAC:IAR/96/2.1). Rome: TAC Secretariat, FAO.

Contributed by:
Kirsten Probst and JÜrgen Hagmann
with inputs from
Maria Fernandez and Jacqueline A. Ashby
Email: JHagmann@aol.com

Document(s) 29 of 34

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