Document(s) 10 de 15

Introduction: why learn lessons on participatory research?

The word ‘lesson’ can refer to a teaching exercise that is structured to provide facts, skills and information, or to the meaning and awareness that is extracted from an experience. By reflecting on what we are doing and why, we can hope to limit our mistakes and create new ways of seeing, negotiating and resolving problems and opportunities. Lessons are important to the future of participatory research, as the recent critique of participatory development as a ‘tyranny’ shows (Cooke and Kothari, 2001). They call for a critical review of participatory development approaches and research methods – to study the controls on the processes behind ‘participation’ paradigms, and to demonstrate why it should be preserved as an approach. However, even ten years ago, Fals-Borda and Rahman (1991) were also warning of the take-up of participatory methods by agencies as a requirement and new form of control and social engineering, that would bring criticism of the role of participatory research methods. They emphasized the need for reflection to counter such outcomes, going on to stress instead how the importance of participatory research might increase in the future. This is through its demonstration of the complexities and stresses of local joint action in changing social and political conditions, at the same time as showing the changes achievable by people in such joint action – to continue to understand the commitment, understanding and support their ever-changing context might require. Although participatory research may also

provide better ‘knowledge’ for more enlightened action by planners and policy-makers, or create more local civic action, the changes it achieves are part of a more profound self-awareness about the taking of action for change.

This chapter aims to show that this critical review and personal reflection is taking place for participatory research, in both methodological and personal practice, to make it better placed to meet the challenges and critiques of research for transformation in natural resources management (NRM) (see also Hobart, 1994). It illustrates why and how people at the Chatham workshop have continued learning with participatory processes in research supporting development, despite the many stresses in their conduct. Chapter 6 has already reviewed certain key ‘good practices’ from the case studies, emphasizing ‘the field’ as a critical alternative to controlled, narrowly focused pilot trials and models of conventional scientific agricultural research. It showed how to build bridges between different research methodologies, both for better work with stakeholders and new learning possibilities for users of natural resources and for those researching NRM. This chapter brings together lessons from the wider range of practitioners at the Chatham workshop, and the wider field of development-related and action-oriented research they represented. These lessons reflect on why participatory research was being done, why collegiate research was important and difficult, how new frameworks help those involved to rethink the relations between action and knowledge, and what ‘ownership’ means in research terms, going well beyond a ‘restatement of methodologies’ (Biggs and Smith, 1998). It thus looks beyond the ‘learning’ discussion of Chapter 6, to look at the complex questions of action if research is to have real transforming power. Much of the recent effort and critique of participatory research has been about recognition and sharing of different knowledge to enable action to be planned, and giving local people a clearer voice However, there is a wider effort and critique within participatory research – to bring understanding and confrontation of social relations and dynamics into the design of action, beyond just those experienced in knowledge and its synthesis. This chapter tries to look at the impact of these new lessons on action, learning and knowledge as presented at the Chatham workshop.

The chapter begins with a review of the new aspects of participatory research as discussed at the Chatham workshop, and then goes on to look at the benefits of putting agricultural research within a ‘natural resource management’ framework, on how and why agriculture and resources management can be studied together for greater understanding and for better outcomes for livelihoods and ecological stability. The chapter then expands issues of collective action in NRM and stakeholder interaction in groups and forums. Such an issue raises new and fundamental concerns about work with power, stakeholder interests and interfaces between public agencies and local groups in action for change. In its conclusions, the chapter reviews the value of participatory research methods. There are few easy ‘impact’ criteria, as hoped for by some research agencies to justify the use of participatory versus conventional methods (or their joint use). What changes through truly participatory research is outcomes, and the local explanation of realities and an understanding of the opportunities to change them.

This chapter is a personal synthesis of the findings and experiences presented by researchers at the Chatham workshop, whose case studies are summarized in the Annexe of this volume. Box 7.1 gives an overview of the participants at the workshop, and the research approaches presented. The workshop brought together people from the Participatory Research and Gender Analysis (PRGA) initiative of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), with others working in different areas of NRM.

The case study papers presented at the Chatham workshop covered a wide range of issues and contexts of participatory natural resource management research, a broad domain hereafter abbreviated as PNRMR. The PNRMR coverage of methodologies was broader than the specific multidisciplinary research approach developing in the CGIAR. The debate of the Chatham workshop is reviewed here, not as any ‘toolkit’ of research methods and procedures – although methods and frameworks from the case studies are outlined to show innovative ideas and practices from both ‘action’ and ‘applied/strategic’ research contexts. The debate synthesized here has the wider aim of showing how participatory research is conscious of its links with social transformation, and can reflect on this in the very design and management of research, knowledge generation and action.

Changing contexts of participatory research

If participatory research is to stay true to its concern for working with local people, then it should adapt to new contexts and new concerns within local society and its environment, as well as maintaining exploration of new research and communication methods.

Understanding new times and new dynamics in resource management

In addressing innovation in resources management strategies, the PNRMR case studies emphasized the people, institutions and technologies (and their interrelation) involved in managing resources and in shaping access to them. A discussion paper by Hecht (1999), circulated at the workshop, emphasized how

new concerns about livelihoods and food security have to be better linked with understanding not only of the environment, but also of policies for management and capacity for action, a concern also recognized more widely by the CGIAR (Vosti and Reardon, 1997; Scherr et al, 1995). New forces of change include widespread state disengagement from agricultural support with increased reliance of local and private sector initiatives, greater awareness of life options and life choices by people, greater uncertainties about globalization, and new concerns about environmental changes through population growth, urbanization and possible climate change.

The case studies are reviewed throughout this chapter for illustrations of the changes in working methods, communication and focus undertaken to meet these new contexts.

A key change highlighted in almost all case studies, and earlier in Chapters 2 and 3, is a shift in research from not seeing women at all, or seeing women as an excluded sector, to seeing them as important local managers, especially in biodiversity management. Several case studies emphasize how women’s activities, and the impacts of change on them, must be made part of wider policy studies on rural development. Gurung’s case study, in this volume, on the importance of biodiversity for agriculture in Nepal, demanded a critical

consciousness of how women’s knowledge in production has been transformed by new crops and technologies. These changes can compromise women – and we must recognize such stresses if we are to promote rural development in areas where women play critical roles in production and resource management. We also need better identification of the strategies adopted by women to counteract their often increasing marginality. Van Koppen’s case study, in this volume, on transformation in irrigation management and water rights in South Africa (see Box 7.5) showed how scenario studies of links between water allocation and economic change could – and should – be developed to show the impact of certain scenarios on women.

However, some case studies showed how it is still frequently difficult to reach women, and a commitment to do so requires alternative thinking on ways of communication that can penetrate their often constrained lives. Nelson’s case study, in this volume, on working with potato blight in the Andes (see Box 7.4) notes that the requirements of many programmes for change in participation levels are too demanding for women, so that it has been difficult to get women into farmer field schools. An alternative approach was to try different strategies to reach the women, for example through attempts to emphasize health issues in pesticide use, and raise their awareness of the role of microbes in family, animal and plant health.

Methods: collegiate design and the self-awareness of scientists

One clear area of change relevant to this discussion was a movement beyond the simple mapping of local knowledge and comparison of ideas, to ‘collegiate design’, based on shared knowledge, and serious mutual thinking about the design of research projects and new resource management options. This is not a new issue in participatory research, but it is clearly beginning to be given much more attention in both applied research and action research contexts. Collegiate design is one term from within agricultural research and development (ARD) to describe a process that involves mutual communication and negotiation in shaping new technologies and institutions for NRM. Another term is ‘dialogical research’ (Fals-Borda and Rahman, 1991), which refers to situations where information is compiled and exchanged through discussion and other media, and not just via experiments, and where priorities and the design of work are developed not only by different groups but also in various forums.

Greater contact with farmers and resource users has opened new ways of seeing and grouping farmers, and of understanding their roles in resource management. Groups are often differentiated along gender, class and ethnic lines, as well as by their agrarian conditions. They are no longer either the beneficiaries of development, or the recalcitrant avoiders of technology. People are seen as stakeholders – those with a stake or claim in resource use (see Ramirez, 2000). The study of their interaction requires understanding of differences of opinion, disagreement and conflict, and scope for consensus building. This moves the review of stakeholder dynamics beyond the description of interaction and differences in knowledge and concern that were once common in agricultural research. This challenge is discussed further in a later section of this chapter.

Collegiate debate in such differentiated contexts requires much more effort at mutual understanding. It requires constant self-evaluation and self-learning by scientists about their approach to people as well as on the method used and the knowledge learned. However, the importance and difficulty of critical self-learning by scientists and its costs were mentioned by some of the case studies, as summarized in Box 7.2. The capacity to confront a research programme and change it to ensure it meets farmers’ needs was only systematically mentioned in a few studies. However, this may yet be one of the key facets of a truly PNRMR approach.

One common finding in many community-/group-based research initiatives was the more limited possibilities for data collection. Very often it was found that local people did not consider it necessary to collect a lot of detailed information – often because they can see the benefits without having to collect supporting evidence. Thus many projects had to employ literate monitors to meet the external needs of monitoring and scientific data collection. However, the problem of users telling you what you want to hear – a problem in many local monitoring activities – was not mentioned in any of the case studies. Perhaps the reality of contact in PNRMR will allow problems to be more visible, and this does build a new kind of trust for local action.

Communication: participatory action research and learning with local eyes

The case studies demonstrate the serious attention given to what Fals-Borda (1991) saw as the four critical levels of communication in participatory action research practice:

1. Collective or ‘dialogical’ research, where information is provided through many means and types of group debate, which can not only be objectively verified but also create socially validated knowledge on which a group can subsequently base its actions.
2. Critical recovery of history, which includes local knowledge and recognition of roles, rights, relationships and associations that shapes people’s involvement in their environment.
3. Valuing and applying folk culture, to recognize knowledge, capabilities and core values, and appreciate cultural and ethnic elements, through many forms of expression besides conversation – music, drama, sports, story telling and others.
4. Production and diffusion of new knowledge, which aims to reach different kinds of people in groups, and can use many other media besides the written word.

Box 7.4 summarizes how three of the case studies took up these issues of communication, not only to understand and respond to farmers’ knowledge but also to extend it across and back into groups through various means.

A new focus: beyond livelihoods to new resource access and social justice

The issue of rights to use resources remains a key issue, now being fought on new platforms that focus much more clearly on group identity and social justice, and the search for new access and usage rights. The new global forces of privatization and resource scarcity put an intense ‘double squeeze’ on the poor and excluded. There has been long-standing criticism of the failure of conventional agricultural research to work with the poorest and most vulnerable groups of society. As has been noted in the discussion paper for the workshop by Hecht (1999), in Chapter 2 of this volume and in Vosti and Reardon (1997), agricultural research must now face up to a new mandate for poverty alleviation, and not just agricultural intensification. The workshop case studies showed how

several initiatives have shifted the debate from one of advocacy for the excluded, to a more serious commitment to building resilience and local knowledge. A reduction in exclusion is not just an ideological political platform, but a sincere new focus on taking local knowledge seriously, with a commitment to build local rights and respect for previously marginalized groups through the knowledge they have of resources. The new empowerment focus is not simply about rights – it is also about holding onto heritage and knowledge at the local level. This is aptly described by Gurung’s case study, in this volume, on the eastern Himalayan initiative on gender, ethnicity and agrodiversity management. This study emphasizes the extent of women’s knowledge of biodiversity, and the need to use this knowledge and awareness to build social legitimacy and identity as a vital asset in areas where agriculture is increasingly dependent on women. The case study by Klemick and Jarvis, in this volume(see Box 7.4) also demonstrates this emphasis on the biodiversity heritage as a new platform for action. The new interest in understanding societal dimensions of resource management – and understanding divisions on gender, ethnic and class divisions rather than just land tenure or employment type – have also opened a new discussion about stakeholder analysis and working with different groups. This was most clear in the case studies on water access by van Koppen, Conroy and Rangnekar, and Vincent and Khanal, all in this volume, as described in Box 7.5. No longer is it just the socioeconomic dimensions of production in interdisciplinary research that are analysed – instead a range of societal dynamics and relations come under scrutiny. Rather than just relying on ‘scientific’ assessments of problems, scientific knowledge and methods also become tools for validating farmers’ knowledge and action and understanding their performance.

These kinds of support for ‘rights’ of use and recognition of management capability remain rare, and until recently were the focus of localized NGO initiatives in small water projects. In India, some NGOs strive for more equal access to water that maximizes biomass rather than profit for greater local livelihood security (Datye et al, 2000). However, there is now a move for action at a national level in the systematic fight for the legal rights of excluded groups–as shown both by the South African case study of van Koppen in this volume (see Box 7.5), and other fights by indigenistas for water rights in Ecuador (Pacari, 1998). Negotiating collectively for rights is another new face of the empowerment struggle.

However, despite the clear importance of these issues for land and water resources, few other case studies clearly address the issues of justice and equity in resource allocation, although several address the issue of scarcity in biophysical terms. The difficulty that scientists encounter in facing up to the political dimensions of resource use is discussed further in a later section.

PNRMR: why put agriculture into a resource perspective?

Jim Williams’ case study, in this volume, noted how the PNRMR debate is helping in ‘mainstreaming the environment’ within the sustainable livelihoods approach. We not only learn to see the environment alongside many institutional and livelihood issues. We also learn the complexities of environmental interactions, in which individual technologies or natural resources may be under special focus. PNRMR is concerned with how individuals and communities perceive themselves, and hence act in relation to their wider environment, and also with the environmental externalities of natural resource management. The older focus on production becomes part of a much bigger picture of regional/resource – landscape management – and there are new stakeholders to consider beyond the bounds of the farm, the market and the research programme. Several of the case studies presented summed up a new ethos of concern to increase land/resource productivity sustainably – and not just to seek technology transfer or land intensification. This brings a greater consciousness of time and space into the analysis of production and resource use, and also into the role of technology in controlling resource availability, the two issues reviewed in this section. Issues of governance, negotiation and conflict resolution underpin all these issues, discussed further in a later section.

Space and environmental complexity: landscape and social dynamics

Several case studies explored new spatial frameworks for research, in order to investigate ‘landscape scales’ as projects moved beyond the farm or community. Another innovation was to work with the idea of the landscape as a mosaic, which was made up of different action areas of people, and not just different

biophysical elements. Although this ‘mosaic’ idea is becoming more common as a rural planning concept, as mentioned by Hecht (1999) and Moench et al (1999), it was not always easy to operationalize from a governance perspective. Landscape ecology is a mature academic domain, but a new grassroots emphasis on local governance by local groups brings new requirements to the understanding of social control across these landscapes. The case studies showed a variety of experimentation, with new conceptual and practical frameworks to design research, as summarized in Box 7.6. With the new interest in ‘landscape scales’ came a clear recognition that many habitats have multiple and sometimes conflicting users, as well as multiple uses. NRM involved nonresident as well as resident users. Many case studies also emphasized the use of more integrating tools, such as resource flow maps, resource endowment ranking and livelihood problem trees.

However, there remain some challenges in the ‘landscape’ approach. Technology and production systems using natural resources create other domains of interaction beyond the farm/village or watershed, that require analysis of other systems within a resource management domain – irrigation systems within a river basin are one example. Vincent and Khanal, in their case study from Nepal (in this volume, see Box 7.7), explored an interdisciplinary ‘socio-technical’ framework for looking at irrigation systems, whose operation and use both shapes and is shaped by the larger hydrological cycle and river basin dynamics. Agricultural research for new technology is increasingly located in rural environments facing new, contingent and seriously challenging politics in which it is difficult to bring conventional approaches to induced technological change. Work has to be steered by political and social realities and is often less amenable to standard scientific research design and evaluation methodologies. Yet trying to work with these realities has created powerful fields of learning on participatory methods of studying NRM, the production systems using them, and how people innovate in both.

Jim Williams, in his case study, noted how participatory research tends to be ‘local and spotty’ and community horizons tend to be foreshortened. He made a case for GIS as a way of ‘scaling up’ around these problems. He also critically reviewed the role of different levels of information technology in providing information, and providing a negotiating tool to communities. GIS-level tools can integrate a lot of information but are expensive, and clear thought has to go into seeing how they benefit communities, rather than just the researcher. Both his review on information tools, and the case study of Schreier on Nepal, in this volume, specifically address the potential political role that information tools – especially GIS – can play in providing new information to local users (and to the state). Both Williams and Schreier convincingly discuss how these new tools can build community-based NRM, improve communication and help build local action and democracy for a wider sphere of livelihood opportunities and civil society development. However, Williams noted how the information tools used may expose hidden issues but not enable their resolution. As with participatory rural appraisal (PRA), irresponsible application may do more damage than good. However, while information technology (IT) tools may empower the researcher and agency more than the community, this is still not sufficient argument to withhold these ‘potentially democratizing’ tools from community use. A key issue is how to keep them participatory and not let them be used for policing, or precipitating conflict.

Time, resource complexity and technology: systems in evolution and interaction

PNRMR continues to question the whole idea of linear technology transfer central to much earlier agricultural research. However, the Chatham case studies illustrate the greater interest on how technologies intertwine, and also how communities actually adapt, internalize, reinvent and generally ‘creolize’ technologies so they work in a particular location (Richards, 1996). Thus they create not just specialist ‘local adaptations’ of a standard technology, but vibrant

new things that have value and commercial potential in a range of local resource domains. The research community is showing more signs of recognizing this local creativity, rather than just looking to research and invent ‘on behalf of the people’ and disseminate new technologies. Indeed, participatory processes can help to bring this creativity about, through a reference to local knowledge, and especially by allowing local trials and an evaluation of technologies, with serious and non-judgemental commitment feedback by researchers. These are also helped by some of the new research design frameworks discussed in a later section.

The case studies not only emphasized the importance of understanding the history of people’s use and rights when looking at NRM, they also emphasized a new commitment to the long term in building up links with farmers, and building real benchmark studies of change. The new frameworks, integrating agriculture and resource use, improve the focus on linkages between resources, technology and products that shape their value. They also give greater attention to time as a factor that shapes outcomes.

The conscious decision to put agriculture and NRM together, also with a greater consciousness of livelihoods, landscapes and habitats raised some new opportunities for looking at technology. Some new perspectives in the case studies emphasized the evolution of, and interaction between, technologies over time and space locally. There was also much greater attention paid to the operational aspects of technology – how to make it work effectively and for the long term. Examples include:

• Seeing the effects of technologies together, and their evolution over time. The case study of Conroy and Rangnekar looked at feed scarcity and water scarcity as inter-related problems. How and where technologies ‘touch together’ was also considered in the case study by Tutwiler on long-term trials of water use, soil fertility and cultivation practices in irrigated areas of Egypt. This looked at soil fertility as an outcome of soil, water and production choices, with the long-term trials allowing for holistic study over time. The case study was thus focusing on water management and soil fertility, and also relationships between them. Research looked at both the maintenance of fertility in the ‘old lands’ and the building up of soil fertility (‘new lands’) under irrigation. The aim was to look at sustainable crop sequence choices, which required a minimum of 12 years study. Although the research was still managed by professional researchers, the monitoring team included local farming organizations, extension staff and participating farmers.
• The ‘long-term’ view also meant thinking more about cycles of production and local self-sufficiency. Peters’ case study on forage improvement in Honduras involved a programme that was thinking about seed replication by farmers locally and not only about the adoption of best species or best practices. Her study showed how farmers and researchers were considering the sustainability of seed supply locally, and not just taking up the offer of new varieties. The programme left farmers free to choose and explore mixes
  
  of grasses and legumes – the former are natural for pastures and soil conservation, but the latter are also useful for cutting and carrying, and can improve fertility. The initiative is designed to help farmers recognize the combination of forage options available, and to build trust and mutual learning to test more complex and risky alternatives in forage species.
• Nelson’s case study of potato blight also emphasized how technology needs changes, and should be seen against problems of evolution – of disease, of migrations of more resistant forms, and of different social options for controlling diseases in different places. Pounds’ case study of efforts to control potato blight in Nepal (see Box 7.8) reinforces the need to work within the power of local social networks. The demand for technology is never static.
• Technology still has to be financially viable in terms of construction, management and environmental costs. Conroy and Rangnekar, in their case study, describe a project appraisal that conventionally looks at a benefit–cost ratio, also considers benefits to different stakeholders and to the environment. When some potentially negative environmental impacts were identified by the researchers, these were discussed locally. The livestock-keepers and well-owner decided themselves these negative outcomes were unlikely to happen and that they would be able to manage any such consequences. Similarly, the case study of Vincent and Khanal, looked at the requirements for keeping water supply systems operational, rather than simply looking at the technology as a set of components to be disseminated or installed.

Participatory technology development also remains a key commitment – and there is much more serious commitment required in thinking about the institutional needs and management skills that go with the introduction of new technology, and concern for better evaluative criteria. Nevertheless, a small number of the case studies paid a great deal of attention to the real challenge of participatory design of infrastructural technology on the larger scale. Here the difficulties of understanding local wants, negotiating options and bringing them into being often takes participatory action research into a new order of difficulty, requiring a reflection on the whole project and not just on local action. The case study of Vincent and Khanal, in this volume, considered some of these difficulties, as summarized in Box 7.7.

One of the challenges of a PNRMR methodology is that it has not yet moved very far beyond the small-scale technologies that can be tested by individuals and small, local groups. ‘Local priorities’ are rarely universal, and finding consensus is often difficult, although not impossible. When compromise occurs in order to get something built, it can strain relations even between very open and committed workers and local representatives. To continue work in the context of sensitive social relations is one of the core challenges of participatory technology development.

Building new interfaces for NRM

The engagement of PNRMR with these issues of local self-determination, with space and time in resource management and technology evolution, also means engagement with a much wider range of stakeholders and policy actors, raising new questions of scale. Political changes at the local and national level change the interfaces where contact can take place between different groups, and many resource users actively take up new platforms and new ‘windows’ to empower themselves.

If PNRMR has its roots in challenges to the neutrality of technology, and demands for a better understanding of farming systems and micro environments, then it is now taking the same challenge through demands for better prospects for new collective action. PNRMR allows a focus on resource use that brings in a wider and very different range of stakeholders than conventional agricultural research. It also has to link clearly with law and politics as well as planning and development policies. Several case studies commented that, while groups are often a central part of new participatory action, it is important too that researchers and facilitators understand the challenges as well as opportunities in building group action. Also, building ‘social capital’ in new networks and groups may be neither easy nor always as democratic as participatory rhetoric assumes (see also Cooke, 2001).

The case studies also gave recognition to how local interests drive and shape local change, and not just ‘external institutional agendas’. Gurung’s case study, in this volume, illustrated that there are communities consciously wanting to build on local knowledge for survival, and that require understanding of how production strategies are linked into culture (see also Mosse, 1997; Parajuli, 1998). However, community action may not solve the ‘problems’ perceived by agencies.

Shaping facilitation: linking people and linking activities

In her case study, in this volume, of change processes on the management of a Ugandan wetland now largely converted for rice production, Borrini discusses some of the stages suggested for motivating local action for participatory management. These are:

• Preparing the partnership.
• Developing the agreements.
• Implementing and reviewing (learning by doing).

In the first phase, discussion is promoted by the community – on present use and management experience with wetlands, and options for improvement. Local ‘important people’ are pulled in (elders, traditional authorities and landowners). Awareness will increase, and different groups will work out interests and concerns, and organize how to communicate. After ‘ritualization of the common vision’, it takes time to negotiate a management plan and develop basic rules for extracting resources, with different stakeholders striving for consensus. Borrini proposes the idea of a ‘pluralistic management committee’ of different people and interests, to guide implementation, which should be taken up as a way of ‘learning by doing’.

Through researcher commitment, local needs can also be the starting point for R&D otherwise defined in external terms. Brinn’s case study, in this volume, of a programme to facilitate better tsetse fly control in Zambia, describes how such commitment created a ‘demand and support model’ approach to land use planning, rather than the conventional ‘suitability and enforcement’ approach. This involved a bottom-up discussion of local needs, and of how to do things

in places where there is demonstrated hostility towards ‘government planning’. Brinn describes a phased approach:

• Phase 1, which identified livelihood projects rather than an immediate focus on tsetse control (and related land use planning) to build local support and local coordination. The individual projects were likened to pieces of a mosaic. The projects have individual integrity and ownership but when placed together they constitute a de facto plan (with the idea that external objectives for a plan must link with local wants).
• Phase 2 consisted of building up projects into the plan drawn up at Phase 1.
• Only Phase 3 of the project addressed issues of land use planning such as communal grazing resources, boundaries, procedures for arbitration, etc. Then the initiative could use trust, understanding and confidence built up during the earlier phases.
• Phase 4 re-linked with community needs, supporting community infrastructure provision.

However, Brinn’s case study gives a more prosaic view of some of the stresses involved in working with locally constituted committees. He highlights the many advantages of innovative, locally driven, low-cost and sustainable initiatives. He also warns of the risks of unpredictability, slowness, vulnerability to nepotism, and the challenges of too limited control and ‘lack of glamour’ for researchers and agencies.

Garrity’s case study, in this volume, echoes some of these views, stressing the need to think about survival and ‘generational change’ in local Landcare groups in the Philippines, to ensure they stayed active and responsive to new ideas and opportunities (see also Box 7.8). These case studies are helpful for getting researchers to think about their commitment – and where it may work. They also serve to show that locally triggered change is feasible, and the rewards of locally managed transformation when it is positive.

Building new interfaces for stakeholders in organizations and practices

The new focus on institutions and ways of communication to exchange knowledge and build awareness brought some powerful insights on the complexity and scale of interactions to be addressed, and new ideas on interfaces. Several of the case studies dealt primarily with the interface of farmer–researcher–research institutes, and this has been adequately dealt with in Chapter 5. This section deals with the wider issue of stakeholder network–research organization interactions, that shape outcomes of both research, and resource user’s actions. Some key experiences from the case studies are summarized in Box 7.8, although other examples are also found in Boxes 7.4 and 7.7.

There was a great deal of interest in field techniques that gave physical recognition to the value of local knowledge, and in attempts to bring local knowledge and scientific knowledge together, with some examples shown in

Box 7.9. These cases demonstrated ideas on how to rethink the design and layout of experiments, and the spatial scale for studying resource–livelihood interaction, as well as the interaction of local and scientific knowledge.

Politics and policy-making – the last struggle for participatory research?

Any intervention in local resource management requires an understanding of politics. Politics can be about the struggle for change, or about the pursuit and exertion of power, but it can also be about understanding ways to get things done. Local social and agrarian relations are key factors shaping politics and the contest for resource use. National policies, transformed into new institutions, also shape these possibilities for struggle, for power, and for new strategies of action to emerge. Scherr et al (1995) emphasized the gap in policy research methods to provide insights for change in local organization in NRM, especially to show how and why local organizations are influenced by wider policy actions. They used ‘policy factors’ to open up a wide range of issues affecting the behaviour of a group. These included not only sectoral policies and their instruments of control, but also legal and institutional factors that shaped organizational dynamics, and political factors that might influence the strength of local organizations and their capabilities for action. Scherr et al felt that the debate about participatory research methods could make a contribution towards this critical area of policy research.

Several of the case studies begin to discuss this policy context. Stroud’s case study of the PAM (Participatory Agroecosystem Management) approach in the African Highlands also strives for a much more comprehensive rethink of research design. She sees the need to bring in different kinds of research partnerships, as well as different types of knowledge development for different stakeholders, rather than mapping multiple stakeholders or uses in resource management. The PAM approach emphasizes thinking about the interactions of major elements, including socioeconomic and policy environments, the need for multi-partner and multidisciplinary field work, the use of participatory methods and the use of integrated community action plans where ‘learning by doing’ is emphasized. The case studies, both in this volume, by Barbara van Koppen (Box 7.5), and Klemick and Jarvis (Box 7.3), also discuss the importance of policy initiatives, including effective central activity to match local initiatives, and decision tools to explore future options for excluded and marginalized groups.

However, only a few of the case studies specifically address the more complex politics that can come into play around transformation in NRM, even when developed in a participatory way. Pound’s case study from Nepal (see Box 7.8) on the variable success of communities trying to adopt stringent measures to eliminate potato wilt, offer some insights into local committees and the factors that make them strong or weak in designing and enforcing rules. Vincent and Khanal’s case study, in this volume, on irrigation management reform in Nepal (see Box 7.7) documented some of the problems facing both organizations and programme researchers involved in a project for institutional reform of irrigation management. They presented a framework for

understanding how interactions to transform water management will involve many different actors in different domains of an irrigation system and in a project hierarchy. Conroy and Rangnekar (case study, in this volume) worked specifically to understand the needs of groups and how to negotiate improved water supply for livestock between groups with very unequal power relations (Box 7.4).

Surprisingly, there were no case studies on participatory research to drive reform within public agencies supporting NRM, although concern for this is not new (Bagadion and Korten, 1985). Why is this? Sometimes it does seem that while PRGA and PNRMR are very good at promoting a community and group focus, they are rather silent on the politics of intervention and of bureaucracies. The new focus on and commitment to local collective action sometimes seems to make researchers ignore the apparatus of the state and its bureaucracies and political institutions. They are, therefore, sometimes silent on the wider social and political factors that can make collaborative research and project intervention work. Perhaps for agricultural researchers it is still very difficult to research and critique the ‘policy environment’ when this includes the mandate of the major international research and development agencies that funds them. Social science research in the CGIAR is widening, there is more inclusion of actor and stakeholder perspectives, and PRGA is strongly promoting multidisciplinary approaches. However, it continues to be a struggle to introduce new concepts from political and institutional analysis, and cross-reference to theories that can analyse the real social relations shaping the dynamics of change.

Conclusions

Returning to the beginning of the chapter and Box 7.1, the research debate was clearly moving participatory research towards new concerns in NRM. There was a fresh effort to understand technological complexity and local action in order to achieve more sustainable NRM. Many researchers were becoming more aware of their responsibilities in applied and action research for development with local people. An understanding of people’s options and choices to preserve or change natural resource management, and how to facilitate this awareness, was growing. Thus the Chatham workshop demonstrated a significant amount of progress towards the development of a critical concern in participatory research – to recognize and bring together local and external knowledge, and make local needs a key element of concern.

Work on participatory action still has dilemmas and struggles within it. However, the Chatham workshop showed that there was an acceptance of the need to discuss this. Coverage of this topic was present in a serious discussion about collective action and group dynamics, and in a further discussion of participation and policy. A consideration of methods demonstrated a new understanding of how knowledge was part of, derived from, and linked with action – and not just a linear precursor to action in planned change. Awareness and understanding of the stresses in building local management groups and

facilitating networks among politicians and planners was developing. Methodologies such as those identifying actors in local management and stakeholders in the transformation of resource use help to discover who may be involved in initiating change. However, researchers and facilitators are still learning about the support strategies that may help projects, long-term research trials and new local user groups to survive and evolve in the long term. PNRMR gives a new collective dimension to working with local people, but there are no easy blueprints against the stresses of forming and supporting groups. The challenge remains for PNRMR to consider how to facilitate and work with the group formations that are able to actualize change. Many of the case studies discussed this concern, and this consciousness of institutions and dynamic social relations is one important way in which NRM is now turning its attention to the ‘social’ dimension.

Action research in the context of governance reform and social justice was visible in some work, especially those working with water issues. However, a critical area remains that of research into wider policy initiatives for transforming natural resource management – to understand more about the stresses of interactions between actors at many levels, the uncertainties local people face from their wider social environment, and how to build new policies in the face of them. Some case studies presented new methods of local decision-making. However, no case study gave any detailed analysis of how the governance of resources could be renegotiated beyond the local level. An understanding of politics and how it is enmeshed in NRM, and a critical awareness of the wider societal dynamics in collective action, does remain one of the critical areas of future debate in PNRMR.

The case studies therefore showed that participatory research for development policy and action can also be done with a wider consciousness of the stresses and uncertainties that transformation involves. There was very strong evidence of researchers not allowing participation to be tyrannical, with a high level of self-criticism of own practice. More seriously, these researchers still had to fight the older misconceptions of past non-participatory research methods – of assuming technology is neutral, that problems are capable of technological fixes, that there is no differentiation in uptake and response to new options, and that scientifically defined data collection methods can provide all the data necessary for planning change.

This, then, is the first potential ‘value’ of participatory research methods, especially in the applied research areas of agriculture and NRM. If the results presented at Chatham are taken on board by planners and programme makers, then the use of participatory methods should lessen the likelihood of promoting inappropriate technologies or ideologically determined institutions for the management of natural resources. Examples from the case studies in this volume that already demonstrate this value include the ‘mother–baby trials’ to help farmers chose the experiments of interest to them. Also, Heong’s participatory experimentation did lead to a reduction in unnecessary pesticide use by farmers. The challenge, of course, is contained within this ‘if’ – that higher-level policy and decision-making in development and applied research agencies take the results on board.

The second potential ‘value’ of participatory research, especially in an action research context for better resource management, is the way it can transform local knowledge, self-awareness and power to guide action. This power is shown in the work on the CIAL documented by Vernooy and Braun et al and in change in the Uganda wetlands documented by Borrini in her study on feed and water shortages for livestock herders who were helped to locate new water points and negotiate institutions for their long-term use by different groups. The programme reported by Vincent and Khanal gave villagers some new, more easily controlled irrigation structures where they wanted them, even though the construction quality was sometimes lacking. Such participatory research starts to reduce the ‘transaction costs’ that might be paralysing the search for new resource management options. However, although participatory research may show how to make management and use of resources easier – with less stress on people – it may not make people use their resources more efficiently or sustainably in the short term. It may be a long time before people achieve real change with a ‘visible’ impact, simply because wider conditions inhibit risk taking. However, many micro shifts may be visible in how people interact and develop local coping strategies.

The biggest ‘value’ is the change that may come in what people learn about themselves, the people they work with, and their capacity for action if they wish it. This, of course, refers to researchers as well as local people, who may both gain new understanding, and build new capacities for local people, researchers and policy-makers to work together.

Thus, this workshop gave some answers for those hoping to legitimize participatory methods by showing that they will create a better ‘impact’, or that new criteria for impact monitoring might be generated. However, most of the case studies were more concerned with exchanging ideas about the process of participatory work, and the development of interdisciplinary approaches. Too great a focus on ‘impact’ and change – both key concerns of a technology transfer mode of thinking – is to miss the most substantive concerns of researchers using participatory methods, which is to create an awareness of sustainable actions for change in local people. What changes through truly participatory research is the chance of better outcomes, and the local explanation of realities and opportunities to change them.

The Chatham workshop brought different groups of researchers together to exchange their experiences. It used the title ‘Research f(or) Development’ to explore differences in research approaches and in the concerns of different researcher groups, but also to see how each can learn from the other about knowledge generation and social processes for working with rural transformation. Different researchers did show some differences in objectives and concerns. For some, the key focus was still on knowledge generation. CGIAR researchers (and some others) aticulated the fact that they are generally expected to contribute to ‘producing generalizable results’, which McDougall et al (case study, in this volume) note as a challenge in PAR. The ‘specialist’ scientific culture, which comes with pressure to publish, places certain constraints on researchers in terms of requirements to collect data in forms suited to statistical analysis and other accepted means of analysis and

verification. However, part of the strength of the workshop, and chapters in this book, was to show how different knowledge generation methods need not compromise each other. Researchers associated with rural development initiatives, NGOs or academic researchers may face fewer institutional conflicts in pursuing PNRMR. However, they may still be more concerned than their local partners with obtaining defendable ‘valid’ findings and comparative studies. Thus they also need methodological clarity in how they use different approaches to gain knowledge for communication. In some cases, it may appear that formal agricultural research has certain conflicts of interest with development-oriented PNRMR, which may be better able to acknowledge political and social forces. However, sometimes the difference was more apparent than real, especially as both formal agricultural research and development-oriented research are getting more involved in action requested by users.

More seriously, the hybrid knowledge frameworks generated were also recognized as important in showing how, where and why knowledge is used, and action might generate change and new knowledge. This wider concern at Chatham went beyond the discussion of the ‘best knowledge’ debate, into a discussion on working with people for change, and the stresses and potential tyrannies which can come with the use of new ideas and methods. Several of the frameworks discussed in this chapter show new thinking in this area. Thus, the Chatham workshop also showed the value of exchange between CGIAR and other scientists, and between researchers in research institutes and within development projects, to learn, through discussion and analysis, how to change research practice so that the research process moves from a ‘top-down’ process to one which involves natural resource users and others in analysis and decisions about natural resource management. All the workshop participants placed a much stronger emphasis on the processes and methodologies of working with people and of creating a debate on learning capability, not just a toolkit for knowledge generation. This book based on the Chatham workshop may help to publicize and further refine participatory research methodologies. However, this has been done with a clear discussion of the difficulties involved, and not just simplistic advocacy or populism. The debate was about a commitment to work within the social reality of change and public action done in its name, and the natural resources and people that are part of this. No one working in this sphere can really consider older research methods, and development initiatives without a user focus or without a capacity to explore dynamic social contexts, even if further challenges remain for work undertaken as participatory research and development.

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