Participatory research

This sourcebook has two purposes. The first is to provide a selection of evaluation tools and change mechanisms for collaborative groups to consider and use. The second is tostimulate discussion of evaluation and adaptation in collaborative resource management. Collaborative resource management and adaptive management are not new concepts, but experience has not caught up to theory, and there is much to learn from the rapidly evolving efforts underway.

Media File: 

evaluation__adapatation_in_collab_resource_mgmt.pdf

  In the hillsides of Trinidad’s Northern Range, smallholder subsistence farming systems dominate the landscape. Pushed to this frontier by escalating pressure on low-lying agriculture lands from more urban development and a rising population, farmers continue to rely on short-term crops on the steep slopes there.

 Natural resource managers are seeking tools to help them address current and future effects of climate change.

Over the last 10 years, there has been a significant increase in private and public sector interest to explore payments for ecosystem services (PES), in order to assign value to ecosystem services, and thus promote better land use practices. We recently investigated how PES schemes are faring in meeting the goals of safeguarding ecosystem services, while also benefiting local livelihoods.

La Pedrera is a small town located on the Caquetá River in the Colombian Amazon. The town has electricity for only a few hours per day. During that time all the shop owners turn on their TVs and radios. Men, women and children sit on the street to watch TV; as I look around, I see that many of them are currently engrossed in a Japanese soap opera.

While winter around the Chesapeake Bay is known for oysters and striped bass, summertime means blue crabs. If you enjoyed steamed crabs from Maryland this summer, you may have consumed crabs harvested by watermen involved in a ground-breaking test of technology to improve long-term blue crab management.

   The Conservation Catalysts Network (CCN) focuses on universities, colleges and research institutions that are catalyzing large landscape conservation. Our members are pairings of academic and research institutions with conservation initiatives (for example, the pairing of the Harvard Forest and the Wildlands and Woodlands Initiative).

Chandler Clay, 202-572-3312, cclay@edf.org

The skyscraper Qatari capital city of Doha is a far cry from Cecilia Kibe’s home in Turkana district, a remote area in Kenya inhabited by mostly nomadic communities and pastoralists hit hard by the effects of climate change.

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Colorado State University’s Colorado Water Institute (CWI) is spearheading a U.S. Deartment of Agriculture-funded research project on water for agriculture in the Colorado River Basin (CRB).