Resources

This paper provides a brief account of a participatory methodology used in the development of land and resource use plans in Tanzania's rift valley. In recent years population pressure has led to increasing land and resource use conflict between the three groups - agriculturalists, pastoralists and hunter-gatherers - who inhabit the area. A participatory approach was used to provide an understanding of the complex issues involved and to build trust and cooperation between the different groups. Mapping, transects, seasonal diagramming, semi-structured and open interviewing were used in the process of involving stakeholder groups in developing land and resource use plans for their village territory.

Aerial photographs were used as the focus for discussions about land use practices in an area of Kenya. Details are given of how the photographs were taken. The photographs helped to reduce spatial biases, such as the tendency for field workers to walk along the contours and along ridges. They also seemed to "confirm what made sense intuitively" in terms of land use options. During household interviews, people seemed happy interpreting the photographs though they were mostly literate and had seen aerial photographs before.

This short paper reports on the use of browse ranking in southern Zimbabwe. Two types of ranking were conducted. First, a simple scoring of a list of all available trees in the area was carried out. The results showed that the livestock owners' rankings tallied closely with quality assessments based on chemical analysis. Next, a more focused matrix ranking explored a few key species against a range of criteria. In terms of overall preference, early shooting was the most important criterion, followed by the importance of dry leaves as fodder. The paper concludes that ranking exercises can provide high quality information quickly and effectively, and can therefore be useful planning tools for helping to design fodder improvement programmes with herd owners.

The methodology recommended by this document builds on rapid rural appraisal techniques. The author develops a framework for more effective analysis and design of community forestry activities. First, the framework analyses tenure issues within three broad tenure types: the holding, the commons, and the forest reserve. Second it examines, from the point of view of the household, the opportunities for tree planting and use under each of these three tenure systems. While it is recognised that there are obvious limits to the use of the rapid appraisal methodology, it should be possible to significantly reduce related design problems in projects through the procedures suggested in the publication. The author's knowledge of a forestry project in the Arusha region of Tanzania provides examples.

In 2013, a group of young Karimojong set out to explore land, peace and customary law in Karamoja.  This book presents their finding on how decisions are made internally between Karimojong and between Karimojong and government on these subjects. 

This report is based on the work of the group (SHAS), in Guinea Bissau, whose main aim is to improve the quality of the area's physical infrastructures and to develop human resource capacity. PRA methods have been incorporated into this work. Three examples of PRA in practice are given, weed-ranking which indicates land quality and suitability for cultivation, mapping of land distribution - a quick guide to wealth and poverty and the mapping of hydrological features in the area. The report concludes with lessons learnt from these exercises. In each instance farmers were crucial in the process and augmented their own knowledge of the areas and what was happening in them. [Abstract based on mimeo version]

This paper presents a number of methodological innovations on RRA and PRA in the context of food security. It is interesting in the first instance because it reviews work done as a follow-up to a PRA workshop on household data collection for food policy needs. On the method front, there are examples of mapping, diagramming, ranking and how each method feeds into food policy decisions. An increased use of visual methods is highlighted, and the connected increase in participation in and ownership of the research by local people. Along with this is an increasing importance of qualitative data in food policy decisions. The paper also includes an introduction to and comparison of PRA and RRA. It concludes by commenting that an additional advantage of these methods is that they are cost-effective, but that this may bring a linked disadvantage - that PRA methods are used with the intention of "extracting" information.