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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.

This is a follow-up report on the work done by ActionAid to develop Community Based Food Security Monitoring Systems (CBMS) to assist in the timely predictions of impending food shortages. It is envisaged that CBMS's will not only prevent famine but also help build up livelihoods and strengthen long term development processes. This report looks at attempts in Malawi and Kenya to understand more about ways to use the community in the management of their own relief. Field staff were asked to speak to the community and come up with a list of alternative indicators that were particularly meaningful to them. An attempt was made to see if the the unique and detailed ways communities have of understanding and expressing situations of food insecurity could also have predictive value.

Documents a process of community development through PRA, discusses the advantages of the use of PRA, particularly through local community members. The use of a number of techniques are documented, including spatial (maps and transects) and temporal (time and trend lines, seasonal calendars) data as well as numerous ranking excercises. A community action plan was produced, and the methods by which the community began to implement this are given. Attempts to demonstrate that PRA by communities can initiate long term development providing lasting strength and cohesion. A number of illustrations are included.

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.

This article describes 'Development Planning for Real', a new approach for integrating participation into the uban planning process. It has grown out of 'Planning for Real', which is discussed in the article by Tony Gibson in the same issue of RRA Notes. Pilot trials of the approach are being held in a number of countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Early pilot results from Cambodia, Tanzania and Zambia suggest that the approach can be successfully used to generate a community-controlled planning process in both rural and urban contexts, and in a variety of societies and cultures.

This paper argues in favour of moving beyond simple preference ranking in P/RRA as conventional methods produce limited data which is often misinterpreted. While ranking enables participants to define their own criteria for discriminating between items, it does not give an overall preference order because different items may have different weightings, so simple adding up would give misleading results. Asking participants to list items subjectively from best to worst overcomes this but still leaves the difficulty of interpreting the gap between ranks. Another alternative is to ask participants to give points to all the items being considered, so that simply adding up the scores allows different items to be compared. A number of ways to improve scoring are presented and illustrated using examples taken from an assessment of a food-for-work programme in Merti-Jeju district, Ethiopia. The study was carried out with women in villages to investigate food preferences, and help choose appropriate commodities for the programme. Techniques include qualified preference which compares one item to another and 'shopping' which simulates choices between many items with different market values. It is considered that these methods give better quantitative information and provide a useful way to explore real-world preferences in different circumstances.