Resources

The Aga Khan Rural Support Programme supports soil and water conservation work on private land, a priority identified by villagers, as part of a watershed management project. Villagers suggested that monitoring should look at: erosion controlled; land reclaimed; moisture retention in soil (as inferred from crop growth); and productivity and income generation. The article goes through the process of participatory impact monitoring, illustrated by real results. The benefits of such monitoring are listed, most of them related to increased farmer understanding of processes and control over further experimentation.

The article discusses conflict and conflict management in using PRA as a long-term process of local institutional development. It describes factors which prevents practitioners from using PRA as part of a process which recognises and handles conflict. Examples from India illustrate situations where the use of PRA has generated conflict and how it was managed in different institutional contexts. The potentially serious consequences of failing to address conflict is highlighted by an example from Gujerat, India, where conflict generated by a PRA resulted in violence and death.

This film demonstrates a participatory approach to crop research which has been developed by the International Crop Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) in India. It aims to bring researchers closer to farmers through on-farm evaluation of pest-resistant varieties. The approach was developed to overcome the limitations of the transfer of technology approach, which is often innappropriate to the complex, risk-prone agriculture of the semi-arid tropics (07). It recognises that farmers and scientists perform complementary activities, and advocates a decentralised and participatory approach in which scientists perform a facilitating and support role (08). The research was carried out in collaboration with women farmers, who play an important role in maintaining biological diversity. First, the pest problem was diagnosed and the different varieties grown by farmers were analysed (09). In the second stage the characteristics of the farmer's varieties were matched with those of the scientist's pre-release lines. On-farm trials were then conducted in different villages (11). After harvesting the farmers carried out their own evaluation of the genetic material (14). The different varieties were ranked to elicit the farmer's preferences, according to their own criteria (16). The scientists learned that a mosaic of varieties better suit the diverse situations faced by farmers in these complex dryland environments than the uniform introduction of a standard seed (23).

The North Western Dry Zone Participatory Development Project in Sri Lanka attempts to introduce a participatory approach in all stages of programme planning and implementation. This booklet on user's guidelines on PRA techniques has been developed using the recent experience of PRA conducted in the project area. Brief guidelines are given on how to use the following techniques: mapping and modelling, seasonal analysis, wealth ranking, venn diagrams, matrix scoring and ranking, transects, change and trend diagrams, and semi-structured interviews. Participatory village resource management planning is also briefly discussed.

This 10 minute film looks at the use of video in raising awareness of environmental and health issues in the remote Ladakh region in north-east India. It suggests that video is a powerful tool which can be used to enable people to participate in the development process. In 1993 the Ethnographic Audio Visual Archive (EAVA) ran a two-day participatory educational workshop using video with representatives of the six villages in the Markhor valley. The workshop aimed to increase local people's awareness of the fragility of the Ladakhi environment, which is threatened by planned road construction schemes, and to develop measures for its protection (03). The villagers mapped out their locality and made a detailed model of the valley which clearly showed the impact of the road (04). It also highlighted the deforestation that had taken place over time (05). Role-plays were facilitated to enact traditional stories and the video footage was played back in the evenings (06). After the workshops policing committees were formed to prevent further deforestation. The second part of the film focuses on East Ladakh, nomadic herders among whom vitamin deficiency is common (07). A matrix ranking was carried out to identify local ideas on health problems. A simple method was devised of making berry juice rich in vitamin C from a local plant (08). The group discussions about the berries were recorded and played back to those who had not attended the workshops (09). The final part of the video looks at a student video project which investigated the pollution of local streams and the resulting conflict between women and men (09).