University of Georgia, United States, and Universities/NGOs, Ecuador
Submitted By:
Robert Rhoades
Contact Person: Robert E. Rhoades
Contact Email:
Country: Ecuador
Project Description: The SANREM-Andes Project is an interdisciplinary, participatory project involving U.S. universities (University of Georgia, Auburn University, Iowa State, and Ohio State) in collaboration with Ecuadorian universities and NGOs. The purpose of the research project is to seek principles of and solutions for sustainability at the mountain landscape scale. The project works in the Cotacachi region of Northern Ecuador with 43 indigenous communities. Themes of the research involve soils, water, biodiversity and societal dynamics. A recent emphasis is on climate change and its impacts on society. Research has been funded by USAID over the past 5 years.
Project Website: http://www.oired.vt.edu/sanremcrsp/
Project Publication:
| Paper: |
Rhoades, Robert E. 1998. "Participatory Watershed Research and Management: Where the Shadow Falls." Gatekeeper Series No. 81. London: Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Livelihoods (SARL) Programme, International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED).
The participatory, integrated watershed project has burst upon the development scene over the past years as a holistic way to address many of the agricultural and natural resource challenges raised in Agenda 21. As a result, dozens of people-oriented research and development projects have been implemented throughout the world which aim to look at multi-objective, diverse stakeholder issues within the contexts of multiple scale settings (e.g., watersheds, catchments, landscapes, river basins). Concerns of conventional watershed projects are addressed with a participatory component which assigns equal weight to people's perceptions and needs along with hydrological and other biophysical processes. However, despite the powerful logic behind such an approach, there is some concern that the rhetoric is not living up to practical accomplishments. There are few published impact studies or honest appraisals detailing if the participatory watershed approach actually works. This paper, while arguing in favour of the new paradigm, makes an argument that now is the time to address potential pitfalls in the conceptualisation and operationalisation of such projects. Eight such 'landmines' are listed and discussed:
- Scale confusion and scale wars
- The participatory methodology fetish
- Social underdesign of projects
- Re-invent the wheel syndrome
- Great expectations
- Tragedy of the
- participatory commons
- Duplicating management structures
- Stakeholder complexity and competition
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Online Project Publication(s) http://www.iied.org/docs/gatekeep/GK81.pdf
This Network Project is classified within these Core Themes:
Agriculture
Biodiversity and Ecosystem Management
Complex adaptive systems
Connecting the ecological, economic, and social
Driving forces relevant to a sustainability transition
Environment
Health and Environment
Impacts and response
Indicators and monitoring
Integrative methods for place-based analysis
Poverty and Hunger
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