Environmental Monitoring, Community Participation and Governance of the Commons: Insights from Nepal

Abstract

"Monitoring changes in habitats and species allows people to alter their management and use of natural and commons resources to ensure sustainability and conservation, particularly if the monitoring involves local people; or does it? My research questions and investigates the process, influence and impact of different forms of environmental monitoring conducted by local resource-users, specifically 'participatory monitoring' involving collaboration with scientists and what I refer to as 'local monitoring' based on local knowledge and practices. It seeks to understand the multiple ways in which local communities may monitor their forest resources and the outcomes; both intended and non-intended, that these may have on socialecological systems. I therefore place monitoring within a wider socio-economic context and draw on the fields of post-modern development theory, political ecology, commons research and work on participation. The on-going research is based on fieldwork in the community forests of Nepal and this paper presents a background to the research, the process and preliminary findings of the fieldwork and plans for data analysis. It is initially clear that monitoring, in both participatory and local forms, is an important part of people's decision-making with regards to use and management of forest resources, both in community forests and on private land. The empirical and theoretical implications of community-based monitoring with regards to equity, knowledge and power have yet to receive critical attention from researchers but will be the focus of my analysis over the next year."