Tracking change

Table of contents:

• Tracking change: indicators to assess a moving target - Editorial
  4 - 5
  written by ILEIA editorial team
  Understanding and documenting the conditions which enhance as well as those which limit the expansion of LEISA is a major theme for ILEIA. This requires an understanding of the impact of many conditions which are themselves in constant evolution. Moreover, these conditions are seen differently by different stakeholders. The challenge is therefore very complex as we are faced with many conditions which not only change, but have different meaning to different actors. It is therefore important to focus attention on tracking change. Fortunately, many groups around the world are working on this same theme. NGOs, farmer organisations and research institutes try to define indicators of sustainability that are relevant to their reasons for tracking change. This newsletter contains experiences, success stories and shortcomings in the attempts of different stakeholders. It also gives some examples of cases where farmers, NGOs and researchers tried to find a common language to track change together.
• Escaping the deforestation mythology
  6 - 8
  written by James Fairhead , Melissa Leach
  The landscape of Kissidougou prefecture in the Republic of Guinea is striking. Patches of dense, verdant, semi-deciduous rain forest tower over open expanses of grassy savanna. These islands of forest, in a sea of savanna, are generally round, a kilometre or two in diameter, and conceal villages at their centre. Apart from these islands, dense forest vegetation is found only in narrow strips along streamsides or swampy valley bottoms. This landscape resembles that in many parts of the West African forest-savanna mosaic or 'transition' zone, which stretches along the northern fringe of the forest zone from Sierra Leone eastwards to Nigeria and beyond. In this article the authors show how indicators can lead to a myth if interpreted the wrong way.
• Agreeing on indicators
  9 - 11
  written by Pablo Sidersky
  AS-PTA is a Brazilian NGO working in partnership with farmers, associations, and rural trade unions (STR) of the Northeast, to seek more agro-ecologically and economically sound forms of agricultural development. As can be said of many NGOs, despite the intense and dedicated work of AS-PTA members, there is little systematic, documented evidence on the impact of their efforts. Unfortunately, lack of proof is often interpreted as a lack of success or an absence of evaluation. What to monitor and what indicators to use are among the first steps to be agreed upon in a partnership between farmer organisations and NGOs jointly seeking to track the impact of their work. The following experience tells one story of how to agree on indicators that are meaningful to both farmers and NGOs.
• Assessing sustainability in Burkina Faso
  12 - 13
  written by Kevin McSweeney , Salibo Somé
  People may agree on the characteristics of a sustainable system, yet there is still great variability in the relative importance accorded to the different aspects of sustainability. The different percepctions are the result of the wide range of stakeholders  disciplines, the specific fields of development they work in and their institution s interests. This variation complicates the study of indicators of sustainability. The Sustainable Agriculture and Natural Resource Managment Collaborative Research Support Program (SANREM CRSP) has research established in the following countries: The Philippines, Ecuador, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Morocco, Honduras and Costa Rica. The research focuses on at the watershed level or smaller catchments, without losing sight of broader scale environmental, social and economic influences that affect sustainability at the local level.
• Grassroots indicators: measuring and monitoring environmental change at the local level
  14 - 15
  written by Helen Hambly
  This article describes the importance of local people assessing and monitoring change in their environments. The concept of grassroots indicators is introduced using examples from the author\'s fieldwork as well as studies by researchers from the IDRC-supported Grassroots Indicators Network. Major challenges include finding a common language for farmers and scientists to discuss the patterns of environmental change and plan development activities and finding ways for policy makers to benefit from indigenous knowledge.
• Facilitating a joint analysis of change
  16 - 17
  written by Sabine Guendel
  The traditional slash and burn cropping system in Yucatán, Mexico faces many problems due to changes in the environment. Peasant farmers have a rich vocabulary to talk about these changes. In 1992, Yucatán University carried out a rural appraisal to initiate community-based research projects on alternatives for improving family livelihoods and natural resource management. One of the initial activities was the introduction of two legumes. This article describes how peasants and researchers got together to discuss innovations and monitor and evaluate changes.
• Perceptions of a deteriorated nature
  18 - 19
  written by Elena Lazos Chavero
  Before initiating a development project in the Sierra de Santa Marta in southern Veracruz, the perceptions of environmental transformation and degradation were investigated in two villages of the region. Elena Lazos writes about a comparative study of nahuas and mestizos perceptions in southern Veracruz, Mexico. Instead of presuming an alleged harmonic relation of peasant populations with their natural environment, the researchers tried to analyse the connections between the diversity of environmental perception and the decreasing diversity of the natural habitat.
• Tracking change needs changing tracks: pictures create common ground for dialogue
  20 - 21
  written by Valentina Mazzucato , David Niemeijer
  Our research project analyses processes of technological change in a West African context by studying how soil and water conservation technologies have changed over time and space in four villages in eastern Burkina Faso. Thus, one of our main methodological concerns was how to track change. However, we soon found out that change is not a topic that can be asked about in direct terms if one wants to get beyond the standard answers (less rain, fewer trees, poorer soils, etc.). In this article, the authors explain how making a village picture book created a common ground for discussing change.
• Towards a biodiversity-based productivity framework
  22 - 23
  written by Vandana Shiva
  According to the dominant paradigm of production, diversity goes against productivity, which creates an imperative for uniformity and monocultures. This has generated the paradoxical situation in which modern plant improvement has been based on the destruction of the biodiversity which it uses as raw material. The irony of plant and animal breeding is that it destroys the very building blocks on which the technology depends. Forestry development schemes introduce monocultures of industrial species such as eucalyptus, and push into extinction the diversity of local species which fulfils local needs.
• Farmers fenced out in Tamil Nadu
  24 - 25
  written by T Fatimson , G Keshav Rao
  India has gone through its Green Revolution and is now in the Era of Liberalisation. Agricultural policies have made large-scale monocropping plantations economically attractive to urban investors. Drastic changes have occurred in land use. What it means for small and marginal farm families in dryland tracts in Madurai District, Southern Tamil Nadu, is discussed in this article.
• Integrated soil management: a challenge for farmers and scientists
  28 - 29
  ILEIA\'s Research Programme on ecologically sound ways of farming in different agroecologic and socioeconomic environments started end 1995 (see ILEIA Newsletter December 1995). In one of the first research activities farmers and researchers together looked at the characterization and evaluation of soils of the six pilot areas in Ghana, Peru and Philippines. ILEIA requested three national soil institutions subcontracted by the International Soil Reference and Information Centre (ISRIC), to work in close cooperation with farmers and NGOs in the pilot areas to realize this task. For farmers and scientists to compare and exchange their views and knowledge is the central to this activity. Both farmers and researchers recognised that a soil focus fails to integrate many other parameters. They agreed that capacity building is needed to integrate many different aspects of ecologically sound agriculture at the local level. Local working groups of farmers, NGOs and researchers need to orchestrate this integration of different pieces of the puzzle.
• Organic farming in Northern Ghana
  30 - 30
  written by Hannah Zemp-Tapang
  Part of ILEIA s effort to understand the factors that encourage or constrain ecologically sound farming is to document and learn from existing experiences. Ghanaian journalist Hannah Zemp-Tapang was asked to document experiences in ecological farming in Northern Ghana. This article presents some of her findings. A full report is available from ILEIA on request.