Participatory monitoring
Those involved usually live in communities with considerable social cohesion, where they regularly cooperate on shared projects.
[3] Moreover, scientist-executed monitoring can be logistically and technically difficult and is often perceived to be irrelevant by resource managers and the local communities.
[18] Many of these approaches are directly linked to resource management, but the entities being monitored vary widely, from individual animals and plants,[5][12][19][20][21][22][23] through habitats,[24][25][26][27][28] to ecosystem goods and services.
[3][32] Participatory monitoring is included in the term ’participatory monitoring and management’ which has been defined as "approaches used by local and Indigenous communities, informed by traditional and local knowledge, and, increasingly, by contemporary science, to assess the status of resources and threats on their land and advance sustainable economic opportunities based on the use of natural resources".
[32] term ’participatory monitoring and management’ is particularly used in tropical, Arctic and developing regions, where communities are most often the custodians of valuable biodiversity and extensive natural ecosystems.
[43][44] An international symposium on participatory monitoring was hosted by the Nordic Agency for Development and Ecology and the Zoology Department at Cambridge University in Denmark in April 2004.
[46] In the Arctic, a symposium on data management and local knowledge was hosted by ELOKA and held in Boulder, USA, in November 2011.
Design of the scheme, analysis of the results, and management decisions derived from these analyses are all undertaken by professional scientists funded by external agencies.
This has advantages in terms of low cost of materials and training, simplicity, and reduced potential for technical hitches.
[91] Increasingly, participatory monitoring initiatives incorporate technology, from GPS recorders to georeference the data collected on paper,[92] to drones to survey remote areas,[93] phones to send simple reports via SMS,[94] or smartphones to collect and store data.
[103] However, phones are expensive; are vulnerable to damage and technical issues; necessitate additional training - not least due to rapid technological change; phone charging can be a challenge (especially under thick forest canopies); and uploading data for analysis is difficult in areas without network connections.
[108] For example, monitoring could on the one hand, investigate sensitive social problems within a community, or contested resources at the centre of local conflicts or illegal exploitation - data that community leaders might want to keep confidential and address locally; on the other hand, the same initiative could generate data on forest biomass, of greater interest to external stakeholders.
