Implementing Agency:
Department For International Development (ESRMU)

Managing Institute:
Institute of Development Studies (IDS)

Contractor:
Natural Resources Institute

Project Code: R4765 R4811 708-620-021 708-620-022	Start Date: 01-Feb-92	End Date: 01-Jun-94
Commitment: £242,091	Status: Completed	Type of Funding: Bilateral- TDR

Project Background:
Deforestation and reduction in tree density and their effects on soils and hydrology are major concerns in the forest-savanna transition zone of West Africa. The development and application of agricultural technologies which enable more sustainable natural resource use, such as agroforestry systems, is a priority of the government and of donors working in the area. Local participation in the research and development of these technologies is also a priority to ensure that these are appropriate and workable. In practice, however, combining sustainability and participatory priorities is difficult. Guinea is one of several countries where the perceptions, constraints and opportunities of rural people differ greatly from those of development agencies.

Project Objectives:
In a part of the forest-savanna mosaic in West Africa:

* explain how changing social organisation and indigenous technical knowledge (ITK) effect the impact on the agricultural environment of pressures such as population growth and commercial change.

* develop participatory methods for monitoring environmental change, as experienced by local communities and their constituent social groups..

* show how participatory environmental monitoring (PEM) can improve the research and development partnership between extension staff and local populations and help interventions to build on local agro-ecological practices.

Intended Outputs:
The research will take place in collaboration with two development projects in Eastern Guinea, and has the following outputs:

* a literature survey which reviews historical data for the research site and comparative data from the region.

* information regarding how ecological processes are understood and how this understanding and local social organisation condition resource management; how environmental experience and perceptions vary within rural communities; how and why these perceptions have changed over the last 50 years.

* investigation of available environmental information and field observation of a number of basic ecological variables, to cross-check data on local perceptions.

* A PEM manual for use by extension agents which can efficiently identify which local people face which environmental problems and why.

Policy implications include whether village-level environmental monitoring can be established to assist village-level responses to environmental change; whether such approaches are an alternative and/or complementary to top-down environmental interventions.