At the heart of REDD: a role for local people in monitorin forests? (173 kB)

REDD+ implementation challenges include linking remote sensing and national forest inventories of carbon stocks, to local implementation and measuring carbon loss from forest degradation. Community-based forest monitoring can help overcome these challenges. This analysis shows that local people can collect forest condition data of comparable quality to trained scientists, at half the cost. Empowering communities to own and monitor carbon stocks could provide a rapid and cost-effective way of absorbing carbon dioxide emissions, while potentially contributing to local livelihoods and forest biodiversity conservation.

Environmental monitoring: the scale and speed of implementation varies according to the degree of peoples involvement (484 kB)

Solutions to the global environmental crisis require scientific knowledge and responses spanning different spatial scales and levels of societal organization; yet understanding how to translate environmental knowledge into decision-making and action remains limited. This analysis examined 104 published environmental monitoring schemes to assess whether participation in data collection and analysis influences the speed and scale of decision-making and action. The results show that involving local stakeholders in monitoring enhances management responses at local spatial scales, and increases the speed of decision-making to tackle environmental challenges at operational levels of resource management.

Local Participation in Natural Resource Monitoring –  A Characterization of Approaches (771 kB)

No system exists to guide the development and expansion of natural resource monitoring schemes. To help develop such a protocol, the authors present a typology of monitoring categories, defined by their degree of local participation, ranging from no local involvement with monitoring undertaken by professional researchers to an entirely local effort with monitoring undertaken by local people. The strengths and weaknesses of each monitoring category are assessed. Locally based monitoring can lead to rapid decisions to solve the key threats affecting natural resources, can empower local communities to better manage their resources, and can refine sustainable-use strategies to improve local livelihoods.