Participatory monitoring of natural commons in Brazil: lessons from the literature and the field

Participatory monitoring has been recognized as a relevant tool for monitoring natural resource and as an empowering mechanism to involve stakeholders in management worldwide. In Brazil, even though such initiatives have been... [ view full abstract ]

Participatory monitoring has been recognized as a relevant tool for monitoring natural resource and as an empowering mechanism to involve stakeholders in management worldwide. In Brazil, even though such initiatives have been developed, they are still in its infancy and only recently governmental agencies are starting to support participatory monitoring projects. Therefore, the pre-conditions for designing and implementing these initiatives are still unclear. Our objective is to investigate the main factors contributing to such initiatives related to natural commons in Brazil. We combined findings from nine cases from the literature (review carried out through the online platform Google Scholar) with our three field studies, from the Community Conservation Research Network, in communities of southeastern Brazil. Our findings show that factors contributing to participatory monitoring include: i) great interest of local communities to participate in the initiatives (some previously carried out informal monitoring systems); ii) community leaders aware of the importance of having information about the resources used; iii) most initiatives seeking conservation integrated with local development; iv) intense capacity-building efforts for local inhabitants; and v) increasing interest from governmental agencies and researchers in participatory monitoring. We also noted in such initiatives that: i) implementation is mainly led by research institutes and Universities and not by local communities and governmental agencies; ii) some of them has no focus in local development and involvement of local communities are poor; iii) funding are mostly directed to research (usually a maximum of five years) and not to maintain a long-term initiative; iv) 2/3 of the cases from the literature are reported for Amazon region, where ecosystems are often better conserved and human population density is very low; v) 2/3 of all cases refer to sites inside protected areas; and vi) in some cases, there are divergence of perspectives and values among government agencies’ staff regarding users participation in management. In Brazil, frequent institutional instability causing discontinuity of policies, and government lack of financial resource and staff to monitor natural resources highlight the urgency to foster citizen science at all levels. In this sense, recognition on the importance of local communities in collecting and using information for better resource management; provision of incentives (e.g., increasing involvement in decision-making) for long term commitment of communities; and the need to expand citizen science to both rural and urban transformed landscapes are key to improve resource monitoring.