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This book is an important, tangible outcome of the workshop, entitled ‘Participatory Research for Natural Resource Management: Continuing to Learn Together’, held at the Natural Resources Institute (NRI), University of Greenwich, Chatham, UK, in September 1999, and co-sponsored by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) System-wide Program on Participatory Research and Gender Analysis (PRGA) and the NRI.

The PRGA and NRI convened a group of scientists, nominated by their peers for their involvement in innovative participatory natural resource management (NRM) research, to strengthen interchange in the Program’s international working group on participatory research approaches for natural resource management formed in 1998, and to exchange experiences related to:

• management of common property and protected areas;
• natural resource management at the landscape and watershed scales;
• soil and water management, land care and rehabilitation.

These themes were explored through the following key questions:

• What innovative approaches are being developed for collective participation and decision-making in research on NRM problems and processes?
• What new linkages have been established between farmer-led research initiatives and formal-led ones?
• What methods are proving most useful for participatory research with gender and stakeholder analysis and for improving the involvement of specific groups of actors in planning, monitoring and evaluating NRM research?

Each participant at the workshop offered a case study from their own experience that integrated biophysical NRM themes with methods for building and maintaining partnerships with stakeholders.

The workshop enabled the working group, which had hitherto interacted mainly by email, to fuse as a learning community based on a strong nucleus of field experience. The Program prepared a short handbook on the case studies presented at the workshop, and added more from other centres in the CGIAR (PRGA, 2000, Equity, Well-being and Ecosystem Health: Participatory Research for Natural Resource Management, Cali, Colombia). This collection is a companion volume to the analysis and synthesis of this work. The participants resolved to

develop a book based on lessons drawn from practical experience and analysis of the case studies as a contribution to the debate surrounding several major questions facing participatory research at the present time. These include:

• challenges to organizing participatory research;
• the quality of participation and quality of science in participatory research;
• scaling up of participatory research approaches and successful participatory natural resource management (PNRM) initiatives.

The purpose of the book is to present a variety of innovative approaches for collective participation and decision-making at various stages of NRM research, to identify principles of good practice for research on NRM, to identify common problems and weaknesses in PNRM research, and to identify priority issues and challenges for future research and institutional change.

Researchers from the CGIAR, universities, government research and development organizations, and NGOs in developed and developing countries, as well as donors, research programme managers and policy-makers are our main audience. We hope that the book will prove useful for graduate courses on both the biophysical and social science aspects of NRM, and to those involved in the field implementation of PNRM.

Chapters 2–7 were commissioned by the editors from case study authors who are active field practitioners of PNRM research. The introductory and final chapters were commissioned from senior research managers. Each chapter was both reviewed by the editors and peer reviewed.

Throughout the book, reference is made to the 23 case studies, summarized in Annexe 1, which illustrate a wide range of NRM research and development situations at the farm, community, watershed and landscape levels, and bring practical reality to bear on generalized concepts.

Barry Pound, Sieglinde Snapp, Cynthia McDougall and Ann Braun (editors)
December 2002

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