Monitoring the outcomes of participatory research in natural resources management: experiences of the African highlands initiative

Sustainable use and management of natural resources is essentially about people relating to each other and their environment in a positive way. Therefore, outcome monitoring can be used to characterize and assess in detail changes in behaviour of researchers and farmers as they engage in community based participatory research activities. The innovation of outcome monitoring methodology is that it makes a shift from assessing only the technical outputs of research programs towards focusing on the changes in the behaviour, relationships and actions of the people and organizations noting “how” these came about (or not). These contribute and lead to desirable outcomes. The methodology used in the research reported here followed a “participatory learning action research” approach and involved teams of NARI scientists from eight benchmark sites in five countries of Eastern Africa. They systematically monitored the outcomes of participatory research, and its challenges, their experiences, lessons and behavioural changes that have taken place as they try to apply participatory research approaches. The methodology for monitoring outcomes is their use as a means to the desired changes as is part of the continuous activities of research activities Preliminary results show that the desired changes in the approaches used by research teams to cope with NRM technology development has been realized. Researchers are focusing on documentation of adoption trends and economic profitability of technologies but are less engaged in documentation of the participatory research process, changes in behaviour, and interactions that result from using the process. Strongly rooted commodity approaches to research and technology development and dissemination, and skepticism about participatory research remain some of the challenges; if not by the researchers themselves, then by the institutional culture in which they are based. Additionally, skills and competencies in conducting participatory research and monitoring of the outcomes are developing. Increasingly, partnerships and other institutional working arrangements among collaborating R&D organizations are influencing the research teams who are starting to modify their approaches to include community based research.

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