The Social Nature of Participatory Ecological Monitoring

Abstract

Participatory ecological monitoring brings together conservationists and members of the public to collect data about changes in nature. This article scrutinizes the “social nature” of such monitoring, considering not only its impacts for nature, but also society, and importantly the ways in which these interact. Drawing on the field of nature–society studies we present a framework with which to explore case studies from the community forests of Nepal. We document the importance of multiple knowledges of nature, including what is referred to as “local monitoring” and its relation to the scientific procedures promoted in participatory monitoring; the consequences of participatory monitoring as a situated and embodied practice, such that it may (re)produce social inequalities; and the place of monitoring within the wider socioecological regime, with regard to possible unintended consequences for both nature and society. This article thus expands our understanding of the complexities of this increasingly popular approach to conservation.

Keywords:

• community-based conservation
• ecological knowledge
• ecological monitoring
• local monitoring
• nature–society studies
• Nepal
• participatory social nature
• socioecological regime

Acknowledgments

We first thank the communities of Golmatar Paleko and Burke CFUGs in Nepal, without whose generous help the research on which this article is based would not have been possible. We also thank all the staff at the Nepal Swiss Community Forest Project in the Kathmandu and Ramechhap district offices. We thank the Government of Nepal and Tribhuvan University for kind permission and assistance in conducting research in Nepal.

Notes

^a Interviews with CFMS participants aimed to be exhaustive, in terms of talking to all participants; however, some participants were unavailable as they had moved away from the area.

^b Respondents for the household survey, harvesting trips, and focus groups were selected on a stratified random basis with stratification based on tole (hamlet), caste, and gender.

Second, Castree considers nature to be social through processes of engaging nature, which move beyond knowledge alone to describe how societies physically interact with nature, highlighting that “the physical characteristics of nature are contingent upon social practices: they are not fixed” (Castree 2001 13, emphasis in original). Third, he considers nature to be social through the remaking of nature, which describes the ways in which societies physically reconstitute nature, either intentionally or unintentionally, such as through genetic modification or the creation of acid rain.