Guide to participatory tools for forest communities/by Kristen Evans, Wil de Jong,

The Center for International Forestry Research has developed and adapted various participatory tools for use with forest communities and other natural resource dependent groups. The tools have diverse applications: stakeholder identification, decision making, planning, conflict management, information collection, landscape assessment and other uses. The Guide to Participatory Tools for Forest Communities is intended for environment and development practitioners, researchers and local government officials. It provides information on various tools to help readers grasp basic capabilities, identify the most appropriate tool for their needs and find resources for additional information. Much like a map, this guide sends readers in the right direction when selecting participatory tools.

Participatory methods have gained popularity in recent years as researchers, field practitioners and development professionals have sought more effective ways to involve local people in decision making and research.The Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) has developed various participatory tools specifically for use with forest communities and other natural resource dependent groups.Some of these tools are adaptations of existing methods; others were created specifically for work with forest dependent communities.The tools have diverse applications: stakeholder identification, decision making, planning, conflict management, information collection, and other uses.
CIFOR has applied and tested these methods in communities in many countries, including Indonesia, Vietnam, Nepal, Zimbabwe, Cameroon, Malawi, Brazil, and Bolivia among others.This collective experience has strengthened and enriched the tools, making them flexible and robust.
This guide is directed toward environment and development practitioners, researchers, and local government leaders.It provides information on several tools in order to help readers grasp the tools' basic capabilities, identify the most appropriate tool for their needs and find resources for additional information.The guide does not provide an exhaustive description of how to use each tool but rather an introduction and comparative overview.Much like a map, this guide sends readers in the right direction.
The guide is divided into three main sections.
The first provides a brief discussion about forest communities, participation, participatory tools, pitfalls of participatory tools and related concepts.The second section provides a summary description of each tool, considerations when selecting a tool and a comparative matrix to make it easy to find the right tool.The final section provides more details about the tools in a table format.Each tool has a general description, strengths and limitations, practical considerations, an example and resources for more information.As more tools are developed, they will be added to the guide.
Readers who are new to participatory tools may find it valuable to start with the overview in "Concepts."Those who already have a clear idea of their objectives for using a tool may find it easiest to visit first the comparative matrix in "Guidelines for Selecting a Tool" to determine which tool meets their needs.Others may wish to flip straight to the "Toolbox" and browse.

Purpose of this Guide Forest Communities
The communities that live in tropical forest areas and rely on forest resources for food, housing, and work are often isolated, with small populations and little formal education.Many of these communities have recently emerged from paternalistic power structures such as patronage systems, dictatorships, or feudal economies.These legacies have left them with little power or experience when negotiating for the future of their communities and their forests.Government officials, private economic interests and other stakeholders often struggle to understand and value the perspectives of local people.As a result, community voices are less likely to be heard and their concerns are often left unanswered in the decision making and policy development that affect their forests and well-being.This is consistently an obstacle when trying to improve local livelihoods or manage natural resources sustainably.

The Importance and Urgency of Community Participation
Communities often have little say in what happens to them and their forests.However, community participation in decision making is important for several reasons.First, political and social forces such as land reform, decentralization policies, the advance of the agricultural frontier and the global market are transforming forest landscapes in the tropics.Forest dependent communities are extremely vulnerable to these changes.If their forests are threatened, communities might struggle, transform, or disappear completely.In many situations, without strengthening communities, the forests will be equally changed or endangered.
Another important argument for community participation is that local knowledge and perspectives are fundamental components of any research or assistance project with communities.
Local people must be involved in decision making about their natural resources to guarantee sustainable use, encourage local buy-in, minimize conflict and distribute efficiently the benefits of the forest (Ostrom et al. 1999).In fact, community participation does not have to come at the expense of other stakeholders; rather, it can create a win-win outcome where everyone benefits (Colfer and Byron 2001).
There are also two important policy trends that make the participation of communities in decision making more urgent.The first is forest devolution, which is a process that puts control of tropical forests into the hands of local communities.This trend is part of a larger reform that has been prompted by diverse forces: grassroots land re-allocation and community empowerment movements, democratic decision making reforms encouraged by outside influencers such as donor nations, recognition of the economic consequences of unsustainable forest management by central government or private enterprise management, and growing confidence in the capacity of communities to maintain the biodiversity of forests.
Participation means involving local people in the development of plans and activities designed to change their lives.In its most developed form, participation is a continuous process of negotiation and decision making that occurs at various levels and with all stakeholders (Jennings 2000).

Concepts
Government decentralization is the second important trend that has made the need for participatory approaches more urgent in some developing countries.Decentralization reforms that affect the forestry sector have been adopted by approximately 60 countries in the tropics.Decentralization involves reversing centralized government planning so that planning starts at the local level, instead of being imposed from central authorities.The reform hinges on the belief that citizens can be "trusted to shape their own future" (Jennings 2000).This is a responsibility as well as a right, requiring that communities take a more active role in local government project planning and budgeting processes.Although participatory methods do not guarantee empowerment, they have the potential to generate downward accountability of the governance process and strengthen civil society (Chambers and Mayoux 2003).

Participatory Research
Participatory research is a collaborative learning process where local people and researchers are full partners in creating knowledge.This means that community members are involved in the formulation of the research question, methodology, data collection and analysis phases.Participatory research requires constant self-reflection on the relationship of the researcher to the community and on the impact of that relationship on the research (Thompson et al. 2005).
For a researcher, the information that participatory methods generate can be more useful and valid than other approaches: "When used well, participatory approaches and methods can generate both qualitative insights and usually more accurate quantitative data than more conventional approaches and methods" (Chambers and Mayoux 2003, page 3).Participatory tools can bring to light connections, identify causeeffect linkages and reveal nuanced distinctions.Participatory tools can create models and test them.Participatory methods can also be more cost-effective than conventional social science methods, or they can serve as an important first step to designing larger and more expensive conventional studies (Chambers and Mayoux 2003).

Pitfalls
Participatory tools, with all of their advantages, have limitations and problems as well.We point out a few of the pitfalls below with suggestions for dealing with them.
Many participatory methods use group workshops or meetings.Critics have pointed out that because of their public nature, workshops and meetings tend to amplify the voices of those who already express them loudly, weighting more heavily the opinions of dominant individuals in the community (Mosse 2001).Women or other marginalized groups are less likely to participate and thus their opinions are not counted and heard.These problems are legitimate, but they can be ameliorated by adjusting the activities to make them less public and by diversifying the exercises to provide alternative ways of expressing opinions.Examples include anonymous voting, dividing into small groups, separating men and women, and providing non-verbal and non-written means of expression through drawing.Many creative solutions are available for providing communication channels for those who traditionally are more reticent.
Another limitation of participatory tools is that it is often impossible to pre-test a method.Conventional social science methods, such as questionnaires or semi-structured interviews, might be piloted with a small group and possible problems corrected before launching the full scale study.However, pre-testing a participatory tool may not be feasible because of the nature of the tool, additional cost or excessive demand on community members.Therefore, cross-checking procedures are necessary to verify and validate results.One cross-checking method involves implementing different approaches to elicit the same information.This is called triangulation.Another cross-checking technique is to repeat the exercise with a focus group that reflects the distribution of people or classes within the community.A practitioner who has not yet developed trust with a community may have to implement a careful triangulation strategy, while a practitioner with long-standing relationships with community partners and a significant level of trust is likely to have more reliable results.
A further criticism is that participatory methods produce a "peculiar local knowledge," transformed by the intervention of outsiders and the expectations of locals (Mosse 2001).While outsiders learn about the local reality, local people learn to adapt their knowledge to become compatible with outsider lingo and perceptions.
Once local people understand the rules of the game, the participatory methods become tools of negotiation whereby local people gauge what benefits they can win from the outsider and communicate their needs in order to optimize returns.This results in distorted or contradictory data.The problem can be mitigated by crosschecking results by using a combination of participatory methods.However, the best approach is to invest time and effort to develop trust with the community so that communication is open and honest.
Critics also warn that participatory methods can be used to manipulate or placate.Institutions may wear the cloak of "warmly persuasive" participatory methods to continue to validate top-down planning when in reality there may be no authentic commitment to democratic governance or true participation.The methods become "well-honed tool[s] for engineering consent" (Hildyard et al. 2001).Communities may believe that they are impacting a process, but their decisions are not relevant because the existing power structures do not account for them.The activities serve as "pretty wall hangings and posters" (Mosse 2001).This pitfall was identified by Arnstein (1969) in her important critique of bad faith participatory methods.Instead of devolving power to communities, "participation" manifests itself as token measures with the appearance of community involvement, while the true decision making continues to take place elsewhere.Practitioners should carefully and critically reflect on how participatory methods are being used in their research and projects.
A practical problem with participatory tools is that they frequently produce visual products, such as diagrams, that are difficult for outsiders to understand or analyze without detailed documentation (Chambers and Mayoux 2003).Practitioners should carefully document the discussion by the participants surrounding the visual products in order to record results that are accurate and meaningful.

Several Approaches
Participation has been described as both a means and an end, a vehicle and a goal itself (Jennings 2000).Participatory tools reflect the dual nature of participation.A practitioner might use participatory activities purely to elicit local knowledge and perspectives.Local people's input is limited to providing information, while the information that the tool generates is used by decision makers elsewhere.We call this approach "extractive knowledge capture" (see Figure 1a).An example of extractive knowledge capture is the Uganda participatory poverty assessment, where policy makers at higher levels developed national programs using data collected by participatory methods from communities.Although the communities were asked for their opinions, they did not participate in decision making that used the information they provided (Narayan 2002).
On the other hand, involving local people in decision making might be the objective for using a participatory tool.This participatory approach is called "collaborative management" (see Figure 1b).Collaborative management actually brings the community into the decision making process, involving local people in discussion, negotiation and planning.There are several participatory tools that are particularly strong in collaborative management.For example, Visioning and Pathways have been adopted by a local government in the northern Bolivian Amazon as a method for community members to formulate and negotiate for projects in the annual budget cycle (Evans et al. 2006).
Whether an extractive or collaborative management approach is appropriate depends on the situation and objectives.Most tools can be used in either extractive or collaborative management ways.1a.Extractive knowledge capture 1b.Collaborative management Consider a hammer in a carpenter's toolbox.

Synthesis
The carpenter relies on her hammer to do many things, but it performs some tasks, such as pounding nails, better than others, such as pounding screws.The hammer is useful in many contexts: building a home, fixing a table, or hanging pictures.However, the hammer is simply a device; it is neither an approach nor a methodology.How well the hammer is used and the quality of the construction depend almost entirely on the judgment, skill and planning of the carpenter wielding it.
When we selected the tools for this guide, we looked for the same qualities as a good hammer: tools that help a field practitioner or researcher perform some tasks very well, are not contextspecific, are flexible in their application, and have proven themselves in the field.None of these tools is a methodology itself, but each can be integrated into an approach or methodology as needed.Success also depends entirely on the effort and judgment of the facilitator and participants.We tried to fill this toolbox with a diverse selection of tools so that the right tool is ready when needed.

Brief Descriptions
Below are short summaries of the tools in this guide.See "Toolbox" for more information on each tool with examples and resources.
Four Rs Framework assesses stakeholders' roles and influence in forest management.
The tool was developed by the London based Institute for International Development (Dubois 1998, Tekwe and Percy 2000, Mayers 2005), and designed specifically for analyzing communities and natural resources.The tool evaluates "Four Rs": rights, responsibilities, revenues/returns and relationships.The tool can either be used by outsiders to understand the local situation or in group settings where stakeholders identify their roles in forest management and then analyze any imbalance between the four Rs.
Pebble Scoring is a flexible, simple diagnostic scoring procedure which clarifies both understandings and priorities of participants.The methods were developed as part of the participatory rural appraisal tool kit and are just as appropriate for forest communities.The scoring is not the end point; the respondents are always asked to explain the final rankings.There are many possible applications of this tool, for example examining the relative importance of different types of landscape elements versus types of uses e.g.food, medicinal products, etc.

Visioning and Pathways are group activities
where participants think about a desired future and develop action plans and strategies to reach it.The tools are based on the Future Search methodology created in the 1980s which grew from a commitment to democratic ideals and a belief that local people should manage their own planning.The methods were adapted from business visioning and planning techniques developed in Trist and Emery's Search Conference (Holman and Devane 1999).

Scenarios help participants identify influences or
factors that could affect their future and then formulate several plausible outcomes based on those influences.Scenarios frequently take the form of narratives but can also be quantitative models.The methods were originally developed by the Rand Institute for military war games (van der Heijden 1996), later adopted by Royal Dutch Shell for business strategy development (Wack 1995), and now are being applied in large scale environmental assessment such as the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and in regional environmental impact prediction and planning (Peterson et al. 2003).

Guidelines for Selecting a Tool
Participatory Mapping is a group technique for developing geospatial perceptions of landscapes.It was proposed and developed specifically for community forestry contexts in the 1990s (e.g.Jackson et al. 1994).Participants use pen and paper or GIS tools and computer mapping tools to capture geo-physical features and community relationships to natural resources.The information collected can be diverse and depends on the focus of the exercise e.g.delineating access rights to natural resources, identifying important areas or resources, describing forest activities or defining borders.

Spidergrams
are visual representations of quantitative answers to a clearly articulated question.This tool has been used in many contexts and was adopted for use in participatory rural appraisal workshops in Africa in the 1990s.The results, shaped like a simplified spider web, are easy to understand and provide a starting point for discussion and making comparisons.
Venn Diagrams is a stakeholder analysis tool where participants visually represent relationships between stakeholders and their relative importance by arranging cut-out shapes.Venn Diagrams can be combined with a focused discussion among group participants.The concept originated with John Venn in the 19th century and has since been adopted in many fields including community forest settings.

Considerations When Selecting a Tool
Which tool is the right one to use?Following are questions to consider.

What are the objectives?
There may be multiple objectives for using a participatory tool, including achieving impacts that are initially less obvious or tangible.See Table 1 for possible objectives.It is important that the practitioner have a clear understanding Many participatory tools do more than elicit information.For example, Visioning and Pathways not only help a community develop a vision for the future of the community, but they also create a forum for conflict resolution, build capacity in planning and encourage the participation of marginalized groups.
of her objectives before selecting a participatory tool.Because participatory tools are currently in favor with development agencies, they are frequently a required component of projects.In many cases using a participatory tool has become an objective in and of itself.Unfortunately, in many communities this has led to overuse and participant fatigue.The negative impacts are two-fold: hardship on participants because of intrusions on their time and unreliable results because communities grow indifferent.

What information is needed and in what format?
Whether conducting research or planning a development project, the scientific questions or project design will generally determine what information needs to be collected.Information generated by participatory tools generally falls into one of two categories: knowledge or values.Knowledge is an assumed truth that is verifiable and commonly accepted as fact.Examples of knowledge are the average harvest volume of Brazil nut per family, the number of families with a water well or the number of tree species of commercial value in the forest.Knowledge can be elicited by Participatory Mapping or through the models developed in BBNs.
Values are opinions, perceptions or preferences, such as the most important palm species in the forest, the best place to hunt, the worst-off family in the village, or how best to allocate the community development budget.Several tools in this guide draw out people's values about their community and natural resources.The information may be quantitative with numerical results, such as rankings of opinions or percentage of respondents in agreement.Outputs from participatory tools can come in the form of geo-referenced maps, sketch maps, ranked or numerical values, models, opinions, visions, plans, drawings, or narratives.The format of the results depends on the tool and how it is implemented.When selecting which format is most appropriate, keep in mind the target audiences that will be using the information.Choose the format that they will understand best.
A practitioner should inquire whether a community has already participated in an activity before engaging in it.It may be the case that the same information has already been collected and is available without repeating the effort or imposing on the community.

Comparative Matrix
Table 1 provides a quick reference to the tools in this guide.Although there are many factors that might be considered when selecting a participatory tool, we chose to include two: objectives and information elicited.The table first lists possible objectives of a practitioner and marks the tools that correspond to those objectives with a star.Next is a list of the type of information elicited by the tool, again noted with a star in the column corresponding to the appropriate tool.

Additional Considerations when Selecting a Tool
Who should participate?
Communities, no matter how large or small, are complex.Relationships, hierarchies, power and personal histories all affect the outcomes of participatory methods.Acknowledging and understanding this complexity is important when working with communities.Selecting the participants for an activity can be a very sensitive issue.It is important to take the time to consult with as many local people as possible, from both inside and outside the community, to understand the context.
The people who either influence or are affected by an issue or problem are called stakeholders.
Stakeholders can be individuals, groups or institutions and can generally be divided into two categories.Internal stakeholders or "insiders" come from within the immediate physical setting of the community and are directly affected by the issue at hand.External stakeholders or "outsiders" come from outside the community, but either influence decision making or are themselves indirectly affected by decisions.These categories depend on the context.For instance, a local government official may be an outsider to a community problem, but an insider to a regional issue (Evans et al. 2006).
It might be helpful to do a stakeholder analysis first before engaging in participatory research or community development.Effective tools for identifying stakeholders and their relationships include Who Counts Matrix, Venn Diagrams and Spidergrams.

Who should be facilitating?
The selection of the facilitator for a participatory exercise is an important and sensitive decision.
Ideally the facilitator is a trusted neutral party without an important interest in the outcome of the activity.A professional facilitator is not necessary; experience in explaining the activities and in leading discussions are the most important qualifications.Local school teachers can be excellent facilitators with rural communities because they understand the context and language.An external facilitator can be a wise choice when there is conflict or division among the participants (Evans et al. 2006).However, the facilitator should have experience and knowledge of the community or context.If that is not feasible, the facilitator should plan to spend several days in the community prior to the activity in order to understand better the situation and context.
Several of the tools require specialized or advanced facilitation skills.The success of Visioning and Pathways and Scenarios is particularly dependent on the ability of the facilitator to motivate participants, unleash their creativity, discuss difficult issues and build consensus.BBNs require a specialist to generate the models.

Encouraging Participation
Community members, particularly the most marginalized, may initially be hesitant to participate in an exercise.They may have little experience with participatory activities, or perhaps participatory methods have been used so frequently in a community that participants are fatigued and doubtful of the benefits.Working in small groups, using drawings, individual voting, and games that are active and physical will motivate people to participate.While someone may be quiet in the large group discussions, she might be the best at drawing in her small group, or a participant who does not know how to read or write might be the most effective speaker in group presentations.Gender divisions in forest communities are often strongly demarcated, and women frequently are reluctant to give their opinions in front of men.In order to encourage the participation of women, it can be helpful to divide groups by gender.

Ethical Considerations
Obtaining Permission.It is both an ethical responsibility and good sense to request proper permission to borrow a community's time and knowledge for a participatory activity.The field practitioner should present a proposal to the community, explaining the objectives, activities and how the information will be used.The benefits to the community should be clear.Following the study or activity, the information, whether it is data, photographs, diagrams, discussions or interviews, continues to be the property of the community and should be used only with permission.
Time.Participatory methods ask people to give freely two valuable resources, their time and knowledge.Local people can be wonderfully generous to outsiders, donating many hours without requiring anything in return.This is a privilege that should not be abused.Try to limit the amount of time demanded of community members.Understand the daily routine and activities of the participants.Organize activities during periods when most can attend.For example, avoid market days or harvest time.
Because of family commitments, it is often difficult for women to attend full-day workshops.
Consider breaking the activities down into half-day segments (Evans et al. 2006).Some practitioners choose to pay participants for their time.This should be avoided when possible for several reasons.First, the participants who attend will be those most in need of money and will not provide a representative sample of information.They may also not be very motivated.Most importantly, if the benefits of the participatory activity are so unclear to participants that they require payment to attend, then the objectives of the research or program need to be revisited.
Returning Results.Information should always be returned to the participants and the community.The results should be presented in an understandable and useful format.Photographs, maps, drawings, theater and discussions are all creative ways of communicating the results and information effectively.Distribute as many copies of documents as possible (Thompson et al. 2005).
Consider setting up meetings for participants to present their results to other communities and local government officials.
An effective way to return results to a community is to combine posters with photographs and present them at a community event.Here, community members in the village of Thuong Nyat in Vietnam review the results of a Scenarios workshop and share them with local government officials.

Brief Description
The Four Rs Framework is a way of analyzing stakeholder roles and power relations by breaking them down into four categories: rights, responsibilities, relationships, revenues/returns.The analysis has two steps.First is an assessment and scoring/ranking of three Rs (rights, responsibilities and revenues/returns) with regard to stakeholders.The second is an analysis of the status of the fourth R, relationships, between stakeholders by creating a relational matrix.

Purpose
The purpose is to understand the roles of stakeholders with respect to the Four Rs.The process reveals underlying power structures and incentives or disincentives for sustainable use or management of natural resources.
The tool can be used as a normative scenario exercise, where participants describe the ideal roles of stakeholders and what must be changed to achieve those roles.The tool can be used to develop a benefit plan among stakeholders, or as a preliminary step for elaborating a cost-benefit analysis.
The process can open up a dialogue for negotiation and positive change.

Outputs
There are two primary outputs.The first are charts with rankings of the rights, responsibilities and revenues/returns of stakeholders.The second describes the relationships of the stakeholders to each other, usually in the form of a matrix.

Key informants Focus group discussions
Future Scenarios Pebble Scoring

Weaknesses
Issues related to the Four Rs are often very sensitive and marginalized groups may not discuss them openly Requires facilitators that are relatively experienced

Participants
Participants can be from any group: community members, fieldworkers, local government leaders, institutional decision makers.

Facilitators
Because of the sensitive natural of the issues, facilitators should be neutral parties.They should be enthusiastic and experienced in gender and cultural awareness, consensus-building and conflict management.

Typical Duration
The activity can generally be completed within a three hour workshop or during individual interviews.

Budget and Materials
The time of the researcher and the participants plus standard workshop materials.

Example
In Indonesia the Four Rs Framework was used to start an action-learning process at the beginning of a collaborative forest management project.The tool made explicit the imbalances in stakeholder roles and responsibilities.For example, the original inhabitants with the biggest stake in the forest had limited legal responsibilities related to forest management.The government had the responsibility to manage and protect the forest, but lacked the means to do so effectively.In principle, responsibilities and rights should be transferred to those who have a bigger stake in the forest (Kusumanto 2005).

Overview Brief Description
Pebble Scoring is a quick, flexible and simple diagnostic scoring procedure which clarifies participants' understandings and priorities.It involves rating items such as resources, species, locations, or landscape units.The items are rated with respect to each other according to selected criteria, such as overall importance, value for food, value for building material.The method encourages discussion of the underlying reasons for these ratings.

Purpose
To investigate, overview, clarify and communicate people's choices and preferences.

Outputs
Numerical tables of comparable scored items along with explanations for these patterns.Can yield new insights and clarify or gauge priorities.

Group discussions Participatory Mapping
Focal interviews Field visit and assessment

Key Elements or Methods
Preliminary discussions with the target group define and clarify the items to be scored and the criteria for scoring.Cards are created with a label or picture symbolizing the aspects to be scored.During facilitated group workshops, the facilitator demonstrates how the counters, such as pebbles, should be distributed according to the quantitative relationships or values of the group.The participants then distribute a fixed number of counters (usually 100 total) onto the cards.The scores are never viewed as an end point; the respondents are always asked for an explanation of the results.

When to Use
As an initial evaluation When seeking an overview of a broad array of topics To establish priorities When categories and items are relatively simple to select and define When trust is already established between the facilitators and the target group When summary and comparison between groups is useful or necessary

Brief Description
Visioning and Pathways are creative tools to develop a long-term group vision and strategies to reach that vision.During Visioning exercises, participants think about their ideal future, discuss the possibilities, and come to a consensus.During Pathways, participants develop specific strategies and action plans to reach a desired future.

Purpose
To provide an opportunity for various stakeholders to develop a shared ideal future To encourage thinking long-term To promote collective action by providing a simple planning structure for developing strategies to make a desired future a reality

Outputs
Visioning creates a consensus vision of an ideal future, although breakout groups might create their own visions separately first.The vision might have various focuses: a community, a region, a natural resource, a protected area.The visions can be written narratives, drawings, maps, models or a combination.Pathways generates step by step written plans to reach a desired condition, specifying "How, Who and When" to implement each step.

Complementary Tools
Participatory Mapping Scenarios

When to Use
For long term community development or natural resource use planning To prepare proposals for projects To decide how to distribute the benefits of a natural resource management plan If a community is facing changes, uncertainties or problems When there is little thinking or planning for the future When Not to Use If there will not be good participation or sufficient time for preparation If there is not interest or buy-in from important stakeholders If there is no decision making structure that will use the results

Strengths
Encourages thinking about and planning for the future Motivates discussion of sustainability Provides an easy-to-use process for developing specific strategies to reach goals Encourages the participation of all members of the community

Facilitators
The facilitators must be skilled and energetic motivators in group workshops.
Requires one facilitator per breakout group.

Typical Duration
One to two workshops of one day each over a period of several weeks.

Budget and Materials
Facilitator time of one month for preparation and execution, participants' time, basic workshop materials, and meeting space for the workshops.

Example
As a result of government decentralization in Bolivia, communities gained the right to request projects and services from the local government.However, communities in the northern Bolivian Amazon were having difficulty formulating and presenting legitimate and worthwhile proposals in the local government planning meetings.They were unprepared or not presenting demands that represented the needs of the entire community.
Visioning provided a vehicle for the community members to meet, discuss, and decide upon a vision for the community.When the community leaders presented their visions at the local government planning sessions, they were successfully able to argue for and justify the projects that they were requesting.

Purpose
Scenarios can be used to help a community identify uncertainties, to prepare for change, to stimulate creative thinking about the future, to develop strategies and plans, and to unify diverse stakeholder groups in a dynamic and participatory planning exercise.

Outputs
Several distinct (usually 3-5) narrative descriptions or stories of possible futures, usually long-term, 10-20 years in the future.Can be written narratives, drawings, maps, models or a combination.

Participatory Mapping
Trend Analysis Visioning Force-field Analysis

When to Use
A community is facing changes, uncertainties or problems A community or stakeholders are in conflict about natural resource use When there is little thinking about the future or sustainable planning

Facilitators
The facilitators must be skilled and energetic motivators in group workshops.
Requires one facilitator per breakout group.

Typical Duration
Three to four workshops of one day each over a period of a month.Followup dissemination meetings to share results with a broader audience are recommended.

Budget and Materials
Facilitator time of one month for preparation and execution, participants' time, basic workshop materials, and meeting space for the workshops.

Participatory Mapping
Overview Brief Description Participatory Mapping includes a range of methods from simple sketch maps to more complex cartographic techniques using GPS and GIS technology.
A common thread through these methods is involving local people in the geographical identification, definition and description of resources and points of reference in their surroundings.In its simplest form, Participatory Mapping is a facilitation technique for discussing landscapes and their characteristics.However, it can also involve training local people in the use of mapping technologies such as GPS, GIS, etc. to develop highly detailed and accurate maps.

Purpose
To

Facilitated group workshops Capacity building workshops
Guided fieldwork

When to Use
When communities need more detailed information to make decisions related to resource management or territorial definitions To mediate conflicts related to resource use or property rights When assistance agencies need to understand customary practices and perceptions before attempting to assist communities

Weaknesses
The resulting maps will only be as good or as valid as the knowledge base of participants.As a result, the methods are problematic for mapping large landscapes that are outside local use or for use with participants that have recently migrated and are unfamiliar with their surroundings.
If not facilitated properly, methods could raise expectations or generate conflict with neighboring stakeholders.

Brief Description
Spidergrams represent visually the importance and influence of various factors or aspects of a situation.Participants rank the aspects on the axes according to criteria.Then the points on the axes are connected by a line.The resulting spider web shape represents the various component parts of a situation.This is a simple, rapid, visual participatory tool to analyze a situation by breaking it down into parts, rank the parts, and then understand and discuss the influence of the parts on the whole.

Purpose
To provide a simple and adaptable tool for the identification and relative weighting of the factors contributing to the answer to a specific question or set of related questions To understand the importance and influence of each part To examine cause and effect

Outputs
The output is a visual graph of the components of the answer to a central question and the relative weights of each contributing component.The data can be converted into a table but the table format loses its utility for large and complex Spidergrams.

Complementary Tools
Discourse-based Valuation BBNs Focus group discussions

Key Elements or Methods
Organize small focus group sessions or workshops of 5-8 people in each group.Identify a central question and draw it in the center of a flipchart.
Have the participants answer the question by adding "spokes" radiating out from the central question.Ask the group to identify the least important component of the answer and score it with one point.Then score each other component relative to that least important one.Then connect all of the spokes and discuss the results.For the top scoring results, now complete a new Spidergram to understand their components.By focusing on the high importance answers, the analysis can rapidly move through complex questions.

Advantages and Limitations
When to Use When a complex question or issue needs to be analyzed In the assessment or monitoring phases of a project As a comparative exercise between different groups to discuss differences or similarities in opinions To understand cause and effect For stakeholder identification and analysis To develop group consensus about priorities • Participatory Mapping can combine sketching with geo-referenced points, such as this map of the forest of the community of Palma Real in the northern Bolivian Amazon.Participants first used a GPS to georeference the locations of major features, such as roads, streams and borders.Then they penciled in the GPS points on a geo-referenced paper grid.Finally, they sketched in more detail, using the GPS points for reference.In one week, participants mapped 8000 hectares of forest.
Those tools include Pebble Scoring, Who Counts Matrix, BBNs, and Discourse-based Valuation.The tools which provide qualitative information about values are Visioning and Pathways, Scenarios, Venn Diagrams, Participatory Mapping and Spidergrams.Most of the tools require analytic thought, where participants break a situation down and try to understand constituent parts and relationships, including Discourse-based Valuation, Four Rs, Participatory Mapping, Pebble Scoring, Spidergrams, Venn Diagrams.Several methods are synthetic and creative; participants generate plans, strategies, or ideas.Creative tools are Visioning and Pathways, and Scenarios.

Table 1 . A quick reference guide to the tools.
Makes it possible to clarify stakeholder roles and set targets for fulfilling responsibilities Can motivate community participation in multi-stakeholder negotiation Deals carefully with sensitive issues of power and makes it possible to discuss them openly in a safe forum Can stimulate dialogue about existing, yet hidden, power relations Can identify capacity gaps in roles and assistance needed to fill the gaps Can be quantitative when scoring methods are used Possible participants include community members, community leaders, and other stakeholders.Dividing men and women into small groups can be very helpful.Participant literacy is not necessary if drawing is used.
OutputsSketch maps or geo-referenced maps that incorporate various types of local knowledge and technical data: natural resources, borders, community features, perceptions, land use.