Monitoring and evaluation to support adaptive co-management: Lessons learned from the Millennium Villages Project

Abstract

This article focuses attention on monitoring and evaluation approaches that will help resource managers to manage for change and uncertainty in adaptive co-management (ACM). ACM is a learning-by-doing approach that aims to build flexible community-based natural resource governance systems through collaborative or otherwise participatory means. We describe the framework for monitoring and evaluation that we developed and applied in ten African countries, which includes fixed indicators and measures for co-management performance monitoring, a process evaluation element, a platform for repeat ecological surveillance, and a longitudinal household survey. We comment on the usefulness of this framework, and its applicability to a wide range of geographic contexts. We then present a four step model to assist managers in applying the framework to specific co-management problems. The model suggests a cascade approach to defining key evaluations questions at a systems, network, individual and synthesis level. We illustrate the application of our model and framework by means of a case study of a co-managed agroforestry program in western Kenya.