Whose involvement?—can hierarchical valuation scheme intercede for participatory methods for evaluating secondary forest resource use?

Abstract

The participation of local people in projects involving secondary forest resource use in developing countries is examined. Methods and approaches used by research and community development workers for collecting information are revisited. However, the focus is on people-centred methods and approaches relevant for optimising the participation of local people. A case study on secondary forest resource use in rural South Africa is presented. The sustainable use and management of forest resources demand a comprehensive knowledge about the status of the resources through participatory inventory approaches. A hypothesis is tested that the hierarchy of methods and approaches carried out at the household level generate more robust results than communal level approaches for evaluating the availability of secondary forest resources to rural households. Socio-economic factors, institutional arrangements and naturally occurring processes are noted to drive the use of forest resources. The human centred driving forces are better understood through encompassing techniques that capture the knowledge and skill of local people. Such an initiative fulfils the society-nature relationship in the context of the new sustainability science, with challenges that need to be faced with methodological innovations. One of such is the hierarchical valuation scheme that provides the rigour, the confidence and the robustness for assessing and evaluating local resource use as compared to the use of other participatory approaches at communal gatherings. Traditionally, forestry and ecological techniques are used for resource assessments and the prediction of forest resource use. The techniques often neglect local participation, and where local people were integrated, they often provided cheap labour. Traditional ecological inventory techniques are in recent times complemented with methods from social science and development disciplines through participatory learning and action. Participatory rural appraisal is the most commonly used but with its inherent flaw. The importance and use of participatory rural appraisal have been explored and found not to be as robust as previously thought. However, in order to make local participation more liberating and empowering, most weaknesses of participatory rural appraisal have been addressed by the hierarchical valuation scheme. The use of the proposed scheme is explained as a complementary technique for PRA processes, and not providing replacement for any technique.