Participatory monitoring
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The participatory monitoring aims to develop a greater understanding of natural resource health and the impacts of anthropogenic activities within local communities through a socially integrated resource assessment.
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The participatory ecological monitoring process begins with an initial village meeting to inform the purpose of the activities, select indicator species, monitoring sites and a local monitor team.
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The local monitoring teams are either designated or elected by community members at the village level or can be volunteers. However, they should at least be able to read/write and count. A local monitoring team consists of five people per village and contains male and female.
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The monitoring method is developed by the support organization and the monitoring has a simple design and method to be accessible to anyone, irrespective of educational level (using simple count of cut stump to assess the amount of carbon loss; measuring the tree height with graduated pole wood to measure tree biomass and carbon).
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Local monitors were trained by the technical staff from the support organization on the method before conducting the fieldwork.
Classifications
Category
Scale of implementation
Phase of solution
Enabling factors
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The support organization assists the community to identify the relevant indicators, these should be the key natural resources or target species providing useful information to allow local community to perceive the effectiveness of the management in place;
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The support organization provides technical assistance in the long term monitoring and builds the capacity of the local monitors.
Lessons learned
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The monitoring method developed must be an effective means of illustrating to coastal communities the benefits of natural resource management. The number of cut stumps or number of mangrove mud crab holes could be a good indicator to demonstrate clearly to the community the effectiveness of the mangrove management.
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The dissemination of the results of the monitoring helps the community to understand the state of their resources and the amount of carbon stocks in their mangrove forest. The support organization must define the key messages from the monitoring results (the carbon stocks at the mangrove reserve are much higher compared to the unmanaged mangrove forest).
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Local monitor team is not paid but they are given a daily food allowance when they are conducting the forest inventory and carbon monitoring. The income from the sale of the carbon credits is planned to secure the long term monitoring activities.
Part of the panorama conservation areas solution
