“…This is not to dismiss the value of quantitative measurement in natural resource management, but the view was that after decades of quantitative 'top-down' research in the region (for example, Lowe-McConnell, 1964;Eden, 1970;ter Welle et al, 1993;Castello, 2001;Mistry et al, 2004Mistry et al, , 2008Read et al, 2010;Pickles et al, 2011;Taylor et al, 2016), it was time to try out something different, incorporating community participation. A full account of our first attempt at this, applying 'problem-based learning' for building capacity in working through complex problems can be found in Mistry et al (2010b).…”