What's in a name? Unpacking “participatory” environmental monitoring

Abstract

While the number of projects that claim to conduct participatory environmental monitoring (PEM) is growing, "participation" continues to be translated into very different practices. We performed a systematic review of PEM projects reported in peer-reviewed journals (n = 146) to explore the main ways in which participation is operationalized and whose interests it serves. We found that local people were mainly involved in PEM projects through data collection, while professionals dominated during the ideation and design of the projects, as well as during the evaluation and use of data. Data collected through PEM was mainly used by professionals and researchers (56% of the cases that provided information on this topic), and less often used by local communities (20%). Our findings indicate that in most PEM projects published in scientific journals, participation is mostly functional in the sense that local peoples' involvement is framed so that they contribute to the gathering of information in a cost-effective way, while their potential interests in shaping the purpose and format of the project and use of the data appear overlooked. Overall, the actual practice of most PEM projects analyzed appears to foster participation in a very limited sense of the word. Although some studies document strong empowerment effects of PEM programs, many studies are superficial in their documentation of this aspect or they do not involve local people beyond collecting data.

What Participation? Distinguishing Water Monitoring Programs in Mining Regions Based on Community Participation

“…These distinctions are valuable for recognizing differences between PWM programs and emphasize that there is no "one-size-fits-all" approach to program design. While similar conclusions have been found in other fields [32], this finding is novel within the mining sector. While the framework allowed us to assess the depth of community involvement in PWM projects design, data collection and interpretation, it lacks strong causal evidence to support the conclusion that these projects are succeeding in improving water governance or in reducing barriers to community approval for mining operations.…”

“…They are: conceptualization, collection and interpretation, respectively. Another recent review of participatory environmental monitoring programs assessed community involvement by explicitly identifying seven stages: ideation, design, data collection, evaluation and use of data [32].…”

A State‐of‐the‐Art Review of Indigenous Peoples and Environmental Pollution

“…While the number of projects that claim to conduct participatory environmental monitoring is growing (Turreira‐García et al 2018), most research reporting the impacts of environmental pollution on IPs has been conducted by scientists. For example, the Aamjiwnaang First Nations community in Ontario, Canada, requested scientists to assess level of exposure to pollutants both in their lands and bodies through a community‐based participatory research project (Cryderman et al 2016).…”

Storing and sharing: A review of indigenous and local knowledge conservation initiatives

“…Non-participation (i.e., when citizens remain as objects over which decisions and programs are imposed) would be at the bottom of the ladder, while citizen control (i.e., when citizens take an active role in several moments of the program) would be at the top of the ladder. These ladders have been used to categorize citizen science (Haklay 2013) or participatory monitoring initiatives (Danielsen et al 2008;Turreira-García et al 2018), but have not yet been used in the field of ILK conservation. Moreover, participation is influenced by a myriad of internal and external factors (Nov et al 2011;Haklay 2016), which have not been necessarily considered in previous work regarding ILK conservation.…”