Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
with key informants (for example, community elders, or the local children) and cre-
ate a map of the community. For example, the informants may highlight the location
of the best water source, or places where crop raiding by wildlife is particularly bad.
●
In a
livelihood matrix
, the respondents list all the livelihoods that are potentially
available to them, including the conservation-relevant ones that you are particu-
larly interested in (for example, bushmeat hunting or working as a ranger). They
then score these livelihoods along a range of dimensions, such as physical difficulty,
risk, prestige, career progression, profitability, barriers to entry. These scores can
potentially be aggregated into a ranked list. This is a useful exercise for discussion of
the options available for alternative livelihoods projects (Section 6.3.3) and of peo-
ple's perceptions of the relative desirability of the conservation-relevant activity.
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Focus groups
are forums in which the issues under investigation are discussed by
a group of people. For example, focus groups are often used to discuss the concept
of wealth in the community, what the indicators of wealth might be, and how
individual households can be partitioned into different wealth groups (Box 3.1).
Focus groups should be made up of three to six individuals, selected with an eye
to the group dynamics that you wish to promote. If they are aimed at discovering
how people cope with temporary food shortages, a group made up of women
(who cook the meals) would be appropriate. For discussions about hunting
behaviour, men might be more appropriate. Usually more than one focus group
is used, in order to triangulate results and obtain a range of perspectives.
●
Ranking
allows participants to express the relative weight they give to each of a
range of options or outcomes. For example, people might be asked to rank different
meats in terms of their taste, availability or price; or livelihoods in terms of their
potential to earn cash, difficulty, stability of income, or usefulness in times of
extreme need.
PRA emphasises the use of locally available, visual props. For example, respondents
might use piles of seeds to partition their livelihood activities between seasons.
Researchers could show cards with pictures of various animals on them to ask
which ones are commonly seen, and whereabouts. Maps can be drawn on the
ground with sticks and other objects, or in colour on paper—although care must
be taken, as the concept of a map can be difficult for people unused to them.
The PRA research methodology emphasises inventiveness, and the use of all
available mediums to find out about the important issues that affect a community.
Its strength is that it should give a much truer picture of the issues that people face,
and the results should be much less conditioned by researcher expectations. The
emphasis on participation means that it is an excellent platform for stakeholder
engagement. Conservation programmes that truly aim to be community-led and
address the community's relationship with wildlife in a positive way would do well
to start with a PRA approach.
There are some issues that need to be considered when doing PRA. These
include the danger of unrepresentativeness, leading to a biased understanding of
the issues. For example, biases would occur from talking just to the community
