Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
(KNUST) and University for Development Studies (UDS), both in Ghana, and
the Université de Conakry in the Republic of Guinea
•
increased collaboration with farmers.
From about 1997, the focus shifted to:
•
identification of those aspects of farmer resource usage that appear to favour
agrodiversity
•
demonstration and improvement of sustainable agrodiversity management
practices as a way of meeting simultaneously the triple objectives of conserv-
ing biodiversity, strengthening food security, and enhancing rural livelihoods.
Methodology
The ensuing case studies mainly contain the findings of the post-1997 PLEC
research. In carrying out that work and the maiden work that preceded it, partici-
patory procedures were commonly followed by the research scientists.
The participatory procedures involved learning farmer practices and their
underpinning knowledge by close collaborative work between the multidisciplin-
ary teams of scientists and the farmers through:
•
group discussions
•
farm visits
•
joint on-farm experiments and other forms of cooperative ventures within the
selected project focal sites (Map B).
These activities were facilitated by collaboration with governmental and non-
governmental agencies, and by farmer associations in which, as discussed in
Chapter 5, expert farmers played a central role, especially as sources of local
knowledge and as mediators with other farmers. Overall, the farmer associations
were composed of a mix of males and females numbering more than 1,300 people.
In the work with the farmers (PLEC members as well as non-PLEC members),
special emphasis was placed upon understanding how, on the basis of traditional
knowledge, farmers manage agrodiversity. Because traditional knowledge reflects
local conditions including popular values, it can be assumed to offer a sounder
basis for developing more locally adaptive resource management models in line
with the grassroots, bottom-up development paradigm. Seen in this vein, trad-
itional or indigenous knowledge may be said to be “complementary to conven-
tional science” (Brokensha, Warren, and Werner, 1980: 8; see also Richards,
1985; Chambers, Pacey, and Thrupp, 1989; Benedict and Christofferson, 1996;
Chambers, 1998; Mammo, 1999; Van den Breemer, Drijver, and Venema, 1995;
Haverkort, van't Hooft, and Hiemstra, 2003).
All the three principal teams of PLEC research scientists based, respectively at
the University of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology,
and the University for Development Studies equally followed the multidisciplinary
