Design and Implementation of an Adaptive, Integrated Approach to Health and Sustainability in a Smallholder-Dominated Agroecosystem - Integrated Assessment of Health and Sustainability of Agroecosystems - page 32

both the sources and the types of conflicting or competing perspectives, goals, and
action plans; and (2) as tools for generating a common understanding of a problem
situation and for negotiating some degree of consensus on goals and plans. These are
discussed in detail in Chapter 5.
To determine the types and characteristics of the units comprising the penultimate
layer of the study sites, a census of all land-use units within each of the six ISSs was
carried out. In this census (Appendix 1) details on the (1) characteristics of the owners
and managers, (2) types and quantities of resources available, (3) types of enterprises
carried out within them, (4) constraints to productivity, (5) goals and objectives, and
(6) productivity were sought. Gini coefficients and Lorenz curves as described by
Casley and Lury (1982) were used to explore the distribution of resources among the
land-use units. Gini coefficients were calculated as ( T 1 − T 2)/10,000, where T 1 is
the sum of the cross products of cumulative percentage of land-use units and lagged
cumulative percentage of the resource. T 2 is the sum of the cross products of lagged
cumulative percentage of land-use units and cumulative percentage of the resource.
The Gini coefficient lies between 0 (absolute equality) and 1 (absolute inequality).
If two distributions are compared, the one with a larger coefficient is more unequal,
but this depends on the shape of the Lorenz curves. If the distribution with a smaller
coefficient lies entirely within the other, then the conclusion about relative inequality
is unequivocal. If the curves cross each other, then the inequalities differ only over
parts of the range of these distributions.

2.2.4 i in D i C A t of r s
Two methods were used to generate two suites of indicators. Communities, through
a participatory process facilitated by the researchers, developed the first set suite.
Researchers and the multidisciplinary team developed the second suite using descrip-
tions given by the communities in the initial workshop and in the loop diagrams.
Details of the process and methods used are presented in Chapter 6, Section 6.2.

2.2.4.1 community-driven Indicators

The objective for the community-driven indicators was to develop a suite of indica-
tors that the communities can use to assess the health and sustainability of their
agroecosystem. The indicators were developed in two stages. First, discussions were
initiated among communities during leadership training programs with regard to the
AESH concept and the ideas of monitoring and evaluation. Three-day workshops
were then held in each of the six villages; the indicators were developed at these
workshops. Participatory tools such as focus group discussions, scoring matrices,
and trend analyses were used to identify, rank, and then categorize indicators. Fur-
ther details on the participatory methods used are provided in Chapter 3.

2.2.4.2 selection of Research-based Indicators

For research-based indicators, the objective was to develop a suite of indicators for
use by researchers and policymakers. It was assumed that this suite of indicators
would be complementary to the community-driven suite. Indicators were defined
as variables that reflect (1) changes in key system attributes or (2) changes in the