Community Participation and the Integration of Agroecosystem Health and Sustainability Concerns into Practical Decision Making - Integrated Assessment of Health and Sustainability of Agroecosystems - page 57

3 Community Participation

and the Integration of
Agroecosystem Health
and Sustainability
Concerns into Practical
Decision Making

3.1 IntRoductIon
Agroecosystem health and sustainability are value-based and change-oriented con-
cepts. Both require that issues concerning people, power, and praxis be explicitly
addressed. Active participation of communities in agroecosystem health and sustain-
ability assessment and implementation is based on four key principles. The first is
that those who experience a socioeconomic phenomenon are the most qualified to
describe and investigate it (DePoy et al., 1999). The second is based on the proposi-
tion by Lewin that causal inferences about human activity systems are more likely to
be valid when the human beings in question participate in building and testing them
(Argyris and Schon, 1991). The Freirian theme that poor people can and should be
enabled to conduct an analysis of their own reality (Freire, 1968) is another predicate
for the inclusion of communities in the process.
Another reason for a participatory approach is that agroecosystem health and
sustainability are not objectively verifiable states of a hard system, which means that
actions geared toward some long-term plans—but based on current evaluations of
health and sustainability—are likely to become less relevant as the system evolves
over time and space. Emphasis should shift to iterative planning, implementation,
and reflection coupled with continuous monitoring and regular evaluation of progress
toward the long-term goals. These processes of planning, action, and reflection should
be structured in such a way that they are self-perpetuating, confluent with the local
context, and operational within the local decision-making process. The only practical
way of achieving this is by enhancing the capacity of communities in the agroecosys-
tem to monitor, plan, and implement their own health and sustainability programs.
In the recent past, several techniques for the systematic involvement of com-
munities in research and development processes have evolved in various dimensions
(Chambers, 1994; Jiggins, 1995). Although this has been gainful in many ways, the

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