Irene Guijt – författare

The first book to critically examine how monitoring can be an effective tool in participatory resource management, Negotiated Learning draws on the first-hand experiences of researchers and development professionals in eleven countries in Africa, Asia, and South America. Collective monitoring shifts the emphasis of development and conservation professionals from externally defined programs to a locally relevant process. It focuses on community participation in the selection of the indicators to be monitored as well as community participation in the learning and application of knowledge from the data that is collected. As with other aspects of collaborative management, collaborative monitoring emphasizes building local capacity so that communities can gradually assume full responsibility for the management of their resources. The cases in Negotiated Learning highlight best practices, but stress that collaborative monitoring is a relatively new area of theory and practice. The cases focus on four themes: the challenge of data-driven monitoring in forest systems that supply multiple products and serve diverse functions and stakeholders; the importance of building upon existing dialogue and learning systems; the need to better understand social and political differences among local users and other stakeholders; and the need to ensure the continuing adaptiveness of monitoring systems.

The first book to critically examine how monitoring can be an effective tool in participatory resource management, Negotiated Learning draws on the first-hand experiences of researchers and development professionals in eleven countries in Africa, Asia, and South America. Collective monitoring shifts the emphasis of development and conservation professionals from externally defined programs to a locally relevant process. It focuses on community participation in the selection of the indicators to be monitored as well as community participation in the learning and application of knowledge from the data that is collected. As with other aspects of collaborative management, collaborative monitoring emphasizes building local capacity so that communities can gradually assume full responsibility for the management of their resources. The cases in Negotiated Learning highlight best practices, but stress that collaborative monitoring is a relatively new area of theory and practice. The cases focus on four themes: the challenge of data-driven monitoring in forest systems that supply multiple products and serve diverse functions and stakeholders; the importance of building upon existing dialogue and learning systems; the need to better understand social and political differences among local users and other stakeholders; and the need to ensure the continuing adaptiveness of monitoring systems.

Each person and household experiences poverty and inequality differently, and so listening deeply to many people's experiences lays the foundation for learning together about options and choices. SenseMaker is a unique method of inquiry that encourages and enables novel insights not obtained from conventional quantitative and qualitative methods.

Social change is messy. Poverty and inequality are experienced in a myriad of ways, each person and household with specific opportunities and needs. Working with their inherent complexity requires seeing what is happening at the margins for small groups, as much as what is center stage for themajority. Such nuances matter. Listening deeply to many people’s experiences lays the foundation for learning together about options and choices. SenseMaker is a unique method of inquiry that encourages and enables novel insights not obtained from conventional quantitative and qualitative methods. It is action-oriented and, therefore, well-suited for people needing data-informed insights for adaptive management.SenseMaker works by unpacking and exploring the diversity of people’s experiences through stories they share, allowing many voices to be heard. Starting from people’s experiences that they interpret themselves, patterns emerge across the stories. These patterns can shed light on the structures and mental models that explain the events and phenomena that people share. Such depth can help identify appropriate pathways and innovations to deal with complex problems. Probing into the patterns and trends of people’s experiences provide important nuances, lifting the lid on factors behind sometimes puzzling results. These patterns are collectively analyzed with stakeholders, strengthening collaboration, learning, adaptation, and accountability.This guide is written for those who wish to use SenseMaker to conduct assessments, monitor progress, and undertake evaluations or research. Drawing on more than a decade of experience, the authors share dozens of examples from international development, providing practical tips and ideas for context-specific adaptations. They show how the method can be used to for difficult-to-measure outcomes related to poverty reduction, social justice, peacebuilding, resilience, gender norms, behavior change, governance and environmental management.

Fertile Ground addresses presents the findings of the first formal study and in-depth research into the impacts of participatory watershed management in a wider range of agroecological and socioeconomic settings in Africa, Asia, Australia and Latin America. The Sustainable Agricultural and Rural Livelihoods Programme of the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) has, through its collaborative research programme, New Horizons, worked with a diverse group of organizations engaged in the development, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of participatory watershed management and soil and water conservation projects and programmes. The twenty-three case studies provide compelling evidence of the importance of local people's involvement in natural resource planning and management and reveal how difficult it is to scale-up and institutionalize participatory approaches in large, sector-based programmes, particularly in government bureaucracies. The collection provides an analysis of the biophysical, socioeconomic and institutional impacts of development and management practices and to point to practicable and realistic ways forward for both governments and external support agencies.

Understanding and demonstrating the effectiveness of efforts to improve the lives of those living in poverty is an essential part of international development practice. But who decides what counts as good or credible evidence? Can the drive to measure results do justice to and promote transformational change - change that challenges the power relations that produce and reproduce inequality, injustice and the non-fulfilment of human rights? The Politics of Evidence and Results in International Development critically examines the context and history of the current demands for results-oriented measurement and for evidence of value for money. The book looks at how organizations and individuals embrace, resist, adapt or comply with these demands. Practitioner case studies illuminate different sets of relationships in the aid chain, examining the impact of the demands for results and evidence on the pursuit of rights-based approaches and enquiring into whether the growing emphasis on upward accountability is trumping mutual learning. The book's challenging conclusion identifies power-aware strategies for development practitioners, enabling them to generate and use results and evidence for transformational ends. This book will inspire development professionals and organizations to cultivate their political skills. It will encourage them to play the results and evidence game to support their own, not someone else's agendas.