During the preparations of the GFS, national (and sometimes international) institutions and organizations will establish working relations with local and regional organizations. Such partnerships and collaborations will be important and useful to access information about the study area prior to going to the field. Local foresters, for example, may be part of a field team. Important preparations are:
• Field team composition
• Literature review and secondary data.
• Identify key informants: Which local foresters and local organizations are knowledgeable about the area. General site information prior to going to the field; e.g. ownership, permissions, etc.
• Acquisition of equipment and materials needed for the fieldwork.
• Logistical information: e.g. Roads, distance, accommodation, etc.
• Pre-visit (optional)
The composition of the field team must reflect the expertise needed for the data collection: In the planning and start phase a forest inventory expert is important. During the fielwork a botanist must be consulted when unknown species are found. The core team for the fieldwork, however, will be the foresters and the persons with experience in collecting socio-economic data through interviewing and use of participatory techniques. The latter might be the foresters who have had some preparatory training in interviewing skills. The crews needed for the plot measurements may also include forestry students and or locally recruited people. Ideally, the team should be comprised of both men and women. It should be remembered that in many countries a large part of non-wood forest products are collected by women and children. If women are to be interviewed separately, for example, it can be preferable that the interviewer is a woman.
A preparatory training workshop with the fieldcrews, or at least the fieldteam members is recommendable. During this training workshop plot measurement must be practised, as well as training given in the do’s and don’t’s of interviewing1. The training must be very practical and maybe include fieldvisits. Sometimes interviewing and doing fieldwork might require a person to unlearn certain approaches. It is important that the team working with the forest users have a genuine interest in exploring how local people operate in the field. The training workshop can in some cases be part of the criteria for the selection of fieldteams.
The team leader plays an important role. Responsibilities include maintaining good relations with the community, including compensation for lodging and day labour. The team leader must have an overview of the data that is collected and the progress of the fieldwork. Furthermore, he or she should encourage team briefings in the evenings to sum up the days’ work.
It is important to make sure that agreed upon team rules, behaviour and protocol are followed. Examples of “team-agreements and protocols”:
- Protocols are a set of rules governing how people act in given situation, i.e., and the basis of a code of conduct. Each team should appropriately and sensitively reflect an understanding of the culture of a situation. Protocols are important in conducting interviews and facilitating participation.
-“During interviewing do not interrupt someone else (team member or local participant) during his or her turn at interviewing or probing for information, or answering a question, or pursuing a discussion”…
-“When interacting with team members and local people -Do not assume that you know the answer or that somebody is wrong about something” (Messerschmidt, D.1995). See also recommended references in annotated bibliography for further reading.
Knowledge from secondary data is indispensable when preparing for forest inventory and interviewing. To understand the realities encountered in the field, reports on previous forest inventories, national policy issues and community forestry issues, people etc. must be studied. In addition to sensitizing the field team, secondary data is also needed when analyzing and processing the data after fieldwork. There are often a lot of unpublished and published reports, surveys which should be consulted.
One cannot assume, of course, that all secondary information is necessarily good information. It should always be read with a critical eye. As the teams review the literature, it is useful to keep a list of areas where all the reports seem to agree about resource management practices. Likewise, it can be interesting to note where there is conflicting information that can be further clarified during fieldwork (Freudenberger, 1994).
Plot Data collection:
List equipment [Saket]
Interview Data collection:
- Maps, aerial photos.
- Flipchart-paper, pens etc
1 Guidelines for interviewing are discussed later in this chapter.
