Forestry Technical Network Webinar: Learning from a living archive – local communities owning the change, monitoring the progress and communicating the impact
“The act of portrayal itself can be seen as a way of capturing agency”
On Tuesday, 4 May 2021, the Dryland Forestry Team hosted a Forestry Technical Network (FTN) webinar called Learning from a living archive: local communities owning the change, monitoring the progress and communicating the impact. The FTN is a network which intends to ensure a high standard of technical excellence and promote innovation in FAO’s work in forestry by providing a platform to promote the exchange of ideas and experiences. The webinar objectives were to present innovative participatory documentation tools that may be leveraged by local communities to take ownership of the change-making process and explore visual problem appraisal for better project implementation.
The importance of the participatory approach
In recent years, a growing consensus on the importance of adopting a participatory approach to knowledge documentation, monitoring of change and evaluation of impact has emerged. Said approach relies on the premise that involving stakeholders, particularly program participants, creates the conditions for long-term transformational change. By encouraging the direct participation of beneficiaries, this community-based approach provides an opportunity to receive useful feedback and ideas from the ground, increase stakeholders’ participation and motivation and promote the knowledge exchange between all parties involved. Importantly, the lessons learned from participatory processes can be disseminated to other communities and potentially influence the policy and decision-making level.
Participatory approaches thus seem particularly well adapted to the field of communications, monitoring and evaluation and could play an important part in sustainable land and forest management. Amongst the many different participatory methods and tools available, visual mediums provide an accessible way for communities to take action on their own issues and become agents of change.
Exploring Participatory Knowledge Management
The first speaker of this webinar, Loes Witteveen, Lead Researcher Communication, Participation & Social Ecological Learning at Wageningen University, provided a theoretical and conceptual framework for participatory knowledge management based on her research and experience. Dr. Witteveen discussed the act of portrayal, participation and visual knowledge capitalisation and highlighted the importance of preserving communities’ agency, engaging program participants and remaining accountable to the people involved.
Following this intervention, Fidaa F Haddad, Dryland Forestry Officer at FAO presented the Making Every Voice Count for Adaptive Management (MEVCAM) initiative, launched by FAO’s Forestry Division (NFO) and the South-South and Triangular Cooperation Division (PST). The joint collaborative efforts was designed to bring local communities and decision makers together to identify challenges and develop common solutions to acute problems on the ground through the development of participatory videos.
Lastly, Phil Malone, Co-Founder, of the international NGO Access Agriculture, explained how capacity development and South-South exchange of farmer-to-farmer training videos in local languages promotes agroecological principles and rural entrepreneurship. Mr Malone pointed out that trainings were often only available in the languages spoken in the cities, depriving rural communities from access to knowledge, which is the reason why Access Agriculture took the initiative of translating videos in more than 75 local languages. Phil Malone closed his presentation by reminding the audience that participatory videos are accelerating and amplifying processes of exchange that have always existed between communities at a smaller scale.
Take home messages
The webinar has highlighted the importance, the benefits and the challenges of putting local communities at the centre of the knowledge management process and has shown that participatory documentation tools are effective at disseminating knowledge from local communities.
The next Forestry Technical Network webinar will take place on the Monday, 17 June 2021 to celebrate the International Day on Desertification and Drought. This joint collaboration between the Forestry Technical Network and the Land and Water Networks will explore some of the ways in which this potential could be realized, including examples of ongoing initiatives and tools that are being developed and trialed to support the decision-making and monitoring of restoration activities for healthy lands.