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Participative environmental research and the role of continuing education
David Knight, University of Southampton
Introduction
Environmental pressure groups are increasingly using scientific as well as moral and emotional arguments to support and legitimise their position[1]. However, such a policy comes at a price as scientific research is expensive to commission. In the area of ecology and nature conservation especially, environmental pressure groups can call on the resource of their own members to collect information about the numbers and distribution of biotic communities in threatened habitats. This process takes advantage of a long tradition of amateur interest in natural history in the UK where the study of nature, fossils and geology became one of the most popular pastimes amongst Victorians.
However, the use of volunteer resources is not without problems. To gain the greatest value from the volunteer input it must be properly managed which itself requires resources. The value of the scientific information depends on the skills and knowledge of the volunteers in both collecting, recording, displaying and interpreting data. The value of any data collection exercise must also depend on volunteers remaining sufficiently motivated to maintain their efforts over long time periods and feel part of a process rather than a source of free labour. Indeed it could be argued that the most cohesive arguments for conservation of a local area are made when a local community spontaneously realises the value to itself of a local copse or pond rather than when an environmental group launches a campaign bandwagon.
Continuing education has a key role to play in maximising the effectiveness of a large non-professional input into the collection of scientific data, a vital part of the process of indicating nature conservation ‘value’. Through improving skills of sampling and species identification and in keeping records, continuing education can allow volunteers to take a greater control of the process of science they are engaged in, rather than simply acting as data collectors. This includes developing scientific hypotheses, manipulating data, carrying out statistical analysis and presenting results to support a nature conservation argument which is relevant to them in their locality or community.
Ison[2] has coined the term ‘participative ecodesign’ whilst describing how farmers and communities became involved in agricultural research and development programmes. Participative ecological research organised between environmental groups and local communities - ideally initiated by local communities - is an important method allowing for local communities to gain a role and a voice over decisions about their local environment. Such participation provides a function for continuing education; allowing communities speak the same ‘language’ as experts and to interpret the results of their own scientific enquiry in the context of a scientific understanding of ecology and the environment and the value of nature.
The need for scientific information
In order to save an area valued by a community for its nature conservation and/or recreational value, or to criticise a specific policy such as agricultural set-aside environmental groups underpin their moral arguments with support from the law, especially the Wildlife and Countryside Act (1981) and increasingly European Union legislation such as the Habitats Directive and international agreements such as the Bio-diversity Treaty signed at Rio in 1992.
These laws work by giving ‘value’ to wildlife and landscapes[3]. It is therefore important to know what plant and animal communities are present, especially rare or endangered species. Similarly land that is already protected as a local nature reserve or community conservation area will need management plans which must take into account what biotic communities are present. The success or otherwise of the implementation of a management plan can be determined by measuring its effect on specific plant and animal communities through continued monitoring of the numbers and distribution of living organisms[4] .
Perhaps the best and longest running systematic use of volunteer labour in ecological monitoring comes from the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), responsible for collating and interpreting the information provided by many thousands of bird-watchers around the country.
British Trust for Ornithology
Set up in 1932 BTO can now boast approximately 10,000 members in the UK, generating over one million person hours of field research effort. They cannot be defined specifically as an environmental pressure group because the information they collect is not used in campaigning and is freely available to all. The greatest volunteer effort goes into the annual breeding bird survey, the nest record scheme and the ringing scheme. The continuous monitoring of data over long time-scales can provide strong evidence for trends in bird species which may be related to changes in climate, agricultural practice or a combination of factors. The key point is that these very powerful data-sets have been collected by volunteers.
This in itself can cause problems. For example, how good is the data collected? Criticism in the past of BTO census techniques led to official vindication by an enquiry of the then Nature Conservancy Council and Institute of Terrestrial Ecology.
Second, as an organisation such as BTO becomes successful tension can develop between an increasingly professional staff of both scientists and administrators and the amateur members of the organisation, a relationship which must be managed carefully.
Despite these problems Taylor[5] comments ‘the co-operative nature of the BTO’s interests, bringing together fine-scale professional skills and large scale enthusiastic amateur fieldwork ... may in some ways offer the best mechanism for long-term and large scale ecology’. Of course local communities are more interested in their own patch of land, that is, small scale rather than large scale ecology. The implications of this are discussed in the next section.
National versus local ecological monitoring and research
An analysis of the success of BTO raises several issues. Not only are volunteers concentrated geographically in the South-East of England, but generally, the interests of keen natural historians are focused very much on birds, flowering plants, butterflies and moths. These groups have the largest data-sets at the Biological Records Centre, collected for use in mapping the distribution of species across the UK, usually on a 10 km grid pattern[6]. Other groups of organisms such as lichens or flies have their adherents, but those with an interest in these groups tend to be called ‘experts’ or ‘specialists’, even if they are amateurs, reflecting the few numbers of people interested in these groups.
Whilst no one can deny the importance of conserving highly visible species in their own right, or using them as indicator species, this focus can have important consequences when considering bio-diversity as a whole. Management based on data collected from birds, flowering plants and butterflies may tend to benefit those species only, perhaps to the detriment of less conspicuous species, such as wood decomposing organisms, a case strongly argued by Hambler and Speight[7].
Nature conservation evaluation and monitoring are therefore key processes that local communities need to engage in if the future of a local conservation area, be it a wood, copse, meadow or river bank, is to be secured. This requires a small-scale whole site approach with many species being covered, not just those that are highly visible. It is here that continuing education can have an important role.
Continuing education and community action
How can continuing education play a role in facilitating local people to become involved in conserving their local conservation area through an understanding of what plant and animal species are present? One approach is in participative research. This is a very different approach to examples where non-specialists become involved in research being directed by experts, such as the study on bumblebee habitat requirements co-ordinated by Fussell and Corbet[8].
Ison[9] describes some guiding principles about participative research or ‘eco-design’ involving pastoralist communities of rural Australia, listed in Table One.
TABLE ONE
Some guiding principles for participative research with communities
Adapted from Ison[10].
1.Projects have the potential for more mutually satisfying outcomes when an invitation is extended to participate, and the resultant communication is based on conversations which acknowledge each person's experience as unique and valid.
2.it is important to understand that experience and knowledge are related to context and that it is necessary to attempt to appreciate particular contexts.
3.enthusiasm, which may be triggered, appears to be an emotional state predisposing individuals to action which is meaningful to that individual.
4.matters which individuals are keen to take action on may or may not concur with 'experts'.
5.pursuit of these matters in an open collaborative and critically informed ways can lead to locally meaningful and adaptive changes.
6.knowledge is both individually and socially constructed and because of this, processes are necessary to create learning networks.
7.diversity of experience, knowledge and research is an asset of equal
importance to conservation of local environments.
Such principles are equally relevant to the role volunteers have in carrying out ecological research in a local habitat in a continuing education context. The process described below is similar to the approach recommended by Hall[11] as part of the democratisation of research:
1.Continuing education classes may represent a non-threatening way for environmental groups, local amateur experts and members of the local community to get together and discuss issues surrounding the conservation of a local area.
2.The expertise of those contributing to national recording schemes such as those organised by BTO can be focused onto a local area and skills in identification shared with others in a supportive environment.
3.The ecological role and significance of less obvious organisms such as those of the decomposer community - woodlice, millipede, earthworms and fungi - can be explained and placed in the context of the inter-related web of life which includes the more well-known birds and plants.
4.Skills in the identification of more obscure organisms can be taught. This is being made easier by the development of a series of simple and easy to use keys which have been developed after extensive testing by school, college, university and adult groups as part of the AIDGAP project (aid to the identification of difficult groups of plants and animals)[12]. A recent example is a guide to identifying woodlice[13].
5.An ability to relate the number and diversity of organisms present with other methods of evaluating the value of an area (that is, a landscape evaluation or historical perspective) can be developed.
6.Skills in presenting a case for the preservation of an area, for example in the context of a planning enquiry or local campaign can be gained. This may include an understanding of graphical presentation and statistical analysis.
7.Within a local group priorities for managing a local conservation area can be examined and management related to continued monitoring of species present as evidence of the efficacy or otherwise of management such as the clearing away of invasive species such as laurel in woodland.
8.Developing and maintaining an enthusiasm for natural history and nature conservation amongst community members which will allow for the long-term commitment for such projects.
Of course the future prospects of local conservation areas require a commitment from local residents which go far beyond the local ecological research described here. Grants can be obtained to repair footbridges, build paths, buy tools etc. Volunteers to carry out conservation tasks will need to be organised and issues such as vandalism and litter need to be addressed.
Such work is vital and in Hampshire is supported by a group entitled Greenspace, funded by the Hampshire County Council and the Countryside Commission whose motto is ‘community action for the environment’. Their work is strongly commended. However, there is much scope for community members to become as much involved in scientific research and monitoring as in a litter picking or pond clearing activity, to use the process of scientifically ‘valuing’ their wildlife to protect it and gain a better understanding of their own patch of bio-diversity.
[1] Yearley, S. (1992) Green ambivalence about science: legal-rational authority and the scientific legitimation of a social movement. In British Journal