Who we are

A short introduction to Participatory Monitoring and Management Partnership

The Participatory Monitoring and Management Partnership (PMMP) is an international collaborative network for local leaders and communities working with participatory monitoring and management of natural resources. The Partnership seeks to transform the way the world monitors and manages natural resources by improving the quality and extent of community-led approaches to resource management.. To accomplish this objective, PMMP will support participatory monitoring and management worldwide and facilitate training, education, and learning from practice.

Why? Experiences suggest that local natural resource management and monitoring can support sustainable livelihoods. These practices can promote concrete and realistic solutions to the climatic, environmental and developmental challenges. Internationally and nationally, in many countries, natural resource monitoring has become a central issue in supporting decision-making processes at the local and large scale. Moreover traditional knowledge present in such management systems often complements scientific knowledge. At a meeting in Amazonas in September 2014, a total of 200 participants from 17 countries unanimously agreed to begin building a Participatory Monitoring and Management Partnership. The PMMP has the objective to promote and strengthen participatory natural resource management and monitoring.

Who? The Participatory Monitoring and Management Partnership will comprise of local and indigenous organisations, civil society organisations and government departments as well as other natural resource management bodies and the private sector working on participatory natural resource monitoring and management. The Partnership will also include individual community members, researchers and practitioners. We invite you and your institution to help us build this new Partnership.

How? The key activities of PMMP will be:

Community to community experience exchange and networking
Provision of strategic communication inputs and advocacy targeted at policy makers
Capacity building, and education to the local and national partners
Promotion of best practice approoaches through a ”community of practice”
Joint fundraising for collaborative activities on the ground
Information exchange on challenges and solutions related to the partners work with participatory natural resource monitoringusing the aid of social media and other tools

Roles and Responsibilities. The governance structure of the PMMP is being developed. The vision is that the PMMP will consist of local partners in each country who develop and implement a common work plan and joint activities that are supported technically and administratively by the Partnership. Partners with specific expertise will be identified with the possibility of taking a leading role in driving specific Partnership activities. During the process of building the PMMP, the activities of the Partnership will be supervised by a Committee on Governance and Fund-raising and another Committee on Communication and Capacity-building. The Government of Indonesia has expressed their intent to host an international meeting of the PMMP in 2015.

Context

Global climate change and its effects have become a great concern leading the development of scientific research and public policies oriented to mitigate and adapt to its effects. Internationally, under the realm of the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD) and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Rural communities living in and adjacent to forest and wetlands, especially indigenous peoples, are among those hardest hit by climate change. Their existence is largely dependent on natural resources and they live in areas where the ecosystems are rapidly changing.

Environmental observations are the basis for successful adaptation to environmental changes and for the sustainable use of resources. Scientific knowledge of the environment is far from complete, and the development of this knowledge is costly. Local people observe the environment all year round. They often possess considerable knowledge of the environment. Their knowledge is rarely, however, being quantified, analyzed or used for natural resource management.

In recent years, several pilot initiatives have developed and tested simple tools for local documentation and management of resources, so that the people who live from natural resources can themselves systematically track trends in natural resources and take more decisions as to how these should be protected and used. The new methods provide a forum for dialogue on natural resources between local communities and authorities. They prevent conflicts over limited resources. Local knowledge becomes accessible to municipal and national authorities and this shortens the time between observed changes and management actions. Local monitoring cannot replace conventional scientific monitoring but local and conventional scientific knowledge can complement each other.

The new methods can promote concrete and realistic solutions to the climate, environment and development challenges. It will, however, require establishment of the methods in more areas. It will also require training, education, learning from practice and applied research.