Participatory Resource Appraisal (PRA)

 Participatory Resource Appraisal is a way of learning about natural resources from local community. A field-based methodology evolved in1990’s- involves local community participation in study on natural resources. Participatory Resource Appraisal (PA) enable local people to identify their own priorities and make their own decisions about the future. The organising agency facilitates, listens and learns. PRA uses visual and flexible tools to ensure that everyone can join in regardless of background. It can be carried out in a place familiar to local community. PRA can help utilise natural resources on a sustainable basis.

 

•        Participatory - People are involved

•        Resource – source of supply of something that is available for use

•        Appraisal-finding out of information about problems, needs etc-

 

PRA was developed in Africa and Asia and is now used across the globe. A multitude of acronyms are used to describe it: e.g. PLA (Participatory Learning and Action), and PRA (Participatory Rural Appraisal).

 

PRA is an assessment and learning process for participatory planning and action. The approach aims to incorporate the knowledge and opinions of rural people in the planning and management of development projects and programmes. Participatory Appraisal is an empowerment approach that seeks to build community knowledge and encourage action at grass root level.

PRA is used when you are willing to let the community take control, when you want to base your actions on local knowledge and when you want to reach out to very diverse members of a community. The long-term goal of this approach is to empower and enable people to analyse and tackle their problems themselves.

 

 

Principles of Participatory Resource Appraisal

 

1) Listening and learning - through participation

2) Offsetting biases – which generally arise with “rushed proposals”

3) Proper utilization of community time – in the best possible way

4) Seeking diversity – learning from diverse conditions and people

5) Crosschecking – to minimize errors in the results obtained

 

PRA uses a lot of visual methods making it especially useful for participants. Various techniques are used including community/participatory mapping, diagramming (resource mapping, Venn diagrams etc.), focus group discussions, interviews, ecosystem mapping, etc. Oral and visual communication using diagrams, pictures etc. are prioritized to overcome literacy divides.

 

Techniques used include:

•        Ø Surveying and sampling, e.g. transect walks (systematic walk along a defined path (transect) across the community/project area together with the local people to explore the water and sanitation conditions by observing, asking, listening, looking), wealth ranking (information on the relative wealth and well-being of households in a village -helps in determining the social and economic status of households in a village), social mapping.

•        Ø Interviewing, e.g. group discussions, semi-structured interviews

•        Ø Community mapping, e.g. Venn diagrams, matrix scoring, ecograms, timelines.

 

 

The critical aspects of PRA are

1) Proper attitude and behaviour- for approaching and establishing links with local communities

2) Process of participation- process of rapport building, process of learning, pace of participatory process, broadening and deepening participatory process

3) Methods for interactive participation-interview, walks, etc

4) Sharing-information obtained from local communities should be shared for further learning to occur

 

Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) is thus an assessment and learning approach that focusses on empowering local people to actively involve in analysing their living conditions, problems, and potentials and bring about changes required. Changes are to be achieved by collective action and the local communities are encouraged to assume responsibilities for implementing appropriate actions. PRA follows the principles of decentralization and empowerment and ensures accountability to stakeholders. PRA is an exercise which transfers the role of planning and decision-making, traditionally taken by government institutions and development agencies, to the target group or community itself.

 

• PRA can be expensive at first as it is very important that people running the process are properly trained in the approaches and its values. If local community members learn the approaches themselves and become more confident, the costs of hiring external help may be reduced.
• PRA should be an ongoing process to ensure you are getting the most out of it.

• PRA can be extremely inclusive, flexible, and empowering. The knowledge produced by local community researchers will be highly reliable, and can help to identify and tackle underlying issues.
• When local community members have been trained to facilitate a process, this capacity remains within the community for the future.
• PRA is a creative and flexible approach that can complement and draw in other techniques as and when needed throughout the process.

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PRA Techniques

 • Transect Walk

• Timeline

• Social Mapping

• Seasonal mapping

• Venn diagram

• Matrix ranking

• Pair wise ranking

• Well being ranking

 Transect Walk

• It is mostly used for the appraisal of natural resources in terms of status, problems and potential. It provides a cross-sectional representation of the different agro-ecological zones.

• This has also been used for the depiction of various social aspects, such as, the caste and ethnic determinants of a settlement.

 Types of transect Paths

• Walk from a high point across to a low point in the area

• Just a straight line walk from one extreme point of the area to the other.

• To get more detailed view of the area, an S-shaped transect walk is also undertaken

 Key steps

• Locate a group of local people having some knowledge of the area and who are willing to walk with you for the exercise. Explain the purpose of the study.

• Go along with the people at the prefixed time on the already decided transect path.

• Observe the surroundings. If necessary, stop at certain locations for detailed discussions on the points emerging. It also gives you a breather and time to note down details.

• After returning, draw a transect on a large sheet of paper. Let the local people take the lead in drawing the transect diagram. Use your notes and the notes of other members of the transect team while making the diagram

• It is not uncommon to have two transects done for the same area- one by local men and another by local women. What is very striking s the different perspectives the two transect produce.

• The path, as far as possible, should remain the same for different transect walks. It helps in making the date more comparable. If you want the coverage to be detailed, you can select more than one path and have the same and different team do the transect walk.

 

Timeline

• It captures the chronology of events as recalled by local people

• Time line provides an aggregate of the various landmark events as perceived by the local people.

• Helps to learn from the community what they consider to be important past events, the historical perspective on current issues and to generate discussions on changes with respect to issues you are interested in.

 Key steps

• Identify some elderly persons in the village, explain the purpose of the exercise.

• The key questions:

• When was the village established? What are the important events in the history of the village? What major changes took place? What are the reasons for these changes?

• Make a note of the key points in brief in cards in bold letters.

• Once you feel that the list is more or less complete, keep the cards in a chronological order- the earlier events on the top and the later events lower down.

•  Add years to the left side of the list of events.

• Triangulate with other elderly persons in the village to see the correctness of the information given in the time line. Secondary sources of information can also be used.

 

Venn Diagram

Venn diagram is useful to study and understand local people’s perceptions about local institutions, individuals, programmes etc. Particularly useful to study and analyse:

 • Various institutions and individuals and their influences on the local people

• Various groups and individuals in the locality and their influence.

• Relative importance and usefulness of services and programmes

 

Eg., 1) Ask the participants to list the various institutions , which are assigned in different sizes of the circles. Size of the circle is proportionate to perceived importance- i.e., big circle more important

2) Distance from the centre is proportionate to access, i.e., less distance means easier access

Well being ranking

• Used for ranking and grouping households and communities on the basis of income/livelihood, wealth and other perceivable well being criteria such as educational attainment, food security etc.

• It is based on the perception of the local people. It helps to understand the local people’s conceptions of wealth, well-being and their views on socio-economic disparities between households.

• Helpful to explore issues like: livelihood, vulnerability, constraints to development as people perceive them, and to design intervention strategies in line with people’s aspirations.

 • To study inter-household and inter-group socio-economic disparities and to understand how the local people view them.

• Well being ranking is generally done with key informants. The selection is made based on the basis of their knowledge about the different households.

 

Make a list of households. The names of the head of households are written on separate cards. A group of key informants with good knowledge of the village are then asked to rank the household. Let the participants do the ranking on their own. Ask the participants to sort out the household cards into representatives categories of well- being. Ensure that the participants discuss among themselves and arrive at the well-being categories.

 As the participants arrange the household cards, ask them why they have placed the cards in a particular order. This gives you the criteria participants are using to do the well being ranking.

Natural Resource Accounting (NRA)

 

Natural Resource Accounting is based on the concept - ‘measurement of a resource leads to its better management’. Natural resource accounting is the compilation of data relating to natural resources within an accounting framework. NRA is an accounting system that deals with stocks and stock changes of natural assets, including biota (cultivated or wild), subsoil assets (reserves), water and land with their aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. Natural resources accounts may involve both physical units and monetary values. Natural resource accounts differ from other data as they are organized in terms of stocks and flows.

Natural resource accounting can be used to support environmental policy, along with environmental impact assessment, economic analyses and public investment/expenditure reviews.

The resources include both those which contribute to marketable forms of production as well as non-commercial or environmental resources such as air, water and biological life. Natural resource accounts are regarded as a means of creating linkages between the environment and the economy. The terms 'NRA', 'green accounting' and 'environmental accounting' are used interchangeably.

The aim of NRA is to provide information on the state of natural resources and the changes affecting them. It is an important link in the chain of sustainable development. The term 'sustainable development' means a form of development which is capable of meeting the needs of the present generation without jeopardizing the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. 

Natural Resource Accounting (NRA) is an attempt to develop accounting systems to help monitor the responsible utilisation of natural resources, which will in turn lead to sustainability. There are various types of natural resource accounts: stock accounts, flow accounts, a combination of these two, emission accounts, waste accounts and environmental expenditure accounts.

Environmental accounting or NRA aims to provide a framework for organizing information on the status, use, and value of natural resources and environmental assets as well as expenditures on environmental protection and resource management.  NRA is also used to account for the depletion of natural resources and the fall in the environmental quality.

An environmental account must be:

• Purposeful and important for the account-user who depends on the reported information;

• Able to measure change in a defined account subject through time;

• Organised to enable comparisons and crosschecks in an internally consistent manner; and

• Comparable with other relevant accounts so it can provide the basis for more detailed or aggregated analyses

 

Aims of natural resource accounting:

Natural resource accounting is a means of demonstrating linkages between the environment and the economy. The resultant information can form the basis for the computation of environmental performance indicators. 

In short, Natural resource accounting can be used for:

• the demonstration of accountability for the management and protection of natural resources

• identifying environmental problems such as resource depletion;

• analyzing government policy;

• undertaking resource management and decision-making;

• monitoring sustainable development;

• drawing up (macro-economic) indicators for environmental performance or prosperity;

• improving benchmarks for measuring a country's national product.

 

Organisations:

There are a number of organisations which are active in this field, such as the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the United Nations Statistical Division (UNSD, formerly known as UNSTAT). These organisations include the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the World Bank, the World Resource Institute (WRI), the Statistical Office of the European Communities (EUROSTAT) and the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF)

The need for NRA took its first step at the United Nations (UN) conference on Human Environment in 1970 (Stockholm Conference) when the relationship between economic development and environmental degradation was discussed for the first time. 

The Brundtland Commission, set up by the UN, articulated the idea of close association between the environment and economic activities in 1987, which was followed up by environmental accounting and the Earth Summit at Rio de Janeiro in 1992.

 UN General Assembly resolution titled, "Transforming our world; the 2030 agenda for sustainable development" (25^th of September, 2016) which got the approval of more than 190 countries, requires the preparation of Natural Resource Accounts.

India is a signatory to this resolution.

The UN, in 2012, adopted the System of Economic and Environmental Accounting (SEEA). It is the latest internationally accepted framework for NRA.

Significance of Natural Resource Accounting

NRA can be effectively utilised for:

            (i)Resource management; (ii) Policy planning; (iii) Identification and accounting the natural resources within the economy; (iv) Monitoring sustainable development goals; (v) Combating climate change: and (vi) Aid to Environment Impact Assessments

What are the Challenges Related to Accounting of Natural Resources?

§  There is lack of proper training and capacity building among personnel involved.

§  Limitations in preparing the asset accounts - mapping the periodicity of data.

§  Multiple agencies are involved in data collection for resources; it may give rise to the issues of data sharing/data conflict.

 

    NRA has deep inter-linkage to sustainable development; and 10 of the 17 goals (Sustainable Development Goals or commonly known as the SDGs, 2030) are directly or indirectly related to the management of natural resources and their accounting. The government of India is a signatory to the UN General Assembly resolution on the adoption of SDGs titled, “transforming our world; the 2030 agenda for sustainable development”. Thus, it becomes an obligation for GOI to develop fine standards of resource accounting.

Accounting for natural resources will definitely aid both economical and ethical perspectives of life on earth. For example, accounting for forest wealth has a number of useful policy benefits, including the provision of a framework for analyzing and presenting detailed and diverse data in a manner which supports economically informed policy choices.