Copyright © 2016 by the author(s). Published here under license by the Resilience Alliance.
Tschirhart, C., J. Mistry, A. Berardi, E. Bignante, M. Simpson, L. Haynes, R. Benjamin, G. Albert, R. Xavier, B. Robertson, O. Davis,
C. Verwer, G. De Ville, and D. Jafferally. 2016. Learning from one another: evaluating the impact of horizontal knowledge exchange
for environmental management and governance. Ecology and Society 21(2):41. http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-08495-210241
Research, part of a Special Feature on Community-based Management of Environmental Challenges in Latin America and the
Caribbean
Learning from one another: evaluating the impact of horizontal knowledge
exchange for environmental management and governance
Céline Tschirhart 1, Jayalaxshmi Mistry 1, Andrea Berardi 2, Elisa Bignante 3, Matthew Simpson 4, Lakeram Haynes 5, Ryan Benjamin 5,
Grace Albert 5, Rebecca Xavier 5, Bernie Robertson 5, Odacy Davis 6, Caspar Verwer 7, Géraud de Ville 2 and Deirdre Jafferally 6
ABSTRACT. There is increasing advocacy for inclusive community-based approaches to environmental management, and growing
evidence that involving communities improves the sustainability of social-ecological systems. Most community-based approaches rely
on partnerships and knowledge exchange between communities, civil society organizations, and professionals such as practitioners
and/or scientists. However, few models have actively integrated more horizontal knowledge exchange from community to community.
We reflect on the transferability of community owned solutions between indigenous communities by exploring challenges and
achievements of community peer-to-peer knowledge exchange as a way of empowering communities to face up to local environmental
and social challenges. Using participatory visual methods, indigenous communities of the North Rupununi (Guyana) identified and
documented their community owned solutions through films and photostories. Indigenous researchers from this community then
shared their solutions with six other communities that faced similar challenges within Guyana, Suriname, Venezuela, Colombia, French
Guiana, and Brazil. They were supported by in-country civil society organizations and academics. We analyzed the impact of the
knowledge exchange through interviews, field reports, and observations. Our results show that indigenous community members were
significantly more receptive to solutions emerging from, and communicated by, other indigenous peoples, and that this approach was
a significant motivating force for galvanizing communities to make changes in their community. We identified a range of enabling
factors, such as building capacity for a shared conceptual and technical understanding, that strengthens the exchange between
communities and contributes to a lasting impact. With national and international policy-makers mobilizing significant financial
resources for biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation, we argue that the promotion of community owned solutions
through community peer-to-peer exchange may deliver more long-lasting, socially and ecologically integrated, and investment-effective
strategies compared to top-down, expert led, and/or foreign-led initiatives.
Key Words: best practices, community owned solutions, environmental governance, Guiana Shield, Guyana, indigenous, knowledge exchange,
participatory, visual
INTRODUCTION
As a result of escalating and converging environmental, social,
and economic challenges, community empowerment has been a
response to dealing with the complex and unpredictable nature
of environmental management and governance (Kapoor 2001).
There are increased calls for a shift away from top-down, expertled (usually foreign) decision-making through strengthening local
and institutional capacity for participatory environmental
management. This, as Rodriguez et al. (2006) point out, has the
potential to help communities in biodiversity-rich developing
countries take the lead in finding long-term sustainable solutions
to their own environmental management and conservation/
poverty dilemmas.
Historically, capacity building and training activities (the core of
many developed world, donor funded, conservation and
development projects and interventions) have focused heavily on
delivering a “product” and trying to provide local people with
“prescriptive advice” rather than developing their abilities to work
through complex problems themselves (Kaplan 2000, Black
2003). Reasons for this include the short timeframe within which
many of these projects run, which thereby restricts innovative
learning approaches and the development of “soft” skills that
evidently take time to develop, as well as the agendas of funding
bodies, development/conservation agencies, and practitioners,
which often focus on promoting their own interests (see Mistry
1
et al. 2009, 2011). There is also a need for a change in mind-set—
with a move away from dependency on past blueprint solutions
and trained behaviors, and instead freeing participants to respond
individually to unique situations (Kaplan 2000). Capacity
building for participatory environmental management should
“create enabling conditions for learning which...involve a concern
with issues of power, culture, institutions, worldviews and values”
(Armitage et al. 2008:96). Also, as Eade (2007) points out, real
capacity is built only when it contributes to enabling participants
themselves to change their own realities. Thus, the challenge lies
in the development of approaches that can create these enabling
conditions.
In order to tackle increasingly complex social-ecological
challenges, over the past decade there have been calls to integrate
and take into account different types of knowledge emerging from
different stakeholders, based on the argument that the sole
perspective of Western science and its systems of knowledge are
not sufficient for the understanding of, and acting upon, multiscalar and systemic challenges (Olsson and Folke 2001). Indeed,
local knowledge that is grounded in specific contexts, adaptive to
changing environments, and situated within numerous interlinked
facets of people’s lives is now often considered to be key to solving
complex social-ecological challenges, such as adapting to the
effects of climate change (e.g., Newsham and Thomas 2011, Fu
et al. 2012). This acknowledgment has led to the development of
Royal Holloway University of London, UK, 2The Open University, UK, 3University of Torino, Italy, 4Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust (Consulting) Ltd,
UK, 5North Rupununi District Development Board, Guyana, 6Iwokrama International Centre, Guyana, 7IUCN National Committee of The
Netherlands, The Netherlands
Ecology and Society 21(2): 41
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many mechanisms through which scientific and local knowledge
could be shared for supporting social-ecological sustainability,
such as community-based natural resource management (Berkes
2007) and adaptive comanagement (Olsson et al. 2004, Armitage
et al. 2007). Participatory and empowering processes have been
placed at the center of these approaches to ensure increasing
ownership of the process by the communities concerned.
Knowledge exchange between a wide range of stakeholders and
disciplines is gaining prominence, based mainly on a subjectivist
view of knowledge (Fazey et al. 2014). Knowledge exchange and
the coproduction of knowledge (e.g., Mauser et al. 2013, Reed et
al. 2014) place communities within an extensive network of
stakeholders at different scales, who join their forces to solve a
specific issue. Although knowledge exchange is presented as an
innovative move forward, Fazey et al. (2014) also point out that
this mechanism still lacks a validated conceptual framework and
evaluation method to assert its effectiveness. To answer these
concerns, Reed et al. (2014) assessed ways in which knowledge
exchange can lead to better practice, and effectively inform policy.
They underlined five principles: (1) design knowledge exchange
into the research; (2) represent user knowledge needs and
priorities; (3) build long-term, trusting relationships based on
dialogue; (4) deliver tangible results as soon as possible; and (5)
monitor and reflect on the experience in order to improve and
guarantee legacy of the process. Fazey et al. (2014), on the other
hand, focusing on the particular topic of the evaluation of
knowledge exchange, proposed five principles for knowledge
exchange evaluation to strengthen the practice: (1) design for
multiple end users; (2) be explicit about how you conceptualize
knowledge in the process; (3) evaluate diverse outcomes; (4)
practice participatory evaluations; and (5) use mixed methods for
evaluation. Although these papers were published after we
initiated our knowledge exchange process, the principles
suggested are those that are shared by many experienced
practitioners who are involved in the knowledge exchange field,
and which some of this paper’s authors have learned the hard way,
having reflected on the failure of particular approaches to
research that involved participants from developing country
contexts (see Mistry et al. 2009).
While the inclusion of local communities in decision-making at
all levels of environmental management and governance has been
presented as crucial for capacity building and social-ecological
integrity, there are also strong critiques of participatory
community-based approaches, summarized in Measham and
Lumbasi (2013), including a lack of autonomy in contexts where
higher level stakeholders are often supervising the interventions.
For example, Palmer Fry et al. (2015) described the “power
struggle” that occurs between marginalized community members
and other stakeholders, such as NGO employees and government
officials, in determining which conceptualizations and
approaches are used for determining and improving community
well-being within conservation interventions, and therefore what
is monitored during such interventions. In contrast, community
owned initiatives where the approach focuses on issues relevant
to communities’ livelihoods and beliefs, and enables greater levels
of community autonomy within a project, can have better success
(Mistry et al. 2016). In essence, the main issue at stake seems to
be the distribution of decision-making power within multistakeholder environmental management interventions, where
community members are seldom the ones to initiate and lead the
processes.
To promote better practice and positive impact, support socialecological integrity, and empower local communities, there is
therefore a need for alternative ways of promoting local
knowledge and practices through less hierarchical mechanisms.
One way of achieving this goal is through community peer-topeer knowledge exchange. It is important to clarify here that
different types of knowledge exchange involving communities can
take place. Some of them involve knowledge exchange between
communities and other stakeholders, such as government
agencies and academia. Our particular focus is on knowledge
exchange that takes place between communities; hence, the rather
convoluted, but accurate, description of our knowledge exchange
approach is “Community Peer-to-Peer Knowledge Exchange”
(CP2PKE).
There is growing recognition of the role of CP2PKE in
environmental management, with a range of institutions at all
levels of governance beginning to support the adoption of more
“horizontal” models of capacity building, in which knowledge is
shared among communities themselves (e.g., UNDP 2014, World
Bank 2015). Based on programs carried out initially in India, and
then throughout Asia and Africa in the 1990s, Patel and Mitlin
(2002) discussed some of the strengths of CP2PKE through which
poor urban communities can share information with one another.
They observed that CP2PKE created a climate of trust where
participants were more willing to share their experiences,
knowledge, and challenges. Feedback was given through a peerto-peer process, and learning techniques from peers built
confidence in the learning process, as it seemed more achievable
when peers had demonstrated their own ability to learn as well.
The level of ownership of the process was high, since challenges
and solutions were shared and self-determined, and the pace of
progress and management of local dynamics was controlled by
communities themselves. Receiving individuals from other
communities stimulated curiosity and participation, and
although leaders were involved, they were not allowed to
dominate the process, as is often the case in more vertical
approaches. Similar results were found by Wahbe et al. (2007)
during a health CP2PKE between indigenous communities in
Ecuador and Canada. In addition, the authors highlighted the
increased motivation to instill positive change, the empowerment
of a wide range of community members, and the re-evaluation of
cultural values in the process.
We describe a CP2PKE where community owned solutions for
addressing social-ecological challenges were shared between
indigenous communities living in the Guiana Shield region of
South America. By analyzing the empirical data collected during
the knowledge exchange process, we present practical and original
criteria for evaluating the success of the transferability process
and the impact of the knowledge exchange on the communities.
RESEARCH CONTEXT
The CP2PKE we evaluated took place under the umbrella of
Project COBRA, a three and a half year research project financed
by the European Union (see http://www.projectcobra.org). The
aim of this international, multidisciplinary, multistakeholder
project was to identify, document, and promote community
owned solutions for the management of natural resources in the
Ecology and Society 21(2): 41
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Guiana Shield, South America, and for determining the most
effective and efficient use of emerging funding streams in order
to promote social justice and ecological sustainability. We worked
in four stages: Stage 1: Developing a shared cross-scalar and
interdisciplinary understanding of the factors that may influence
community social-ecological survival (see Berardi et al. 2012,
2013a, b, 2015); Stage 2: Exploring future scenarios affecting
social-ecological resilience across local, national, and
international scales (see Mistry et al. 2013a, 2014a); Stage 3:
Identifying practices for operationalizing ideal cross-scalar
models for social-ecological survival, namely by identifying
community survival strategies “best practices” (see Mistry et al.
2013b, 2016); and Stage 4: Building wider capacity and sharing,
and applying “community survival strategies” best practice in
other communities and civil society organizations (CSOs) (see
Tschirhart et al. 2014).
In Stages 1–3 of the project and at the local level, the research
focused on the North Rupununi region of Guyana. Overarching
the whole project were three related research approaches:
participatory action research (Kindon et al. 2007)—where
reflection and learning, as well as the needs of the participants
involved in the project, were built into the way the project
functioned; system viability (Berardi et al. 2015)—a holistic
framework through which communities assessed their responses
to a range of social-environmental challenges; i.e., community
survival strategies; and participatory visual methods—namely
Participatory Video (PV) and Participatory Photography (PP)
(Lunch and Lunch 2006, Bignante 2010, Mistry and Berardi
2012), tools that allow people to represent their own views and
concerns in an accessible way. In addition, indigenous community
researchers carried out and led all field-related activities, including
community engagement, PV and PP recordings, and sharing.
Reporting and reflection on all these approaches are presented
elsewhere (see Berardi et al. 2013b, Mistry et al. 2014b, 2015a, b).
We present results only from Stage 4, the final phase of the project
involving CP2PKE between communities.
Community exchange process
Stages 1–3 of Project COBRA enabled indigenous communities
in the North Rupununi, Guyana to identify and record six best
practices for community survival through the use of the system
viability conceptual framework and the use of PV and PP (see
Mistry et al. 2013b and Mistry et al. 2016). These best practices
were traditional fishing techniques, the setting up of a community
radio station, community self-help practices, traditional farming
techniques, the development of partnerships through the local
CSO, and strategies for the transmission of indigenous culture to
youths. This was the culmination of two years of participatory
research with the communities and the development of a
community engagement process through the use of PV and PP.
A team of five indigenous facilitators (composed of two females
and three males) was employed by a partner indigenous CSO on
the project to facilitate the community engagement process of
best practices identification in the North Rupununi. This process
had been documented and tested in the form of a handbook (see
Berardi et al. 2014a) so it could be used as a capacity building
tool with other communities. Capacity building in other
communities involved:
1. sharing the project concepts and techniques with other
communities, discussing them, and adapting them to the
local context;
2. presenting the North Rupununi best practices to other
communities as a source of inspiration for them (and
reflection on similar issues involving the community); and
3. engaging these communities in identifying and sharing their
own best practices.
During the exchanges, the handbook formed the basis of the
activities that took place, and laid the foundations for a shared
understanding in terms of concepts and techniques.
Through discussions with established CSOs in the region, six
communities from the different countries of the Guiana Shield
that may have had similar social-ecological challenges as the
North Rupununi were invited to carry out the exchange (Fig. 1):
Kwamalasamutu, a Trio community in Suriname; Kavanayén, a
Pemon Arekuna community in Venezuela; Katoonarib, a
Wapishana community in Guyana; Maturuca, a Makushi
community in Brazil; Laguna Colorada, a Sikuani community in
Colombia; and Antecume Pata, a Wayana community in French
Guiana. Since all of these communities were unknown to the
Project COBRA members, their engagement involved the support
of CSOs that had extensive and long-term experience of working
with these communities. These CSOs also participated in the
exchanges by giving support in communication, facilitation,
logistics, and ethics, and at the same time helped monitor and
evaluate progress and impact. The teams engaged in facilitating
the CP2PKE were therefore composed of two or three indigenous
community facilitators from the North Rupununi (termed
“community facilitators”), one or two national CSO staff
members with strong ties to the communities (termed “CSO
support”), and one to three non-indigenous project researchers/
practitioners (termed “project practitioners”).
Fig. 1. Indigenous communities of the Guiana Shield involved
in the exchanges. The best practices that formed the basis of the
knowledge exchange were developed primarily from the North
Rupununi, Guyana, including the communities of Apoteri,
Fairview, and Rupertee (Drawing credit: Jenny Kynaston).
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Table 1. Overview of community engagement during exchanges.
Community
Country
First visit
in
Last visit
in
Number
of visits
Length of
engagement
(months)
Type of civil
society
organization
supporting
COBRA
Average
size of
COBRA
team to
facilitate
process
Number of
local
participants
at beginning
of work
Number of
local
participants
at end of
work
Translations
needed
October
2013
Venezuela December
2013
Guyana
January
2014
Brazil
January
2014
Colombia April 2014
June 2014
3
9
6
9
5
June 2014
3
7
6
9
7
June 2014
4
6
3
12
6
Trio-Dutch–
English
Spanish–
English
None
June 2014
2
6
3
3
3
September
2014
May 2014 July 2014
2
6
5
10
10
2
3
National
CSO
National
university
National
CSO
National
CSO
National
CSO
National
university
and CSO
5
7
5
Kwamalasamutu Suriname
Kavanayén
Katoonarib
Maturuca
Laguna
Colorada
Antecume
Pata
French
Guiana
The initial schedule for the exchanges involved three trips over a
period of six to nine months. However, due to logistical realities
such as project funding constraints, limited access to some areas
and communities, time taken to obtain visas, and the restricted
period to deliver the program, exchanges varied between
communities. An overview of the exchanges is given in Table 1.
The first trip to each community, which lasted between five and
10 days, involved presenting the project to the community and
addressing any queries they had about the aims of the CP2PKE;
working with the community’s governance structure to select up
to 12 local community members who could work with the project
over the next few months; training these community members in
the concepts and practical methods of the project; identifying the
community’s own best practices; identifying which North
Rupununi best practice may be used to tackle one or more of the
community’s challenges; and developing a plan of
implementation and documentation. These activities were carried
out using our participatory, visual, and systemic methodological
approach outlined in the COBRA handbook (Berardi et al.
2014a). During the days spent in the community, many
community screenings also took place to present the training
outputs and North Rupununi best practices to the wider
community. At the end of the training, a team of up to 10 trainees
was left in charge of documenting their community owned
solution and implementing the North Rupununi best practice
(Table 2).
The second trip of between five and seven days occurred after a
period of two to four months, with the objective to evaluate
progress and provide further support and capacity building in
project concepts and methods. A final trip of between five and
seven days was organized after another period of two to four
months to carry out a final assessment of the best practices
transferability and its impact on the community and local
participants. During these last trips, support was also given to
finalize the community’s films and photostories. All of these can
be viewed on the Project COBRA website. Finally, discussions
were carried out to plan future community-based activities using
Portuguese–
English
Spanish–
English
French–
English
the project concepts and methods in order to encourage the
sustainability of the project intervention. This included
preparations for, and attendance at, a Guiana Shield Indigenous
Participatory Film Festival, which invited all community
members involved in the project to showcase their community
owned solutions. The film festival took place in Georgetown,
Guyana in September 2014.
KNOWLEDGE EXCHANGE EVALUATION
Our evaluation of the CP2PKE involved two tasks: firstly, an
assessment of the capacity building of participants, which focused
on developing a shared understanding of the concepts (e.g.,
community owned solutions, system viability) and communication
approach (PP and PV). We hypothesized that the CP2PKE would
be more effective if communities that spoke different languages
and had distinct histories could at least share common concepts
and techniques. This laid the groundwork for the second part of
the CP2PKE evaluation, which investigated the impact of the
sharing of best practices. In particular, we wanted to focus on
investigating whether the CP2PKE of best practices inspired
communities to take action in relation to their own challenges.
Part of this investigation also looked at the impact of practical
issues on the CP2PKE, such as the length of community
engagement and the impact of language barriers.
Within the project, the evaluation carried out was established in
order to find out whether (1) participants in the project engaged
with the general objectives of the CP2PKE, and discussed and
redefined these objectives to suit their specific context and culture;
(2) participants were able to interpret the concepts and the tools
used to carry out the CP2PKE through their own culturally
specific understanding, and whether they critically engaged with
these concepts and tools, and proposed their views and
interpretation on them, leading to a redefinition of concepts and
tools in a locally owned way; (3) participants engaged with their
wider community to help in the presentation, discussion, and
implementation of the North Rupununi best practices; and (4)
the North Rupununi best practices had an impact on host
communities (as a source of inspiration for developing their own
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Table 2. Solutions, challenges, and North Rupununi best practices chosen to implement in the six communities of the Guiana Shield.
Community
Local community owned solution
Main challenge identified
North Rupununi best practice chosen to
be implemented in response to the main
challenge identified
Antecume Pata
Fishing practices
Katoonarib
Kavanayén
Kwamalasamutu
Forest island management
Tourism cooperative
Two-farm system
A local COBRA team for selfrepresentation and voicing concerns
Culture group
Culture group
Self-help to rebuild village bridge
Laguna Colorada
Traditional cultural education
Maturuca
Cattle raising to assert land rights
Lack of community togetherness and
local governance
Culture loss
Culture loss
Lack of community togetherness and
local governance
Lack of communication facilities
between communities
Lack of communication facilities
between communities
practices for facing up to current and emerging challenges). This
enabled us to develop a program for evaluating in what way the
participants’ capacity had been built, how this capacity was put
in practice, and in what way this has benefited the wider
community. In addition, we collected quantitative and qualitative
data about participants, the community, the characteristics of
each trip, and the teams facilitating the exchange to understand
contextual factors that could influence the impact of the
CP2PKE.
Table 3 shows the different forms of monitoring and evaluation
that took place during the whole period of engagement with each
community. In the three communities of Kwamalasamutu,
Kavanayén, and Katoonarib, monitoring and evaluation took
place during every visit, and more indepth impact work at the
community level was possible. In Maturuca and Laguna
Colorada, community impact was derived from the participants,
consultant reports, and anecdotal evidence, such as email
correspondences. In Antecume Pata, community impact was
assessed but was limited by lack of wider participation.
Furthermore, the local participants in Antecume Pata chose a
North Rupununi solution that did not require much community
involvement, which limited a comprehensive evaluation of the
CP2PKE in this case.
The assessment at the participant level was carried out through
78 individual interviews (26 COBRA participants over three
trips), two focus groups, and five peer-to-peer interviews. In the
case of the peer-to-peer interviews, this was where small groups
of participants (2–4) discussed their experiences of the CP2PKE
process, with one of them taking down notes of the highlights of
the discussion. At the community level, we analyzed 115
individual questionnaires and the discussion transcript from one
focus group. At the consultant level, 12 reports and evaluations
were analyzed. Finally, 15 end-of-trip COBRA team group
evaluations, as well as 17 reflective diaries, were also used as data
to better understand the impact and success factors of the
exchange. Both the consultant reports and COBRA team
evaluations provided additional observations on the experiences
of both the community participants and the wider community.
These data were organized into individual participant and
community responses, and then coded to elicit themes related to
the transferability of concepts and techniques, and the impact of
Community radio
Community radio
implementation of best practices. All qualitative analysis took
place using the NVivo software, with initial categories created in
order to focus on the elements that would demonstrate the impact
of our activities in the communities. However, it was an iterative
process, and new categories emerged during the analyses, which
were then incorporated into the final results.
RESULTS
The key themes that emerged for successful transferability of
project approaches included indigenous facilitators as key
participants in the exchange, peer-to-peer learning, and the design
of the exchange and the local training context. Similarly, the local
context played an important role in determining the impact of
best practice sharing on communities, as was peer-to-peer
learning. We will now explain these in detail.
Criteria for successful transferability of project approaches
Indigenous facilitators for peer-to-peer learning
Our results from the participant interviews demonstrate that the
most popular perceived benefits from an indigenous exchange
were “enjoying learning from them [the indigenous COBRA
facilitators],” with six participants also indicating that it was
“good to have an indigenous cultural exchange.” The interviews
and our own observations indicated that indigenous facilitators
from the North Rupununi were able to explain the project
concepts and techniques in their own words, and could give
examples that people could relate to. Having an intimate
experience of community challenges and dynamics, they would
often adapt and deliver messages according to their indepth
understanding of the local context. They also facilitated a climate
of trust, as participants knew, and could see from the videos and
photostories presented, that the facilitators came from similar
backgrounds and could understand the local context better than
non-indigenous facilitators. At the same time, local participants
felt more at ease asking questions and coming forward with their
ideas and views with the indigenous researchers. As one
participant from Katoonarib says:
“When white person come, it’s white man business. But with
[Project COBRA indigenous facilitators], it’s our own people.”
Another participant from Katoonarib said that she “Liked it that
not white people coming, but more Amerindians.” A participant
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Table 3. Types of monitoring and evaluation undertaken in each community.
Community
Forms of impact evaluation
Participant
Community
Individual
interview
Focus
group
Peer–peer
interview
Kwamalasamutu
Kavanayén
Katoonarib
Maturuca
Laguna Colorada
15
21
18
9
1
5
Antecume Pata
15
Individual
questionnaire
Focus
groups
1
61
40
Note 2
Note 3
Consultant
COBRA team
Individual
report
End of trip
group
evaluation
Individual reflective
diaries
3
3
Note 1
2
2
3
3
4
2
1
4
4
3
2
2
2
2
2
1
14
Note 1: There was no specific consultant involved in this exchange.
Note 2: For the Maturuca community, all activities took place in the North Rupununi, Guyana, not in the Maturuca community, due to institutional
constraints. Therefore, all direct training and activities took place only with the Maturuca COBRA participants. There was no direct wider community
engagement by the COBRA team; all community consultations were done through the participants and consultant.
Note 3: As a result of logistical issues, a second trip to this community by the COBRA team did not take place, so no direct monitoring of progress by
the COBRA team occurred, although the consultant made a second visit and provided feedback.
from Antecume Pata mentioned that “they [Project COBRA
indigenous facilitators] live like us a bit, they do cashiri, they hunt,
they fish, they do everything, they party...we are the same.” This
community’s local leader indicated that he would not have
approved the project without the involvement of indigenous
facilitators.
However, being an indigenous facilitator was not without its
challenges. Some indigenous communities were used to nonindigenous professionals working for national and international
agencies and/or on projects. Seeing an indigenous person taking
the lead on community engagement was a new experience, which
raised issues, both in the way the indigenous facilitators perceived
themselves, and in the doubts about their role within some
indigenous communities. These issues of positionality as an
insider or outsider have been explored in detail by Mistry et al.
(2015b).
Peer-to-peer learning for concepts and technique transferability
In terms of concepts, indigenous facilitators could illustrate ideas
with a wide range of examples from their own communities. For
example, in Antecume Pata, an understanding of community
survival strategies was facilitated through drawings developed by
community facilitators in order to illustrate their local
understanding of the various strategies available to communities.
This activity was perceived by participants to be engaging, and
participants very quickly gained an understanding of the different
survival strategies available to communities. In terms of
techniques, many participants said they enjoyed learning how to
use information and communications technology (ICTs) with the
community facilitators. The fact that peers were able to manage
the technologies and then teach them gave the participants
confidence and conveyed the message that these were not just
“white people’s” tools. Furthermore, techniques could be taught,
again, using their own understandings and language. For example,
participants in Katoonarib said:
“When foreigners come, people say they are using us and our
resources. When indigenous people come, who have shared their
experience with the foreigners, we can see if it benefits, it gives us
confidence. People from the North Rupununi have ideas how they
can make things happen, how to improve.”
“A [female indigenous facilitator] gave really nice explanations—
she has nice mind. I feel frightened to ask B [male indigenous
facilitator], we’re afraid to ask men. But she tells in easiest way. I
learnt about equipment, meeting people, computer” (female
participant, Katoonarib).
This last quote also underlines the success of having both males
and females within the team of indigenous facilitators, as this
helps ensure that all participants can be fully included in the
process.
Design of exchange and local training context
Some of the key criteria that we analyzed were the effect of the
number of visits and length of engagement with the community
on the success, or not, of the CP2PKE. Our initial plan envisaged
an engagement taking place over a period of approximately six
months, with three visits to each community in order to deliver
initial training, evaluate the process, and give support if necessary.
However, as Table 1 shows, communities were not all engaged
over the same length of time, nor did they have the same number
of visits. The impact appears particularly clear for the community
of Katoonarib. Here, participants benefited from four visits from
community facilitators over a period of six months, which gave
them many more opportunities to exchange with facilitators and
deepen their understanding of concepts and techniques.
Katoonarib was geographically and culturally quite close to the
North Rupununi, within the same country and region, and was
therefore the easiest community to reach. This enabled the
indigenous researchers to independently organize a fourth trip to
Katoonarib, with minimal involvement of project practitioners,
in order to carry out a stronger follow-up of the project.
Logistics, budgeting, and planning to visit communities in distant
and foreign settings were significantly more complex. Participants
from the communities of Antecume Pata and Maturuca, which
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Table 4. Community participant team composition.
Dominant
gender
Dominant age
National
Profession,
language spoken occupation
Past experiences
in projects
Hopes
Antecume Pata
Male
Young
Well
None
To learn
Katoonarib
Female
Wide age range
Well
Varied
To learn
Kavanayén
Female
Mature adults
Well
Several
ICT + community issues
Kwamalasamutu
Maturuca
Female
Balanced
Young
Wide age range
Not well
Well
None
Several
ICT + community issues
ICT + community issues
†
Mainly
subsistence
Mainly
subsistence
Teachers and
students
Subsistence
Wide range
†
Information and communications technology
both showed low levels of understanding of concepts and
techniques, were visited only twice. In Antecume Pata, only two
trips were carried out over a period of three months. As the CSO
support states in her evaluation of the final trip, “they fairly
understood the purpose of the project (medium level).
Nevertheless, I think a third visit in the community would have
increased the level of understanding of the purpose of the
project.”
Another criterion that we focused on in the evaluation of the
impact of the CP2PKE was the composition of the team that
delivered the capacity building. This was a key factor, especially
in the first trip, where a community was engaged for the first time,
and key workshops were taking place to transmit an
understanding of the project and its core aims and approaches.
The tasks carried out by the different members in charge of
delivering the training on the first trip were numerous: meeting
with community leaders, planning for delivery of the workshops,
facilitating the workshops, translating, evaluating activities,
supporting the process, adapting the process according to the
context, engaging with the whole community and the supporting
CSOs, and capacity building. Our results show that there was an
optimal team composition for an effective exchange:
. at least two indigenous facilitators (male and female);
. at least one CSO support with extensive experience of
engagement with the local community; and
. at least two project practitioners (with at least one with
extensive experience of concepts and techniques, and one in
charge of translations, if necessary).
Local to national CSOs are crucial in order to implement an
exchange, especially within a short period of time. In our case,
they had indepth knowledge of the context, extensive knowledge
of the participants and community dynamics, and could advise
on appropriate methods and techniques to engage with the
participants and the wider community. CSOs also monitored
activities between the exchange visits and provided useful
information for adapting our standard methods according to the
context. Our CSO support also ensured that proper protocol was
followed in order to have as much community engagement as
possible.
Project practitioners’ tasks were to support the process of
delivering the activities (planning, adapting, discussing) and
evaluating the process. Project practitioners also had the
responsibility of building the capacity of indigenous facilitators.
In some cases, project practitioners also had to carry out
translations during workshops. Our results indicate that the
bigger the team of practitioners is on the first trip, the higher the
chances are of transferring concepts and building capacity in the
use of techniques. In Katoonarib, where the highest levels of
understanding and technical competency were reached, three
project practitioners were present on the first trip, most of whom
had several years of experience in community capacity building.
This was in addition to two indigenous facilitators. Being a bigger
team meant that tasks could be divided between several people,
and therefore, the delivery of the training could be more timeefficient.
We also evaluated the impact of the characteristics of local
participants on the CP2PKE (Table 4). Some key characteristics
of local participants can help explain the success or challenges in
engaging participants in concepts and techniques. These include
experience of working in other projects, gender and age
composition of the team, availability, and motivation. Our data
show that a mixed team composed of young people and elders
had a higher probability of understanding concepts and methods.
Katoonarib’s team of local participants had an age difference of
33 years between the oldest and the youngest participant. On the
other hand, in Kwamalsamutu and Antecume Pata, where
understanding was the lowest, the age range was only 10 years.
In a mixed group, according to age, gender, and experiences in
previous projects, different interpretations and perceptions could
be developed. These different levels of understanding within the
group of participants could be pooled and shared, thereby
enhancing understanding and engagement. The sharing of views
occurred during the workshops, as participants were encouraged
to contribute their views, but also during practical activities and
in the wider community engagement. Having a mixed team meant
that different people were available at different times, so there was
always a critical mass of participants to spend on the tasks.
Participants had different types of responsibilities according to
their age, gender, commitments, and occupations. This enabled
collective ownership of the initiative, which in turn supported
perseverance with implementation of tasks once the exchange
visits had ended.
We also looked at the setting of the training as a potential
characteristic that could determine the impact of the CP2PKE.
In most contexts, initial engagement and training was carried out
within the participants’ communities. As a result, concepts and
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ideas presented could be very rapidly related to their own
community context, especially during the training in PV and PP
techniques, which involved practical activities within the
community. This can be of significant help to encourage
ownership of concepts, to give a familiar meaning to them. This
could be one of the reasons why the participants from Maturuca
had a relatively low level of understanding compared to other
participants. They were invited to the North Rupununi (Guyana)
in order to engage with the project and be trained. As a
consequence, concepts were explored in a nonfamiliar context and
did not allow these participants to gain a full ownership or
understanding through an embedded, experiential learning
process within their own communities.
significant time was needed for ICT capacity building, it became
challenging to focus in great depth on building conceptual
understanding. This was particularly the case in Kwamalasamutu,
as the following quotes illustrate: “The participants had very
limited (if any) IT skills. After two weeks, we had a feeling very
few of them could carry out tasks independently. If working in
such contexts and for only a limited period of time, it is important
for the participants to practice these skills a little bit every day
and as part of each activity” (project practitioner,
Kwamalasamutu).
An additional criterion for evaluating the impact of the CP2PKE
was the quality of communication between facilitators and
participants. An undeniable factor for building capacity in
concepts and techniques is the fluidity of communication between
community facilitators and local participants. However, in order
to work with the communities of Antecume Pata, Maturuca,
Kavanayén, Laguna Colorada, and Kwamalasamutu, translation
was constantly required. One level of translation was required in
Kavanayén and Laguna Colorada (Spanish–English), Antecume
Pata (French–English), and Maturuca (Portuguese–English).
Two to three levels of translation were needed in Kwamalasamutu
(Trio-Surinamese/Dutch–English). As recorded in a field report,
“this significantly impacted the dynamics of the workshops.
Activities need to be significantly adapted if working in such a
context, by making discussions/explanations as simple and
concise as possible, with more emphasis on action. Otherwise, the
activities become very difficult to follow for the participants.” We
observed that participants felt less shy about expressing their
doubts or asking questions if they could address them directly to
the indigenous facilitators rather than having to go through
translators, who were often non-indigenous. Katoonarib, where
a very good understanding of the CP2PKE process and objectives
was achieved, was the only community where facilitators and local
participants could communicate directly with each other. In
Antecume Pata, one participant mentioned that although all
discussions were translated in French, competency in French did
not enable her to follow everything: “It [the training] was not too
difficult, but what was difficult was the French, I forgot a bit how
to speak French.” Language was therefore a strong barrier during
the exchange process. Although the CSO support and research
team members were careful to translate accurately, the mere act
of translation had the effect of diminishing the peer-to-peer
interactivity, thereby taking a significant amount of time out of
other activities. We would therefore suggest that the capacity to
transfer concepts directly, peer-to-peer, without translations,
would significantly enhance the process of transferability.
Local factors affecting community best practice impact
Each community selected a best practice from the North
Rupununi that was inspiring for the community to adapt and
implement (Table 2). Table 5 summarizes the extent to which the
best practice implementation was achieved, the main challenges
and successes mentioned by participants and wider community
members, and whether they had plans to continue the activities
in the future. Results demonstrate that the most common reason
given for the successful implementation of the best practice was
effective interaction and engagement with the wider community,
while common challenges included the absence of community
engagement, lack of resources or funding, poor organization of
the team, and lack of time. Difficulties in engaging the wider
community depended on several reasons. One of them was the
lack of participation of the community in events organized by
the local team to promote the project activities. In Antecume Pata,
for example, screening films and organizing meetings in the
evenings to present the best practices attracted few members of
the community. As a consequence, the community was widely illinformed about an important aspect of the project, which was the
best practice exchange.
The final criterion that we looked at was the ICT experience and
skills of participants. Previous ICT experience of the local
participant team was a factor in the level of understanding
reached in techniques and concepts. At the end of the community
engagement, participants in Kavanayén, Maturuca, and
Antecume Pata were technically more independent than
participants from Katoonarib or Kwamalasamutu, who had no
experience in ICT before the project. Teaching ICT skills can be
extremely time-consuming, especially with participants who have
barely touched a computer before. As a consequence, when
Criteria for the impact of sharing best practices at community
level
Moreover, in several contexts, the relatively young age of the local
team members made it difficult for them to be heard by the rest
of the community, especially when local leaders did not
sufficiently support the activities. In Antecume Pata, although the
leader had approved the project and gave all the technical support
he could to guarantee good development of the capacity building
events, he did not help in calling people for informative meetings,
would not always attend the meetings, and would very seldom
lead them. This impacted the project in the sense that the young
local team lacked the initiative or courage to ensure that their
work was being properly communicated to the rest of the village.
A quote from a participant in Katoonarib illustrates this point:
“... the Toshao [community leader] didn’t show interest for the
activity that was plan by the team... as a leader of the community,
he should have shown some extent of attention to the work they
are doing.” On the other hand, in Kwamalasamutu, key
community members, including leaders, participated in choosing
the North Rupununi best practice, which guaranteed a very high
impact in the process of implementation, despite all the other
challenges met in this particular community. Leaders became
aware of the main weakness of their community through the
screening of the North Rupununi best practices, felt ashamed that
they could not deal with community mobilization in the same way
the North Rupununi communities did, became extremely
motivated to implement this practice in their own community,
and eventually made it happen.
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Table 5. Summary of best practice transfer impact perceived by COBRA participants.
Antecume Pata
Katoonarib
Kavanayén
Kwamalasamutu
Maturuca
Level of best practice
implementation
Main challenges in
implementation
Main successes in
implementation
Future best practice activities
envisaged
A local COBRA team
established and working in
community
Culture group established
with various activities,
including campfire events,
dance, music, and costumemaking
Culture group established
with various activities,
including campfire events,
dance, music, and costumemaking
Village bridge rebuilt
through self-help
Establishment of community
radio agreed upon by
regional leaders; funding
request to local partners,
and research on licensing
and equipment carried out
Poor organization of team,
support of leaders
An organized team with
support from leaders
Unsure
Lack of resources
Community participation
Developing more activities
linked to best practice
Poor community
engagement
Community participation
Developing more activities
linked to best practice
Does not say
Getting leaders support
Lack of resources
Community participation
Apply principles to other
community issues
Developing more activities
linked to best practice
Another critical issue in engaging the wider community was team
work and communication with the community. Local team
members often did not believe enough in their ability to carry out
the activities; they were shy, and afraid to fail, which made it much
more difficult to engage the rest of the village. In Antecume Pata,
where the local participants’ team was young and inexperienced,
many were frightened to talk with the leaders or take the initiative
in organizing informative meetings with the wider community. As
one Antecume Pata participant said, “For me it was difficult to
present in front of people, it was the first time, I never did it
before.” As a consequence, there was significant reliance on the
CSO support for taking on the community engagement process.
Group coordination was another relevant issue. As stated by a
community facilitator in Katoonarib, “Group dynamics had been
problematic in that the coordination of the activities was
dependent on the specific persons assigned for the activity.
Individuals felt that there was no proper coordination and group
work and cooperation in general.” In Kavanayén, participants
formed a core group of highly motivated people who were already
trying to implement some aspects of the best practice they chose
before the arrival of the CP2PKE in the community. As a
consequence, although people in the village were not always aware
of the project context, the impact of all the activities developed
to implement cultural transmission was very high.
Transferability of best practices to the wider community
The best practices presented from the North Rupununi were often
found to be inspirational for the local participants as well as the
community. Watching videos and photostories of how people in
the North Rupununi managed to carry out successful practices
enabled the communities to compare the North Rupununi
situation with their own, be inspired, trigger some reflection, and
be motivated to apply similar practices. It created a climate of
solidarity as much as an atmosphere of “teaching,” which
supported the process in all contexts. The following quotes
collected from people who attended community meetings
illustrate this:
“I never had interest in culture, but when I saw the culture video
[from North Rupununi] I became keen to do things I never had
interest before, dances, language. It helped me become interested
in my own culture. Before I wanted to learn Portuguese, but now
I want to learn Wapishana—better to learn own language first
before adapting to someone else’s culture” (Katoonarib
participant).
“Yes, it was interesting because they presented the posters they
made, some stories about their village, I was happy to see these,
it gives ideas to do some things” (participant, Antecume Pata).
“Liked looking at their [North Rupununi] videos/photos, got
inspired by their culture video. Asked, why aren’t we doing it?”
(Katoonarib participant).
The CSO support observed the same phenomena, as they state in
the following quotes:
“We consider that the training and exchange with the North
Rupununi community was a catalyst and a stimulus to imitate the
process undertaken by Project COBRA in other countries as
Guyana and Suriname, in finding solutions and identifying
challenges of the Kavanayén community” (CSO support,
Kavanayén).
“The greatest impact was the realization that other indigenous
peoples in similar geographical and cultural context, have
advanced and reached significant levels of organization and
leadership” (CSO support, Laguna Colorada).
Frequent screenings and communicating progress within the
wider community helped build legitimacy within the communities
and facilitated support of the whole process: villagers were less
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reluctant to be interviewed and were more motivated to
participate. In Antecume Pata, for example, where the total
engagement period was extremely short and community
participation was challenging, the CP2PKE managed to attract
some positive attention from villagers only at the end of the second
visit: people became curious and came to observe progress, and
the team finally began to see more participation at screenings.
Peer-to-peer learning for making change
In the contexts where greater team work and group interaction
took place, our evaluation shows how participants and the wider
community reached a new level of understanding of the
challenges encountered in their communities and the potential
solutions for addressing them. For example, in Antecume Pata
and Kwamalasamutu, issues such as an unrepaired bridge or an
unrepaired “tucuspan” (meeting house) were linked to issues of
internal governance and community spirit rather than lack of
funding from the government. The confidence to make a change
was transmitted to communities, as solutions that were working
in other (yet similar) contexts appealed to feelings of indigenous
and community pride; communities observed that if other
indigenous communities could do it, then surely they could do it
as well. Furthermore, organizational skills were built, although
they were not the explicit target of the CP2PKE. As a result of
the confidence building, and the strengthening of knowledge and
organizational capacity, the change linked to the implementation
of the best practices was rapid. In all communities, within six
months, a new practice was in place. For example, in Katoonarib
and Kavanayén, a successful culture group was created, and in
Kwamalasamutu, a bridge had been repaired within three months,
thanks to the implementation of the “self-help” best practice.
In order to implement and document the best practices,
participants and wider community members had to deal with
issues related to community governance, management and
planning, and communication. An important aspect of the best
practice implementation was that the local participants and the
wider community had to cope with these issues independently,
with only limited support from the project staff members. This is
maybe one of the most important outputs of this step of the
CP2PKE, namely fostering enabling conditions for selfdetermination. Key soft skills, including strong leadership, good
team management and planning, community togetherness, and
communication, were identified by the local participants as key
elements for implementing the best practices in their communities
(Kaplan 2000, Black 2003, Mistry et al. 2009). Building key soft
skills also contributed to building the confidence of many
participants to take on new roles within their community. For
example, young women in Kwamalasamutu were able to address
male community leaders during public meetings, and express their
concerns regarding their leadership capacity, in front of the North
Rupununi indigenous facilitators. Without the confidence
building during the community exchange, such encounters would
not have happened.
Yet, we still felt that the timeframe for some of the interventions
could have been longer. Although positive change occurred in all
contexts, we found that six months was the bare minimum to
ensure that the main outcomes of the initiative were reached,
including the transferability of core concepts and techniques to
participants and the wider community, and ensuring the
successful implementation of a best practice to face up to a local
challenge. For the practices that needed a significant initial input,
such as implementing a community radio, six months was too
short, and only the crucial initial guidelines could be transferred
in order to motivate the community to get the task started. In
addition, CP2PKE could have been reinforced through a two-way
exchange where community members and participants visited the
communities where the best practice was taking place (Patel and
Mitlin 2002). In this case, the limitation was not only the
timeframe but the resources available for this additional exchange.
More broadly, the limited timeframe and resources available for
the CP2PKE constrained the depth of the impact evaluation on
the communities involved. We acknowledge that a more detailed
process for social impact assessment for the community exchanges
(Berardi 2013) that took into account factors such as deadweight,
displacement, attribution, and drop-off, while locating the impact
assessment within the interests and aims of the communities
themselves rather than those of individual projects, could have
been carried out. We hope to do this in future community
interventions.
DISCUSSION
Our study, based on practical criteria for evaluating the impact
of a CP2PKE process, provides important evidence for the range
of enabling factors that not only ensure successful CP2PKE
between communities but also contribute to meaningful impact
of the exchange. This can help define optimal programs to further
consolidate this innovative practice. This study therefore fills a
crucial gap in research and provides a strong baseline for the
development of similar initiatives, while acknowledging the
limitations imposed by delimited project-based interventions.
Our impact assessment process paralleled recommendations for
knowledge exchange evaluation made by Reed et al. (2014) and
Fazey et al. (2014):
1. We focused on participants’ priorities in terms of the
challenges that the communities were facing and their own
practices rather than our own predefinition of which
challenges to address and which solutions to implement.
2. We built long-term, trusting relationships based on dialogue
that went beyond “hit-and-run” interventions and instead
focused on growing the relationship over an extended period
of time, especially through working with established CSOs
that had built these relationships before our CP2PKE
process.
3. We delivered tangible results as soon as possible, with
community participants being able to produce their own
videos and photostories from the very first day of capacity
building, and then on to the more important impact of
implementing community owned solutions, which provided
benefits to the wider community.
4. We applied an evaluation process that explored the impact
on a variety of stakeholders, from participants involved in
the capacity building (differentiated and analyzed in terms
of, for example, age, gender, diverse capacity, and
motivation) to the wider community, including the
involvement of leaders.
5. We were explicit about how our CP2PKE was
conceptualized and the assumptions we had in terms of
expected outcomes.
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6. We evaluated a range of actual outcomes, some that were
directly linked to the project objectives (e.g., implement a
new practice in a community) and some that were not
specifically outlined originally but clearly emerged during
the process (e.g., the strengthening of self-confidence of
young community members).
7. We used evaluations as part of the process of delivering the
CP2PKE, which involved a wide variety of stakeholders in
assessing the process and adapting it according to feedback.
8. We used mixed methods in the evaluation process, including
one-to-one interviews, focus groups, observations, and peerto-peer interviews.
However, we also wanted to go beyond applying these generic
“good practice” principles and identify more practical
recommendations than those outlined by Reed et al. (2014) and
Fazey et al (2014). In our approach, we were able to implement a
relatively robust evaluation process for assessing the impact of
our CP2PKE, and to therefore provide practical recommendations
on how to increase the success of CP2PKE initiatives beyond
generic principles of good practice.
Our results highlight a number of key criteria for maximizing the
impact of a CP2PKE, such as the composition of the participants,
the length of the exchange, and the role of collaborating CSOs.
However, critical to the success of the exchange was the role of
community facilitators. Research shows that individuals may be
more likely to view information produced by those with similar
interests as more credible and legitimate (e.g., Henry and Dietz
2011, Moeliono et al. 2014), and may also exhibit homophily,
namely the tendency for people to interact with people similar to
themselves (McPherson et al. 2001). Establishing a common
understanding of concepts and tools through the community
facilitators was also crucial. Our use of “foreign” concepts such
as system viability became locally owned through sharing
concepts and tools, and readapting them to local necessities and
views. However, there are major dangers with this approach too.
We faced the potential risks of “facipulation” when promoting
concepts and techniques developed within the globalizing modern
cultural context; i.e., giving a participatory and grassroots guise
to a process with the subtle aim of transferring non-indigenous
concepts, such as system viability, and ICT tools, such as videos
and laptops, which may not, in fact, be compatible with the local
cultural context (White and Tiongco 1997). We have debated this
issue elsewhere (Berardi et al. 2014b), but suffice to say that the
process we adopted prioritized freedom for the communities
themselves to choose how the concepts and techniques were
adapted and implemented on their own terms.
Participants’ capacity in ICT and community infrastructure, such
as access to the Internet, in many cases was limited, which made
the use of participatory visual techniques and methods
challenging. Nevertheless, starting from the initial capacity
building training, participatory films and photostories played a
fundamental role in producing tangible outputs, which helped
focus and motivate participants to undertake activities, while at
the same time enabling sharing of progress with the wider
community. We found that the use of PV and PP enabled
participants to gain new technical capacity but also to analyze
their local practices with a new angle and gain ownership of the
core concepts and techniques of the project. It is clear that as ICT
communication networks and technologies become more
accessible and participants become more skilled in their use, the
drawbacks of using techniques such as PV and PP will diminish,
with the real prospects of these techniques becoming a core part
of communities’ day-to-day lives and any eventual CP2PKE
process. However, in our practitioner manual that underpins the
process, we also suggest that advanced ICT technologies may not
always be appropriate in the CP2PKE process, and that more
accessible communication tools, such as hand drawings, could be
used (Berardi et al. 2014a).
The focus on self-determined challenges proved to be a key step
of the process. Only once the community challenges were
identified could the North Rupununi best practice be chosen and
implemented by the local communities. The community owned
approach, especially when involving the wider community, was
critical for community motivation and ownership of the process.
We have started a chain of action that we hope will open
opportunities for communities of the Guiana Shield to be the
instigators of exchange processes. We have already seen some signs
of this: the community of Maturuca is pursuing exchanges with
the North Rupununi and has independently organized internships
to the North Rupununi to explore ecotourism and learning
languages, and at the same time has invited North Rupununi
students to study vegetable growing in their agricultural school.
Community-to-community knowledge exchange constitutes a
unique opportunity to find alternative ways of dealing with
climate change and complex social-ecological challenges. It also
provides one of the most ethically appropriate frameworks to
engage research and carry out projects with indigenous
communities, and deconstruct conventional Western knowledge
(Smith 2012).
CONCLUSION
Many environmental management and governance policies are
unclear with regard to how the expenditure of funds for the
protection and enhancement of the environment is going to be
spent within the receiving institutions and communities. Our
analyses show that peer-to-peer knowledge exchange for
supporting and sharing community owned solutions holds great
promise for successful and sustainable environmental
management in the Guiana Shield. Within a context characterized
by indigenous communities as the key mediators, providing
funding to first identify and then help strengthen community
owned solutions through peer-to-peer knowledge exchange would
be an effective mechanism for addressing the needs of protecting
the environment while empowering indigenous communities and
integrating traditional sustainable livelihoods with innovations
that would actually promote, rather than undermine, community
cohesion and indigenous culture.
Responses to this article can be read online at:
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/issues/responses.
php/8495
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Acknowledgments:
We would like to especially thank the COBRA participants and the
communities of the North Rupununi (Guyana), Kwamalasamutu
(Suriname), Kavanayén (Venezuela), Katoonarib (Guyana),
Laguna Colorada (Colombia), Maturuca (Brazil), and Antecuma
Pata (French Guiana) for their enthusiastic participation in this
research. We would also like to thank the following practitioners
and academics for helping facilitate the exchanges and for their
insightful inputs into the process: Rachelle Bong A Jan and
Gwendolyn Smith of Attune Development, Suriname; Bibiana
Bilbao and Adriana Millan of the Universidad Simón Bolívar,
Venezuela; Vincenzo Lauriola of the Instituto Nacional de
Pesquisas da Amazônia, Brazil; Jorge Restrepo and Sandra
Aristizabal of the United Nations Development Programme,
Colombia; Aurélia Stefani of the Université des Antilles et de la
Guyane, Institut Pasteur, French Guiana; Claire Couly of the Parc
Amazonien de Guyane, French Guiana; and Nicholas Fredericks
and Faye Fredericks of the South Central People's Development
Association, Guyana. We thank the reviewers for their pertinent
comments, which greatly helped improve the paper. This research
was funded by the Environment Programme, Management of
Natural Resources, DG Research and Innovation, European
Commission 7th Framework.
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