Page:Niger Delta Ecosystems- the ERA Handbook, 1998.djvu/35

Introduction to succeed when Local People are in control, because they have to be committed and because they can only blame themselves when things go wrong.

Sustainable development therefore means empowerment. The political and economic empowerment of people in a locality allows them to control development and use its devices (institutional structures, funds, marketing, etc.) themselves, in order to create the local wealth which maintains the institutions of empowerment and the infrastructure needed for further wealth creation.

However, the first stage in any such work is participatory research.

2.4WHAT IS PARTICIPATORY RESEARCH?

ERA aims to be the voice of Local People, but it can only be their voice if it has their trust and if it speaks their truth. Gathering relevant knowledge comes from throwing off all preconceptions and by a humble immersion into local life.

ERA's approach is necessarily based upon what ERA people are able to do in the field with limited resources. This means getting to know a community by living within it, in order to feel as far as possible what it may be like to be a member of that community. This means sleeping, eating and washing in the same way, and travelling in the same way—whether by bush-taxi and speed-boat or, more likely, by foot and canoe, or piled onto the back of a motor-bike with one or two others. There are no guarantees, but this is the best way to win trust and friendship and, with luck, to get at the truth of a situation.

This approach to getting local knowledge seems to be dangerously informal, despite having the formal name of 'Participatory Research' or PR. Nonetheless, the process has a respectable academic history and ERA workers approach it seriously.

PR is based upon Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA). In the jargon of the rural development profession this began as Rapid Rural Appraisal (RRA), and the approach has been well justified in relation to work on the environment by David Atte when he was Senior Lecturer in Geography at the University of Ilorin. He wrote:

"... rural communities in Africa and other parts of the third world have a profound and detailed knowledge of the ecosystem and species (the natural environment) which they are in contact with, and cultural settings within their respective environments. The dimensions of the knowledge are wide, encompassing the whole range of human experiences with regard to both tangible and non-tangible entities. Their fields of knowledge include history, linguistics, economics, social knowledge, politics and administration; energy related technology; (the) physical environment of soils, water and climate; biological entities of plants, crops, weeds, pests, domestic and wild animals, medicines, taxonomic systems, time, skills, artefacts, religion and a host of others. In all these fields, each rural group has developed knowledge encompassing theory, concepts, inter-relationships, factual and attributive information to a high degree of accuracy. (David Atte, 1989)"

This applies equally to urban communities, and Atte further summarises PRA activities as

''... both an attitude and a methodology. It provides the mind-set which enables the outsider (usually the elite) to interact with insiders (usually Local People) as equals and for mutual benefit. It helps outsiders to understand the ... community systems by using (the) visual techniques of diagrams, models, counting and quantifying'' 33