3 Recruiting a PRA team for Ecuador This summer I will be working with an Ecuadorean NGO called EcoCiencia and

Box 8.3 Recruiting a PRA team for Ecuador This summer I will be working with an Ecuadorean NGO called EcoCiencia and

will be leading a Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) in a small peasant commu- nity located in Pululahua Geobotanical Reserve, a 30-minute bus ride north of Quito.

EcoCiencia has held some successful campamentos with kids and parents but now sees potential and has interest in establishing a more permanent environmental education program with complete local participation. They suggested possibly a small andean zoo.

I’m taking the zoo suggestion one step further by doing a PRA and thus figuring out with the residents what are their biggest problems and what are suggested solu- tions, some of which might be addressed by an interpretation center of some kind ...

For those who are unfamiliar with PRA methodology, in short, it’s a workshop of 2–3 weeks on site where a team of outside tecnicos works with a local commu- nity team to investigate the site, discuss problems and solutions, and present them to the entire community who then discuss and prioritise them. A document results, done in part by the people and it is designed to promote autosuggestion on the part of the locals to use action plans and start their own development process.

In my case I will also be using the PRA results as a feasibility study for the estab- lishment of an environmental interpretation centre which would provide economic, educational, and any number of other benefits.

PRA is an impressive methodology catching on in Latin America (while it is mainstay in India and Asia) which really puts into practice the principle of local participation that many talk about and few do.

I am currently recruiting tecnicos for the interdisciplinary team . . . Requirements are proficiency in Spanish, some experience working with rural or local people, disciplinary skills that complement the yet unformed team, and a desire to work hard during the short stay. The offer is open to all students and professionals. I welcome recommendations of other people, especially latinos, as well.

Source: Jon Kohl, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, in Environment in Latin America

Network internet bulletin board, 21 March 1996

While the techniques of local appraisal are well-intentioned by those who lead and conduct them, the critical questions concerning the balance of power are who leads them and to what ends. In general they are led, or at least significantly advised, by First World professionals, and the idea that a group of outsiders visiting for a short period of time can appreciate, let alone solve, the problems experienced by local communities is rather pretentious and patronising, and suggestive of neo-colonialist attitudes. It is no doubt exciting, and a little ‘ramboesque’, for the First World professional to be whisked off to help a community somewhere in Latin America, Oceania, South East Asia or Africa, and will certainly add kudos to their curriculum vitae. But such approaches may not be appropriate for addressing the structural and long-term problems of community devel- opment. This is not to say that collaboration between First World professionals and local communities is not possible or desirable. But a crucial element in such collabora- tion might be to redress existing imbalances of power so that the outcome of the exer- cise represents the interests of local people rather than the interests and values of the ‘outside tecnicos’. To this end, Heeks (1999) suggests that there are specifically several

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questions to be asked where participation is being considered: what are the political and cultural contexts? who wants to introduce participation? and why? who is participation sought from? do they want to, and can they, participate? (Heeks, 1999: 6).

Other participatory techniques

Another related technique which attempts to involve the notion of participation in the making of decisions is the Delphi technique, which is used to set threshold values or critical levels or standards of specific aspects of a development (such as pollution levels or maximum visitor numbers) or to identify positive and/or negative impacts of a devel- opment. It is a judgemental technique involving the subjective assessments of those who take part, although it is often seen ‘as a means of collecting expert or informed opinion

13111 and of working towards consensus between experts on a given issue’ (Green and Hunter, 1992: 37).

The technique uses responses of the participants to an initial questionnaire about the issue under study. The second stage compiles these responses and informs participants of the results (that is, the total responses). The third stage repeats the first but partici- pants have the benefit of knowing all other responses. The stages can be repeated numerous times if a consensus is not close enough.

Although meetings between its participants can take place as part of the process, one of the advantages of the technique is that it provides anonymity, or at least separation, for each individual participant, thereby reducing peer pressure in the formation of opin- ions and permitting more honest responses. Meetings and/or collection and dissemina- tion of responses form an important part of the attempt to reach a consensus from all individual responses.

The example given in Box 8.4 illustrates the use of the technique. It highlights the general limitations on the depth of participation attained by the technique and the conse- quent suspicion with which its results may be treated by local people. Despite this, there is no doubt that such techniques may be useful in the field of tourism planning, as the example cited in Box 8.4 illustrates. It is not possible to be precise in a classification of this scheme according to Pretty’s typology, largely because of the limited amount of information available. One important issue concerns the adequacy of the representation of the local village population by the mayor – some groups may feel inadequately repre- sented. On present information, however, its classification could range from Pretty’s

passive participation to functional participation.

Disadvantages of the Delphi technique include its method of selection of participants, the possibility of the dominant influence of particular personalities, its design by profes- sional planners rather than those most affected by the plans, and the arbitrariness of the selection of its values. The selection of participants is normally made either by the professional planners or by the interested party who wishes to see the proposal go ahead; and is most unlikely to be made by those affected adversely by the plans. The anonymity of participants does not necessarily preclude the inordinate influence of a dominant personality over the outcome of the technique as a result of the power relationships between the participants. As with any subjective assessment technique, it is feasible that the same group could produce a different outcome at a different time and a different group could produce a different outcome at the same time. Moreover, it has the poten- tial to be used as a means of ensuring that control stays with the ‘experts’ and out of the hands of the local people. (For further discussion of the Delphi technique in the context of indicators for sustainable tourism, see Miller (2001).)

Chapter 4 introduced the notion of carrying capacity for tourism destinations and illus- 11111

trated its calculation in Box 4.7. Although Box 4.7 calculated the physical, real and

222 • ‘Hosts’ and destinations