---
title: "Participatory monitoring"
chunk: 1/3
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_monitoring"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:15:26.931405+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

Participatory monitoring (also known as collaborative monitoring, community-based monitoring, locally based monitoring, or volunteer monitoring) is the regular collection of measurements or other kinds of data (monitoring), usually of natural resources and biodiversity, undertaken by local residents of the monitored area, who rely on local natural resources and thus have more local knowledge of those resources. Those involved usually live in communities with considerable social cohesion, where they regularly cooperate on shared projects.
Participatory monitoring has emerged as an alternative or addition to professional scientist-executed monitoring. Scientist-executed monitoring is often costly and hard to sustain, especially in those regions of the world where financial resources are limited. Moreover, scientist-executed monitoring can be logistically and technically difficult and is often perceived to be irrelevant by resource managers and the local communities. Involving local people and their communities in monitoring is often part of the process of sharing the management of land and resources with the local communities. It is connected to the devolution of rights and power to the locals. Aside from potentially providing high-quality information, participatory monitoring can raise local awareness and build the community and local government expertise that is needed for addressing the management of natural resources.
Participatory monitoring is sometimes included in terms such as citizen science, crowd-sourcing, ‘public participation in scientific research’ and participatory action research.

== Definition ==
The term ‘participatory monitoring’ embraces a broad range of approaches, from self-monitoring of harvests by local resource users themselves, to censuses by local rangers, and inventories by amateur naturalists. The term includes techniques labelled as ‘self-monitoring’, ranger-based monitoring’, ‘event-monitoring’, ‘participatory assessment, monitoring and evaluation of biodiversity’, ‘community-based observing’, and ‘community-based monitoring and information systems’.
Many of these approaches are directly linked to resource management, but the entities being monitored vary widely, from individual animals and plants, through habitats, to ecosystem goods and services. However, all of the approaches have in common that the monitoring is carried out by individuals who live in the monitored places and rely on local natural resources, and that local people or local government staff are directly involved in formulation of research questions, data collection, and (in most instances) data analysis, and implementation of management solutions based on research findings.
Participatory monitoring is included in the term ’participatory monitoring and management’ which has been defined as "approaches used by local and Indigenous communities, informed by traditional and local knowledge, and, increasingly, by contemporary science, to assess the status of resources and threats on their land and advance sustainable economic opportunities based on the use of natural resources". term ’participatory monitoring and management’ is particularly used in tropical, Arctic and developing regions, where communities are most often the custodians of valuable biodiversity and extensive natural ecosystems.

=== Alternative definitions ===
Other definitions for participatory monitoring have also been proposed, including:

"The systematic collection of information at regular intervals for initial assessment and for the monitoring of change. This collection is undertaken by locals in a community who do not have professional training".
Likewise, the term ’community-based monitoring of natural resources’ has been defined as:

"A process where concerned citizens, government agencies, industry, academia, community groups and local institutions collaborate to monitor, track, and respond to issues of common community concern".

"Monitoring of natural resources undertaken by local stakeholders using their own resources and in relation to aims and objectives that make sense to them".

"A process of routinely observing environmental or social phenomena, or both, that is led and undertaken by community members and can involve external collaboration and support of visiting researchers and government agencies".

=== Limitations ===
It has been suggested that participatory monitoring is unlikely to provide quantitative data on large-scale changes in habitat area, or on populations of cryptic species that are hard to identify or census reliably. It has also been suggested that participatory monitoring is not suitable for monitoring resources that are so valuable they attract powerful outsiders. Likewise, in areas where changes, threats, or interventions operate in complex fashions, where rural people do not depend on the use of natural resources and there are no real benefits flowing to the local people from doing monitoring work (or the costs to local people of involvement exceed the benefits), or where there is a poor relationship between the authorities and the local people, participatory monitoring is probably less likely to yield useful data and management solutions than conventional scientific approaches.

== History ==
Whereas government censuses of human populations, which date perhaps to the 16th century B.C., were likely the first formal attempts at environmental monitoring, farmers, fishers and forest users have informally monitored resource conditions for even longer, their observations influencing survival strategies and resource use.
Participatory monitoring schemes are in operation on all the inhabited continents, and the approach is beginning to appear in textbooks.

=== Conferences ===
An international symposium on participatory monitoring was hosted by the Nordic Agency for Development and Ecology and the Zoology Department at Cambridge University in Denmark in April 2004. It led to a special issue of Biodiversity and Conservation October 2005.
In the Arctic, a symposium on data management and local knowledge was hosted by ELOKA and held in Boulder, USA, in November 2011. It led to a special issue of Polar Geography in 2014.
In the Arctic, three circumpolar meetings were held in 2013-2014:

In November 2013 in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, hosted by Oceans North Canada,
In December 2013 in Copenhagen, Denmark, hosted by Greenland Department of Fisheries, Hunting and Agriculture, ELOKA, and Nordic Foundation for Development and Ecology,
In March 2014 in Kautokeino, Norway, hosted by International Centre for Reindeer Husbandry, UNESCO and other partners.
The first global conference on Participatory Monitoring and Management was hosted by the Brazilian Ministry of Environment (MMA) and the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation (ICMBio) and held in Manaus, Brazil in September 2014.

== Approaches ==
Thematically, participatory monitoring has considerable potential in several areas, including: