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A systems approach to modeling Community-Based Environmental Monitoring: a case of participatory water quality monitoring in rural Mexico Ana Burgos, Rosaura Páez, Estela Carmona & Hilda Rivas
Environmental Monitoring and Assessment An International Journal Devoted to Progress in the Use of Monitoring Data in Assessing Environmental Risks to Man and the Environment ISSN 0167-6369 Volume 185 Number 12 Environ Monit Assess (2013) 185:10297-10316 DOI 10.1007/s10661-013-3333-x
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Author's personal copy Environ Monit Assess (2013) 185:10297–10316 DOI 10.1007/s10661-013-3333-x
A systems approach to modeling Community-Based Environmental Monitoring: a case of participatory water quality monitoring in rural Mexico Ana Burgos & Rosaura Páez & Estela Carmona & Hilda Rivas
Received: 17 April 2013 / Accepted: 26 June 2013 / Published online: 13 July 2013 # Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013
Abstract Community-Based Environmental Monitoring (CBM) is a social practice that makes a valuable contribution to environmental management and construction of active societies for sustainable future. However, its documentation and analysis show deficiencies that hinder contrast and comparison of processes and effects. Based on systems approach, this article presents a model of CBM to orient assessment of programs, with heuristic or practical goals. In a focal level, the model comprises three components, the social subject, the object of monitoring, and the means of action, and five processes, data management, social learning, assimilation/decision making, direct action, and linking. Emergent properties were also identified in the focal and suprafocal levels considering community self-organization, response capacity, and autonomy for environmental management. The model was applied to the assessment of a CBM program of water quality implemented in rural areas in Mexico. Attributes and variables (indicators) for components, processes, and emergent properties were selected to measure changes that emerged since the program implementation. The assessment of the first 3 years (2010–2012) detected changes that indicated movement towards the expected results, but it revealed also the need to adjust the intervention strategy and procedures. Components and processes A. Burgos (*) : R. Páez : E. Carmona : H. Rivas Centro de Investigaciones en Geografía Ambiental, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Antigua Carretera a Patzcuaro # 8701, Colonia Ex Hacienda de San José de la Huerta, Morelia, Michoacán, ZC 58190, Mexico e-mail:
[email protected]
of the model reflected relevant aspects of the CBM in real world. The component called means of action as a key element to transit “from the data to the action.” The CBM model offered a conceptual framework with advantages to understand CBM as a socioecological event and to strengthen its implementation under different conditions and contexts. Keywords Water quality . Community-based research . System research . Emergent properties . Tropical dry lands
Introduction Community-Based Environmental Monitoring (CBM) is a social practice that makes a valuable contribution to environmental management and ecosystems protection (Becker et al. 2005; Brown et al. 2012). Its application in the area of health has improved public services (Björkmanand and Svensson 2009) and reduced incidence of endemic diseases and basic health problems in developing countries (Mswia et al. 2003; Barreto et al. 2006; Duc Thang et al. 2009). CBM of water quality has extended worldwide and it has been seen as the way to organize local solutions to water problems (Deutsh et al. 2005; Nare et al. 2006; Srikhanth 2009). Owing to its capacity to build participatory processes, groups, and networks of decision and action, CBM has also been identified as a promoter of social change (Bliss et al. 2001; Van Rijsoor and Jinfeng 2005).
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Since its inception, CBM has grown as an expression of scientific activity at the interface between science and society. Its adoption by the scientific sector has gained ground thanks to the concepts of Community-Based Research (Savan 2004; Seely and Moser 2004; Bodorkos and Pataki 2009) and Citizen Science (Delaney et al. 2008; Conrad and Hilchey 2011), under which scientists and society interact to achieve common objectives. In this sense, CBM is involved in the building of scientific knowledge and in the promotion of active societies; this double role presents challenges in both methodology and implementation. The practice of CBM raises two main scientific concerns as follows: first, programs must be rigorous in their design and must adhere to standards of ecological monitoring (Vos et al. 2000) if data are to be reliable and the conclusions are to interpret environmental change and support decision making and, secondly, its results can contribute to an understanding of the social processes that it promotes (Pollock and Whitelaw 2005; Conrad and Doust 2008; FernandezGimenez et al. 2008). These multifaceted aims complicate documentation, analysis, and synthesis of CBM initiatives in diverse contexts and conditions. Conrad and Hilchey (2011) recognized that this heterogeneous and poor documentation hinders comparison among studies and causes gaps in understanding, explanation, and exploration. To study CBM as a socioecological event, this paper proposes a conceptual framework based on the systems approach that has been widely applied in studies of sustainability (Gallopin 1996; Clayton and Radcliff 1997; Kelly 1998; Kay et al. 1999). In this sense, the objective of this paper is twofold as follows: first, to apply the systems approach to model the CBM procedure and, secondly, to use the proposed model to assess a program of participatory water quality monitoring that has been developed in tropical dry lands in rural Mexico. This example offers guidelines to evaluate such an approach and to judge its potential to improve the study and implementation of participatory monitoring initiatives.
A systems approach for the study of CBM The combination of an ecological systems approach with components of social participation or action
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research has shown a high potential for heuristic purposes and for communication, design, or decision making and it has been used to face different kinds of socioecological problems. This approach contributes strongly to the structuring of a complex reality for scientific purposes (Eksvärd and Rydberg 2010) or to orient management goals when several actors and visions need to be articulated, for example, for facing an ecological degradation condition in a socially appreciated ecosystem (Recovery Potential Screening 2013). Similarly, CBM can be better understood with the application of system-based principles for building a model, such as shown in Fig. 1. Focal level and primary system: components and interactions In this conceptualization, the CBM event is conceived in a focal level encompassing a primary system that consists of three components as follows: (i) a social subject, (ii) the object of the monitoring, and (iii) the means of action. The social subject is a group of persons who are not specialists in ecological or environmental issues but who are interested or motivated to focus their attention on some component with which they are in contact. Since this is normally a gregarious activity, the social subject can be referred to as a social group. The object of monitoring consists of some biophysical element of their inhabited space such as water, air, wildlife, or forests. Recently, other objects of monitoring of a social or political type are also considered in the citizen observatories, particularly in urban communities. Finally, the means of action refers to the set of elements that allow the social group to influence the object of monitoring. They include organizational resources (local institutions), materials (economic resources, equipment, and building materials), or communication (means of communication, access to information, and formal contacts). With regard to the three components of the primary system, the model highlights five relationships that determine important processes (Fig. 1). The first is the relationship between the social group and the object of monitoring, resulting in the process of data management which first step is data generation. The data, an attribute of the observed object, are recorded in an encoded way by the social group. In CBM, data must be obtained through rigorous protocols. The generation of data bonds the observers with that observed
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10299 CONTEXTUAL LEVEL
CBM program (matter, energy, information) INPUT University groups
assimilation social learning social subject
NGOs data management ENVIRONMENT
means of action
direct action
object of monitoring
strengthening
linking
external actors
regulation
ENVIRONMENT OUTPUT (information / energy / environmental externalities)
Organizational level Component Relationship Fluxes (energy, matter, information)
Emergent properties in focal level Community self-organization Response capacity Autonomy for environmental management Emergent properties in contextual level Connectivity – Social capital Control of negative externalities Socio-spatial dynamics at larger areas
Fig. 1 Community-based monitoring (CBM)
in an intimate relationship, so the community monitors become spies, and the ability to watch continues to increase as a product of this relationship. Berkes et al. (2007) offered examples of how this watcher capacity of the local groups is stored for decades as local knowledge, creating excellent bases for CBM. However, for CBM to achieve its purpose, observation should translate into systematically stored data and thence transformed into information. This process is the contribution that science makes to the spontaneous observation of man in contact with nature, and in the CBM programs, this requires the support of trained university groups. The second process appears as a feedback loop in the same component of social subject, and it refers to social learning (Fig. 1). For Reed et al. (2010), it reflects a change in the understanding that goes beyond the individual and moves inside a wider social unit, or community of practice, through social interactions among actors within a social network. This concept has had a significant influence on natural resources management as a defining process to facilitate decision making and collective action towards sustainability (Hjorth and Bagheri 2006; Pahl-Wostl et al. 2007;
Johnson et al. 2012). The relationships that cause social learning usually are collaboration, cooperation, knowledge interchange, and shared construction of knowledge (Fenandez-Gimenez et al. 2008). CBM strongly facilitates these interactions, so the inclusion of the process of social learning in this model formalizes the need to induce or study it in this context. The third relationship is that between the social subject and the means of action, herein designated as assimilation/decision making. This connection indicates that the social subject has realized that the activities of monitoring are not for data storage, but for driving informed acts. Assimilation is a key motivator for the social subject to obtain the means of action required to transform an unwanted situation or to support a desired one. Fast and complete data interpretation by monitors plays a core role to encourage this process. Finally, the last two relationships stem from the means of action (Fig. 1). In one, the social subject exerts direct action on the object of monitoring without the mediation of some external actor. In the other, the process entails a link with external actors (institutions of government, communities, firms, universities, and
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nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)), with the aim of motivating comanagement through regulation, application of standards, or reduction of negative influences on the primary system exerted by external actors. Hierarchical structure at CBM The systems approach leads to the recognition of the hierarchical structure of the whole system, as conceptualized by the theory of hierarchies (O’ Neill 1989). At least three organizational levels are relevant to understanding the phenomenon of interest as follows: the focal level, where the primary system is located; the subfocal level with higher resolution on subcomponents; and a suprafocal or contextual level. According to this theory, the description of dynamics at focal level requires the consideration of structural restrictions that are imposed by the lower level (initial conditions) as well as the functional constraints resulting from the upper one (Giampietro and Mayumi 1997). Applied to CBM, the subfocal level refers to the individuals who make up the social group, as well as specific aspects of the object of monitoring, and also those subcomponents that comprise the means of action. The inclusion of the suprafocal level immediately implies attention to the geographical and socioenvironmental contexts of the CBM program. The geographical context establishes the spatial relationships of monitoring activities such as sites within a watershed, sectors of a protected natural area, or different parts of a city. The socioenvironmental context strongly conditions the design and implementation of a CBM program (Pollock and Whitelaw 2005); it also defines relationships among social groups; monitors other external actors who establish networks, games, and institution; and create perceptions and make use of decision tools (Pahl-Wostl et al. 2007). The social capital visible at this level is crucial for taking environmental, territorial, or political decisions that are to operate on a large area. Emergent properties at CBM hierarchical levels The recognition of hierarchical levels allows identification of emergent properties of interest that result from interaction of components within one level but are observable only at the next highest hierarchical level (Giampietro and Mayumi 1997). For the CBM model, the emergent properties of interest in the focal
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level are community self-organization, response capacity, and local autonomy for environmental management (Fig. 1). In systems thinking, self-organization refers to the appearance of dissipative structures created in systems that are out of thermodynamic equilibrium. The new structures favor a major structural complexity of the whole system and the storage of additional information. These structures are generated by means of dissipative processes that are detonated by the energy that enters the system, creating new conditions and opportunities (Kay et al. 1999). In the present model, this scenario is applied to the emergence of new structures such as social structures or infrastructure to reach some goal of the monitoring, promoted by energy that has entered the system by means of the CBM program (see below). The response capacity is related to the ability to deal with uncertainty and problematic situations (bad environmental management), with CBM being a suitable vehicle for its development. Both emergent properties, the self-organization and the response capacity, are related to the autonomy of community, seen as the capacity to decide and act on the local natural resources with a wide vision to face the future. Regarding the suprafocal level, the CBM model considers the emergent properties that are determinants of the improvement of environmental management at larger scales. Among these are second-order institutional structures (e.g., watershed committees, institutions created to embrace several administrative jurisdictions, or multiple juxtaposed territories), the adoption of complex relational practices and organizational learning, and control over environmental externalities at a variety of scales (Fig. 1). Inputs/outputs in CBM Frequently, the CBM programs are conducted by external groups belonging to universities and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) working together with related or complementary interests (Savan 2004). In addition, in some countries such as the USA and Canada, government agencies and other mainstream actors (e.g., private sector and regulatory bodies) are also involved in CBM initiatives (Fernandez-Gimenez et al. 2008; Tremblay et al. 2008). In systemic terms, all these external groups inject fluxes of matter, energy, and information (Fig. 1, gross arrows) that can initiate processes which emergence would be rare or may activate others that would occur at
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very slow rates. These flows proceed into the system in an orderly way, called intervention strategy, which design and development should be based on theoretical, conceptual, technical, and ethical criteria. The traits of intervention strategy vary according to their purposes and schemes. Danielsen et al. (2008) used the level of relative involvement of local stakeholders and professional scientists in monitoring to identify categories of monitoring schemes. Since CBM is a socioecological event, the intervention strategy must be preferably designed to act upon biophysical and social components, and on the relationships among them. CBM programs also produce output flows (Fig. 1, gross arrows). The information generated is a main product that is frequently the major interests of university groups. However, outflows of matter and energy should also be considered, such as the energy involved in linking local actors to external agencies. In the long term, the outflow of material can be beneficial (e.g., fluxes of individual or seeds of protected species) or deleterious (e.g., fluxes of contaminated water or sediments from deforested areas). In any case, output fluxes are a measure of the impacts of a CBM program outside the whole system.
Model application: community-based water quality monitoring in rural Mexico In Mexico, CBM is only emergent and is scarcely documented. In the present work, the proposed model was applied to examine the effects of a CBM program implemented in a rural area characterized by water deficit, intense isolation, and socioeconomic backwardness. The program was a part of a regional-scale project started in 2006; this employed action research to encourage processes for endogenous development by means of a broad agenda of action lines such as organic production, cooperatives, conservation and use of biodiversity, and community water management. In this framework, in 2010, the “Bajo Balsas Community-Based WaterQuality Monitoring Program” (Bajo Balsas program) was launched with two main purposes as follows: first, to obtain reliable information on the status and seasonal variations of water quality of the sources used by local populations and to identify determining natural and anthropogenic factors and, secondly, to motivate community participation, training, and organization to act on water resources (i.e., environmental management), and
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to improve the response capacity and self-organization (i.e., social change). Contextual level: the geographic and socioenvironmental scenes The Bajo Balsas program was implemented in a hydrographic system of 1,140 km2 composed of three medium-sized watersheds in the low zone of the Balsas River Basin in the State of Michoacan, Mexico (extreme coordinates UTM 2104527– 2063354 N/E 14 196766–247315 W), hereinafter Bajo Balsas. The area fits the category of tropical dry lands, where the climate is warm–dry with summer rainfalls, an annual mean precipitation of 650 mm (concentrated between June and October), and annual mean temperature of 28 °C. The seasonality of water availability structures the functioning of ecosystems, productive and social activities, and, hence, gives rise to a socioecological system regulated by water (Maass and Burgos 2011). The area is completely rural, and the people inhabit small settlements with 10 to 200 homes spread out over the landscape. The territory is arranged in agrarian units called “ejidos,” which are units of common land ownership with legal status in Mexican legislation and autonomy to make decisions about the inhabited territory. The ejidos are suitable territorial units in which to achieve ecosystem management (Thoms and Betters 1998). However, neoliberal agrarian policies of the twentieth century in Mexico have led to a dismantling of collective action and the promotion of individual actions (Loehr 2012), thereby weakening the powers of impoverished peasants and increasing their vulnerability. Additionally, the population is very isolated because of the poor condition of terrestrial routes, the low level of education, and a lack of telephone coverage and Internet; this results in low flows of matter, energy, and information. The natural constraints, the socioeconomic backwardness, the governmental neglect, and the weakness of local institutions have encouraged the migration of undocumented immigrants to the USA and the involvement of youth in illegal activities (organized crime). The focal level: components and relationships of the primary system The primary system was defined by the following (Table 1): (i) the agrarian unit (ejido) and the social
Action capacity
External links
Action
Linking
Assimilation
Social learning
Incorporated information Significant learning (mental construct) Information use
Data management
Administrative arrangements with external actors
Effective actions
Local decisions
Changes in perceptions, understanding, and behavior
Confident data
Inversion in water quality management
Dp (%)
Perceived difficulty
Material resources
Tg (%)
Training level of social group
Institutional integration
RP (%)
Relative participation
Local institutions
Po (#)
Observer population
Means of actions
Mp (#)
100
100
Inventory, semiquantitative analysis, and description of local actions to assess preventive and corrective actions to control water quality by year Descriptive assessment and semiquantitative analysis of administrative arrangements and results by year
(# of arrangements by year)
Qualitative interpretation
– (# of direct actions by year)
Qualitative interpretation
Analysis of database
Economic estimation of resources invested in direct action or in the linking with external actors
100 Ms: monitors with charges of social responsibility; C: total of charges of local institutions in the community Ms C
WQ1 ¼
∑ni¼1 ðIi WiÞ ∑ni¼1 Wi Ii: index for variable; Wi: weighting of variables
Determination in laboratory according to standardized techniques
Determination in field with portable equipment
Frequency analysis of questionnaires applied to monitors about difficulty of monitoring tasks
Ti: training level of each monitor, calculated as the number of assisted activities/total activities in the period
∑n1 Ti McþMp
ðMcþMpÞ Po
# of inhabitants of locality >15 years old minus # of core and peripheral monitors
# of participants that assisted 50 % of activities
Assessment
Data (# of confident data generated by year) –
–
Ii (%)
In field (8): temperature (air and water), pH, turbidity, alkalinity, hardness, total coliforms, E. coli In laboratory (14): pH, electric conductivity, turbidity, hardness, alkalinity, ions, ammonia-N, NO−2, NO−3 Water Quality Index WQI (%)
Mc (#)
Core monitors
Acronym (U)
Peripheral monitors
Water quality
Operational learning (skills and abilities)
Participation
Variables (indicators)
Object of monitoring (water sources)
Social subject (group)
Attribute
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Processes in primary system (focal level)
Components of primary system (focal level)
System category
Table 1 System categories, attributes, and state variables for assessing the effects of the Bajo Balsas program on main components and processes at the focal level
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Author's personal copy Environ Monit Assess (2013) 185:10297–10316
group involved in monitoring (social subject), (ii) the water sources for the local population (object of monitoring), and (iii) the local institutions and material resources for water management (means of action). The social subject: agrarian units and peasant monitors The Bajo Balsas program was conducted in 15 agrarian units (ejidos), distributed in the three watersheds of the hydrographic system. At the start of the program, they showed low internal activity in their attention to local water sources. The integration of the social group in each unit arose from the preexisting local institutions set up by the assembly and the local authorities. Invitation to participate in the program was issued within the framework of regional projects that were already underway, and at all times, it was wide, directed both at those people with positions of responsibility in their communities, and at local inhabitants without distinction. The object of monitoring: the water sources The program focused on monitoring the water quality from sources that supply domestic use. The type of source available in each locality depends on its topographical location within the watersheds. In the highlands (>700 masl), where settlements are among the slopes, the water comes from small permanent springs or from runoff between rocks in the canyons or on the ridges. In the middle altitudes (500–700 masl), springs are markedly fewer and smaller, so populations must access multiple sources, combining springs and small wells for access to groundwater, in order to achieve the required volumes. In the lower parts of the watersheds (
