1
It was a bit meandering but so what?Using
Participatory Action Researchin river catchment
management

• Geoff Whitman and Rachel Pain

2

• What stakeholders said at the beginning
• R5 Well I find it you know, with academics, they
  know, theyve been to university, theyve got
  their degrees, theyve read this, theyve
  studied that...and I just thought to come on
  something like this and not be patronised...
•  
• R6     Theyll come from, these people will come
  along from the Environment Agency and this,
  that and other, and theyll say you do that,
  they haven't a bloody, no practical idea
  whatsoever.
•  
• R5  No.
•  
• R6    They won't listen to you, theyve read it
  in books and thats what we come across and
  that comes regular and thats whats wrong with
  the country they don't listen to the people
  enough.
•  
•  

3
The Centre for Social Justice and Community
Action

• A research centre made up of academic researchers
  from different disciplines and community
  partners.
• University-public engagement as a two-way
  dialogue, research as co-produced.
• Our aim is to
• promote and develop research, teaching,
  public/community engagement and staff development
  around the broad theme of social justice
• provide a centre of excellence for theoretically
  informed participatory and community-based
  research
• provide a locus for good practice in this type of
  research and associated initiatives in teaching,
  training, engagement and staff development.
• Website http//www.dur.ac.uk/beacon/socialjustice
  /
• email socialjustice_at_durham.ac.uk

4
Co-production

• What do we mean by co-production?
• Moving beyond interdisciplinary working and its
  dialogue amongst Experts
• Institutional level
• Jasanoff (2004) Institutional focus of
  observable historical phenomena at level of
  society
• Individual level
• Callon (1999) the Co-Production of Knowledge
  Model . This recognises that concerned publics
  have,
• specific, particular and concrete knowledge
  and competencies, the fruit of their experience
  and observations(p.85), which, have an
  important role to play in enhancing the
  abstractknowledge of the scientists (p. , 85).
• PAR
• A foundational tenet of PAR (Lewin, 1945
  Freire, 1973), that requires that we
• stop working with people as subjectsinstead
  we build relationships as co-researchers (Reason
  and Bradbury 2008, p.9) and that co-researchers
  are engaged as,
• full persons and that exploration is based
  directly on their understanding of their own
  action and experience, rather than being filtered
  through an outsiders perspective (ibid, p.9).

5
Participatory Action Research

• PAR involves people who are concerned about or
  affected by an issue taking a leading role in
  producing and using knowledge about it.
• Many names are now used to describe research
  processes that are in some way participatory -
  PAR is distinct because
• it is driven by participants (a group of people
  who have a stake in the issue being researched),
  rather than an outside sponsor, funder or
  academic (although they may be invited to help)
• it offers a democratic model of who can produce,
  own and use knowledge
• it is collaborative at every stage, involving
  discussion, pooling skills and working together
• it is intended to result in some action, change
  or improvement on the issue being researched.
• it inverts who constructs research questions,
  designs, methods, interpretations and products
  (Fine et al 2007)

6
Participation in water management

• Public participation is now firmly established
  across academic and policy spheres (and also
  hotly contested and critiqued)
• Particular resonance in recent European water
  legislation
• Aarhus Convention (1998) requires that measures
  are taken to include public participation
  approaches during the preparation of plans and
  programmes (Carter and Howe, 2006)
• Inclusion of stakeholder participation
  requirements within the Water Framework Directive
  (2000/60/EC).
• WFD one of the first pieces of European
  legislation that explicitly demands a high degree
  of involvement of non-state actors in the
  implementation (Newig et al., 2005).
• In the UK, River Basin Plans management is
  currently trialled through the Environment
  Agencys 10 trial catchments
• We are exploring improved ways of engaging with
  people and organisations at a catchment level in
  ways that can make a difference to the health of
  all our waters http//www.environment-agency.gov
  .uk/research/planning/131506.aspx).
• Richard Benyon, Minister for Natural Environment
  and Fisheries these catchments should, provide
  a clear understanding of the issues in the
  catchment, involve local communities in decision
  making by sharing evidence, listening to their
  ideas, working out priorities for action and
  seeking to deliver integrated actions that
  address local issues in a cost effective way and
  protect local resources (World Water Day, 22
  March 2011).
• BUT... Technical decisions on river basin
  management will mostly be made within the
  regulatory framework encompassed by the WFD so
  there is little scope for extended, in depth,
  involvement with the public (Wood, 2008).
  Conflict with above?

7
From surveillant science and participatory
modelling to PAR

• Diffuse pollution is a key area in catchment
  management
• Catchments as critical filters for water
  issues
• Difficulty of location few intensively
  monitored catchments
• Surveillant science (Lane et al., 2009) using
  mathematical models and remote sensing
• Limited public engagement
• Project written to challenge this approach
• Participatory modelling ...the use of
  modelling in support of a decision-making process
  that involves stakeholders (Voinov and Bousquet,
  2010, p.2) has been widely used in catchment
  management
• Can a PAR approach be applied to this (seemingly
  oppositional) issue/methods?
• PAR is an alternative way of doing science
• Refusing the distinctions between theoretical
  and applied, and science and advocacy critical
  participatory action research commits at once to
  human rights, social justice, and scientific
  validity
• (Torre et al., 2011, forthcoming)
• Public Science (Torre et al., 2011)
  (http//www.publicscienceproject.org/participatory
  -action-research-as-public-science/)
• But doesnt sit easily with traditions/institution
  s of science (or social science)
• Are the challenges greater when PAR is attempted
  with hard science methods/research/policymaking?
  
• What can PAR learn from engaging with the
  scientific method? Can this method be peeled off
  the traditional hierarchy of expertise? What does
  that do to science?

8
Background to the project

• Two projects both funded under the RELU
  programme
• Understanding Environmental Knowledge
  Controversies The case of flood risk science
  (Oxford, Durham, Newcastle and UEA)
• 3 year project
• Multiple aims but focusing on one To experiment
  with a new approach to public engagement in the
  production of interdisciplinary environmental
  science, involving the use of Competency Groups
• Building Adaptive Strategies for Environmental
  Change with Rural Land Managers (Rachel Pain,
  David Milledge and Geoff Whitman)
• 18 month project focused on how we might
• explore and promote novel approaches and
  partnerships for interdisciplinary research and
  analysis on living with environmental change in
  rural contexts
• Methodology
• (i) We used PAR with Lune Rivers Trust
• (ii) All members of team critically evaluated
  the process and outcomes

9
Identifying the research focus
10
SCIMAP Sensitive Catchment Integrated Modelling
and Analysis Platform

• SCIMAP aims to determine where within a catchment
  is the most probable source of diffuse pollution

• The idea to develop some form of risk assessment
  tool that might be used on farms
• The idea that you might be able to identify how
  vulnerable a farm yard is in terms of material
  from it getting into the river
• The influence of roads as pathways that
  concentrate and sustain water flow, increasing
  the likelihood of connection
• The critique of SCIMAP, particularly the Land
  Cover map and its inability to differentiate
  between different forms of improved pasture
  leading to data collection by the group and a
  small test of the influence of more complete land
  cover data.

11
The rest of the research process then focused on
co-producing 3 outputs

• A Farm Vulnerability Tool
• A Risk Assessment Tool
• A PAR toolkit

12
The movement and sharing of expertise

• Knowledge production is a negotiated process -
  both between academics and locals and between the
  locals themselves (they contested each others
  knowledges)
• The coding of the models remains with the
  scientists. However, other aspects were
  collectively negotiated such as
• What the questions of interest were
• How feasible solutions might be
• What the wider institutional context was and how
  this would impact on our proposed solutions
• Risk assessment index
• Farm vulnerability tool
• Critiques of SCIMAP and land cover
• How to disseminate and use the end products
• The models become a product of the collective
  competence of the group, as they incorporate
  multiple knowledges
• We question the term redistributing expertise
  (c.f Lane et al., 2009 Landstrom et al., 2011)
  because its underlying assumption is always that
  the academic/scientist/policymaker is the active
  partner who is benevolent and able to empower
  local knowledge.
• With the conditions in place for real
  collaboration, this can happen on both sides.

13
Evaluating PAR

• Collective evaluation the project approach of
  PAR
• Whole group discussion (meeting 9)
• Follow-on interviews with participants
• Audio diary kept by the academics throughout the
  project
• Project tools being used already

14
Critically evaluating PAR

• Lack of clarity / culture of ground-up working?
• I havent grasped really what you want hereIm
  baffled at the moment completely you know and
  youre on about four meetings, if I dont get
  more understanding I wouldnt be at the next one
  because I dont know what youre on about
• PAR local member
• Its just an academic exercise
• Yes my comment was this is just going to be an
  academic exercise, thats how I felt about it, I
  didnt feel it was going to progress or do its
  something that Durham University its almost a
  self-indulgent thing you knowI didnt think it
  was particularly a two-way thing
• PAR local member

15

• Benefits of the PAR process
• Rachel An alternative would be that wed come
  to youon that first day and said this is what
  its going to be about, that would have been the
  alternative.
• R1 This is definitely better, this process.
• R2 Definitely.
• R3 Yes.
• R1 Instead of somebody coming along and saying
  this is what were going to do, we decided what
  we wanted you to do, and thats pretty unusual.
  So we werent being forced to accept something
  thatmight not be exactly what we wanted, we had
  the input too.
• R1 Weve got a very good result out of itDon't
  forget youre dealing with a big diversity of
  people and I don't think thats easy, thats not
  easy, I thought it worked very wellThe people
  who live here and work here and fish here and
  farm here are the people who know what goes on.
  I think theres nothing better than local
  knowledge when you need information about the
  land in my opinion.

16

• Geoff Yes, so one of the things that was raised
  was that as a Rivers Trust you rarely get the
  opportunity to just sit around the table and
  discuss issues in the way that we did.
•  
• R1 You hit the nail on the head, the Rivers
  Trusts if you will are very much seen as a
  spending arm of DEFRA, and DEFRA may come along
  and say well theres X amount of money available
  for buffer stripping and X amount of money
  available for tree planting and X amount of money
  available for weir removal and theres always
  then a scramble to get projects on that meet the
  criteria for each one of those particular
  fieldsThis I think is a very useful tool to
  actually get people round the table, sit down,
  look at the catchment, decide what the issues are
  in there, and then prioritise your action plan to
  address the pressures and I think it corrects
  that sort of, at the moment things are sort of
  top down, driven from the top if you will.

17
Using project tools

• Geoff Has anything happened with it since we
  finished?
•  
• R1 Im using that bit that we developedthe land
  study and the risk assessmentWenning Improvement
  Project.
•  
• Geoff Oh so the Environment Agency sounded
  interested in it?
•  
• R1 Very interested.
•  
• Geoff Really?
•  
• R1 Yes, yes I had a meeting last night here with
  who is the team leaderfor this area and we
  actually discussed that workand he is keen for
  me to talk to somebody from Natural Englandwhos
  leading work on diffuse pollution and maybe give
  them my ideas you knowto maybe give a catchment
  assessment of where the pressures are arising.

18

• A roller-coaster ride
•  
• Geoff This has just been, its been a
  roller-coasterWithin the first, what was it,
  maybe the first five minutes of that meeting of
  me trying to quite clumsily explain what we were
  trying to do Mick put his finger on it and said
  basically you know I have no idea what youre
  talking about, what the hell is this project
  about you know and I just at that point I got
  really anxious and thought oh no, this is going
  to be a disasterAnd how are we going to pull
  this one out of the bagSo that was my initial
  thing but then very quickly it changedI think
  the rest of it for me has been a fantastic
  process, Ive thoroughly enjoyed being part of
  it, so thats my experience of the project, its
  gone up and down and up and down but at the end
  you know I think its been a great process for me
  personally.

19
Conclusions?

• Is the first use of PAR in the UK on a river
  catchment management issue a success? And could
  this be a model of how to do public engagement
  in river catchments (i.e. River Basin Plans)?
• We think so but.
• The institutional/policy context may be a
  challenge
• Scientists/policymakers/all of us vary widely in
  our aptitude for PAR
• What about the impacts on PAR?
• Shows that PAR can work with the (other)
  scientific method - the commitment to real
  collaboration is what matters
• Institutional capture national support but
  local implementation
• Boundaries of PAR
• LRT not the usual focus of PAR legitimacy
  issues?