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Key Messages
- Progress toward a common vision of sustainability can be measured by environmental monitoring when it is driven by local information needs and community values. Local monitoring information can be integrated into adaptive decision-making structures where verification, investigation of cause, research into mechanisms or development of options can be initiated in response to early indications of environmental change.
- Effective information delivery involves a two-way dialogue on the characterization of information that will actually create improved knowledge in the decision-maker. Simply finding improved ways to provide scientific information does not result in better decisions.
- For more effective community-based decision-making, environmental information should be:
- Timely;
- Relevant to problems and players;
- Useable in form and for a specific context;
- Targeted, accessible and understandable to its audience;
- Integrated, and suggest a course of action;
In order to achieve these characteristics, local capacity must be developed to generate, deliver and use ecological monitoring information.
- Community based monitoring (CBM) of environmental change is an effective tool for building community capacity and local networks as well as stewardship and public education. This enhanced capacity enables more effective public participation in local governance which can, in turn, lead to a more inclusive decision-making process. This results in more effective choices related to conservation and sustainability that incorporate increasingly complex aspects of social, economic and environmental factors.
- Positive feedbacks within successfully initiated local programs result in their becoming increasingly embedded within the community. Once information is delivered effectively, the capacity to use that information will increase. The power to affect decisions leads to wider community engagement, and so on. This positive feedback cycle builds one of the most valuable products of CBM: social capital. Social capital is the combination of people and their skill sets as well as trust in and respect for one another that allows for commitment to working together for the betterment of their community
- Application and development of these results through partnerships in further communities, parks, protected areas and landscapes depend on resources for coordination, scientific support, and seed money. Results suggest that government monitoring programs might benefit from measures of success related to the delivery of information as feedback to decision-makers.
The project has led to the establishment of a CCMN Model for Community Based Monitoring, which can be used as a reference in any community across Canada.
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