So you need a social monitoring plan: Now what?

Excerpt

Soil and water conservation personnel have a long tradition of collaborating and learning directly from the constituencies with whom they work. Collaborative, cooperative, and participatory arrangements between agencies, organizations, and stakeholders have been described as essential to effectively address ecosystem management goals. In the last two decades, collaborative efforts among managers and stakeholders have become more formal in character and have been defined as “adaptive comanagement” (Armitage et al. 2009). The adaptive comanagement approach allows for flexibility and responsiveness to new and emerging social and ecological issues, while paying particular attention to the diverse and dynamic interests of natural resource stakeholders (Pahl-Wostl 2006; Pahl-Wostl et al. 2007; Atwell et al. 2010). A core value of this approach is enhancing the capacity of all stakeholders (e.g., farmers, conservation organizations, and government agencies) to reflect on management outcomes and adapt to meet project goals and expectations. Fulfilling this core value necessitates a structured approach to monitoring and evaluation (Plummer and Armitage 2007; Armitage et al. 2009), which can offer insights into effectiveness of various participatory approaches and encourages experimentation and adjustments that can address an individual project as well as an organization's strategies (Chess et al. 2000; Low and Randhir 2005).

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