In the area of land management, participation in monitoring requires the involvement of different stakeholders: local communities, decision-makers, scientists and NGOs. Its function as a “cornerstone to effective decision-making in natural resource management” makes it a powerful tool for adaptive co-management (Cundill and Fabricius 2009). It promotes social learning and collaboration in environmental management. It is not only LXH254 datasheet considered a cost-effective tool (Danielsen et al. 2005a; Sheil and Lawrence 2004), but also a means to allow feedback

for land management (Armitage et al. 2009; Berkes and Folke 1998; Berkes et al. 2000; Stringer et selleck kinase inhibitor al. 2006). Most studies on participatory monitoring are site-oriented, which makes them descriptive and anecdotal, and it is therefore difficult to extract general guidelines applicable to different scales and situations. Few attempts have been made to link different studies to a theoretical framework. Some authors have

only proposed a characterization of monitoring approaches according to the degree to which local communities are engaged in data gathering and analysis (Danielsen et al. 2008; Evans and Guariguata 2007). Many Evofosfamide supplier case studies show the value, success and interest of land users in the participatory monitoring approach (Andrianandrasana et al. 2005; Danielsen et al. 2005b; Noss et al. 2005; Rijsoort and Jinfeng 2005). They also argue the need to promote the local point of view and participation in decision-making (Danielsen et al. 2005a). A few authors have underlined the limitations and caveats related to participatory monitoring and suggested ways to address them (Garcia and Lescuyer 2008; Poulsen and Luanglath 2005; Webber et al. 2007; Yasue et al. 2010). They highlight the difficulty in scaling up the results for natural resource management decisions. Local people do not always understand the concept of monitoring, and by extension,

the benefits they could receive. Lack of incentives to follow up for long periods and time limitations make monitoring difficult to sustain. According to many these authors, developing a comprehensive framework of long-term participatory monitoring, ensuring local interest, and offering incentives are key issues to be addressed. We agree that incorporating local needs and opinions in all aspects of natural resource management, including monitoring, is a prerequisite for success. In the hope of making local participation more successful and sustainable, we developed a multi-stakeholders’ monitoring system of natural resources, in 6 villages in Northern Laos. We focused on simple tools to assess the availability of important Non Timber Forest Products (NTFPs), rather than focusing on biodiversity, a hard to define concept.