Partners: Auburn University, Heifer Project International, Central Mindanao University, Municipal Government of Lantapan, Tigbantay Wahig.

A University/NGO research project, promoting community understanding of linkages between human land use and water quality, was conducted in central Mindanao, as part of the SANREM CRSP.

Basic understanding of water issues was accomplished through a series of training workshops addressed to community groups and run by citizen teams that monitor water quality and watershed stability in streams and lakes using inexpensive, simple test kits and other basic and portable analytical tools. After being trained and forming monitoring teams, community members were expected to sample water at group-determined stream sites on a voluntary basis. The ecosystem under investigation is the Manupali River watershed, which encompasses agricultural eco-zones of upland forests, agroforestry buffer zone, vegetables, corn, sugar cane and lowland rice.

The overall goal was to foster the development of community-based water monitoring groups and to collect credible water quality/quantity data for environmental and policy improvements.

• Filipino partners on the work plan, educators and community developers, helped customise the workshops to the local situation, facilitating the workshops, providing translations of training principles to the local dialect and participating in other aspects of program design. Research results were disseminated to community members, educators and local policy makers, by both the citizen monitors and program managers, through written reports and oral presentations. Citizens responded enthusiastically to water quality monitoring opportunities.

• Thousands of water quality samples were collected, and citizen data revealed a clear, west-to east gradient of degradation across four subwatersheds of the municipality. For community understanding and action, the information was popularised as a "Walk Through Time," i.e., subwatersheds of the west represent relatively natural conditions of the past whereas those to the east demonstrate the environmental costs of using traditional technologies to clear land for agriculture, homes and roads over the last few decades.

• Information increased interest in citizen-based watershed data within the local and National scientific communities and prompted the municipal government to incorporate the research findings and recommendations into their new, Natural Resource Management Plan.

• Water monitoring team incorporated to form an NGO, and the newly elected president of the group was appointed by the mayor to serve on the Natural Resource Management Council of the Municipality (a direct link between the community-based water monitors and government policy).

Participatory research, extension of information and community action occurs simultaneously in collaborative arrangements (instead of a top-down model to conducting the research in isolation from the local community, then trying to extend the significant findings to them through such technology transfer and the media).

The type of information policy makers need for natural resource management planning should be science-based. However flexibility can be applied in meeting some of the scientific requirements, especially in watersheds that are degrading rapidly, and irreversibly. In these situations, application of partly understood conservation practices, with full community involvement, may fare better than waiting for a "complete" scientific analysis.

The start-up of a collaborative process in these projects was relatively slow and expensive, but initial results indicate that the potential for lasting benefits and project sustainability are much higher than if attempted by a community, NGO, university or government agency in isolation.

Gladys Buenavista, Ph.D.
Site Coordinator, SANREM CRSP
8722 Lantapan, Bukidnon, Philippines
tel. (63) 918-861-9683; fax (63)(88) 813-3229
Email: gladys@xu.edu.ph