Enhancing the Potential for Sustainability through Participatory Environmental Assessment

View the project final report

• 2012 annual report

Commodities

• Additional Plants: native plants

Practices

• Animal Production: free-range, grazing management, grazing - continuous, grazing - rotational
• Education and Training: extension, farmer to farmer, focus group, networking, participatory research, workshop
• Natural Resources/Environment: biodiversity, habitat enhancement, indicators, riverbank protection, soil stabilization
• Sustainable Communities: public participation, sustainability measures

There is a marked lack of environmental assessment in land degradation mitigation and ecological restoration programs. Where evaluation does occur, the human dimension is typically underrepresented. Moreover, the process tends to be producer- (technical experts) rather than recipient- (stakeholders) focused, limiting local relevance and usefulness. The most common alternative involves inviting stakeholders to participate in a discussion of assessment results. This may capture their opinion, but not the context of land degradation mitigation contribution to the actual evaluation. Overcoming this challenge may be possible by engaging all stakeholders (including scientific experts) in the identification and prioritization of the criteria used to assess conditions, followed by an evaluation of impacts supported by the criteria they have selected and ranked. This project was focused on the development and testing of such a participatory evaluation protocol in the San Simon Watershed in southeastern Arizona.

Introduction

Human interventions to manage and/or restore degraded lands are common in drylands worldwide, e.g., Pinus halepensis afforestation projects in the Mediterranean (Bautista et al. 2010) or livestock management designed to conserve soils and the vegetation of grasslands in the southwestern U.S. (Roundy and Jordan 1988, Allen 1995). What is also common of past land management and restoration actions in drylands is the lack of systematic monitoring and evaluation after they have been implemented (Aronson et al. 1993; Rey Benayas et al. 2009; Bautista et al. 2009) and the poor consideration of perceptions and knowledge of local populations who impact or are impacted by the mitigation and restoration actions in question (Bautista et al. 2010;Whitfield and Reed 2012). An integrated and participatory post-assessment that includes top-down and bottom-up worldviews through the involvement of different stakeholders throughout the entire process is essential for better decision-making and definition of policies (McDuff 2010; Hisschemöller et al. 2001; Estrella and Gaventa 1998). Integration of local knowledge in environmental management and assessment processes can be useful to inform science priorities (Tribbia and Moser 2008, Rice et al. 2009, Alexander et al. 2011), identify knowledge gaps (Ewing et al. 2010), contextualize problems and the array of solutions on a local-based scale (Blackstock et al. 2007, Krueger et al. 2012) and avoid time lost and costly future conflicts related with misreading local realities (Sinclair et al. 2008). Participatory processes that engage stakeholders (scientists, practitioners, land users, etc.) all the way through the environmental assessment process increase the potential of ensuring what is measured is relevant to most, if not all, stakeholders. These processes are more than a transfer of results but provide an opportunity for mutual learning and the integration of scientific and local knowledge, where the evaluation both informs and empowers all participants.

The San Simon valley in southeastern Arizona was a key place to implement a participatory environmental assessment because it is one of the most dramatic examples in the southwest of extensive and severe erosion and also of intensive intervention. The San Simon valley is located in United States at the convergence of the Sonoran and Chihuahuan deserts of southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico. The southern side of the drainage originates at 12 miles from the U.S. – Mexico border. The 2,250 square mile watershed is flanked on the east by the Chiricahua Mountains (highest peak in the valley 9,759 feet) and on the west by the Peloncillo Mountains (highest peak in the valley 4,990 feet). The valley takes its name from the ephemeral San Simon River that runs northwest and deposits its water in the Gila River. The Gila, which flows westward, joining the Colorado River near Yuma, is the primary source of water for one of the most important farming areas of Arizona. Over 41% percent of the San Simon valley is managed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Bureau of Land Management (BLM), 26% is Arizona State Trust Land, 19% is private land and 13% is managed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service. There is agriculture in some areas of the watershed (USDA & WRRC 2007), but the major land use, especially in the area of interest for this research, is grazing and recreation under the supervision of the BLM (ADWR 2010).

The earliest descriptions of the pre-cattle boom we have of the San Simon watershed are based on stories and anecdotes - sometimes very different from each other - from pioneers and explorers in the 1840s (e.g., Oscar Hutton, Lt. William H. Emory and John Russell Bartlett), soldiers from the California Column in 1862, stockmen in the 1880s and many others that crossed at some point or inhabited the San Simon valley before the 1890s. Even with these documented accounts of the whole watershed, it is not clear what the story might have been in a specific location or time of the year. This could account for the different descriptions found about this watershed. What is true is that the existence of some of those conditions attracted stockmen and farmers in the late 1880s and transformed this valley into a production-based landscape, especially for cattle raising (Jordan and Maynard 1970). By 1919 the San Simon had been transformed into a highly-eroded watershed needing extensive and immediate restoration (Olmstead 1919). It was after the Dustbowl and the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934 that the U.S. Grazing Service begun five decades of hydraulic control structures on the San Simon River and tributaries, followed by many other actions to combat land erosion, shrub encroachment and risk of flooding caused by the increase in bare soil and the arroyo-cutting. A first group of what were known as the “upstream measures” were initiated in the early 1940s and consisted of the implementation of large engineered structures like terraces and dams in the main channel and tributaries. There are now 19 major structures, including detention dams, several dikes and a large and still unknown number of relatively smaller earth structures. Other later phase interventions in the San Simon consisted of vegetation and livestock management methods aimed at recovering that grassland productivity. The existent grazing regimes are continuous, maintenance, intensive and custodial. On the vegetation management interventions, the common techniques are to remove shrubs and/or re-introduce species of grasses. To remove shrubs, the common techniques used are prescribed burning, mechanical removal by chaining (procedure where two crawler tractors drag an anchor chain to remove the shrub from the root) and chemical treatment with herbicides.

The land management and restoration actions that were evaluated in this study are located between the Cochise and Graham Counties jurisdictions, north of Interstate Highway 10 (I-10). Baseline information used in the study was collected following implementation of the IAPro protocol, which is founded on an ecosystems services framework and provides guiding methodologies that can be tailored to fit local conditions (Bautista and Orr 2011). Participants were contacted based on an initial list of key stakeholders suggested by a local Stakeholder Platform (Gila Watershed Partnership), the local University of Arizona Extension Agency Service and the Bureau of Land Management and following a chain referral procedure. Results from this study will be useful for land management organizations/entities that are interested in the translation of science for society based on a stakeholder-engagement form of participation in the assessment of environmental actions in the context of strategies to combat degradation and desertification in arid and semi-arid lands.