Concretising the transformative challenges of a participatory process through Sen's framework: first insights of an on-the-ground implementation

Overview & Synopsis

A participatory approach was requested in Senegal to get common proposals, from the diversity of users of a peri-urban territory (from industry to farming), for the future National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (NBSAP), in order to commit for a greater preservation of biodiversity. A specific participatory approach, TerriStories® has been selected, as it has proved to be efficient for bringing a diversity of stakeholders in an autonomous agreements and dynamics. The opportunity which has been done to check what happens three months after this implementation bring to design then test an evaluation framework fit to the objectives of this kind of participatory approach aiming autonomous dynamics. The objective of this experiment is firstly to design then test an evaluation framework of progresses in autonomous collective dynamics from a participatory approach, by drawing on Sen's capabilities framework. Then to assess the efficiency of the participatory approach three months after its implementation. Some assessment indicators of different capacities have been designed by drawing concepts from Sen's framework, then a sample of participants (25 %) has been open interviewed in order to characterize what actions have been accomplished after the participatory workshop and which new capacities have been shown to be developed.The results of an evaluation three months after the workshop show not only that the grid designed is operational to identify collective and individual progress regarding the abilities to engage autonomously in ta collective dynamic, but also that the TerriStories® approach has achieved remarkable results on this challenge. Although Sen's works have often considered too theoretical and complex to be operationally applied into participatory approaches, results show this framework is best fit to the objectives pursued by some novel participatory approaches built on serious games and simulation gaming.