Introduction

Whether they are called public environmental monitoring, community environmental monitoring, citizen science monitoring, lay environmental monitoring or volunteer environmental monitoring, they all mean the same thing. They are environmental monitoring programmes that promote or encourage groups of people (local urban communities, rural communities, schools) to take part in environmental monitoring programmes. The term ‘community-based monitoring’ is used here in a generic sense to refer to all of the above groups of people.

The term community-based environmental monitoring has been used to refer to the collecting, analysing and interpreting of environmental data by lay people (Lambie, 1997). Indeed, in circumstances where there is a lack of ‘specialists’, there may be good reasons for a community role in monitoring and management. Danielsen et al. (2000) described such circumstances where there is a need for simple monitoring programmes in countries that lack specialist staff.

The word community in this chapter is used to refer to human communities (a collective group of humans). This chapter is about the role of various groups of people such as schools, colleges, village groups, local communities and Agenda 21 groups, and their role in monitoring ecological change.

Perhaps some of the earliest examples of communities of people recording changes in nature can be seen in cave drawings. In some caves, a series of drawings indicate changes in abundance of various species of animal. Recording changes in nature is, therefore, not a new idea and such practices are embedded in many cultures throughout the world.