Community-based project assessment using the indicators of resilience in SEPLS: Lessons from the GEF-Satoyama Project

As sustainable management of production landscapes and seascapes is increasingly becoming important for global conservation of biodiversity, understanding people dimensions holds key to successful conservation projects. The “Indicators of Resilience in Socio-Ecological Production Landscapes and Seascapes” (the Indicators) had been developed to capture the multifaceted nature of landscapes and human interactions with them.. Although the Indicators had been used in many projects around the world, they had not been used before and after project interventions to determine project impacts. The information from the assessment workshops conducted in Ecuador, India and Seychelles were analyzed to determine the effectivity of the Indicators in project evaluation and monitoring. We then explored how information derived from the use of the Indicators can help project proponents understand the impact of the projects. The results show that the Indicators can be effectively used to determine the strengths and weaknesses of projects being implemented by obtaining input and feedback from stakeholders involved and/or affected by project interventions. We conclude that the Indicators serve as an effective tool for community-based assessment for projects and the overall status of resilience of landscapes and seascapes. We emphasize that qualitative information in discussion among participants of assessments using the Indicators hold rich contents that can be used to better understand the project impact and community needs; thus the project proponents should use the Indicators to obtain and learn from such information, rather than the numerical results which the Indicators also give. •The Indicators of Resilience are effective tools for project evaluation.•Qualitative data is more important than the quantitative assessments involved.•The use of the Indicators of Resilience facilitates stakeholder engagement project ownership.