Library with tools for cross-fertilizing knowledge

Community based environment monitoring has considerable potential for improving the understanding of environmental changes as well as for improving the management of natural resources. Together with the organizers of six community based environment monitoring programs, the INTAROS project has developed a library of ‘good practice’ manuals in community based monitoring that could serve as tools for cross-fertilizing indigenous and local knowledge with scientific knowledge in the Arctic.

This Community Based Monitoring Library is available at the website https://mkp28.wixsite.com/cbm-best-practice
The library is intended to enable community members and organizers of community based monitoring programs to access one another’s experience and gain advice on how to collect and use data.

In the library, each manual is accompanied by a summary describing what worked, what didn’t work and why, written by the organizers of the community based monitoring program. The manuals in the library have been selected on the basis of the following criteria:

• They have already been pilot tested on-the-ground in community-based monitoring programs in the Arctic,
• They have in the view of the program organizers led to salient, credible, and legitimate knowledge products and are used by decision-makers,
• They could contribute to both local and global repositories,
• They are of a sufficient generic nature so they may be used in other communities and areas of the Arctic.

It is proposed that over time there will be secondary copies of the library of community based monitoring programs in the Arctic at (or links from) the web-sites of the Atlas of Community Based Monitoring and Indigenous Knowledge in the Arctic (www.arcticcbm.org), and the Sustaining Arctic Observing Networks (www.arcticobserving.org).