Participatory Environmental Monitoring Committees in Latin America – Lessons from nine case studies

As a consultant to UNDP, Daitch & Associates led a project for UNDP and the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency on strengthening the participation of communities and civil society actors in mining governance through participatory environmental monitoring committees. 

The resulting report identifies the contexts in which participatory environmental monitoring committees have been created, their membership, and the relationships to government systems in order to navigate disputes and to prevent and mitigate environmental degradation. This project required working closely with community committees in four Latin American countries to understand what factors contributed to communities having the greatest capacity to prevent disputes with resource companies,  and to mitigate environmental contamination affecting the communities. This form of joint fact finding and collaborative problem solving is identified as one policy tool to respond to rising socio-environmental conflict in resource-rich regions. These conflicts negatively affect communities and limit potential economic benefits from extraction for developing countries. 

Daitch & Associates led the design of a process that was participatory, requiring ongoing consideration and respect for all project participants’ needs, cultural contexts and expectations – some who had been directly harmed by pollution and environmental damage in their communities. This project culminated in the design of a south-south peer workshop and dialogue gathering for community-based committee members and NGOs from Panama,  Peru, Argentina and Bolivia in October 2018.