Description

Implementing a participatory natural resources research program proved to be a great challenge for the SANREM CRSP. At the time the program was initiated, no established model existed that researchers could use to successfully carry out an integrated, interdisciplinary research in

agriculture and natural resource management. This was the beauty and challenge of implementing SANREM, the program administrators confidently declared. SANREM had the flexibility to be self-correcting and to consistently tune in to the processes developed in the field.

In the absence of a model, SANREM adopted a set of cornerstones or guiding principles, which elucidated and established the approach that would be taken to conduct research on sustainable agriculture and natural resource management at a landscape scale (SANREM CRSP n.d.: 3).

In the first section of this chapter, we show that these cornerstones provided the practical approach for guiding SANREMs research in the Southeast Asian region during Phase I. In the second section, we present a brief discussion of the other issues that further shaped research activities

and direction. We will address the following questions: How did the cornerstones shape the research process? Did these cornerstones lead to the generation of methodologies to better understand landscape interactions?