• Home
• Site Map
• Foreword
  • Foreword
  • Contributors & Copyright
• Introduction
  • Introduction
  • Methods
  • Sites
    • Why Pando and East Kalimantan?
    • Municipal Governments and Decentralisation in Bolivia
    • Municipal Governments and Decentralisation in Indonesia
• Part I. Concepts
  • Wellbeing and Poverty
    • Poverty is More Than Low Income
    • Poverty is a Lack of Wellbeing
    • Poverty and Wellbeing Have Many Dimensions
    • Further Reading
  • Local Governments and Poverty
    • How can Local Governments Reduce Poverty?
    • Four Steps to Improve Local Governmental Action
    • Further Reading
  • Forests and Poverty
    • How do Forests Influence Poverty?
    • What is Poverty in Forest Communities?
    • Are Forests Safety Nets, Poverty Traps or Escape Routes?
    • Further Reading
• Part II. Tools
  • Monitoring
    • What is monitoring?
    • Types of Monitoring
    • Indicators
    • When to monitor?
    • Who conducts monitoring?
    • Linking monitoring to planning
  • Participatory Planning
    • What is participatory planning?
    • Why is participatory planning useful?
    • When and where is participatory planning done?
    • Who should participate?
  • Tool 1: Interactive Mapping
    • What is interactive mapping?
    • Interactive mapping step-by-step
    • Use interactive mapping for monitoring
  • Tool 2: Wellbeing Monitoring
    • What is a local wellbeing monitoring system?
    • Wellbeing monitoring step-by-step
    • Step 1: Define purpose, develop plan and budget
    • Step 2: Develop local poverty indicators and formulate survey questions
    • Step 3: Design the sampling strategy
    • Step 4: Train staff and perform the survey
    • Step 5: Analyse and present the data
    • Step 6: Present findings
  • Tool 3: Community Evaluation
    • Evaluating local government programmes through community focus groups
    • Steps 1-3
    • Steps 4-6
    • Steps 7-8
    • Community evaluation step-by-step
  • Tool 4: Scenario-based Planning
    • What is scenario-based planning?
    • Scenario-based planning step-by-step
    • Visioning
    • Pathways
• Final Remarks
• Acknowledgements
• Additional Resources
• PDF Version

Monitoring is important for local governments because it improves the planning process. If done properly, poverty monitoring provides reliable information on the poverty trends in a district or municipality. This information allows decision makers to answer the following questions:

• Who are the poor?
  
• How poor are they?
  
• Where do they live?
  
• Why are they poor?
  
• What can be done?
  
• How are these facts changing over time?
  

Equipped with this information, a local government can identify strategic priorities in its fight against poverty. These priorities can then be communicated to other government levels and to communities. Community leaders will know what the priorities and the available budgets are before they start their own planning processes. Their planning becomes more realistic and targeted.

The tools introduced in the following sections are examples of how monitoring can provide important information when planning programmes to reduce poverty.

© 2007 Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR)
Contributors and copyright information