Current Conservation magazine has published a short article about my PhD research. Check it out!
Tag phd
Seminar at University of Santo Tomas, Philippines
I was priviliged to speak at the 2021 Science-Technology-Society Seminar, hosted by the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Santo Tomas in Manila, Philippines. I spoke about the role of applied social science in supporting efforts to conserve biodiversity and One Health.
You can watch the video at the link below. My talk starts at 44:00
https://www.facebook.com/ustgalingscience/videos/926237931661131
Effects of social networks on interventions to change conservation behavior
Social networks are critical to the success of behavioral interventions in conservation because network processes such as information flows and social influence can enable behavior change to spread beyond a targeted group. We investigated these mechanisms in the context of a social marketing campaign to promote a wildlife poisoning hotline in Cambodia. With questionnaire surveys we measured a social network and knowledge and constructs from the theory of planned behavior at 3 points over 6 months. The intervention initially targeted ∼11% (of 365) of the village, but after 6 months ∼40% of the population was knowledgeable about the campaign. The likelihood of being knowledgeable nearly doubled with each additional knowledgeable household member. In the short term, there was also a modest, but widespread improvement in proconservation behavioral intentions, but this did not persist after 6 months. Estimates from stochastic actor-oriented models suggested that the influences of social peers, rather than knowledge, were driving changes in intention and contributed to the failure to change behavioral intention in the long term, despite lasting changes in attitudes and perceived norms. Our results point to the importance of accounting for the interaction between networks and behavior when designing conservation interventions.
https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cobi.13833
PhD thesis: Improving environmental interventions by understanding social networks
I have now officially completed my PhD! My thesis, completed under the wonderful supervision of Dr Aidan Keane (Edinburgh) and Prof E.J. Milner-Gulland (Oxford), was entitled ‘Improving environmental interventions by understanding social networks’. A full copy can be found HERE. Scroll down to read the abstract and a lay summary.
Lay Summary
Consider some of the major factors causing deforestation or the extinction of wildlife; clearing of forests for agriculture, over-hunting of wildlife, or logging for wood. All these factors result from people’s actions. So, to conserve habitats and wildlife, we need to understand why people behave as they do. One of the most important influences on people’s behaviour is the behaviour of the people they communicate and interact with on a regular basis – their social networks. Understanding social networks – how and from whom people get information on different topics – can therefore help us to more effectively influence their behaviour, such as by working with influential ‘opinion leaders’ who are connected to many people. In this thesis, I explore how this might work in a conservation context.
I started by reviewing the published literature from other disciplines, such as public health and sociology, and considered the relevance of the approaches they use to conservation. Then, in the rest of the thesis I looked at the role of social networks in an intervention aiming to reduce wildlife poisoning in Cambodia. First, I used a variety of research methods to better understand wildlife poisoning. I found that some residents are poisoning wildlife for food, particularly young men, and some children. But most residents in the area are strongly against wildlife poisoning. To help local efforts against poisoning, I therefore worked with a local NGO, WCS Cambodia, to develop and test a strategy for promoting the use of a hotline for reporting poisoning in one village.
To look at how the village social network might affect the success of these efforts, I used a survey to gather information from everyone in the village about their social relations, enabling me to map the social network in the village. I then used surveys to measure residents’ behaviour and knowledge at three time points, before and after the intervention. I used dynamic network models to determine how these changes relate to the social network. WCS invited a group of 41 people to the promotion event, but I found that information from the event spread through the village, so at least 144 people had received some information after six months. Most of this spread occurred within households. After two weeks, people throughout the village reported being more likely to report poisoning. But this was not a result of them learning about the hotline. Instead, it seems they were influenced by their peers who attended the event. After six months, this peer influence also played a role in people reverting to their previous level of behaviour.
With information about the social network, WCS may be able to better spread information about the hotline, or target people who can persuade others to use it. I use computer simulations to see how information about the hotline, or intention to use the hotline, might spread through the network depending on who WCS targets to receive information. I find that targeting individuals that are highly connected in the network is much more effective than targeting people based on other characteristics, such as wealthy people or those in leadership positions. However, this increase in effectiveness is not large enough to justify the costs of collecting and analysing network data. It would be more cost-effective to target a greater number of randomly chosen people. If WCS are promoting the hotline in many villages, they might be able to analyse the social network of one village to identify some rules-of-thumb about what sorts of people are well connected, which they can then apply elsewhere. For example, perhaps wealthy households tend to be better connected. But I find that rules-of-thumb identified in other studies do not apply here and are probably quite context-specific.
Overall, this thesis highlights how important it is to take social networks into account when designing a behaviour-change strategy. We find that social relationships can help to spread information but can also reinforce existing behaviours and prevent behaviour change. Understanding the structure of a social network can suggest targeting strategies that could overcome this barrier, and interventions should try to use social influences wherever possible. For example, once some residents adopt a new behaviour, they can be a valuable resource for influencing others.
Abstract
Interventions to conserve biodiversity often aim to change human behaviour. Social relations and interactions, or social networks, have a strong influence on the information people receive and on their behaviour. Thus, the interactions between social networks and behaviour have been the subject of intense research effort in countless domains, and practitioners in fields such as public health have developed a range of strategies which account for relational processes in their interventions. This thesis seeks to integrate these insights into conservation and explore their practical implications. I begin by synthesising the literature and discussing the relevance of social network interventions for conservation. The remainder of the thesis examines the role of social networks in a case study intervention aiming to reduce wildlife poisoning in Northern Cambodia. I first use a mixed-method approach to better understand wildlife poisoning. I find that it is widespread, occurring in eight of the ten villages studied, but generally low prevalence, and often carried out by young men or children. However, most residents hold negative attitudes towards poisoning. With the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) Cambodia, I develop and pilot a social marketing intervention to promote the use of a hotline for reporting incidences of poisoning. I then use longitudinal data on behaviour and dynamic social network models to unpick the role of information flow and social influence in this intervention. I find that information from the intervention flowed widely through the village social networks, particularly within households, reaching an audience three-times larger than originally targeted. Having a knowledgeable household member doubled the probability that an individual would become knowledgeable. I also find that intention to report poisoning increases throughout the village in the short-term but returns to baseline levels in the long term. These changes are not driven by knowledge of the intervention. Instead, individuals are influenced by the intentions of network peers. One way to more effectively produce behavioural change that exploits these social influences is to target interventions at influential individuals identified using sociometric data. Using diffusion simulations, I explore the cost-effectiveness of these approaches within the study village. I find that network-informed targeting could result in uptake of the hotline more than double other targeting strategies, but that the relatively high cost of collecting network data makes it cost-ineffective. A more feasible strategy for large-scale interventions might be to conduct network research to identify general rules-of-thumb that can be used to select influential individuals. However, I find that rules-of-thumb identified in other contexts do not apply in Cambodia. Overall, my findings highlight the critical importance of social relations in shaping the outcomes of conservation interventions and illustrate some possible strategies for exploiting them in intervention.
Understanding & addressing wildlife poisoning in Northern Cambodia
This post originally published on the ICCS website.
ដើម្បីអានអត្ថបទនេះជាភាសាខ្មែរសូមចូលទៅកាន់: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.12146181.v1
The coronavirus pandemic is likely to have a variety of unforeseen implications for people and wildlife. One early trend is a reported increase in waterhole poisonings in Cambodia’s Northern Plains. This is concerning for both conservation and human health reasons. Preah Vihear province in northern Cambodia is home to the largest remaining fragments of Southeast Asia’s deciduous woodlands. These woodlands, which once carpeted mainland Southeast Asia, have disappeared elsewhere. As such, Cambodia’s Northern Plains are stronghold for some unique and threatened wildlife species. For example, the area is home to the Giant Ibis – Cambodia’s national bird, which was thought extinct until it was re-discovered in 1993. Unfortunately, three Giant Ibis (representing over 1% of the global population) have been poisoned in recent months. These poisonings can also harm farmers and their livestock, who depend on the waterholes as a critical water source.
So why might we be seeing this worrying spike in waterhole poisoning? Research conducted in 2017, by Emiel de Lange and two Cambodian students, Yim Vichet and Leang Chantheavy, may help to provide some answers. The study is available in the journal Oryx and a full text is available here.
The first documented carbofuran poisonings in Preah Vihear: a problem for people and wildlife
In 2016, in the heat of the dry season, cows in Preah Vihear province were dying seemingly without reason and farmers were complaining of diarrhoea and stomach pains. When government officials investigated they found troubling scenes: at five vital life-giving waterholes, strange purple gravel was strewn at their edges, and dead and dying animals were scattered nearby. A slender-billed vulture, one of less than 100 individuals left in Southeast Asia, was found struggling in the grass and rushed to a vet.
The bird did not survive. However, by examining the contents of its stomach in a laboratory, vets discovered that it had been poisoned by a pesticide called carbofuran. This was even more troubling, as carbofuran is extremely toxic to birds, and was banned internationally, under the Rotterdam convention, following a massacre of Europe’s farmland birds in 1998. Such poisonings not only represented a significant public health danger to farmers and their livestock; they also threatened the rare wildlife which depend on the waterholes for their survival.
At the time, conservationists could only speculate as to the causes for these events. Was it an accidental consequence of pesticide use in agriculture? Was it an intentional attack, perhaps intended to kill a cow in retaliation for a land dispute? Or a protest against conservation rules? To address this problem, we would first need to understand the root causes.
Understanding the root causes of waterhole poisonings
Emiel and his team interviewed local residents and organised group discussions in ten villages in the area, to get a broader sense of how people perceived poisoning, and to attempt to measure its prevalence. Given the sensitive nature of the behaviour, they used a mixed methods approach drawing on theory from social psychology, sensitive questioning techniques, and triangulating multiple data sources. Their conclusions have important implications for managing poisoning in Preah Vihear province, and for studying sensitive behaviours in other contexts.
1. The who, what, where, when, and why, of wildlife poisoning
“In the dry season, when the waterholes are dry, I put the poison in a coconut shell. It is a powder which I dissolve in the water and put in the shell […]. Using this poison, I used to catch a lot of birds, maybe five or six each time, and I would try three times in one season.”
This description is typical of practices documented in eight of the ten villages visited during the study. It is a method used to harvest wild meat, which is primarily consumed at home. It is considered extremely efficient, and easy to learn compared to methods such as setting traps or using guns. In the dry season, a lot of wildlife concentrates at waterholes which makes them easy targets. However, from a conservation perspective, this indiscriminate killing is concerning and witnesses reported that many important species have been affected. It is usually young men, perhaps up to the age of 30, who are using poisons, but we also heard about children playing with poisons and catching animals too. They might learn this from relatives in the village or from shopkeepers, who sometimes sell the poison repackaged in clear plastic bags for ~$0.25.
We might assume that the poorest households are using poison because of food insecurity, but the evidence for this was not clear in 2017. A more important factor in deciding whether to use poison or not seems to be how health risks are perceived. This is one of the key factors that may have changed following the outbreak of COVID-19, as migrant workers are forced to return home and no longer have employment opportunities.
2. Social norms and village reactions
“The villagers are all unhappy [about poisoning] […]. Last year I told everyone at a meeting to not do it and forbade the shopkeepers to sell the poison, […] but people continue to do it in secret.”
Social norms around wildlife poisoning are complex and differ from village to village. In one village, poisoning was a topic discussed freely and seemed to be quite common, while in others nobody had ever seen or heard about such a practice. Most villages lay somewhere in the middle: there were clearly groups of varying size who were using poison or who were accepting of it, while others disapproved strongly. In five villages, chiefs or other authority figures had attempted to prevent poisoning, because it destroys clean water sources and fish populations, risks people’s health, and has caused the deaths of beloved dogs, cows and chickens. They had made poisoners sign contracts promising to stop, or held village meetings to discuss the problem. One traditional doctor even suspected a young boy had been poisoned, but we couldn’t confirm this story. Many people also worry about the health effects of eating poisoned meat, and we recorded a long list of suspected symptoms. On the other hand, many believe that removing the internal organs of a poisoned animal makes the meat safe to eat.
3. The challenges of studying sensitive behaviour
“If people in the village knew this was happening, they would be unhappy as it could kill their cattle.”
Understandably, many people were reluctant to talk about poisoning. Many residents were unhappy about poisoning, and authorities have publicly acted against it in some villages. As such, those using poison may keep quiet about it to avoid social and legal repercussions. Some villages also benefit from conservation projects, such as community ecotourism businesses or organic farming projects, so village authorities may work closely with environment authorities to enforce conservation rules.
This situation raises challenges for researchers. Few people openly admitted to poisoning. Most accounts were indirect, or from those who had been negatively impacted by poisoning. Nevertheless, by carefully triangulating evidence from multiple sources, the study makes several robust qualitative conclusions, though trying to estimate prevalence of poison usage across the landscape has proved more difficult.
What does this mean for preventing waterhole poisoning in the future?
Despite the challenges of studying sensitive behaviours, the results of this study will be useful for planning interventions to reduce wildlife poisoning in the area. Local managers now understand the practices that lead to wildlife poisoning, the people involved, and their motivations. Importantly, the prevalence of this practice is now better understood, as well as the social norms and dynamics in each village, and previous efforts by local authorities to combat poisoning. All of this knowledge allows us to:
- Prioritise villages for intervention
- Identify target groups and plan how to reach them
- Identify potential allies to collaborate with, or use as key messengers
- Understand what sort of information might influence poisoners’ decision-making.
Based on the results of the study, Emiel and his collaborators at WCS Cambodia launched pilot interventions in early 2019. A full social marketing intervention has been conducted in one village, followed by extensive surveys to understand its effects. Watch this space for more news on its impact!
Finally, whether or not the recently observed increase in poisonings follows the trends described in this study remains to be seen. However, early evidence suggests that greater quantities of poison are being used than before. This might indicate that new actors with greater access to capital and commercial motivations are engaging in poisoning. A key component of our interventions to date has been to engage local communities in monitoring and reporting poisoning using a hotline, and this will continue to be critical for addressing this new challenge. High profile media coverage may also assist in encouraging greater control of trade in these deadly pesticides.
Tackling wildlife poisoning in Cambodia
In parts of Cambodia, wildlife poisoning occurs as a method of hunting for meat consumption. Changing people’s behaviour is a challenge for conservation. This post was originally published on the Edinburgh Conservation Science website.
If we want to change people’s behaviour to conserve wildlife, we need to understand how and why people think and behave as they do. To do this we can use methods and tools from disciplines that have been dealing with these questions, such as social psychology. But how do we then make use this knowledge to design effective interventions? Once again, we can draw on the accumulated decades of experience and best-practice approaches that have been developed in other fields. One such approach that has become increasingly used in conservation, with positive results is social marketing.
In parts of Cambodia, wildlife poisoning occurs as a method of hunting for meat consumption
In 2017, I conducted fieldwork to try and understand the phenomenon of wildlife poisoning in Preah Vihear province Cambodia. What we learned is that wildlife poisoning occurs as a method of hunting for meat consumption, where pesticides are placed with bait at waterholes in the dry season. This is seen as a very effective and easy method, and it can catch a wide range of species, but it also risks affecting domestic animals, fish, and reduces water availability. Broadly, people in Preah Vihear are aware of and concerned by the risks of eating poisoned meat, but there are also widespread beliefs that removing the internal organs from an animal makes it safe to eat. People are also concerned about damage to the environment, their water, their cattle and dogs, so in some villages the chiefs have tried to act against poisoning, such as by organising meetings. Nevertheless, some groups continue to use poison, predominately younger men, but also kids as young as ten. Read more about this study here.
In 2018, I conducted a three-day workshop with NGO and government staff, and members of local communities. We developed a conceptual model, compiling all our respective knowledge about this problem into a diagram, and then identified possible interventions. Some of these interventions were recommendations for new regulations on the pesticides, or for altering the patrol routes of environment rangers, but some directly targeted the beliefs, attitudes, norms, and behaviours of local communities. We further developed these using the social marketing approach.
We began by selecting three priority behaviours that we aim to change. Obviously, this includes the practice of poisoning itself, but from our conceptual model we also realised that the behaviour of other members of the community would be key to influencing hunters. Specifically, we wanted to encourage community members to report observed poisoning to a hotline, and to be vigilant in refusing poisoned meat. For each of these behaviours, we then tried to characterise the different groups that would be targeted. For example, a key group of hunters is young children aged 10-15, and a key group we’d ask to be vigilant and report poisoning are the parents of these children. For each of these groups we then examined the costs and benefits of the current behaviour, and the costs and benefits of our desired behaviour, and used these to identify potential routes to change. For example, parents might not report poisoning because they are concerned it will upset others or provoke conflict, but doing so would keep their children, community, and animals safe, and could earn them respect from village leaders. Our messaging therefore focused on the idea that by reporting poisoning you are protecting your community, and that rather than be upset, your community will be thankful.
Our messaging focused on the idea that by reporting poisoning you are protecting your community
Earlier this year, in 2019, I supported WCS in implementing a small part of our planned campaign as a pilot. This served as a case study for my own research into how NGO communications influence behaviour, and how this is mediated by local social networks. For this pilot, we targeted parents with children between the ages of 10-15 and organised an event in cooperation with local government. The event started with short talks by government officials from the departments of health, environment, and agriculture, as well as NGO staff. These talks were intended to highlight all the various risks of pesticide misuse and contamination, explain the laws around pesticide use, and to increase the salience of this issue for our audience. We also had a powerful testimony of a farmer from a nearby village who had lost cattle to poisoning.
Next we screened a short film that was produced especially for this campaign, together with a filmmaker Phearun Yin. The film told the story of a boy, Chan, who discovers that his friends have been poisoned after bathing in a waterhole. He learns that Vibol, another boy, is responsible and decides to tell the parents of the sick children. There is much debate about what to do, but eventually the parents decide to speak to Vibol’s parents about the issue. She already knows that Vibol plays with poison but didn’t think to do anything about it. Eventually, the village chief persuades them that they should call the poisoning hotline, following which environment staff come to remove the contamination and poison. They reward the kids with a certificate for their bravery in reporting and thank everyone for their cooperation. Everyone lives happily ever after!
Every aspect of this story is drawn from interviews with community members and reflects our understanding of the situation.
Every aspect of this story is drawn from interviews with community members and reflects our understanding of the situation. The key elements are that kids are playing with pesticides as a fun way to catch wildlife, and that parents aren’t doing anything about it. Yes – we even interviewed some parents who told us about this. Obviously, the risks to both health and the environment are highlighted, and we have a scene showing that illness is keeping the kids from school – something which is very important to parents. Finally, it was important to show the process of discussion and deliberation, the uncertainty about the best course of action, and the potential for conflict. This reflected the real barriers that are faced by the audience. All this is eventually resolved, and their decision to act in the desired way results in a safer environment and a happy community. Working on this film, and shooting on location with the kids, has certainly been one of the most unexpected, but also most enjoyable parts of my PhD!
Working on this film, and shooting on location with the kids, has certainly been one of the most unexpected, but also most enjoyable parts of my PhD!
After the screening, WCS staff took time to give details about the poisoning hotline and explain how it works. For example, the costs of the call would be refunded, and anonymity was assured if requested. A discussion was then held where the audience was asked to reflect on the motivations and actions of the different characters. This way we hoped to come to a shared understanding of the film and forge a public consensus that reporting poisoning is the best course of action. For members of the audience who still felt hesitant, this could show them the rest of the audience was on board. By using an emotive film, we also hoped to help the audience overcome some of the emotional barriers to action, such as apathy, or the fear of conflict. Furthermore, we wanted this to be something the audience could continue to reflect on, and share with their children, so we distributed a coloured children’s book which told the same story. We also handed out attractive stickers, and calendar leaflets, which showed our campaign logo and the hotline phone number, so that it would always be close at hand, and never far from mind.
We closed our event with a ceremony and a small party. Mimicking the final scene of our film, we asked the audience to make a public pledge of ‘good citizenship’, promising to use pesticides responsibly, and to report contamination. Pledgees received a certificate (identical to that shown in the film) signed by the commune chief, and a big poster so they can proudly show their neighbours and friends that they are a good citizen. This is based on the idea that making a commitment publicly increases the likelihood that you’ll stick to it.
This event wasn’t perfect, but represents a start in getting conservationists to think beyond awareness raising, and to be a bit more nuanced in their engagement with communities. We didn’t have a great budget for the finishing party, and maybe weren’t able to create the buzz we would have liked for the pledging ceremony. We also abandoned earlier plans to work together with the local school and make it a real parent-pupil-teacher event. Instead, it was a sort of fancier version of the kinds of community meetings that NGOs call all the time. I’m convinced that those small details can make a world of difference, but time will tell whether this little pilot will have any impact. Walking through the village several weeks later I was encouraged to see several of our posters up on people’s front doors. Doing applied research in collaboration with a conservation NGO has meant opportunities but also obligations, and this was a particularly stressful field trip trying to bring all parties together, and design all our materials in a very short timeframe, But it has also been an immensely rich experience from which I have learned a lot. Let’s hope our evaluation data will be equally illuminating.
Emiel awarded an Early Career Grant from National Geographic Society
I’m thrilled to share that I have been awarded an Early Career Grant of $9,685 by the National Geographic Society, for my project title ‘Improving conservation behaviour-change communications’.
This will be used to conduct research in collaboration with WCS Cambodia, to understand how communications influence behaviour.
Dteu srok Khmer veng (Back to Cambodia)
An update on Emiel’s PhD research as he heads back out to Cambodia. This post was originally published on the Edinburgh Conservation Science website.
I’m on my way to Cambodia once again so it’s time to give an update! After I arrived back last November it took me a while to get back into the swing of things. I’d had a little accident driving my motorbike in Vietnam which left me with scars down one leg, and a foot that was swelling. I moved into a new flat, with new flatmates, and by the time I’d recovered, settled, and caught up with everyone and all my other hobbies, it was Christmas.
The New Year started on the right foot (no pun intended). My first act after returning to work was to make a pre-submission to a journal, hoping to persuade them to consider publishing the first paper of my PhD. The paper itself still needed some polishing so I spent quite a bit of time getting it into shape over the following months. Unfortunately, we still don’t know whether they want to take it, so the paper is just sat on my desktop waiting for a home. If you want to know what it’s about I’m afraid you’ll have to be as patient as I am trying to be!
In the meantime, I started talks with WCS about what comes next. When I left, I’d given them a brief presentation about what I was finding as I investigated poisoning in Preah Vihear. They then asked me to start thinking about interventions to reduce wildlife poisoning. Of course, this isn’t something I could do without significant input from WCS, but, as they were going through some staff changes, it took a while before we could seriously talk and start to make plans. As the plans did start to materialise, the amount of work I would have to do to ready those plans became clearer, and kicked me out of my post-Christmas complacency.
We’ll think about the different types of people that engage in wildlife poisoning, the behavioural change we want them to make, and the strategies or messages that could get them there.
So, what are the plans? Firstly, we’ll be organising a three-day intervention-planning workshop involving WCS staff, and facilitated by me. This will take a social marketing approach, and I’ve been fortunate to receive guidance from experienced social marketers like Diogo Verissimo, a colleague in Oxford. We’ll start by clearly identifying the problem of wildlife poisoning, the behaviours, motivations and other factors that contribute to this issue. Then, we’ll think about the different types of people that engage in wildlife poisoning, the behavioural change we want them to make, and the strategies or messages that could get them there. Of course, for this to work we need to have a clear understanding of wildlife poisoning, who does it, and why, as well as the social norms surrounding its use. This is where the data I collected last year comes in, and I’ve been working hard to write up a report to share with my WCS colleagues.
I want to know whether the villagers care about this information, whether they pass it on to their friends and family, and whether they can remember it after a while.
I’ll also be conducting another study while I’m in Preah Vihear. WCS runs awareness-raising workshops in villages across Preah Vihear, informing villagers about the endangered species that live around them, their importance, and the laws that protect them. I want to know whether the villagers care about this information, whether they pass it on to their friends and family, and whether they can remember it after a while. These things would all be necessary for awareness-raising workshops like this to have a conservation impact, but they’ve never been tested. WCS have kindly agreed to modify the workshop that they’ll run in my study village. Instead of inviting the whole village, we’ll just invite a few select individuals, on the basis of the social network data I collected last year. We’ll also simplify it and include a few key messages that we’ll be able to track, and test knowledge on.
But all that’s for later… stay tuned! The first thing I’ll do when I arrive is travel to Kampong Thom to take part in the wedding of a good friend of mine. We both started our work with WCS as young graduates back in 2016, and I’m honoured to be a groomsman. Photos to follow!
Life lessons from the field
This post originally published on the ICCS website.
Conservation happens all over the world and, by partnering with local organisations, ICCS researchers get to work in many different places. Conservation also often occurs in remote areas with sparse populations and poor infrastructure, which can make working there very challenging. But getting to the places where conservation happens, collecting data, and understanding what is going on is an essential part of conservation science. For my PhD, I’m working in Cambodia to understand the issue of wildlife poisoning, and working with the Wildlife Conservation Society to develop strategies for persuading local communities to stop doing it. Having just returned from a five-month stint in the woods, I thought I’d share five thoughts I have about making fieldwork a success.
1. Plan ahead – Having a plan reduces risk and provides peace of mind. It is especially important to have an idea of where you’ll eat and sleep each night! Take risk assessments seriously, make sure you know how to access emergency services, and make sure you have a first aid kit and that you know how to use it. Similarly, if you’re using vehicles, make sure you have the knowledge and tools to do basic maintenance if you won’t be able to access a garage. Finally, think about a small bottle of hand sanitizer for those bush toilets!
2. Go with the flow – Nothing ever goes perfectly to plan: there are always things that no amount of planning can prepare you for. The only way to deal with that is to keep calm and have a sense of humour. Remember: it’s very difficult to die. Solutions almost always present themselves, especially in the developing world where people are incredibly resourceful. One dark rainy night each of our three motorbikes had a breakdown and each time a kind passer-by rescued us!
3. Use local knowledge – Local help isn’t just important in emergencies but in every stage of fieldwork from planning to execution. Local collaborators can give you the best planning information and guide you through bureaucracy, I wouldn’t attempt any sort of work without one. Learning the local language is invaluable as talking to locals will give you the most up to date and detailed information. Even just taking a moment to ask about the road ahead can save you hours of headache.
4. Manage your stress – Even if you are a zen-master and follow all of the above, fieldwork is bound to cause you stress at times. Often there is a lot of time and money invested and, especially as a PhD student, it can feel like you’re in it on your own. Make sure you find time and opportunities to do the things you usually love like sport, reading, or listening to music. Keep in touch with your loved ones, and those that can give you moral support – you’ll be surprised where you can get mobile coverage these days!
5. Enjoy yourself –Despite the stress and shock, working in such a different environment and culture is a rare privilege and an amazing adventure. Remember to live in the moment, enjoy the food, take pictures, be curious and learn from the people around you, enjoy each sunrise and sunset and keep a journal. Soon you’ll be back home with a treasure-trove of stories to tell, and maybe feeling just a little wiser.
Fieldwork: deeper into the forest
Emiel’s latest update about his fieldwork and all the challenges of surveying households in rural Cambodia. This post was originally published on the Edinburgh Conservation Science website.
I’m writing from Phnom Penh, fieldwork is done and I feel a great sense of relief. Everything worked out in the end, and within the time available, and it didn’t always seem like it would. Since I last wrote to you, the challenges of working in the Northern Plains of Cambodia only seemed to grow, the toughest times were still ahead. So let me start where we left off.
Everything worked out in the end, and within the time available, and it didn’t always seem like it would.
After about a week of limbo waiting and clearing some administrative hurdles, we finally got our letter of permission from the governor. We wasted no time and set off to the field the very next morning. A few days later, returning from the first village after a morning of heavy rains, we found ourselves cut off by water pouring across an otherwise good gravel road, and the bridges that had recently been installed to cope with flooding were underwater. I walked ahead along the sunken road and felt my way across the bridge step by step and, although the knee-high water was flowing fast, I wasn’t swept away, nor did the bridge collapse underneath me. Having completed this short pilot study, we pushed our baggage-laden motorbikes through slowly, staying well away from the edges.
Flooded roads
No disaster then, but as the rains didn’t stop in the following days I began to imagine Atlantean villages accessible only by propeller-powered motorbikes and specialist diving equipment. These worries weren’t completely unjustified, for although the villages were unlikely to have been built on land susceptible to that level of flooding, those remaining on my list were among the hardest to access, and required water crossings even in the dustiest of dry seasons. I consulted with colleagues at WCS and they agreed a different plan was needed, especially, they were sure to add, given our lack of skill in forest-riding, which they had all noticed. The plan was to take a boat to the first of three villages and walk the four or five kilometres between each of the remaining two. When we were done, the boat would come back for us.
The plan was to take a boat to the first of three villages and walk the four or five kilometres between the remaining two.
Walking for me means packing light. I cut the non-essentials and managed to fit everything needed, including my hammock, the tablets and solar panels, into my 40L backpack. I had clothes for a few days and soap to wash them. The only extra weight I would have to carry by hand were the boxes of soap that we give to our respondents as thanks. On the morning of departure, I met Vichet and Theavy each heaving two bulging backpacks which they insisted couldn’t be cut down further. We met our boatsman at his village and from there walked 2km in the rain to where he kept his boat in a canal – a steely taste of what was to come. The boat was a narrow wooden curve, filled with murky water that glistened with oil. Using cut plastic containers we began scooping the water out and didn’t stop until we got to our destination.
Pushing a boat through the flooded grasslands
The journey itself was fascinating and gave us a glimpse of many different landscapes. First, we passed through vast flooded grasslands, the boat sticking to deeper channels and occasionally cutting through thick clusters of bushes and bamboo along passages marked by plastic bags tied onto branches requiring us to duck for cover. After about four hours we heaved the boat onto a shallow mound of earth and dragged it across to a channel on the other side. We had reached the Stung Sen, one of the largest rivers in Cambodia that drains the forests of the Northern Plains into the vast Tonle Sap lake. The Stung Sen made for a more pleasant journey as we wound our way through the deep forest with tall trees towering along the banks. As we got deeper into the forest the banks gave way until it seemed like we were within a flooded forest, dodging trees, the water stretching into the murky undergrowth. We saw snakes floating on the water, giant monitor lizards resting on branches, and scores of birds overhead.
Boating through the main channel of the Stung Sen
Earlier in the day our boatman had sprung us with the news that we wouldn’t be able to make it in one day and that we’d have to find somewhere to sleep in the forest. Not keen on a hungry night in the rain, we reached a compromise to try and reach one of the small, illegal settlements that are cropping up along the river together with the economic land concessions and enabled by the road access that they bring. It was close to darkness by the time we scrambled onto the riverbank and emerged between a small cluster of wooden houses, where we were gratefully fed, and allowed to wash and sleep. We completed our journey early the next morning, said goodbye to our boatman at the shore and began lugging our boxes down the narrow path passing the occasional boy herding cows. As the path widened houses began to appear and it started to rain. When we arrived at the main dirt road leading into the village we were greeted by a slightly intimidating group of about two dozen men standing around a broken bridge, but as we approached a couple of them came towards us, smiling, and carried our bags across for us.
My assistants asked around and found a ‘kor-yun’, a motorised ox-cart, to carry us to the next village for a small fee.
The next few days proceeded as they usually do, walking through the village surveying households, and inviting people to focus groups with the chief’s help. Khmer villages are laid out along roads so this involved a lot of walking, and without our motorbikes, reaching the farthest households took some time. It was also very wet, and, as I discovered one agonising and wakeful night, the constant squelch of mud between the toes eventually inflicted a cost in the form of trench-foot (maybe jungle-rot is more accurate): the skin between my toes dissolving away, leaving inflamed and infected openings. With this on our minds my assistants asked around and found a ‘kor-yun’, a motorised ox-cart, to carry us to the next village for a small fee. Along the way we got stuck multiple times and the wheels churned the mud and grass roots, making the roads even more treacherous for those that followed. We were warned that reaching the final village would be even more difficult and that walking was our only option, but luckily the village sub-chief volunteered to take us half of the way and show us a shorter route through the rice fields. He rested with us a short while in one of the thatch shelters that farmers use when they work their fields, and miraculously for such a remote place started streaming youtube on his phone.
Riding a Kor-yun through the village
We survived this saga and made it safely back to town just in time for the Pchum Ben national holidays. It was an important chance for Vichet and Theavy to return home, and for me to catch up on some writing and relaxation after more than two continuous months of fieldwork. I even found the time to hop the border to Ho Chi Minh city and explore a little bit of Vietnam. Having planned ahead and piloted the next survey in the last couple of villages, we returned well rested and prepared to enter phase two of our work.
Phase two was us returning to one village and doing a full Social Network Analysis. This meant we had to (try to) interview every adult in the village – so we settled in for a long-term stay at the house of the bemused village chief, bringing vegetables and meat from the distant market. After a few days we reverted back to the village standard of rice and fried fish which were in great abundance after the heavy rains. Each day we would visit new households and explain what we were doing, and after receiving their consent we would take down a list of the members of that household. We would then interview each of the adults separately, asking them to tell us who they go to talk to in the village, who they go to for advice, and who they interact with in a number of different ways. Very often not everyone was home so we would either arrange a good time to come back, having left a packet of soaps as a thank you and incentive, or visit again each morning until we found them. We continued this pattern for close to three weeks of hard work, starting at 7am and finishing after dark, with a short siesta in the middle. The evenings are when the men return home from the rice fields so we would try to take advantage of that time. By the end we knew everyone in the village and they knew us, and we had friendly people letting us know who was home in their neighbourhood, or waving us over to interview a neighbour that we’d been hoping to meet. With almost 400 interviews done, I think only two people refusing to be interviewed says a lot about the character of the people here!
Having finished slightly ahead of schedule, we had some valuable time left for my assistants to check through the thousands of names that we had recorded. Using a list provided by the village chief, we checked each of them and made sure the spelling was consistent. Names aren’t used in Cambodia as frequently as we use them and it’s quite common for people not to know the full names of even their close friends. Instead, people address each other as ‘brother’, ‘aunty’, and so forth, or use nicknames. This made the job more difficult than it could have been, but diligent questioning and time spent cross-checking meant we now have a really excellent dataset. I cant imagine if I’d had to check all those names myself in a script I can barely even read! Luckily, the hard work of Vichet and Theavy enabled me to focus on writing reports and preparing for my presentations to the Ministry of Environment.
A colleague asked me why I wasn’t having a going-away party.
A colleague asked me why I wasn’t having a going-away party. To be honest, I hadn’t even thought about it. Knowing that I will be back here soon means I haven’t let myself get too sentimental, and it feels like I’ll hardly be gone at all – so I’ve kept working right up to departure. On my last evening in Preah Vihear I became aware of this, and tore myself away from the computer for a short time. I took my motorbike and rode the loop around town, a route that I often run in the cooler evenings. The town quickly falls away, leaving swampy lagoons on either side, filled with lotus, and as you follow its’ circular bend, the massive ridge of Tbeng mountain dominates your view, silhouetted below a blazing sky. The town lies sprawled out in front beyond the water, with stilted houses lining up along the road. I’ve spent so much of the past four months speeding my moto down these roads, and now, as I felt the familiar blast of air from a passing truck, a bit of nostalgia began to creep in. It felt like I was seeing things for the first time, it all seemed unfamiliar and new. I saw the families and groups of friends making the same evening ride, three or four to a bike. Every evening they park up along the water and watch the sunset, now turning purple, peeking through the lotus leaves. I felt I was riding into that sunset, a character who has survived to the end of an adventure movie. The hundreds of days spent facing new challenges in new environments were receding into the twilight of memory, too vast to for me to grasp. I turned back into town along the chaotic boulevard where the citizens of Preah Vihear gather to stroll, throw balls, and eat barbecue – the humming of life goes on.
Emiel de Lange 