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Abstract Environmental intervention projects aim to re-engineer the cultural landscape. Entering at a particular moment in time, such projects commonly produce a "baseline" analysis. This analysis captures elements in the environment that are later compared to measured changes the project claims to produce. Illustrated through a case study of a Tanzanian community conservation non-governmental organisation, the argument made in this paper is that uncritical use of such baselines in measuring and evaluating environmental intervention projects is a practice that tends to impose ahistorical understandings of human-environmental relationships that have deep historical roots. The paper illustrates how an attempt to draw a "basic analysis" of initial conditions, without reference to historical situatedness, hindered accurate evaluation of program success in terms of finding sustainable solutions to the problem(s) addressed. Instead, the baseline survey unwillingly functioned as a tool that impeded local empowerment by missing opportunities for local management input and channeling authority to outside experts. The paper explores an alternative cultural-historical approach that integrates historical and political ecological insights by focusing on cultural memory, political facilitation, multiple temporal scales, and public compromise. Introduction Tracing changing landscapes through multiple temporal and spatial scales, the working assumption among historical ecologists is that all systems, organic and mechanical, have histories that shape current systemic parameters (Balee 1998; Crumley 1994, 1998; Egan and Howell 2000; Marquardt and Crumley 1987; Moran 1990). Because historical ecologists see landscapes as the current manifestation of a long history of coevolution and adjustments of the species composing it, understanding of this history is key to measuring the way in which a landscape changes (Winterhalder 1994). Yet, despite recognition of the value of this historical approach to ecological analysis, the use of historical ecology in the evaluation of environmental intervention programs remains underutilized (Hill et al. 2004; Nilsson and Langaas 2002; Renger et al. 2002). As a discipline, evaluation is typically seen as a science-based solution to problems of practice that approaches dilemmas not as real human predicaments to be lived and to be addressed in living, but largely as technical problems that have only evidence-based solutions (Schwandt 2005)1. Because of this bias, and following Crumley (1994,1998), it is probable that the cultural vagueness associated with the discipline of history-as opposed to the scientific rigor associated with the discipline of ecology-may be a barrier to the practical application of historical ecology in evaluation practice. This paper argues that the common use of program monitoring and measurement methodologies illustrate such barriers. Baseline analyses, which are commonly used in the evaluation of intervention effectiveness, typify this problem. This analysis captures elements in the environment that are later compared to measured changes the project claims to produce. Illustrated through a case study of a Tanzanian community conservation non-governmental organization-the Ugalla Project2-the argument made in this paper is that uncritical use of such baselines in measuring and evaluating environmental intervention projects is a practice that tends to impose ahistorical understandings of human-environmental relationships that have deep historical roots. The paper illustrates how, in the Ugalla Project's case, an attempt to draw a 'basic analysis' of initial conditions, without reference to historical situatedness, hindered accurate evaluation of program success in terms of finding sustainable solutions to the problem(s) addressed. Instead, the baseline survey unwillingly functioned as a tool that impeded local empowerment by missing opportunities for local management input and channeling authority to outside experts. …

Choosing Your Baseline Carefully: Integrating Historical and Political Ecology in the Evaluation of Environmental Intervention Projects