Community-based monitoring (CBM) programs are increasingly popular models of environmental governance around the world. Accordingly, a handful of review papers have highlighted the various benefits, challenges, and governance models associated with their uptake. These reviews have been pragmatic in their recommendations and have supported CBM scholars and practitioners in implementing and understanding the various possible forms of CBM, but they have largely been silent on issues around the power dynamics implicit in CBM. Structured around explorations of the colonial politics of knowledge, funding, and finance, this article argues that dominant knowledge systems—specifically those that underpin Western, colonial governments and liberal, capitalist economies—shape the provisioning of funding for local programs and determine the significance of different types of community observations in shaping management decisions. To make this argument, we situate our work at the intersection of political economy and knowledge systems, using theoretical insights and empirical examples to show that funding and finance are key sources of power in shaping CBM programs. These are important insights because CBM is often framed as a purely scientific—and therefore politically neutral—activity. Through this work, we explore questions of intellectual property, histories of institutional exclusion and the privileging of certain knowledge systems, and the relationships of trust and mistrust across different groups and authorities, with the aim of stimulating critical discussions on the power relationships in CBM that will be useful to scholars and practitioners.

基于社区的监测 (CBM) 计划是世界范围内日益流行的环境治理模式。因此，一些评论论文强调了与其采用相关的各种好处、挑战和治理模式。这些评论在他们的建议中是务实的，并支持 CBM 学者和从业者实施和理解 CBM 的各种可能形式，但他们在很大程度上对 CBM 中隐含的权力动态问题保持沉默。本文围绕对知识、资金和金融的殖民政治的探索，认为占主导地位的知识体系——特别是那些支撑西方、殖民政府和自由主义的知识体系，资本主义经济——塑造地方项目的资金供应，并确定不同类型的社区观察在塑造管理决策中的重要性。为了提出这个论点，我们将我们的工作置于政治经济和知识系统的交叉点上，使用理论见解和实证例子来表明资金和资金是塑造 CBM 计划的关键权力来源。这些都是重要的见解，因为 CBM 通常被定义为纯粹的科学活动，因此在政治上是中立的。通过这项工作，我们探讨了知识产权问题、制度排斥的历史和某些知识体系的特权，以及不同群体和当局之间的信任和不信任关系，