Some have argued that current approaches to environmental management are too technocratic, difficult to adapt and oriented to assisting state officials (Bryant and Wilson, 1998). There is a need to develop practical ways to achieve broadened-out environmental management, to enable the participation of non-state actors – farmers, herders and indigenous people – and to make it more adaptive (Kapoor, 2001; Norton and Steinemann, 2001). Technology can assist in the form of expert systems: these are computer programs that enable users to effectively perform tasks usually undertaken by scarce experts (for a review of expert systems application to environmental management see Warwick et al., 1993).