The ComMod approach involves the interaction of local actors, heterogeneous social groups with different rationales and interests, and researchers and institutional stakeholders (i.e. donors, sponsors, administrators and experts), whose socio-political rationales and biophysical intervention framework are just as varied. The project, or intervention within this 'group of actors' (Henocque and Denis 2001) gives rise to dialogue, confrontation, combined construction of the posed problem and its definition, and a description and understanding of processes involved, be they social, economic or environmental.