Browsing by Author "Brown, Katrina Myrvang"

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Changing Gender Relationships and Forest Use: A Case Study from Komassi, Cameroon
(Resources for the Future, 2001) Brown, Katrina Myrvang; Lapuyade, Sandrine; Colfer, Carol J. Pierce; Byron, Yvonne
"Economic and environmental pressures affect access to and use of forest resources, and these dynamics affect men and women quite differently over time. Women are especially dependent on nontimber forest products (NTFPs), but the role of these products has changed markedly. All forest products harvested are now commercially traded in much of Cameroon, compared with only a decade ago, when few products had commercial value. Whereas men have been able to diversify their livelihood strategies, women have less room to maneuver and increasingly rely on diminishing forest resources. This situation has profound impacts on the way women and men perceive change as well as on the current and future management of forest resources."
Commons: Old and New
(Department of Sociology and Political Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, 2003) Berge, Erling; Olwig, Kenneth; Carlsson, Lars; Jansson, Ulf; Sandell, Klas; Wedin, Maud; Pardo, Mercedes; Oses, Nuria; Sevatdal, Hans; Sandberg, Audun; Brown, Katrina Myrvang; Sellar, David; Humphries, David
"The document is a proceedings from a workshop 11-13 March 2003 in Oslo. It presents case studies on commons in Norway, Spain, Sweden, Scotland, and Wales (UK) along with 3 papers with more theoretical discussion of 1) characteristics of protected areas seen as a type of commons, 2) the symbolic value of commons, and 3) the problem of managing commons across levels of organization."
Factors Influencing Adaptive Marine Governance in a Developing Country Context: A Case Study of Southern Kenya
(2011) Evans, Louisa; Brown, Katrina Myrvang; Allison, Edward H.
"Adaptive governance can be conceptualized as distinct phases of: 1) understanding environmental change; 2) using this understanding to inform decision making; and 3) acting on decisions in a manner that sustains resilience of desirable system states. Using this analytical framework, we explore governance in practice in two case studies in Kenya, that reflect the 'messiness' of contemporary coastal governance in many developing country contexts. Findings suggest that adaptive marine governance is unlikely to be a smooth process of learning, knowledge sharing, and responding. There are institutional, sociocultural, and political factors, past and present, that influence each phase of both local and state decision making. New local institutions related to fisher associations and Beach Management Units influence learning and knowledge sharing in ways contrary to those expected of institutions that enable collaborative fisheries management. Similarly, state decision making is relatively uninformed by the diverse knowledge systems available in the coastal zone, despite the rhetoric of participation. Historical relations and modes of working continue to play a significant role in mediating the potential for adaptive governance in the future. The case studies are illustrative and point to a number of institutional and political issues that would need to be addressed in processes of governance reform towards more adaptive management in developing country contexts."
Knowledge, Institutions and Collective Action at the Frontier
(2004) Brown, Katrina Myrvang; Muchagata, Marcia
"Much has been written about the prospects for sustainable development and possible conservation strategies for Amazonia. Some suggestions have focused on so-called traditional resource management, yet most resource managers in Amazonia are fairly recent migrants to the region. Knowledge, institutions and collective action are thus highly dynamic. This paper examines the evolution and development of knowledge amongst colonist or migrant farmers in the frontier environment of eastern Amazonia. It focuses on the Marab'a area in Brazilian state of Para, where colonists from different regions of Brazil have migrated over the last 30 years. We adapt the Traditional Ecological Knowledge concept to analyse taxonomic knowledge, by examining soil types identified by smallholder farmers; systems knowledge, by examining nutrient flows on individual farms; and social institutionalisation of knowledge, by looking at different forms of collective action developing at the frontier. Even very recent migrant farmers rapidly develop taxonomic knowledge of their environment, for example they have detailed knowledge of soil types and of forest plant species. However, migrant farmers demonstrate much more diverse understandings of processes and ideas about how systems work and interact, such as nutrient flows and soil degradation. These perceptions and understandings are rather more divergent from conventional scientific conceptualisations than are taxonomic insights. New forms of collective action are developing at the frontier. The paper analyses three major rural organisations in Amazonia: the Rural Workers Union Movement, the Rubber- tappers National Council and the Landless Workers Movement. These collective action institutions reflect the diverse knowledge of different farmers and institutionalise knowledge within different production, exchange and management systems. The analysis highlights the dynamic and adaptive nature of knowledge at the frontier and links the evolution of knowledge explicitly to different forms of collective action. These in turn represent different resource management strategies and are likely to be key in determining the future sustainability of the frontier, in terms of both the environmental conservation and the well-being and welfare of its human population."
The Limits To Integration: Critical Issues in Integrated Conservation and Development
(2004) Rosendo, Sergio; Brown, Katrina Myrvang
"Integrated approaches are gaining in importance as a means to address the increasing pressures and demands of society on land, water and biological resources and the continuing degradation of ecosystems. Their aim is often to promote sustainable and productive land-use systems and to protect critical resources and ecosystems by balancing land, water and other resource uses, providing a basis for participatory decision-making and conflict resolution among stakeholders, and creating an enabling political, social and economic environment. Integrated strategies are increasingly associated with multi-stakeholder processes and with decentralisation and they may include actors and institutions from government, civil society and the private sector. They have taken a variety of forms, including Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM), Integrated Conservation and Development Projects (ICDPs) and Integrated River Basin Management. Although many integrated approaches make ambitious claims about their likely benefits, in practice the results of implementation have been mixed in terms of ecological, social and economic impacts. This paper examines what has worked and failed to work in integrated approaches and why. It investigates the enabling conditions and well as the biding constraints that appear to affect the success of such approaches. We draw on examples from integrated conservation and development to examine these issues. "The paper first explores the conceptual issues of integration, outlining the different ways in which integration can occur and the different directions it can take. Integration can mean, for example, integration of different goals such as biodiversity conservation and social and economic development. It can also be integration between different actors and institutions, such as government and communities, and it can occur at different scales from local to international, and across scales. It can also involve integration between different ecosystem services to improve human well-being. Different types of integration imply the usage of different tools and instruments or combinations of these. For example, integrating conservation and development may require addressing simultaneously property rights, production and marketing issues. The paper then maps the main integrated approaches developed and implemented in recent decades. The mapping illustrates how integration occurs in practice, including the tools and instruments used and scale of implementation. Based on a review of meta-analyses of approaches aimed at integrating conservation and development and on the authors own research, the paper draws general lessons about the enabling conditions and constraints facing integrated strategies, which can be of a political, institutional, economic, social and ecological nature or a combination of them. Although integrated approaches imply synergies and win-win solutions, in practice they also involve important trade-offs, which need to be identified and negotiated so that solutions are minimally acceptable to all stakeholders."
Mental Models in Human-Environment Interactions: Theory, Policy Implications, and Methodological Explorations
(2012) Lynam, Timothy; Brown, Katrina Myrvang
"This collection of papers focuses on the application of methods to elicit and analyze mental models or social representations, that is, representations of the world that are shared by social groups. Mental models represent the way in which people understand the world around them; they are the internal representation of the external system. Mental models are the cognitive structure upon which reasoning, decision making, and behavior are based. However, importantly, mental models are models, and this means that they are incomplete, and they are often inconsistent representations of reality. They are also dynamic, i.e., they change over time, they are able to adapt to changing circumstances, and may also evolve over time through learning. Currently there is much interest in mental models in human-environment interactions and natural resource management. Elucidating mental models helps us to understand and delineate different conceptualizations of how a system works: the interactions between factors or components, the critical issues, and the causal links. Only when we can effectively elucidate and analyze mental models can we begin to explore how they affect behavior. This in turn might help to develop more appropriate management strategies within a given context. Studying mental models can help us to understand both individual conceptualizations and also collective beliefs or representations. To date in natural resource management the exploration of mental models has sought to assess the degree to which these conceptualizations are internally coherent, i.e., the extent of their coherence with an external reality, and to explore alternative representations. A range of different methods and techniques have been used. The interest in mental models can be viewed as an intrinsic part of more participatory approaches to environmental governance and natural resource management currently underway around the world."
New Challenges for Old Commons: The Implications of Rural Change for Crofting Common Grazings
(Department of Sociology and Political Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, 2003) Brown, Katrina Myrvang; Berge, Erling; Carlsson, Lars
"This paper concerns the way in which 'old' common property institutions cope with and respond to 'new' challenges posed by post-productivist rural change. Common property regimes were once widespread throughout much of the Western European landscape but the prevailing trend over the last few centuries has been towards their demise. The interrelated pressures of population growth, commercialisation, industrialisation, successive rounds of enclosure legislation, and an academic and cultural privileging of individual forms of property, have all conspired to effect the extinguishment and erosion of communal resource rights (North & Thomas, 1973; Dahlman, 1980; De Moor et al. 2002). Nevertheless, a number of these 'old commons' have survived to the present day in countries such as Norway, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Switzerland, Scotland, England, Wales, and Ireland."
Plain Tales from the Grasslands: The Utilisation of Natural Resource in Royal Bardia National Park, Nepal
(1995) Brown, Katrina Myrvang
"This paper examines the use of grassland products from the Royal Bardia National Park in the Western Terai of Nepal. This area has been appropriated as state property from previously being an area of agricultural use less than two decades ago. However, the management of the area for nature conservation relies on human disturbance in the form of grass cutting. This is currently corned out through permitted extraction of resources for a ten day period each year. The extent of the extraction of different grass species and their uses is outlined, and the importance of the various products to local households is discussed Prospects for the sustainable utilisation of the grasslands, optimising the benefits of biodiversity conservation, tourism, and the livelihoods of local people are explored. The current policy includes the establishment of a Buffer Zone adjacent to the National Park, and user groups will be set up to involve local people in the management of the Buffer Zone and the Park. Some implications for use and access to resources are discussed."
The Political Economy of Cross-Scale Networks in Resource Co-Management
(2005) Adger, W. Neil; Brown, Katrina Myrvang; Tompkins, Emma L.
"We investigate linkages between stakeholders in resource management that occur at different spatial and institutional levels and identify the winners and losers in such interactions. So-called crossscale interactions emerge because of the benefits to individual stakeholder groups in undertaking them or the high costs of not undertaking them. Hence there are uneven gains from cross-scale interactions that are themselves an integral part of social-ecological system governance. The political economy framework outlined here suggests that the determinants of the emergence of cross-scale interactions are the exercise of relative power between stakeholders and their costs of accessing and creating linkages. Cross-scale interactions by powerful stakeholders have the potential to undermine trust in resource management arrangements. If government regulators, for example, mobilize information and resources from cross-level interactions to reinforce their authority, this often disempowers other stakeholders such as resource users. Offsetting such impacts, some cross-scale interactions can be empowering for local level user groups in creating social and political capital. These issues are illustrated with observations on resource management in a marine protected area in Tobago in the Caribbean. The case study demonstrates that the structure of the cross-scale interplay, in terms of relative winners and losers, determines its contribution to the resilience of social-ecological systems."
Salience and Its Implications for Common-Pool Resource Management in Scotland: A Tragedy of a Different Kind?
(2002) Brown, Katrina Myrvang; Slee, Bill
"In past contributions to CPR theory, the issue of salience/dependence on a resource has been flagged up as a one of a number of significant factors for robust CPR management. Nevertheless, few authors have pursued the matter in greater depth other than to assert that if the salience or dependence on the resource by group members is high, the more likely there is to be robust management. Moreover, for the majority of CPR studies, salience is implicitly or explicitly assumed to be high. However, cases do exist of CPRs in which this assumption does not hold, and consequently, related theory proves to be of limited utility in explaining the associated institutional and management-related phenomena. This paper challenges this assumption (and related assumptions) with reference to a recent study of common grazings in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, which feature a marked decline in the users dependence on the resource and a trend towards moribund communal arrangements and in some cases de facto privatisation. In highlighting some of the opportunities and constraints for common grazings management, the paper demonstrates that some of the basic preconditions implied in many CPR models are not always met in a post-productivist context. Indeed, the study found that CPR problems can be about declining use as well as under-use, that CPR goals can concern resource revalorization not conservation, and that the relationship between salience and shareholders motivation for CPR management is more complex than commonly portrayed in the literature. Indeed, the perception and capture of changing contemporary CPR values by various stakeholders is often problematic and, despite the dissimilarities with more traditional commons tragedies, deserves more attention than has thus far been given by CPR scholars. The elaboration of this CPR example underlines the way in which certain a priori assumptions about CPRs could be potentially misleading, and highlights the value of drawing contextual factors closer to the centre of the debate. In so doing, the paper calls into question the possibility and utility of constructing a coherent CPR meta-theory."
Strategic Alliances, Partnerships, and Collective Action: Rubber Tappers and Extractives Reserves in Rondonia, Brazil
(1998) Rosendo, Sergio; Brown, Katrina Myrvang
"One of the most well-known examples of grassroots environmental action is the movement of rubber tappers which emerged in Brazil during the 1980s for the conservation of forests through the establishment of extractive reserves, which are defined as 'conservation units that guarantee the rights of traditional populations to engage in harvesting forest products such as rubber and fruits'. The creation of extractive reserves has been promoted as 'among the most important strategies for forest conservation' (Hecht, 1989:53). The designation of extractive reserves has gained support from a diverse array of actors, particularly conservation and environmental organizations who regard it as an opportunity to put into practice an explicit linkage between conservation and development. In addition, the rubber tappers' struggle to win the rights to natural resources in these areas has also gained attention of media world-wide, at a time when deforestation, especially in Amazonia, is a major issue for northern environmentalists. This paper examines empowerment within the context of these initiatives. It investigates the alliances formed between environmental NGOs and other agencies and rubber tappers and how far rubber tappers have been empowered through as a result of the intervention of these organisations." "The evidence presented in the paper derives from research in the Western Brazilian State of Rondonia (see Figure 1) and involves a case-study of a project supported by one of the largest international conservation NGOs, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). This project is a partnership between WWF; local rubber tappers' communities represented by the Rondonia Organisation of Rubber Tappers (OSR) and its member Associations; and a regional environmental NGO (ECOPORE). Research involves examination of key institutions, including the OSR and other organisations located in Port Velho, the administrative center of Rondonia, and case studies of three selected extractive reserves (see Figure 1). "Subsequent sections discuss the way in which empowerment has been interpreted and implemented in conservation projects. It distinguishes two dimensions of empowerment - political empowerment and economic empowerment - and examines how each of these have been affected by the alliances between rubber tappers and external agencies."