Browsing by Author "Slingerland, Maja"

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Competing Claims on Natural Resources: What Role for Science?
(2008) Giller, Ken E.; Leeuwis, Cees; Andersson, Jens A.; Andriesse, Wim; Brouwer, Arie; Frost, Peter; Hebinck, Paul; Heitkonig, Ignas; Van Ittersum, Martin K.; Koning, Niek; Ruben, Ruerd; Slingerland, Maja; Udo, Henk; Veldkamp, Tom; Van De Vijver, Claudius; Van Wijk, Mark T.; Windmeijer, Peter
"Competing claims on natural resources become increasingly acute, with the poor being most vulnerable to adverse outcomes of such competition. A major challenge for science and policy is to progress from facilitating univocal use to guiding stakeholders in dealing with potentially conflicting uses of natural resources. The development of novel, more equitable, management options that reduce rural poverty is key to achieving sustainable use of natural resources and the resolution of conflicts over them. Here, we describe an interdisciplinary and interactive approach for: (i) the understanding of competing claims and stakeholder objectives; (ii) the identification of alternative resource use options, and (iii) the scientific support to negotiation processes between stakeholders. Central to the outlined approach is a shifted perspective on the role of scientific knowledge in society. Understanding scientific knowledge as entering societal arenas and as fundamentally negotiated, the role of the scientist becomes a more modest one, a contributor to ongoing negotiation processes among stakeholders. Scientists can, therefore, not merely describe and explain resource-use dynamics and competing claims, but in doing so, they should actively contribute to negotiation processes between stakeholders operating at different scales (local, national, regional, and global). Together with stakeholders, they explore alternatives that can contribute to more sustainable and equitable use of natural resources and, where possible, design new technical options and institutional arrangements."
From Scaling to Governance of the Land System: Bridging Ecological and Economic Perspectives
(2011) Veldkamp, Tom; Polman, Nico; Reinhard, Stijn; Slingerland, Maja
"One of the main unresolved problems in policy making is the step from scale issues to effective governance. What is appropriate for a lower level, such as a region or location, might be considered undesirable at a global scale. Linking scaling to governance is an important issue for the improvement of current environmental management and policies. Whereas socialecological science tends to focus on adaptive behavior and aspects of spatial ecological data, new institutional economics focuses more on levels in institutional scales and temporal dimensions. Consequently, both disciplines perceive different scaling challenges while aiming at a similar improvement of effective governance. We propose that future research needs to focus on four themes: (1) How to combine spatial properties such as extent and grain with the economic units of market and agent; (2) How to combine the different governance instruments proposed by both perspectives; (3) How to communicate the different scaling perspectives (hierarchy vs. no hierarchy) and meanings to policy makers and other stakeholders; and (4) How to deal with the nonequilibrium conditions in the real world and the disciplinary perspectives. Here, we hypothesize that a combined system perspective of both disciplines will improve our understanding of the missing link between scaling and governance."