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Journal Article Embracing Ecological Learning and Social Learning: UNESCO Biosphere Reserves as Exemplars of Changing Conservation Practices(2013) Reed, Maureen G.; Massie, Merle M. M."Biosphere reserves were first created in 1976 to help scientists, managers, and communities better understand how to conserve biodiversity and improve human-environment interactions. Since then, biosphere reserves have evolved from a primary focus on 'ecological learning' to a broader orientation that includes 'social learning'. The purpose of this paper is to trace how this shift became intertwined with changing expectations about the purpose and philosophy, criteria for site selection, and assessment of effectiveness of biosphere reserves as exemplars of conservation and sustainable development. Drawing on academic reports, policy and other archived documents from the international and Canadian programs, and interviews of key participants, this paper examines how international priorities changed and became expressed on the ground in designation processes and research practices of Canadian biosphere reserves. Our research indicates that social dimensions of learning have been added to earlier ecological objectives. This addition has had a dual impact. While laudably broadening perspectives on research, learning, and learners to include social scientists and local people more effectively, a heightened emphasis on social dimensions has increased the complexity of anticipated outcomes tied to governance and social goals. Biosphere reserves must now establish research and management approaches that encompass both ecological and social dimensions of learning reflecting collaborative and interdisciplinary research and practice that include local perspectives and assessment goals. These changes may require improved clarity for determining where future biosphere reserves should be created and how they should be managed."Journal Article Democracia y Desarrollo: La Busqueda Compartida de Soluciones(2004) Gijsbers, Wim"Leon Janssen es integrante de una consultoria, que asesora al gobierno de Holanda en planeacion ambiental, mientras que su colega Marco Janssen -tambien holandes, pero no familia- es investigador, colaborando con la doctora Elinor Ostrom en la Universidad de Indiana, EUA. Participando en la conferencia mundial sobre Recursos de Uso Comun, el pasado mes de agosto en Oaxaca, ambos visitaron comunidades de la Sierra Norte, hechos que les hicieron reflexionar sus propios criterios sobre participacion, motivacion y desarrollo. Leon: 'En Nuevo Zoquiapam, los campesinos buscan un equilibrio en el uso de sus recursos naturales, como el bosque, agua, peces y su agricultura. No se consideran pobres. Esta actitud solo ocurre con una motivacion interna, que acepta ciertas diferencias en bienestar.' Marco esta impactado por los logros en los Pueblos Mancomunados, resultado de un orgullo y una coherencia social. "Los dos investigadores buscan entender el por que de cambios economicos, ambientales y sociales dentro de la globalizacion mundial. Leon quien visita Oaxaca por segunda vez, observa cambios fuertes aqui: 'Al parecer, los oaxaquenos son mas ricos que hace diez anos. Hay mas carros, 'todo el mundo' tiene television y telefono celular, cosas materiales que en Holanda tambien queremos. Sin embargo, Ã?¿como se relacionan estos logros materiales con las perdidas culturales y ambientales?' Estos nuevos valores y desarrollos tienen consecuencias para las ciencias, suponiendo un compromiso social que estas tengan. Marco: 'Tenemos que mostrar a los estudiantes la diversidad de respuestas que encontramos entre los distintos pueblos en el mundo.'"Journal Article What Constitutes Success in Pacific Island Community Conserved Areas?(2008) Axford, Joanna C.; Hockings, Marc; Carter, R. W."In recent years, few if any community conserved areas (CCAs) in the Pacific island region have been regarded as being successful. However, as success is rarely defined, what constitutes success is not clear. This paper reports an investigation into the way outsiders perceive success in Pacific island CCAs. An exploratory survey revealed six umbrella themes of success: the locus of control; local benefits; resource aspects; management; external stakeholder involvement; and sustainability. Multivariate analysis distinguished two groups, a Big picture group and a Locally focused group. These differ in how they define success, as well as their organizational alignment. The Big picture group, largely from funder agencies and international NGOs, were focused on the broad issues of success, especially the sustainability of CCAs. The Locally focused group was concerned with the practical workings and needs of successful CCAs in the Pacific; many in this group were based with Pacific island governments and NGOs or CCAs. The study concludes that success in CCAs should not be defined solely on project objectives, especially when these have been developed by an external entity or under their guidance. If they are, high rates of failure are to be expected."Journal Article The Formation of Large-Scale Collaborative Resource Management Institutions: Clarifying the Roles of Stakeholders, Science and Institutions(2005) Heikkila, Tanya; Gerlak, Andrea K."This article explores the emergence of collaborative institutional arrangements for managing natural resources in large-scale and complex resource settings, among numerous political jurisdictions and stakeholders. It examines four regional institutions in the United States: the Northwest Power and Conservation Council's Fish and Wildlife Program, the Chesapeake Bay Program, the CALFED Bay- Delta Program, and the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan. While a wealth of literature has looked at the emergence of smaller-scale resource management institutions, and some literature has begun to look at the characteristics and successes of these regional institutions, theory is lacking to explain the formation of these regional institutions. We first introduce three relevant streams of literature-- on common pool resources management, on policy entrepreneurs and social capital, and on science and information in -policy change--to frame our analysis. The comparisons of the cases point to the importance of integrating key insights from the literature for understanding the formation of collaborative resource governance. We emphasize how science, leadership, and prior organizational experience interact in facilitating institutional change, particularly in the process of raising awareness about resource management problems. In tracing the formation of these institutions, we also identify how external institutional triggers can help spur collaborative governance."Journal Article Environmental Governance in Latin America: Towards an Integrative Research Agenda(2011) Baud, Michiel; de Castro, Fabio; Hogenboom, Barbara"Latin America plays an important international role with regard to environmental governance. Knowledge generated by empirical and theoretical studies on environmental challenges can support the renewed efforts in the region to achieve equitable and sustainable natural resource use. Although linkages between social and environmental dimensions have been academically explored since the 1990s, new trends in environmental governance in Latin America deserve a comprehensive analytical approach. This Exploration presents emerging research topics and provides a brief overview of relevant elements and ‘crossovers’ for an integrative analysis. The authors argue that in order to enhance ‘Latin American perspectives’ to solving socio-environmental dilemmas, several research streams need to be brought together in integrative frameworks that can address complex questions related to interactions between state, civil society and market actors on multiple scales. A consortium of ten Latin American and European institutions aims to contribute to the development of such frameworks through the project Environmental Governance in Latin America and the Caribbean: Developing Frameworks for Sustainable and Equitable Natural Resource Use (ENGOV)."Journal Article Native People and the Environmental Regime in the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement(1999) Peters, Evelyn J."A major objective of the Cree and Inuit in signing the 1975 James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement was to protect the environment and thus secure their way of life based on harvesting activities. The main elements of the federal, provincial, and Agreement environmental protection regimes are compared with respect to principles derived from the growing literature on indigenous peoples and environmental assessment. The Agreement contained pioneering provisions for environmental assessment; yet those provisions have not met many of the expectations of the Native people. Part of the dissatisfaction derives from the Agreement itself: some sections are vague and difficult to translate into practices; the advisory committee structures are not well suited to Native cultures; and the right to develop is woven throughout the sections on environmental protection. However, failures and delays in implementing the Agreement have also contributed to this dissatisfaction. These issues have implications for the negotiation strategies of other groups."Journal Article Insights and Opportunities Offered by a Rapid Ecosystem Service Assessment in Promoting a Conservation Agenda in an Urban Biodiversity Hotspot(2012) O'Farrell, Patrick J.; Anderson, Pippin M.L.; Le Maitre, David C.; Holmes, Patrick J."Regional and global scale ecosystem service assessments have demonstrated the socioeconomic value of protecting biodiversity and have been integrated into associated policy. Local government decision makers are still unsure of the applicability, return on investment, and usefulness of these assessments in aiding their decision making. Cape Town, a developing city in a globally recognized biodiversity hotspot, has numerous competing land uses. City managers, with a tightly constrained budget, requested an exploratory study on the links between ecosystem services and biodiversity conservation within this municipal area. We set out to develop and test a simple and rapid ecosystem service assessment method aimed at determining the contribution natural vegetation remnants make to ecosystem service provision. We took selected services, identified in conjunction with city managers, and assessed these in two ways. First we used an area weighted approach to attribute services to vegetation types and assessed how these had changed through time and into the future given development needs. Second, we did a regulatory and cultural service remnant distance analysis to better understand proximity effects and linkages. Provisioning services were found to have been most severely affected through vegetation transformation. Regulatory services have been similarly affected, and these losses are more significant because regulatory services can only function in situ and cannot be outsourced in the way provisioning services can. The most significant losses were in coastal zone protection and flood mitigation services, both of which will be placed under even greater pressure given the predicted changes in climatic regimes. The role of remnant vegetation in regulating and cultural services was shown to be a significant additional consideration in making the case for conservation in the city. Our rapid assessment approach does not allow for nuanced and individual understanding of the trade-offs presented by individual remnant patches, but is particularly strong in quickly identifying issues, key focus areas, and opportunities provided by this research direction, and thereby serving to facilitate and drive constructive engagement between ecosystem service experts and city planners."Journal Article Redes Sociais, Capital Social e Governança Ambiental no Território Portal da Amazônia(2010) Mertens, Frédéric; Távora, Renata; Ferraz da Fonseca, Igor; Granda, Raquel; Castro, Mauro; Demeda, Kátia"The article presents an empirical study where social network analysis is used to map social capital among actors involved in environmental governance processes in the Brazilian Amazon. Using interviews, we carried out the mapping of the dialogue network regarding socio-environmental issues among 505 actors from the Amazonian Gateway Territory. The analysis identified 3384 dialogue relationships. Each actor has an average of 6,7 dialogue partners. The analysis of the structural characteristics of the dialogue network was used to build indicators of social capital of the bonding type, based on the mapping of the organization among actors from the same municipalities, and bridging type, based on the identification of relationships among actors from different municipalities. At the municipal level, the distribution of the two types of social capital allowed the characterization of groups of actors according to their differing participation in the environmental governance of the Territory. At the territorial level, the connectivity pattern among the 16 municipalities exhibits a balance between the two types of social capital and reveals the potential of communication and organization among actors, as demonstrated through the example of the local Agenda 21 projects. These results demonstrate how social network analysis can contribute to the definition (or re-definition) of the territories frontiers in order to include a set of municipalities whose cohesion is based on effective social relationships. We also propose governance actions for the Amazonian Gateway aiming at strengthening dialogue processes, reducing conflicts and promoting the sustainable use of natural resources in the Amazon."Journal Article Emerging Trends in Biodiversity Conservation(2008) Büscher, Bram"Despite much recent attention, biodiversity conservation and protected area management remain, in large part, subservient issues in the world today: they need to continuously adapt themselves to larger issues of the global political economy to remain politically acceptable."Journal Article Security and a Sustainable World(2009) Clifton, Don"This article explores how issues of security, conflict, violence and the military are considered in the sustainability literature. Despite these issues not being particularly well developed within the sustainability setting, various approaches are identified, critiqued, and compiled into a preliminary typology framed around reformist and transformational approaches to a sustainable world. The analysis also reveals how efforts to link military activity to concepts of economic, social, and environmental sustainability are creeping into sustainability narratives at the political level to justify continued militarism under the disguise of sustainability language. Footprint analysis is also used to support an argument that without decisive action, including a substantial reallocation of society's resources away from the military to sustainability focused initiatives, competition over natural resources is likely to intensify in the future and the long standing tradition of exploitation by the rich and powerful of the poor, future generations, and other species with which humans share the planet, is likely to continue."