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Journal Article 'Sustainability Learning': An Introduction to the Concept and Its Motivational Aspects(2010) Hansmann, Ralf"This theoretical paper clarifies the concept of sustainability learning and specifically analyzes motivational aspects. Mastering the challenges of sustainability requires individual learning as well as learning processes on different levels of human systems ranging from groups and organizations to human societies, and mankind as a whole. Learning processes of individuals play a fundamental role, since individuals constitute and shape the larger social aggregates. Learning processes on the level of social aggregates are important since social systems embed and influence individuals. Therefore, sustainability learning needs to be understood as a multi-level concept, comprising individual learning as well as learning processes of human systems. Transdisciplinarity and mutual learning between science and society are considered fundamental approaches of sustainability learning, and hence increase the capacity of mankind to manage human-environment systems in sustainable ways. Based on systemic considerations, the two-fold role, in which motivations act as determinants and targeted outcomes of sustainability learning processes, is explained together with the outstanding role that cooperation, hence cooperative motivation, plays for sustainable development. Finally, the multifaceted, controversial discourses on what sustainability ultimately means (for the scientific community, for a given cultural or political entity, organization, or individual person) are considered."Journal Article State of the Commons(2012) Wallaert, Josh"One year after that meeting, the Reeve Electric Association became the first farmer-owned cooperative to receive a loan for the purchase and distribution of electric power from the Rural Electrification Administration, a centerpiece of Franklin Roosevelt’s first term. In four years, the number of electrified farms in the United States more than doubled, from 789,000 in 1936 to 1.7 million in 1940. To my knowledge, this is the only online photo of the Reeve Plant that is freely available to publish. It was uploaded to Wikipedia in September by Ann Sullivan-Larson, a graphic designer at a print shop in Iowa, and tagged with a creative commons license that allows others to share and remix the image. Although the plant was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1990, the National Park Service has yet to digitize its photographs of the building."Journal Article An Economics Perspective of Plea Bargaining(2019) Banerjee, Anita"The present study is an attempt to look at plea bargaining from an economics perspective. At the outset it traces the origin of plea bargaining. The study also provides a brief sketch of the concept as interpreted by various Economists. Alongside it highlights some of the key tools of economics which can provide a better understanding and justification of Plea bargaining as a procedure for efficient and cost effective method of resolving cases. The article concludes by stressing upon the need to resort to plea bargaining, keeping in mind both the costs as well as a tool to act as deterrence."Journal Article Towards an Arid Eden? Boundary Making, Governance and Benefit Sharing and the Political Ecology of the 'New Commons' of Kunene Region, Northern Namibia(2016) Bollig, Michael"Over the last two decades many sub-Saharan African countries have devolved rights and obligations in rural natural resource management from state to local communities in an effort to foster social-ecological sustainability and economic development at the same time. Often these governmental projects were launched in settings in which traditional commons, informed by both the demands of traditional subsistence-orientated agrarian systems and the tenure policies of colonial and postcolonial states were well established, and in which power struggles between rivaling traditional authorities, between seniors and juniors, and between state agents and local communities were pertinent. These moves were also embedded in (partially contradictory) discourses on decentralization, political participation, economic empowerment, and neo-liberally inspired commoditization of natural resources. In the process of devolvement rights and obligations were handed over to communities which were formalized in the process: formal membership, social and spatial boundaries, elected leadership, established models of governance, and accountability both to the wider community and to state bureaucracy. New commons were established around specified resources: pastures, water, forests, game. In the process these resources were (partially) commoditized: game owned by the community could be sold as trophies for hunting, lands could be rented out to private investors, and water had to be paid for. This contribution is intended to shed light on the process of establishing new commons – in the local context named conservancies – of game management in north-western Namibia. Game on communal lands had been state-owned and state-controlled in the colonial past. This did not preclude poaching but certainly inhibited significant degrees of commoditization. The new commons of game management are meant to do exactly this, in two steps: first specific rights (in this case management rights and transfer rights) are devolved to a well-defined community; then this community (or its committee) decides how to put the newly gained rights to good use and transfers such rights to private investors, tourism entrepreneurs and commercial hunters. While the first step is informed by discourses on participation and co-management, the second step is market-oriented and seeks so-called public-private partnerships."Journal Article Ecosystem Services and Federal Public Lands: Start-Up Policy Questions and Research Needs(2010) Ruhl, J.B."This Essay, based on my presentation at Duke Law Schools 2009 symposium, Next Generation Conservation: The Governments Role in Emerging Ecosystem Service Markets, briefly examines this emerging policy front and proposes a set of key policy questions, research needs, and options for building on the policy work that has been done to date. Part I outlines the basic context for thinking about the role federal public lands might play in the management of ecosystem services, and why using the ecosystem services concept in public land policy is worth considering. Part II proposes several key research paths that must be addressed before federal lands can be managed effectively for ecosystem service flows. Part III bears down on the different roles federal lands might play in promoting or participating in markets for ecosystem services. My goal is not to propose any particular policy for federal lands and ecosystem services, but rather to suggest how federal public land management agencies should go about formulating and implementing such policies."Journal Article A Tool and Process that Facilitate Community Capacity Building and Social Learning for Natural Resource Management(2013) Raymond, Christopher M.; Cleary, Jen"This study presents a self-assessment tool and process that facilitate community capacity building and social learning for natural resource management. The tool and process provide opportunities for rural landholders and project teams both to self-assess their capacity to plan and deliver natural resource management (NRM) programs and to reflect on their capacities relative to other organizations and institutions that operate in their region. We first outline the tool and process and then present a critical review of the pilot in the South Australian Arid Lands NRM region, South Australia. Results indicate that participants representing local, organizational, and institutional tiers of government were able to arrive at a group consensus position on the strength, importance, and confidence of a variety of capacities for NRM categorized broadly as human, social, physical, and financial. During the process, participants learned a lot about their current capacity as well as capacity needs. Broad conclusions are discussed with reference to the iterative process for assessing and reflecting on community capacity."Journal Article The Adaptation Policy Paradox: The Implementation Deficit of Policies Framed as Climate Change Adaptation(2013) Dupuis, Johann; Knoepfel, Peter"The implementation of adaptation policies suffers from barriers and limits; even though adaptation is now set on the political agendas of developed and developing countries, surprisingly few examples of concrete policy realizations are found in comparative assessments. We investigate how the framings of adaptation as a policy problem can relate to tractability issues in implementation. We distinguish three framings of adaptation: climate change adaptation (CCA), climate variability adaptation (CVA), and vulnerability-centered adaptation (VCA) that imply conflicting interpretations of the collective problem to be solved and the goals to be attained through policy solutions. Through the methodology of comparative case studies, we conduct an empirical analysis of three implementation processes in India and Switzerland, and examine how adaptation framings translate into formal policy design and concrete policy realizations. We find that, regardless of the adaptive capacity of the country where implementation takes place, the CCA framing meets more tractability issues than the VCA framing. Therefore, we discuss the paradox that the innovative and additional CCA types of policies, advocated by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), are more likely to face a deficit in implementation according to our analysis."Journal Article Design Principles for Social-ecological Transformation toward Sustainability: Lessons from New Zealand Sense of Place(2012) Chapin, F. Stuart; Mark, Alan F.; Mitchell, Robin A.; Dickinson, Katharine J.M."As society seeks to meet the needs of a growing human population and rising aspirations for consumption, many of the ecosystem services on which society depends have declined in the global aggregate. Although some local societies sustainably manage their natural resources for long time periods, the more frequent pattern is overuse of renewable resources and a trajectory toward degradation. How can this degradation be reversed? In this paper we draw on four New Zealand examples and the literature to posit a set of design principles and recommendations to foster transformation from social-ecological degradation toward more sustainable pathways. These include a strong sense of place, prioritizing long-term solutions over short-term benefits, collective engagement of all key stakeholders and willingness to compromise, right to organize and manage, negotiated consensus on sustainability goals, formal and informal monitoring, flexibility to renegotiate goals and adapt, and guidance by a skilled facilitator. We also identify guidelines that foster consensus-building in the face of contested solutions. Examples from New Zealand and the literature suggest that local social-ecological systems can self-organize to shift toward more sustainable trajectories and that society can foster conditions that increase the likelihood of favorable transformations."Journal Article The European Union as a Manager of Global 'Business and Human Rights' Regulation: Country-by-Country Reporting Rules(2019) Nissen, Aleydis"The European Union’s 2013 Country-by-Country Reporting (CBCR) rules bring within the public domain information on corporate payments made to governments all over the world for the purpose of exploiting natural resources in the oil, gas, mining and logging sectors. In so doing, the CBCR rules enhance transparency in these sectors and aim to reduce tax avoidance and corruption in resource-rich countries. Arguably, they also contribute to the European Commission’s long-term strategy to secure sustained access to raw materials in the European Economic Area. The CBCR rules represent one of the only three binding regulatory frameworks that have been adopted at the EU level to implement the 2011 UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. Just as with the two other initiatives that came into existence (the Non- Financial Reporting Directive and the Conflict Minerals Regulation), the immediate impact on the competitiveness of corporations based in the EU was a key concern during the legislative process. This article uncovers the two strategies that were employed to overcome such concern and give the CBCR rules a ‘global’ character."Journal Article Social Learning and Natural Resource Management: The Emergence of Three Research Perspectives(2011) Rodela, Romina"A review is presented of research contributions that use social learning in research on natural resource management. The review is based on an extensive survey of peer-reviewed journal articles appraised against the following selected analytical items: (1) characterizing features, (2) level of analysis, and (3) operational measures. Together, these allowed for an assessment of underlying assumptions and emerging themes. The findings suggest that, within natural resource management literature, three research approaches to social learning have been developed, each with its own assumptions about the learning process, learning outcomes, and operational practices. Hence, we find that a group of publications showed an interest for participants' learning experiences and focused on the type of outcomes that arise from their attendance in participatory workshops and similar activities. Also, findings indicate that a second group of publications showing an interest for learning in other types of settings, such as groups, networks, and associations, have framed social learning as a process that results in a change in resource management practices, or in how things are done. On the other hand, a third group of publications showed an interest in social-ecological systems emphasizing learning as an emergent property."