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Now showing 1 - 10 of 41
  • Working Paper
    Defining Nature as a Common Pool Resource
    (2012) Rosenbloom, Johnathan D.
    "One of the many ways in which we attempt to study resource use and conservation is to define natural resources as 'common pool resources.' Yet in a broad sense we can understand nature more generally as a common pool resource with which we maintain a special relationship. This definition incorporates several legal, behavioral, and ecological concepts that seek to capture the intricate and complex place where nature and the governance of nature collide. Once we apply the common pool resource definition to nature, we commit to viewing nature through five distinct and specific lenses that are embedded in the common pool resource framework. This chapter explores these commitments in an effort to establish a foundation for related research on how these common pool resource-specific lenses may influence the management of nature. The chapter begins with a short background on common pool resources and the understanding of them in the legal literature. The chapter then turns to five conceptual commitments we make by labeling nature as a common pool resource. An exploration of the commitments reveals that they have both intended and unintended consequences on the way we view nature. Those consequences, in turn, have both positive and negative implications for the management of nature. Further, regardless of whether the commitments help facilitate positive or negative approaches to nature management, each commitment places limiting and potentially harmful constraints on the broader perspective with which we should view nature. The chapter concludes by raising the question of whether this limited perspective fully considers pertinent characteristics inherent in nature and whether we should think more broadly when defining nature."
  • Working Paper
    Decentralization, Participation, and the Environment
    (n.d.) Agrawal, Arun
    "The research will focus on forests and wildlife as its two major renewable environmental resources. Forests and wildlife are the linchpin of livelihood for literally hundreds of millions of poor resource users. They form among the most visible arenas in which changing governmental actions unfold. But equally importantly, a comparative examination of these two types of resources also promises to provide a valuable opportunity to generate innovative theoretical findings about how varaitions in resource characteristics affect institutional success, and how shifts in the locus of environmental decision making affect resource governance outcomes."
  • Working Paper
    Systems Perspective on the Interrelations between Natural, Human-made and Cultural Capital
    (1993) Berkes, Fikret; Folke, Carl
    "In recent years substantial progress has been achieved in the field of ecological economics for clarifying human-nature interrelations. The fundamental role of the life-support functions of the environment (Odum, 1975) for economic development and sustainability has entered from ecology into economics, and has started to be theoretically as well as empirically analyzed. This has, in part, given rise to the terminology of natural capital and human-made capital. In contrast to the assumptions of standard economic theory, ecological economists regard human-made capital and natural capital as fundamentally complementary. Natural capital and its derived goods and services are the preconditions or the basis for economic development. It is not possible for human ingenuity to create human-made capital without support from natural capital (e.g. Daly, 1990). Moreover, it is not possible to approach sustainability by only focusing on these two factors, natural capital and human-made capital interrelations. We need a third dimension, what we refer to as cultural capital, as well. From a systems perspective, we emphasize that the three types of capital are strongly interrelated and form the basis for guiding society towards sustainability."
  • Working Paper
    Cultural Capital and Natural Capital Interrelations
    (1992) Folke, Carl; Berkes, Fikret
    "The importance of natural capital and the relationships between natural capital and human-made capital are of fundamental interest in ecological economics. But a consideration of these two kinds of capital alone fall short of providing the essential elements for the analysis of sustainability. A more complete conceptualization of the interdependency of the economy and the environment requires attention to social/cultural /political systems as well. We use the term cultural capital to refer to factors that provide human societies with the means and adaptations to deal with the natural environment. Cultural capital, as used here, includes factors such as social/political institutions, environmental ethics (world view) and traditional ecological knowledge in a society. The three types of capital are closely interrelated. Natural capital is the basis for cultural capital. Human-made capital is generated by an interaction between natural and cultural capital. Cultural capital will determine how a society uses natural capital to create human-made capital. Aspects of cultural capital, such as institutions involved in the governance of resource use and the environmental world view, are crucial for the potential of a society to develop sustainable relations with its natural environment."
  • Working Paper
    Behavioral Ecology of Conservation in Traditional Societies
    (1994) Low, Bobbi S.
    "Today, as we face increasingly complex environmental problems, of ever-enlarging scale, we are faced by a dilemma: our ideas about what we should do to solve these problems are based on conventional wisdoms about our conservation ethics, and our willingness to trust and cooperate with others. One 'wisdom' is our perception that people in pre-industrial ('traditional') societies, being more directly and immediately dependent on the ecology of the natural systems around them, were more conserving and respectful of those resources than we. Another is that, perhaps because traditional people typically lived in small groups (often among kin), they were likelier to be willing to sacrifice personal benefit for the good of the group, when conditions demanded it. "We feel we have, in important ways, 'lost touch' with ecological constraints as we have developed technological insulation against ecological scarcity and fluctuations -- and thus that we may have drifted away from ecological concern and from cooperativeness. Thus, we find ourselves thinking that if only we could recapture the reverence and cooperativeness of traditional societies, and expand it, we could solve our problems. These conventional wisdoms generate normative prescriptions: that in addition to more information about the impact of our actions on ecological balances, we need to become more reverent, to move closer to the ideal we hold of traditional peoples' patterns."
  • Working Paper
    Whither Commodification?
    (2005) Rose, Carol M.
    "While early commodification theory constituted a sharp critique of economics approaches to law, the author finds a certain rapprochement in some of the newer commodification literature. Although many of the newer scholars remain critical, some in effect borrow the economic idea of the second best, to argue that although gift relationships might be first-best solutions, particularly in intimate associations, market approaches could be second-best even in those contexts, where noncommercial approaches are not feasible. (That is to say, love might be best, but getting paid is second-best, e.g., in the case of prostitution, domestic relations or organ transfers.) Other scholars see commodification as a liberating release from nosy neighbors and intrusive regulators, e.g., in the case of reproductive materials. Still others note that markets themselves are social relationships, and market exchange may act as the opening step toward later relationships of friendship and trust, as in the burgeoning affection between paid caregivers and recipients. In all these and other ways, newer commodification theorists, while still frequently very resistant to law-and-economics, have offered a fresh look into the liberatory or socializing characteristics of market transactions."
  • Working Paper
    Use of Historical Data as a Decision Support Tool in Watershed Management:A Case Study of the Upper Nilwala Basin in Sri Lanka
    (1999) Elkaduwa, W. K. B.; Sakthivadivel, R.
    "Provides a historical analysis method which enables natural resource managers to evaluate the effect of land use changes on an eco-system's natural water cycle. Demonstrates the suitability of the method to an eco-system management approach."
  • Working Paper
    Choosing the Right Mix: Market, State, and Institutions for Environmentally Sustainable Industrial Growth
    (1992) Gupta, Anil K.
    "Efficiency, Growth, and Exports are the main items on nation's economic agenda. There is some concern (perhaps not adequate) for developing Safety Nets for people hurt/ left out by growth. Unfortunately environmental implications of industrial restructuring have not been given adequate attention. We present a framework to identify the appropriate policy response to make growth environmentally sustainable. "We see no contradiction between growth and environment sustainability. There is a broad degree of consensus that the size of the cake needs to be expanded. The issue therefore is not to have growth or not. The issue is what kind of growth and what pace of growth. Environmental implications are contingent on the pace and kind of growth. Since environment sustainability and economic growth reinforce each other, we need to make environment as an explicit decision variable in the macro economic policy. "Three policy measures i.e. market mechanism, state intervention, and institutional innovations can be used to enable firms to internalize externalities. We need to identify various mix of three options to deal with various kinds of externalities. "The best policy response is one that internalizes externalities at lowest transaction cost. In Section one we present a typology of externalities. In Section two we relate the type of externality with the stage and causes of industrial growth. Externalities can arise not only at the firm stage (input and transformation) but also at the consumer stage (consumption and disposal). Growth at production can be due to increase in scale of operation, new technology , and increase in number of firms. Growth in consumption can be due to increase in per capita consumption, introduction of new products and new consumers entering the market. ln Section Three we speculate upon the feasible policy choice given a mix of externalities, associated uncertainties and the measurability of the impact of the uncertainties."
  • Working Paper
    Promise or Pretence - Compliance with the Intergovernmental Agreement on the Environment: The National Environment Protection Council (Western Australia) Act 1996
    (1996) Meyers, Gary D; Potter, Sonia; Leane, Geoff
    "This essay on the National Environment Protection Council (Western Australia) Act 1996 is based on an original Consultancy Report undertaken by the Murdoch University Environmental Policy and Law Centre, for the Legislative Assembly of Western Australia Standing Committee on Uniform Legislation and Intergovernmental Agreements. The original Report encompassed a review of the National Environment Protection Council (Western Australia) Bill 1996. Since the Report's submission, the Bill has become operative, being proclaimed on the 16 November 1996. The Report was commissioned to address the Committee on a number of issues of concern including the nature of, and the State's compliance with the Intergovernmental Agreement on the Environment (IGAE) and the implications for parliamentary scrutiny, now and in the future, of signing the IGAE and enacting the National Environment Protection Council (Western Australia) Act 1996."
  • Working Paper
    Understanding and Supporting the Role of Local Organisations in Sustainable Development
    (2008) Satterthwaite, David; Sauter, Gabriela
    "All poverty reduction is 'local' in that it has to improve conditions on the ground for those living in a particular locality — for instance providing or improving schools, health care, water and sanitation, support for livelihoods or safety nets. Almost all aspects of good environmental management depend on local knowledge and local action. Thus, both poverty reduction and good environmental management depend on local organisations — for what they do on the ground, for the resources they mobilise, for the knowledge they bring, for the accountability they should provide to low-income groups. Indeed, the achievement of almost all the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and their associated targets depends on more effective, pro-poor local organisations."