The Role of Community Participation in Climate Change Assessment and Research

There is currently a gap between assessment and intervention in the literature concerned with climate change and food. While intervention is local and context dependent, current assessments are usually global and abstract. Available assessments are useful for understanding the scale of the effects of climate change and they are ideal for motivating arguments in favor of mitigation and adaptation. However, adaptation projects need assessments that can provide data to support their efforts. This requires the adoption of a more local and context-sensitive approach to assessments. I suggest that Community-Based Participatory Research has the potential to be a tool for such an approach.     

Monitoring Parks Through Remote Sensing: Studies in Nepal and Honduras

The effectiveness of parks as management regimes is hotly contested. Much of the current discussion centered around comparisons of management regimes can be traced to a dearth of cross-site quantitative evaluations. Remote sensing provides a particularly effective tool for this purpose, yet analysis of remotely sensed data requires fieldwork to interpret human activities and the socioeconomic and political contexts that relate to land cover change. This paper examines the effect of establishment of the Celaque National Park, Honduras, and the Royal Chitwan National Park buffer zone, Nepal, on limiting deforestation. In Celaque, the park itself has been largely successful in maintaining forest cover. However, recent changes in land use patterns have led to increasing pressure on the park boundaries, exacerbated by the lack of involvement of local residents. In the Royal Chitwan National Park, in contrast, participatory approaches towards co-management have been implemented over the past decade in the park buffer zone. With significant incomes derived from ecotourism, complete protection of the buffer zone forest has been adopted, leading to significant regrowth of tree cover. However, local decision-making power is limited, and buffer zone management has largely proven successful due to the investment and support provided by international donor agencies. These two case studies demonstrate the utility of remote sensing and Geographical Information Systems analysis in providing a spatiotemporal perspective for assessing management policies. They also demonstrate the importance of fieldwork to provide a nuanced understanding of the socioeconomic and institutional conditions affecting the outcomes of forest management regimes.     

Local people's attitudes towards conservation and wildlife tourism around Sariska Tiger Reserve, India

Conservationists in the recent years view local peoples' support for protected areas management as an important element of biodiversity conservation. This is often linked to the direct benefits, which local communities get from the protected areas. These benefits could be in the form of biomass resources, park funds diverted to local villages by state agencies and revenue from wildlife tourism. There are a very few studies which have attempted to study the direct relationship between benefits from wildlife tourism and local support for conservation. In India, wildlife tourism is restricted, and mostly controlled by state and private agencies. Wildlife conservation policy does not view tourism in protected areas as a source of revenue for the local communities. The present study examines the local people's attitudes towards wildlife tourism and the impact of benefits from tourism on the local support for Sariska Tiger Reserve (STR), India. STR is a flagship for tourism where protected areas are increasingly being visited and where local support for wildlife tourism has not been studied adequately. Results indicate that two-thirds of the respondents were positive towards tourism and support for conservation. The respondents were aware that more tourism benefits are possible from a well-conserved protected area. There appears to be correlation between benefits obtained by local people from wildlife tourism and other sources, and support for protected area existence, suggesting that benefits impact people's attitudes towards conservation. Some of the main problems are the unequal distribution of tourism benefits, lack of locals' involvement in tourism and development. There is a need to clearly address these issues, so that protected areas may get the support of local people, which may lead to sustainable development.     

Wetland cultivation and hydrological management in eastern Africa: Matching community and hydrological needs through sustainable wetland use

Wetlands are critical natural resources in developing countries where they perform a range of environmental functions and provide numerous socio-economic benefits to local communities and a wider population. In recent years, however, many wetlands throughout eastern Africa have come under extreme pressure as government policies, socio-economic change and population pressure have stimulated a need for more agriculturally productive land. Although wetland drainage and cultivation can make a key contribution to food and livelihood security in the short term, in the long term there are concerns over the sustainability of this utilization and the maintenance of wetland benefits. This article draws upon recent research carried out in western Ethiopia, which addressed the sustainability of wetland agriculture in an area of increasing food insecurity and population pressure. It discusses the impacts of drainage and cultivation on wetland hydrology and draws attention to local wetland management strategies, particularly those characterized by multiple use of wetlands, where agriculture exists alongside other wetland uses. The article suggests that where multiple wetland uses exist, a range of benefits can be sustained with little evidence of environmental degradation. Ways of promoting and empowering such sustainable wetland management systems are discussed in the context of the wider need for water security throughout the region.     

Governing Climate Adaptation in the Local Arena: Challenges of Risk Management and Planning in Sweden

This paper directs attention to conditions for climate adaptation as an important part of governing climate change in the local arena. Empirical focus is put on attempts to manage flood risks by means of risk management and planning in two Swedish municipalities. Following the need to widen our understanding of how, when and under what conditions climate adaptation occurs, three challenges are particularly emphasized from the case studies: facing the safety vs. scenery conflict where political priorities and reducing societal vulnerabilities prove difficult; the process of deciding what to adapt to, in which the troublesome role of knowledge is striking; and finally, taking responsibility for measures of flood protection. At the end of the paper, analytical generalizations illustrate the need to give increased attention to institutional challenges and challenges emanating from the science-policy interface in order to come to terms with the implementation deficit in governing climate change in the local arena.     

Governing Climate Adaptation in the Local Arena: Challenges of Risk Management and Planning in Sweden

Abstract

This paper directs attention to conditions for climate adaptation as an important part of governing climate change in the local arena. Empirical focus is put on attempts to manage flood risks by means of risk management and planning in two Swedish municipalities. Following the need to widen our understanding of how, when and under what conditions climate adaptation occurs, three challenges are particularly emphasized from the case studies: facing the safety vs. scenery conflict where political priorities and reducing societal vulnerabilities prove difficult; the process of deciding what to adapt to, in which the troublesome role of knowledge is striking; and finally, taking responsibility for measures of flood protection. At the end of the paper, analytical generalizations illustrate the need to give increased attention to institutional challenges and challenges emanating from the science–policy interface in order to come to terms with the implementation deficit in governing climate change in the local arena.     

Meaning work: reworking institutional meanings for environmental governance

Effective environmental governance requires institutional change. While some actors work to change institutions, others resist change by defending and maintaining institutions. Much of this institutional work is ‘meaning work’, which we define as the practice of crafting, adapting, connecting and performing meanings to purposively create, maintain or disrupt institutions. This paper constructs a concept of meaning work that highlights agency in carrying meanings across scales and between discursive layers, while noting the structuring role of prevailing discourses. It grounds the concept using two environmental governance cases at very different scales: a local democratic innovation employed by Noosa Council in Queensland, Australia; and the international campaign to divest from fossil fuels. The cases demonstrate the diversity of meaning work and the difficulty of achieving deep discursive change. They point to the need for environmental governance practitioners to rework existing meanings to construct compelling stories for change, taking advantage of narrative openings.     

Building community resilience: can everyone enjoy a good life?

Initiatives to reduce community carbon emissions and foster sustainable lifestyles have had varying degrees of success. There is now a need for a re-energised, concerted and joined-up approach that places environmental issues in a wider context – one that improves quality of life while building community resilience. This involves enhancing the capacity of neighbourhoods to recover, respond and adapt to environmental and socio-economic changes. This paper examines the experience gained in a participatory action research (PAR) study to build community resilience, where facilitators supported residents to take ownership of their own agendas. The New Earswick Good Life Initiative (GLI) was an 18-month project undertaken in a low-income suburb of York (UK). A range of approaches were used to identify activities which had the most potential to nurture resilience and foster a shift towards greater environmental sustainability. The GLI highlighted how the introduction of new ideas not only need to be locally relevant but also requires care and time in order for them to embed within community. Altering the way a community manages its environment involves transforming social relationships, strengthening institutions and influencing local power balances. Furthermore, it is necessary to build social capital, knowledge, leadership skills and support social networks to allow communities to effectively engage with relevant local and national policies. Only by providing opportunities to develop these resilient attributes can increased local responsibility be successful. The paper concludes by providing guidance on strengthening community resilience and delivering pro-environmental behaviour change.     

Diversity in Current Ecological Thinking: Implications for Environmental Management

Current ecological thinking emphasizes that systems are complex, dynamic, and unpredictable across space and time. What is the diversity in interpretation of these ideas among today’s ecologists, and what does this mean for environmental management? This study used a Policy Delphi survey of ecologists to explore their perspectives on a number of current topics in ecology. The results showed general concurrence with nonequilibrium views. There was agreement that disturbance is a widespread, normal feature of ecosystems with historically contingent responses. The importance of recognizing multiple levels of organization and the role of functional diversity in environmental change were also widely acknowledged. Views differed regarding the predictability of successional development, whether “patchiness” is a useful concept, and the benefits of shifting the focus from species to ecosystem processes. Because of their centrality to environmental management, these different views warrant special attention from both managers and ecologists. Such divergence is particularly problematic given widespread concerns regarding the poor linkages between science (here, ecology) and environmental policy and management, which have been attributed to scientific uncertainty and a lack of consensus among scientists, both jeopardizing the transfer of science into management. Several suggestions to help managers deal with these differences are provided, especially the need to interpret broader theory in the context of place-based assessments. The uncertainty created by these differences requires a proactive approach to environmental management, including clearly identifying environmental objectives, careful experimental design, and effective monitoring.     

Mind the gap: institutional considerations for gender-inclusive climate change policy in Sub-Saharan Africa

This paper positions climate change against the backdrop of gender, premised on the understanding that neither climate change impacts nor responses are gender neutral, therefore institutions need to respond accordingly. Institutions play a central role in facilitating policy effects and forming major nodes of interaction as well as determining the accentuation of risk. Drawing on examples from different parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, the paper seeks to elucidate why women should be placed at the heart of climate change interventions. Establishing the appropriate connections between gender and climate change will enhance the opportunities for problem-solving and can increase the efficiency and effectiveness of policy-making. The gendered aspects of climate change and environmental relations are analysed by using an African feminist approach as the theoretical framework to expand and expound upon this position. This paper also investigates institutional matters pertaining to the management of environmental resources and highlights some of the constraints that need to be overcome in order to ensure the inclusion and empowerment of women in the management of these resources. It concludes by calling for a thorough understanding of the gender-based power relations in the agendas and activities of environmental governance institutions at all levels in society.     

The Cities for Climate Protection Campaign (CCPC) and the framing of Local Climate Policy

The paper contributes to the research on understanding local global warming politics. Strategic documents from The Cities for Climate Protection Campaign (CCPC) are analysed to show how CCPC has constructed climate change protection as a local issue. The paper's premise is that the climate change issue must be translated or framed to enable actors to work with this problem in a local context, and that successful framing requires establishing a coherent method of describing social reality. CCPC emphasises that the different elements of local and global sustainable development agendas can be mutually reinforcing, and that climate change protection can be reconciled with local priorities and initiatives that reduce greenhouse gases (GHG). It is argued that this framing of climate change makes it difficult to see why and how climate change should be an important concern for local communities. The modest reductions of GHG in CCPC cities thus far highlights that finding meaningful new ways of linking the global and the local should be a core concern of CCPC.     

Mapping Ecological Processes and Ecosystem Services for Prioritizing Restoration Efforts in a Semi-arid Mediterranean River Basin

Semi-arid Mediterranean regions are highly susceptible to desertification processes which can reduce the benefits that people obtain from healthy ecosystems and thus threaten human wellbeing. The European Union Biodiversity Strategy to 2020 recognizes the need to incorporate ecosystem services into land-use management, conservation, and restoration actions. The inclusion of ecosystem services into restoration actions and plans is an emerging area of research, and there are few documented approaches and guidelines on how to undertake such an exercise. This paper responds to this need, and we demonstrate an approach for identifying both key ecosystem services provisioning areas and the spatial relationship between ecological processes and services. A degraded semi-arid Mediterranean river basin in north east Spain was used as a case study area. We show that the quantification and mapping of services are the first step required for both optimizing and targeting of specific local areas for restoration. Additionally, we provide guidelines for restoration planning at a watershed scale; establishing priorities for improving the delivery of ecosystem services at this scale; and prioritizing the sub-watersheds for restoration based on their potential for delivering a combination of key ecosystem services for the entire basin.     

The Cities for Climate Protection Campaign (CCPC) and the framing of Local Climate Policy

The paper contributes to the research on understanding local global warming politics. Strategic documents from The Cities for Climate Protection Campaign (CCPC) are analysed to show how CCPC has constructed climate change protection as a local issue. The paper's premise is that the climate change issue must be translated or framed to enable actors to work with this problem in a local context, and that successful framing requires establishing a coherent method of describing social reality. CCPC emphasises that the different elements of local and global sustainable development agendas can be mutually reinforcing, and that climate change protection can be reconciled with local priorities and initiatives that reduce greenhouse gases (GHG). It is argued that this framing of climate change makes it difficult to see why and how climate change should be an important concern for local communities. The modest reductions of GHG in CCPC cities thus far highlights that finding meaningful new ways of linking the global and the local should be a core concern of CCPC.     

Responding to Pressure on Local Natural Resources: the Story of Three Villages in South-Eastern Nigeria

There has been a recent move by development professionals away from formal “scientific” attempts to address problems caused by changing environmental conditions, towards a greater reliance on the innovative ability and indigenous knowledge of local people. This has necessitated a greater understanding of the way in which communities respond to environmental and socio-economic change. Using a model that predicts community responses to pressure on local natural resources, and data collected in three villages in south-eastern Nigeria, an attempt is made to document the way in which people react and adapt to change. It is concluded that with sufficient time communities will usually develop new resource management and agricultural systems. However, where change is occurring rapidly, a facilitator is required to encourage and accelerate local innovation so that farming and natural resource management systems can be appropriately adjusted before severe environmental degradation takes place.     

Beyond water data: benefits to volunteers and to local water from a citizen science program

Survey results of citizen science water data collection volunteers are presented, indicating personal benefits (e.g., being in nature, helping local water quality), and suggesting potential long-term benefits of improved watershed health (e.g., behavior change). These results can inform citizen science program development and contribute to watershed planners’ understanding of the broad benefits of such programs. We suggest that respondents’ positive feelings toward the watershed's major river and desire to learn about science and nature are place-specific elements that watershed and citizen science program managers could utilize in program development. Moreover, we explore the potential of social diffusion and behavior change and suggest the need for further research in these areas. We conclude that citizen science has potential not just as a means to collect large amounts of data (cheaply), but as a means to engage citizens to make environmentally friendly decisions.     

Local Responses to Participatory Conservation in Annapurna Conservation Area, Nepal

Biodiversity conservation has undergone a profound change in philosophy, policies and management approaches over the last forty years. The traditional top–down approach to nature protection has been widely criticized for failing to include critical social elements in management practices, and is being gradually replaced by a slew of participatory strategies under the rubric of bottom-up conservation. The new approach recognizes local communities as key partners in wildlife management and seeks their participation in social development and biodiversity conservation. However, every social context is different in its structure and functions, and in the way social groups respond to calls for participation. In order to gain a better understanding of the approach and the barriers encountered in its implementation, a questionnaire survey of 188 households was employed in the communities of the Upper Mustang extension of Annapurna Conservation Area (ACA) in Nepal. The study provides a comparative analysis of community participation and its barriers between Non-Tourist (NT) and Tourist (TV) villages. The results revealed important differences between the two groups in terms of their participation in community programs, barriers to participation, and perception of benefits from participation. Owing to their distinct spatial, demographic and attitudinal differences, the two village groups have their own sets of needs, values and motivation factors which cannot be generalized and treated as such. The research clearly identifies the need for the conservation agency to be creative in devising strategies and initiatives appropriate to specific social groups so as to optimize their input in participatory conservation.     

Scoring the Importance of Tropical Forest Landscapes with Local People: Patterns and Insights

Good natural resource management is scarce in many remote tropical regions. Improved management requires better local consultation, but accessing and understanding the preferences and concerns of stakeholders can be difficult. Scoring, where items are numerically rated in relation to each other, is simple and seems applicable even in situations where capacity and funds are limited, but managers rarely use such methods. Here we investigate scoring with seven indigenous communities threatened by forest loss in Kalimantan, Indonesia. We aimed to clarify the forest’s multifaceted importance, using replication, cross-check exercises, and interviews. Results are sometimes surprising, but generally explained by additional investigation that sometimes provides new insights. The consistency of scoring results increases in line with community literacy and wealth. Various benefits and pitfalls are identified and examined. Aside from revealing and clarifying local preferences, scoring has unexplored potential as a quantitative technique. Scoring is an underappreciated management tool with wide potential.     

The importance of the will to improve: how ‘sustainability’ sidelined local livelihoods in a carbon-forestry investment in Uganda

This paper describes a ‘win–win’ discourse on local sustainable development and global climate change mitigation regarding Kachung, a Swedish–Norwegian climate forestry investment in Uganda certified under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). In many ways, this investment is a typical example of how private interests and capital accumulation are prioritised over local concerns in natural resource management under neoliberalism. This study, however, indicated that investors had genuine intentions of creating mutual benefits for the global environment and local people. Drawing on Li (2007), we show that this ‘will to improve’ was nevertheless constructed in ways that resulted in prioritisation of global climate change mitigation over local context-specific concerns.

We identify three core factors making the win–win discourse around Kachung plantation especially resilient: (i) the perceived urgency of climate change mitigation, (ii) the apolitical framing of ‘sustainability’ as an environmental issue that can be fixed through external technical interventions and (iii) the devaluation of local and context-specific knowledge. We end by suggesting that research on the neoliberalisation of nature focus more on analysing the rationales behind specific interventions. This would leave us better equipped to suggest how such interventions should be modified to produce true wins for local contexts.     

Coastal issues for oceanic islands: implications for human futures

Compared to continental areas, most islands have exceptionally long coastlines relative to their total land area. For this reason, islands are uncommonly vulnerable to problems associated with coasts. The future of the human inhabitants of many island states depends intrinsically on the sustainable management of their coasts, a challenge which grows more pressing as island populations increase and the associated demands on island coastlines change and grow. These issues are presented and discussed in this article. The mechanics of the sustainable management of island coasts is itself an important issue. At the national or local level, management is plagued by problems of insufficient and/or imprecise data and understanding that may lead to inappropriate solutions that even exacerbate the problems they are intended to solve. At an inter-governmental or international level, problems associated with the understanding of island environments need to be resolved before optimal management strategies can be developed. This article presents a brief explanation of the nature of coastal vulnerability on oceanic islands, followed by a discussion of several key problems associated with their sustainable development and the role of human and non-human factors in recent environmental change. It discusses the future of oceanic island coasts in the face of both internal and external threats to their sustainable management. It concludes with a blueprint for their survival.     

Communicating About Bioenergy Sustainability

Defining and measuring sustainability of bioenergy systems are difficult because the systems are complex, the science is in early stages of development, and there is a need to generalize what are inherently context-specific enterprises. These challenges, and the fact that decisions are being made now, create a need for improved communications among scientists as well as between scientists and decision makers. In order for scientists to provide information that is useful to decision makers, they need to come to an agreement on how to measure and report potential risks and benefits of diverse energy alternatives in a way that allows decision makers to compare options. Scientists also need to develop approaches that contribute information about problems and opportunities relevant to policy and decision making. The need for clear communication is especially important at this time when there is a plethora of scientific papers and reports and it is difficult for the public or decision makers to assess the merits of each analysis. We propose three communication guidelines for scientists whose work can contribute to decision making: (1) relationships between the question and the analytical approach should be clearly defined and make common sense; (2) the information should be presented in a manner that non-scientists can understand; and (3) the implications of methods, assumptions, and limitations should be clear. The scientists’ job is to analyze information to build a better understanding of environmental, cultural, and socioeconomic aspects of the sustainability of energy alternatives. The scientific process requires transparency, debate, review, and collaboration across disciplines and time. This paper serves as an introduction to the papers in the special issue on “Sustainability of Bioenergy Systems: Cradle to Grave” because scientific communication is essential to developing more sustainable energy systems. Together these four papers provide a framework under which the effects of bioenergy can be assessed and compared to other energy alternatives to foster sustainability.