Management Regimes,Property Rights,and Forest Biodiversity in Nepal and India

This article compares a range of initiatives aimed at involving people in the management of forest resources in Nepal and India. In Nepal, we focus on three categories of state-initiated programs: community forestry, the parks’ buffer zone program, and leasehold forestry. In the southern Indian state of Karnataka, we study the state-initiated Joint Forest Planning and Management program along with older institutions of leaf manure forests (Soppina betta) and historical sacred forests (Kans). We conclude that state-initiated approaches to involving communities have been limited, at best, promote standardized and relatively inflexible management practices, and lead to partial improvement in biodiversity and people’s livelihoods. When management is initiated and owned by the community, as in the case of sacred groves in India, and when other conditions are appropriate, communities can have the opportunity to demonstrate their capacity for putting effective and adaptive conservation practices in place.     

Building Trust in Natural Resource Management Within Local Communities: A Case Study of the Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie

Communities neighboring federally protected natural areas regularly weigh the costs and benefits of the administering agency’s programs and policies. While most agencies integrate public opinion into decision making, efforts to standardize and formalize public involvement have left many local communities feeling marginalized, spurring acrimony and opposition. A significant body of research has examined barriers to effective public participation as well as strategies for relationship building in planning processes; many of which point to trust as a key factor. Trust is especially tenuous in local communities. This paper explores perceptions of trust, expectations for management, as well as constraints to building trust. In-depth interviews were conducted with 21 community members and USDA Forest Service personnel at the Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie in northeastern Illinois. The interviews revealed that trust is perceived as important to effective management. Distinct expectations for management outcomes and processes emerged, including the values, knowledge, and capacity demonstrated in management decisions and actions and opportunities provided for communication, collaboration, and cooperation within the agency-community relationship. The case study identified several constraints to building trust, including competing values, knowledge gaps, limited community engagement, and staff turnover.     

Enhancing climate technology transfer through greater public–private cooperation: Lessons from Thailand and the Philippines

This article contributes to debates about climate change policy and technology transfer by analyzing the success factors underlying collaboration between private companies and communities in developing countries. To date, much attention to capacity building for enabling environments — including public–private collaboration — under the climate change convention has focused on state‐led initiatives and on the innovation and development of technologies. This article, instead, focuses on how private‐sector investors and host communities may collaborate in the diffusion of technologies, by reducing the costs of technology transfer, and making technology more appropriate to developing countries. The article describes cases of collaboration concerning waste management and waste‐to‐energy in Thailand and the Philippines. The article argues that successful public–private partnerships between investors and communities depends on minimizing transaction costs, strengthening collaborative (or assurance) mechanisms, and in maximizing public trust and accountability of partnerships. Lessons are then drawn for enhancing capacity building for technology transfer under the climate change convention and applications such as the Clean Development Mechanism.     

Creating and sustaining community capacity for ecosystem-based management: Is local government the key?

Recently, collaborative approaches to natural resource management have been widely promoted as ways to broaden participation and community involvement in furthering the goals of ecosystem management. The language of collaboration has even been incorporated into controversial legislation, such as the US Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003. This research examines collaboration and sharing management responsibility for federal public land with local communities through a case study of the Ashland Municipal Watershed in southern Oregon. A policy sciences approach is used to analyze community participation and institutional relationships between the US Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, and local city government in the planning processes of five land management actions occurring over a 7-year period. The knowledge gained from examining differing approaches to planning and decision making in the Ashland watershed is used to suggest future planning processes to develop and sustain the community capacity necessary to support implementation of community-based ecosystem management.     

Community Capacity for Adaptation to Climate-Induced Water Shortages: Linking Institutional Complexity and Local Actors

There is growing concern for the capacity of urban and rural communities to manage current water shortages and to prepare for shortages that may accompany predicted changes in climate. In this paper, concepts relating to the notion of climate adaptation and particularly capacity building are used to elucidate several determinants of community-level capacity for water management. These concepts and criteria are then used to interpret empirically derived insights relating to local management of water shortages in Ontario, Canada. General determinants of water-related community capacity relate to upper tier political and institutional arrangements; the characteristics of, and relationships among, pertinent agencies, groups, or individuals involved in water management; and the adequacy of financial, human, information, and technical resources. The case analysis illustrates how general factors play out in local experience. The findings point to geographically specific factors that influence the effectiveness of management. Key factors include collaboration between water managers, clarification of agency roles and responsibilities, integration of water management and land-use planning, and recognition and participation of both urban and rural stakeholders, whose sensitivities to water shortages are spatially and temporally variable.     

Benefits of Collaborative Learning for Environmental Management: Applying the Integrated Systems for Knowledge Management Approach to Support Animal Pest Control

Resource management issues continually change over time in response to coevolving social, economic, and ecological systems. Under these conditions adaptive management, or “learning by doing,” offers an opportunity for more proactive and collaborative approaches to resolving environmental problems. In turn, this will require the implementation of learning-based extension approaches alongside more traditional linear technology transfer approaches within the area of environmental extension. In this paper the Integrated Systems for Knowledge Management (ISKM) approach is presented to illustrate how such learning-based approaches can be used to help communities develop, apply, and refine technical information within a larger context of shared understanding. To outline how this works in practice, we use a case study involving pest management. Particular attention is paid to the issues that emerge as a result of multiple stakeholder involvement within environmental problem situations. Finally, the potential role of the Internet in supporting and disseminating the experience gained through ongoing adaptive management processes is examined.     

Barriers and enablers to climate change adaptation in hierarchical governance systems: the case of Vietnam

Governments fulfil important roles in increasing the adaptive capacity of local communities to respond to climate change impacts, particularly in developing countries. Existing studies on how governments enable and constrain the ways in which local level communities learn and build their adaptive capacity, however, generally adopt network or market-oriented types of governance. However, the most vulnerable regions to climate change impact in the world are generally governed through hierarchical policy systems. This research aims to understand how the hierarchical policy system in Vietnam creates enables and/or constrains the policy capacity of policy actors to contribute to effective climate change adaptation. We conducted interviews (n?=?26) with key actors at multiple levels of government. Our findings show the importance of clear legal institutions, available financing for implementing policies, and the training of governmental staff, particularly at district and commune levels where the policy capacities are generally too low to deal with climate change impacts. We conclude that any efforts to support local actors (i.e. smallholder farmers) should include investments in policy capacity to ensure uptake and upscaling of adaptation actions more broadly.     

Building the role of local government authorities towards the achievement of the human right to water in rural Tanzania

In recent decades, many changes have occurred in the approach to financing and operating water services in developing countries. The demand‐responsive approach is now adopted in many countries in a context of donor‐supported decentralization processes, which gives more responsibility to end users. However, the government's responsibility at different levels is enforced by the international recognition of the human right to water. This paper examines specific actions that build the role of local government authorities in this scenario. A collaboration between an international NGO and a rural district in Tanzania from 2006 to 2009 is used as an action research case study that is representative of local capacity‐building needs in decentralized contexts and rural areas. Three main challenges were detected: i) lack of reliable information; ii) poor allocation of resources in terms of equity; and iii) lack of long‐term community management support from the district. Two mechanisms were established: i) water point mapping as a tool for information and planning; and ii) a District Water and Sanitation Unit Support (DWUS) for community management. The results show how the framework provided by the goal of human right to water helps to define useful strategies for equity‐oriented planning and post‐project support at the local level.     

Building the Capacity of Grassroots Conservation Organizations to Conduct Participatory Evaluation

Stakeholder participation has become a key factor in the success of grassroots conservation and natural resource management programs. Yet the majority of program evaluations are conducted by external consultants for the purposes of accountability, rather than program improvement. Too often, systematic evaluations of conservation programs are not conducted at all. The objective of this study was to build the capacity of a grassroots conservation organization to conduct participatory evaluation, involving project stakeholders in the design, implementation, and use of evaluation. The study applied a conceptual model for participatory evaluation to the Wildlife Clubs of Kenya (WCK), the largest grassroots conservation program for youth in Africa, involving more than one million youth since 1968. Seven trainings in participatory evaluation were conducted with WCK staff, teachers, and community members. The 120 participants, representing nine WCK regions with 800 clubs, showed a significant increase in attitudes and knowledge regarding evaluation, as reflected by mean test scores before and after training. To institutionalize evaluation at WCK, existing organizational practices were assessed and used as a foundation for developing an evaluation system. Based on club competitions, a new evaluation initiative was launched called the WCK Incentive Program. Participants in all seven workshops identified indicators and sources of evidence for this evaluation system, which now serves as a basis for rewarding outstanding performance in WCK. This study revealed the importance of incentives for evaluation, the need to build on existing structures to promote organizational learning, and the necessity for the conservation community to commit resources to capacity building in participatory evaluation.     

Social Capital and Fisheries Management: The Case of Chilika Lake in India

This article shows how social capital impacts fisheries management at the local level in Chilika Lake, located in the state of Orissa in India. In Chilika, the different fishing groups established norms and “rules of the game” including, but not limited to, spatial limits that determine who can fish and in what areas, temporal restrictions about when and for how long people may fish, gear constraints about what harvesting gear may be used by each group, and physical controls on size and other characteristics of fish that may be harvested. A survey of the members of fishing groups has shown that the bonding social capital is strong within the Chilika fishing groups. Bonding and bridging social capital keeps the fishers together in times of resource scarcity, checks violations of community rules and sanctions, and strengthens the community fisheries management. In contrast, linking social capital in Chilika appears to be weak, as is evident from the lack of trust in external agencies, seeking the help of formal institutions for legal support, and increasing conflicts. Trust and cooperation among fishers is crucial in helping to build the social capital. A social capital perspective on fisheries governance suggests that there should be a rethinking of priorities and funding mechanisms, from “top-down” fisheries management towards “co-management” with a focus on engendering rights and responsibilities for fishers and their communities.     

Engaging the community at the Tampakan Copper Project: a community case study in resource development with indigenous people

There is little doubt that one of the most significant challenges facing the mining industry today is how to deal with sociocultural issues, particularly those concerning indigenous groups who are potentially affected by mineral developments. No longer is a project's success dependent on technical and economic considerations alone. Community issues are now an integral component of overall project risk. For the mining industry, therefore, the establishment of positive, strong and transparent relationships with local communities is more than just a moral imperative; it makes good business sense. A case study of WMC's Tampakan Copper Project in the Philippines provides an illustration of how mining companies are developing their capacity to deal with sociocultural concerns.     

Local Capacity for Groundwater Protection in Ontario

Preventing groundwater contamination is vastly cheaper than remediation. Recognizing this, attention in water and land management agencies in North America increasingly turn to groundwater protection. Local agencies, such as municipalities and watershed management districts, are vital to successful groundwater protection, but they face daunting challenges. In the United States, senior governments have recognized these challenges and provide considerable support for local agencies. In Ontario, Canada, local agencies are, to a much greater extent, on their own. The aims in this paper are to analyze factors that shape local capacity for groundwater protection, focusing on Ontario, and to recommend avenues for capacity building. Interrelationships among five dimensions of capacity (technical, financial, institutional, social, and political) are explored through an analysis of three smaller Ontario communities: City of Guelph (population 93,400), Town of Orangeville (population 22,188), and Town of Erin (population 11,000). Size clearly influences capacity for groundwater protection. However, other considerations unrelated to size appear to be as important. These other factors include the ability to form horizontal and vertical linkages with external agencies, political leadership and commitment, and citizen involvement. Thus, smaller communities in Ontario (and other jurisdictions with limited senior government support) would do well to focus on these areas at the same time as they develop their technical, financial, and institutional capacity.     

THE CIRCUIT RIDING ORDINANCE ADMINISTRATOR: A SOLUTION TO SMALL COMMUNITY TECHNICAL INADEQUACIES1

ABSTRACT: Small, rural communities (less than 2500 population) in general do not have governmental staffs with the breadth required to satisfactorily implement and enforce a drainage ordinance. This fact has serious implications in rural Planning. Within a six-country rural area of Southwest Virginia, the circuit riding town manager program has been successfully conducted. The circuit riding town manager is a planning staff member who acts in the capacity of a town manager (assistant to the mayor) for five small towns, any one of which alone could not afford to support the services of such a professional. This note recommends that a circuit riding technical ordiance administrator program could be developed along the same lines. In this manner, the technical ordinance program for serveral small communities could be successfully implemented.     

Adaptive Capacity and Community-Based Natural Resource Management

Why do some community-based natural resource management strategies perform better than others? Commons theorists have approached this question by developing institutional design principles to address collective choice situations, while other analysts have critiqued the underlying assumptions of community-based resource management. However, efforts to enhance community-based natural resource management performance also require an analysis of exogenous and endogenous variables that influence how social actors not only act collectively but do so in ways that respond to changing circumstances, foster learning, and build capacity for management adaptation. Drawing on examples from northern Canada and Southeast Asia, this article examines the relationship among adaptive capacity, community-based resource management performance, and the socio-institutional determinants of collective action, such as technical, financial, and legal constraints, and complex issues of politics, scale, knowledge, community and culture. An emphasis on adaptive capacity responds to a conceptual weakness in community-based natural resource management and highlights an emerging research and policy discourse that builds upon static design principles and the contested concepts in current management practice.     

Private land management for biodiversity conservation

As human influences fragment native communities and ecosystems, remaining land must be better managed to conserve many elements of biodiversity. Much of this land is privately held, yet traditional private land-use management practices often further diminish biodiversity by promoting favored or edge-adapted species. Today, private land stewards are increasingly aware of and concerned about biodiversity, but little guidance exists for them to make land-use decisions incorporating principles and knowledge from conservation biology. Consequently, most management strategies are highly subjective. This article addresses that problem by introducing current conservation wisdom to management and use of private lands. The result is a model program for developing land management plans, with the goal of maintaining viable populations and natural distributions of native species and communities from a landscape perspective. The program establishes a protocol for classifying sites according to the importance of their species, communities, and other elements to global and regional biodiversity. These site classifications are based on the management objectives necessary to maintain important elements. Once managers classify a site, the program provides management standards, general stewardship principles, examples of land management strategies, and basic monitoring and evaluation procedures.     

Lessons from Integrating Fishers of Arapaima in Small-Scale Fisheries Management at the Mamirauá Reserve,Amazon

Fishers and small-scale fisheries worldwide have been marginalized historically. Now it is clear that integrating fishers in management processes is key to resource conservation, but it is less clear how to do it. Here, based on a literature review and new information, we present and analyze a case in which the participation of fishers in the management process was crucial in recovering an overexploited small-scale fishery for the pirarucu (Arapaima spp.) in the Amazon Basin, Brazil. In 8 years of experimental management, from 1999 to 2006, the population of pirarucu increased 9-fold (from about 2200 to 20,650 individuals), harvest quotas increased 10-fold (from 120 to 1249 individuals), and fishers’ participation in the management process increased and they benefited from increased monetary returns. Additionally, the number of communities conducting the management scheme increased from 4 in 1999 to 108 in 2006, following the demands of fishers and regional government agencies. Based on our analysis, we suggest that the participation of fishers in the management of other small-scale fisheries in the world can be improved by focusing on (1) applying the knowledge and skills of fishers in resource monitoring and management, (2) bridging knowledge systems among all involved stakeholders, (3) collaborating with fishers that are interested in, and capable of conducting, resource conservation schemes, and (4) conducting management under conditions of uncertainty.     

Barriers to sharing water quality data: experiences from the Shale Network

The Shale Network is a group of stakeholders collating, publishing, and conducting research on water quality data collected in the northeastern United States experiencing natural gas extraction from shale using hydraulic fracturing. In developing the Shale Network, we have experienced reluctance to share data from all participating sectors. This paper explores this reluctance, identifying barriers to greater collaboration among multiple stakeholders in natural resource management projects. Findings are derived from participant observation of the Shale Network team, surveys conducted during Shale Network workshops, interviews with water quality stakeholders, and participant observation of water quality monitoring training sessions. The barriers identified include perceptions about data problems and quality, technical capacity, regulatory and legal limitations, competition for resources, and resource allocation decisions. This paper identifies strategies the Shale Network has used to overcome data-sharing barriers to expand a culture of data sharing that supports enhanced nature resource management and citizen engagement.     

Addressing global responsibility for conservation through cross-cultural collaboration: <Emphasis Type="Italic">Kodama Forest,a forest of tree spirits</Emphasis>

A commitment to conservation of a place is based on the sense of place expressed by its “conceptual community”, including those who are not its residents in the geographical sense, but who nonetheless identify with it for various reasons. With the global nature of environmental issues being clearly recognized, such communities form a “terrain of consciousness” (Berg and Dasmann 1978), extending responsibility for conservation across cultures, time and space. Although the social mobility and diversity brought about by today’s technology often work against the development of a sense of place, they also allow the formation of such conceptual communities, who can highlight local distinctiveness while at the same time positioning local issues in a global context, so generating a sense of global responsibility. In the case of Tasmania, Australia, recent international interest in its ecologically and culturally significant places, such as Recherche Bay and the Styx Valley, has intensified the focus on forest issues, building on Tasmania’s already well-recognized history of environmentalism. It is important that these issues be recognized in Japan in particular, where a rising awareness about climate change and mass consumerism has alerted the public to the problem of deforestation; however the fact that Tasmania is one of the major sources of woodchips for paper production is not widely known. Awareness by the consumer, it is argued, is a foundation for forming a sense of global responsibility and it is necessary to form a conceptual community of those committed to the same issue. Cross-cultural collaboration is therefore necessary, and creativity can be an effective facilitating agent for this. This paper illustrates this point, through the example of the Kodama Forest, a forest of tree spirits, in North East Tasmania, that arose from such a collaboration between a group of Japanese students and a local community group. The collaboration also facilitated meaningful learning opportunities for the students, who chose to study in Tasmania because of its natural environment. The forest now provides a cultural heritage that also defines the evolution of this conceptual community through on-going collaboration. The importance of human connection at all levels, local, regional and global, in promoting environmental sustainability is addressed through the example of this forest.     

Managing climate change vulnerabilities: formal institutions and knowledge use as determinants of adaptive capacity at the local level in Sweden

Though managing vulnerabilities posed by climate change calls for effective strategies and measures, its challenges have hitherto not been fully understood. In Sweden, municipalities have recently started incorporating vulnerability management into their political and administrative agendas. This study discusses such experiences and explores how institutional determinants may influence adaptive capacity within a local case study area, to illustrate emerging challenges and opportunities for Swedish municipalities in managing climate vulnerabilities. Specifically, formal institutional structure and the use of knowledge are analysed, concluding that vulnerability management often is focused on technical and reactive fixes, due to limited co-operation between local sector organisations, lack of local co-ordination, and an absence of methods and traditions to build institutional knowledge. Even so, opportunities, such as a high capacity to examine risks to technical systems and important establishments which in turn facilitates protection of technical infrastructure exposed to climate variability and change, also exist.     

Effectiveness of Management Interventions to Control Invasion by Rhododendron ponticum

Rhododendron ponticum is an invasive species in many countries, including the United Kingdom, Ireland, Belgium, and France. It poses a serious threat to native flora and fauna, as it is capable of altering entire seminatural communities through its vigorous spread. Control is essential if the conservation value of some communities, such as oak woodland and lowland heath, are to be successfully maintained. Commonly used interventions are herbicide application, herbicide application postcut, and cutting (manual or mechanical) alone. Various techniques have been developed to apply these interventions, but often retreatment of the area is required, increasing the cost of control. Here, we evaluate the effectiveness of some commonly used interventions for R. ponticum control using a systematic review methodology. Eleven studies provided data for statistical analysis. Meta-analyses of captured data show that postcut application of the herbicide Glyphosate or applying the herbicides Metsulfuron-methyl or Imazapyr (no cut) can effectively reduce a R. ponticum stand. There is insufficient available experimental evidence for effectiveness of any other intervention. The systematic review process has demonstrated the lack of replicated studies with controls or long-term monitoring and increases the call for more rigorous monitoring of all conservation management interventions. The quality of experimental evidence of the effectiveness of some interventions contrasts with the acceptance of their use through dissemination of experience. The collection and objective review of experience will require active collaboration of organizations concerned with R. ponticum control.