Environment,development and sustainability of local practices in the sacred groves and shrines in Bongo District: a bio-cultural study for environmental management in Ghana

The eminent crisis threatening biological and resource diversity is a global adversity. Global resource diversities are constantly disappearing and deteriorating at quite an alarming proportion, provoking renewed thinking regarding the effectiveness of existing environmental management approaches and practices. For the past four decades, several epochs of environmental management policies and practices disregarded the cultural imperative for safeguarding efficient environmental management outcomes, particularly at the community level. Even in the rouse of this reality, issues of spirituality and how it binds local community people to their natural environment appear to be given only a window dressing attention through the recognition of sacred natural sites. Eight sacred groves and shrines in the Bongo District were investigated based on an endogenous development framework. The data were collected using focus group discussions with stakeholders at the local and district levels and individual interviews with key local natural resource managers from four selected communities. The study revealed that the way indigenous people construct the worldviews and interactions with nature using ancestors and other spirit mediums can safeguard the environment against long periods of human interference and destruction. It also demonstrates that in certain places traditional institutions are becoming malleable and open to the use of external knowledge and resources in order to sustain places of sacred significance. It concludes that cultural imperative and the issues of spirituality are critical for the sustainable management of environmental resources. The study recommends revisiting local practice and cultural values that promote good environmental management practices within the local communities.     

Co-Partnership in Forest Management: The Gwira-Banso Joint Forest Management Project in Ghana

The involvement of local communities, as well as the private sector and the government in forest management is now an important principle of tropical forestry policy and practice and a major component of most international forestry aid programmes. This paper present an analysis on the Joint Forest Management Project initiated by two timber companies (Ghana Primewood Products Ltd and Dalhoff Larsen & Horneman) in collaboration with local people in Gwira-Banso of Ghana. Conditions required for enhancing responsibility for and commitment to local forest management, and for an effective local participatory process were also analysed. The study began with the premise that incentives and good communication will enhance participation in joint forest management.The assumption was valid and the results from the survey showed that five broad issues prioritised by respondents to be essential for co-partnership in forest management are communication, financial support, tree planting, multiple land use and benefit sharing. The Project enjoys a great deal of support from the local community, but a number of factors make the continued support of local people a challenging task, including questions of immediate livelihood sources and tenure arrangements. Although this participatory forest management has been implemented over a relatively short period, there is evidence that government and private sectors can successfully involve local people in sustainable management of the forests.     

Community participation in international projects: an analytical perspective from the Russian Far East

International projects frequently struggle with the dilemmas of community participation, whether the community in question is the object of a development or aid intervention, or is to be persuaded to cooperate on a conservation project. This paper discusses the challenges facing interventionists and the obstacles and opportunities that local people encounter as they come into contact with exogenous conservation and development projects. The key issues presented can be summarized as legacy, legitimacy, agency and communication. We argue that project planners need to understand the history of past interventions in order to respond appropriately to local expectations. At the same time, the complexity of community leadership and representation complicates the sometimes conflicting agendas of project developers and communities. Much depends on personal relations, individual agency, and initiative. Finally, the physical means of communication—language, print and broadcast media, transport and telecommunications—are important aspects to consider when assessing the limitations to community participation. Although there have been valuable successes in international projects in Russia, as in other regions of the world, a better understanding of community participation is needed to ensure more effective and sustainable means for engaging communities in project development and implementation. This paper explores these questions through a locally-grounded analysis based on the academic research and practitioner experience of the two authors in the remote home of a World Heritage site—the Kamchatka Peninsula, in the Russian Far East.     

Objectives for management of socio-ecological systems in the Great Barrier Reef region,Australia

A wide range of goals and objectives have to be taken into account in natural resources management. Defining these objectives in operational terms, including dimensions such as sustainability, productivity, and equity, is by no means easy, especially if they must capture the diversity of community and stakeholder values. This is especially true in the coastal zone where land activities affect regional marine ecosystems. In this study, the aim was firstly to identify and hierarchically organise the goals and objectives for coastal systems, as defined by local stakeholders. Two case study areas are used within the Great Barrier Reef region being Mackay and Bowen–Burdekin. Secondly, the aim was to identify similarities between the case study results and thus develop a generic set of goals to be used as a starting point in other coastal communities. Results show that overarching high-level goals have nested sub-goals that contain a set of more detailed regional objectives. The similarities in high-level environmental, governance, and socio-economic goals suggest that regionally specific objectives can be developed based on a generic set of goals. The prominence of governance objectives reflects local stakeholder perceptions that current coastal zone management is not achieving the outcomes they feel important and that there is a need for increased community engagement and co-management. More importantly, it raises the question of how to make issues relevant for the local community and entice participation in the local management of public resources to achieve sustainable environmental, social, and economic management outcomes.     

The case for open source appropriate technology

Much of the widespread poverty, environmental desecration, and waste of human life seen around the globe could be prevented by known (to humanity as a whole) technologies, many of which are simply not available to those that need it. This lack of access to critical information for sustainable development is directly responsible for a morally and ethically unacceptable level of human suffering and death. A solution to this general problem is the concept of open source appropriate technology or OSAT, which refers to technologies that provide for sustainable development while being designed in the same fashion as free and open source software. OSAT is made up of technologies that are easily and economically utilized from readily available resources by local communities to meet their needs and must meet the boundary conditions set by environmental, cultural, economic, and educational resource constraints of the local community. This paper explores both the open source and appropriate technology aspects of OSAT to create a paradigm, in which anyone can both learn how to make and use needed technologies free of intellectual property concerns. At the same time, anyone can also add to the collective open source knowledge ecosystem or knowledge commons by contributing ideas, designs, observations, experimental data, deployment logs, etc. It is argued that if OSAT continues to grow and takes hold globally creating a vibrant virtual community to share technology plans and experiences, a new technological revolution built on a dispersed network of innovators working together to create a just sustainable world is possible.     

Institutional credibility and leadership: critical challenges for community-based natural resource governance in rural and remote Australia

Community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) institutions are challenged with finding common ground as a basis for action among diverse resource users and stakeholders. Establishing and maintaining institutional credibility within their regions, catchments, communities and among their membership is fundamental to overcoming the challenge. So too is applying appropriate institutional and governance structures and appointing appropriate leaders. Drawing on triangulated case study data collected over a 12-month period using multiple methods, this paper examines the influence of institutional credibility and leadership on the functioning, decision-making and governance of two CBNRM institutions in Queensland, Australia. The paper shows that stakeholders have very different expectations of what makes a CBNRM institution credible. Satisfying the multiple expectations requires CBNRM institutions to incorporate diverse stakeholder representation, assert their legitimacy and demonstrate accountability, transparency, fairness and justice. The paper also draws attention to the value and importance of appointing inspirational leaders who focus on encouraging followers to pursue collective goals. Comparing the merits and constraints of appointing average Joes versus community elites to the Boards of CBNRM institutions, the paper highlights the urgent need for community-based natural resource governance and inspirational leadership education and training programs to improve the availability and quality of CBNRM leadership in rural Australia. Since combining credible CBNRM institutions with inspirational leaders does not necessarily equate to sustainable on-ground NRM outcomes, it is critical that the education and training programs emphasise the importance of monitoring and evaluating the improvements in decision-making processes and in decision outcomes.     

Community-based forest management in the Yungas biosphere reserve, Northern Argentina

The purpose of this paper is to discuss a methodology for the implementation of a participative plan for forest use and management in a rural community. We present an experience carried out in an aboriginal community located in the “Yungas biosphere reserve” in Northern Argentina. We developed a methodology to work with the community to assess the quality of the forest resources and to find out the causes of degradation. We worked at three levels: the community council, the community, and the school. The community has a very short-term vision. The setup, the feasibility, and the implementation of the plan is highly dependent on the willingness of the community to participate. It is so far the first attempt, in Yungas region, to develop a multi-level methodology to work with local communities to implement a forest-management plan. Findings and recommendations could be useful for others who would like to work in similar contexts.     

Characterizing Interpersonal Influence for Grassland Conservation Behaviours in a Unique Population

Interpersonal communication can influence the decisions people make about engaging in conservation behaviours. In-depth interviews with Tibetan pastoralists serve as the basis for examining interpersonal communication patterns and sources of interpersonal influence about grassland conservation behaviours. Herding and family groups are key collectives; salient sources of information vary across types of information. Salient individuals are those with credibility and means control: community leaders, elders, veterinarians, and government officials. Explicit information about conservation comes from religious leaders. The findings have significant implications for understanding the function and nature of interpersonal influence in unique population groups regarding conservation actions.     

Research on Indicator System of Regional Eco-efficiency:A Case Study of Chengyang District

Eco-efficiency is a valuable tool for managing and solving issues involving resource consumption and pollution emission in current production processes. Despite the popularity of the term “eeo-efficiency“ in business, limited attention has been paid to measuring and reporting regional eco-efficiency for local government policy makers. Based on the concept and method of eco-efficiency, an indicator system of regional eco-efficiency is established in this study. The indicator system comprises 22 indicators, which are divided in to three categories including socio-economic development, resources consumption,environmental pressure. As a promising statistical technique,principle component analysis is used to set the weight of indicators which attempts to calculate the eco-efficiency indices of Qingdao‘s Chengyang District. The results show that the eco-efficiency of Chengyang District has clearly improved 35.1% with small fluctuation from 1995 to 2003. Socio-economic development index and resources consumption index also represent obvious increasing trends. The correlation coefficient between soci-economic development index and resources consumption index is 0.979, which means the social progress and economic growth of Chengyang District depend on an extravagant consumption of resources. The environmental pressure index increased slowly before 1997 and declined gradually after 1997, due to more attention being paid to environmental protection by local government in recent years. Chengyang District still keeps the traditional economic development mode with a high consumption and high production, so the emphases of future development should put on improving the improving the efficient use of natural resources and promoting environmental management sustainability. The results show that the indicators system of regional eco-efficiency is a promising method to quantitatively evaluate resources and environmental efficiency and provide an effective decision-making support for local governments.     

Research on Indicator System of Regional Eco-efficiency: A Case Study of Chengyang District

Abstract

Eco-efficiency is a valuable tool for managing and solving issues involving resource consumption and pollution emission in current production processes. Despite the popularity of the term “eco-efficiency” in business, limited attention has been paid to measuring and reporting regional eco-efficiency for local government policy makers. Based on the concept and method of eco-efficiency, an indicator system of regional eco-efficiency is established in this study. The indicator system comprises 22 indicators, which are divided in to three categories including socio-economic development, resources consumption, environmental pressure. As a promising statistical technique, principle component analysis is used to set the weight of indicators which attempts to calculate the eco-efficiency indices of Qingdao's Chengyang District. The results show that the eco-efficiency of Chengyang District has clearly improved 35.1% with small fluctuation from 1995 to 2003. Socio-economic development index and resources consumption index also represent obvious increasing trends. The correlation coefficient between soci-economic development index and resources consumption index is 0.979, which means the social progress and economic growth of Chengyang District depend on an extravagant consumption of resources. The environmental pressure index in- creased slowly before 1997 and declined gradually after 1997, due to more attention being paid to environmental protection by local government in recent years. Chengyang District still keeps the traditional economic development mode with a high consumption and high production, so the emphases of future development should put on improving the improving the efficient use of natural resources and promoting environmental management sustainability. The results show that the indicators system of regional eco-efficiency is a promising method to quantitatively evaluate resources and environmental efficiency and provide an effective decision-making support for local governments.     

Local communities' participation in decision-making processes through planning and budgeting in African countries

Community participation and community based management are topical themes in current policy and discussion revolving around decision-making processes especially those dealing with natural resources management.This review shows that while governments have accepted the need to either cede or devolve control and management of natural resources to the local communities,the communities are not part and parcel of the planning and budgeting which are crucial in decisionmaking.Communities were seen to be more involved in the implementation of natural resource management programs but lacked ownership of the projects.This causes lack of commitment to the programs and at times hostile reaction from the communities.The communities are always at the receiving end when it pertains to losses in the exchange.Community participation was shown to be effective when the local population is involved not as co-operating users but as natural resource managers or owner managers.     

Shifting sands: changes in community perceptions of mining in Ghana

The contribution of mining to the Ghanaian economy has been substantial. The mining sector is currently a major foreign exchange earner and contributes to long-term capital formation and fiscal payment to the state. However, the industry continues to have adverse consequences on the lives of local community dwellers, most of whom are often unprepared to deal with these impacts. Often, new mining exploration takes place on land that provides land-based livelihood to many rural people. Ironically, compensation payments seem to worsen poverty in the mining communities and bring about the social conflicts. Hence, whilst communities are highly welcoming of mining companies during exploration, they become resentful during operation of the mine. Using two communities in the Asutifi District of Ghana as case studies, this paper presents a candid assessment of the changes that occur in respondents’ perception of mining during, before and after the inception of mining. It also examines the gender dimensions of the impacts of mining activities as well as the communities’ sources of information. Since public participation is an integral part of the environmental assessment process in Ghana, the paper concludes by recommending among others, precise channels of communication and dialogue before mining begins and during the operation of the mine, to increase awareness among community members.     

浙江省粮食贸易中的虚拟水研究

贸易中的虚拟水研究使人们认识到地区的水资源危机可以通过全球性的经济贸易来缓解。虚拟水的进出口是水资源的一个来源,通过贸易的形式、利用各种外部资源来缓解内部水资源的紧缺,最终解决水资源短缺和粮食安全问题,是社会实现水资源社会化管理、生态环境安全和社会经济可持续发展的战略保障。以浙江省为研究对象,首先利用各类农作物虚拟水含量标准,核算了1997~2006年10 a间浙江省粮食贸易的虚拟水含量。然后比较浙江省全年用水量和用水结构,计算得出粮食贸易产生的年净进口虚拟水量占浙江省年总用水量7.41%左右,占到年农业灌溉用水的1717%。研究结果表明,过去10 a浙江省粮食贸易的虚拟水是浙江省水资源的一个重要的补充。〖     

Resource management for sustainable development: a community- and GIS-based approach

A combined approach utilizing GIS, Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) and Focus Group Discussion (FGD) has been developed for resource mapping in a rural poverty-prone area of Bangladesh. This model integrated GIS and participatory tools to include the voices of the stakeholders in assessing available resources and needs. The resource mapping framework, developed using PRA with local community people and community gatekeepers, was aimed at sustainable resource management, and ArcView GIS was used to digitize the resource maps as a Decision Support System (DSS). A detailed assessment and analysis of the quality, quantity and physical status of resources was first mapped in the field and then digitized using GIS. FGD-based interaction with community people at each union in a subdistrict of Bangladesh revealed stakeholders’ opinions on land and water body management. The present paper demonstrates the power of this model as a policy-making tool for sustainable development and poverty eradication. It also recognized the need for collaboration between interdisciplinary policy planners and researchers to develop and implement a policy on agricultural resource management for poverty-prone areas.     

论徽州软体文化旅游资源的元价值与生存困境

首先界定了软体文化旅游资源的概念：即以“非物化”的形式承载并惠及子孙。具有潜在的巨大经济含量,以适当的方式可以开发成旅游产品的文化存在。接着．探讨了软体文化旅游资源在徽州文化旅游开发中的元价值地位。指出软体文化资源是徽州文化旅游产品的灵魂．因而也是其生命周期之长短的决定性因素。在此认识的基础上．文章基于徽州文化旅游资源开发的现状．论述了徽州当前原生性软体文化资源存续的四大困境：生存环境逼仄、文化认同危机、研究与发掘滞后、制度制定不足等问题;最后．提出软体文化资源开发的有关对策：梯度开发、建章立制、去商业化、培养社区情感等。     

Rural Poverty Reduction through Business Partnerships? Examples of Experience from the Forestry Sector

At the Earth Summit in Johannesburg in 2002, partnerships were touted as one of the key routes to sustainable development. But can partnerships really deliver improvements to rural livelihoods? This paper reviews one set of claimed partnerships, those between forestry companies and local individuals or communities, to assess the benefits, and the costs, to local livelihoods. Most arrangements between forestry companies and local communities are not equitable enough to be called partnerships, so the term “deal” is preferred. Positive local impacts of company–community deals include sharing of risks, better returns to land than otherwise possible, opportunities for income diversification, access to paid employment, development of new skills, upgrading of local infrastructure and environmental improvement. However, company–community deals have not yet proved sufficient to lift people out of poverty. They remain supplementary rather than central to income generation. Furthermore, while some deals have resulted in greater cohesion and organisation among community groups, there is as yet little evidence of substantial increases in community bargaining power. Ways forward to increase returns to communities (and to their counterpart companies) centre on moving towards more equal partnerships, by raising community bargaining power, fostering the roles of brokers and other third parties, and developing equitable, efficient and accountable governance frameworks.     

Places and People: Rhetorical Constructions of “Community” in a Canadian Environmental Risk Assessment

This paper addresses the issue of public engagement in environmental risk contexts through a rhetorical analysis of the key term “community” in a risk assessment of mining-caused soil contamination. Drawing on Burke's concept of terministic screens and method of cluster criticism, the analysis shows the divergent constitutions of “community” in the Sudbury Soils Study's official discourse and the citizen-activist rhetoric of the Community Committee on the Sudbury Soils Study. Tracing the verbal and visual clusters within each organization's articulation of “community” as place and people reveals how the official Study's technical-regulatory ideology of environmental risk and citizen participation is countered by the Community Committee's contestatory environmental justice ideology. These competing views of “community” are mutually constitutive in that the official Study's mainstream risk discourse establishes the terms for the Community Committee's reactive counter-discourse, thus limiting citizen participation mainly to questions of “downstream” impacts. Our rhetorical analysis of “community” suggests a generative method for understanding the complex power relations animating specific risk communication contexts as well as for potentially reinventing “community” in terms more conducive to meaningful citizen engagement.     

Building climate change resilience through local cooperation: a Peruvian Andes case study

Many of the problems faced by international projects intending to create adaptive social–ecological systems for climate change stem from lack of stakeholder engagement, limited understanding of local political, economic, and environmental complexities, and restricted time. Local organizations focused on conservation and development might have an advantage in creating adaptive social–ecological systems because they understand local processes and are involved with communities for extended periods of time. A local non-governmental organization, Asociación Ecosistemas Andinos (ECOAN), works in twenty-one communities in the Andean highlands outside of Cusco to conserve the endangered Polylepis forests. As part of the conservation project, ECOAN supports community-led development projects such as building greenhouses. Data for this project were gathered through interviews (with community members in three different communities, ECOAN staff, and donors) and participant observation. This paper shows that ECOAN’s extensive use of participation has led to community ownership of the conservation and development projects. The communities’ close connections to the Polylepis project contribute to resilience through creating networks, extending the local environmental ethic to the Polylepis trees, supporting projects that diversify and strengthen community sustenance, and contributing to the growth of economic activities. This case study provides a positive example of the potential for local organizations and people to take charge of their own resiliency efforts where international projects and protocols may otherwise prove ineffective.     

“Organic is More of an American Term … We Are Traditional Farmers”: Discourses of Place-based Organic Farming,Community, Heritage,and Sustainability

The following study looks at how traditional, organic, cooperative farmers starting a new farming cooperative in the US Southwest communicate about their farming as a set of (sustainable) cultural practices. The study draws on environmental communication theory, the theory of the coordinated management of meaning, and Vandana Shiva’s three-tiered economic model to construct a communication-based framework through which to view farmers’ stories about sustainability. This framework is productive, showing how some Nuevo Mexicano farmers (and others) orient toward farming, sustenance, and human-nature relationships through community, family, heritage, and education. Moreover, in addition to a conceptualization of sustainability as specific practices for nurturing and enduring in environments, communities, and organizations/institutions, sustainability can be understood as embedded ecocultural and historical experience with cross-cultural parallels in land-based communities. This study advances the ethical duty of environmental communication to better understand the ways in which environmental discourse and ecocultural and material realities are imbricated, as well as the call for such discursive study to be grounded in phenomenological experience of the natural world.     

Development,local livelihoods,and vulnerabilities to global environmental change in the South American Dry Andes

Climate change will increasingly impact large areas of South America, affecting important natural resources and people’s livelihoods. These impacts will make rural people disproportionately more vulnerable, given their dependency on ecosystem services and their exposure to other stressors, such as new rules imposed by agribusiness and trends toward the commodification of natural resources. This paper focuses on the vulnerability of rural communities in Andean drylands of Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile, showing how different economic and political pathways lead to different levels of vulnerability. The paper begins with a brief discussion of the methodological and theoretical concept of vulnerability, which framed the research. Starting from the premise that global environmental change impacts are strongly linked to styles of development, the discussion explores the diverse institutional capital and governance schemes as well as different development styles in the case studies and their role in increasing or reducing local vulnerability to climate and water scarcity. Using a comparative perspective, the exposures and adaptive capacities of rural actors in three river basins are discussed, emphasizing situations that speak for the ways in which development styles counteract or magnify conditions of vulnerability. The analysis considers irrigated and non-irrigated agriculture, water property interests, different productive structures (viticulture, horticulture, etc.), producer typologies (large/small, export, etc.), and geographical location. Finally, the paper offers some insights about development style and adaptive capacities of rural people to overcome those vulnerabilities.