Conserving the species-rich meadows of Europe

Owing to changes in agricultural practices throughout Europe, with greater emphasis on intensification, traditionally managed hay meadows have become scarce. Their loss has also meant the loss of species diversity. One of the few areas of Europe where traditional management is still practised is in Northern Spain.The hay meadows of Northern Spain can be defined as semi-natural, species-rich communities that are maintained by one or more factors which are under the direct control of man. The traditional management to which they are subjected has led to a high species diversity. For centuries the meadows have been important to man in supporting cattle during the winter. There is now little need for further increase of production. However, the importance of the need for conservation of species diversity and protection of ecologically sensitive areas is now recognised. Although the biological richness of the hay meadows is well known, few studies have been made of the effects of different traditional management regimes on the diversity and floristic composition of these grasslands.A survey was carried out to examine the effects of traditional management on the floristic composition, diversity and production of these meadows. The area studied is situated in the Valdeón valley, northwestern Spain (Cantabrian Mountains) and consists of a deep valley in which arboreal vegetation is represented by beech (Fagus sylvatica) forests. The survival of semi-natural habitats and traditional forms of management and also the low use of chemical fertilisers compared with Northern Europe are the most important reasons for the richness of these habitats. In this study, cutting for hay once per year, non-irrigation non-manuring and grazing in autumn was correlated with high species diversity. The future conservation of these habitats will depend on the formulation of support to continue with traditional management practices.     

Maya environmental successes and failures in the Yucatan Peninsula

This is a case study of environmental management by an indigenous people, the Mayas of the Yucatan Peninsula, a geographic area shared by Mexico, Belize, and northern Guatemala. The purpose is to contribute information to the debate among environmental policy makers concerning indigenous peoples and their local knowledge. It summarizes recent findings that call into question older theories, often referred to in this debate. The focus is on the evidence for changes in resource use over time: the adoption and abandonment of technologies as affected by climate change and population pressures, including evidence concerning variations in the resources themselves.     

Introduction and overview: environmental knowledge,rights, and ethics: co-managing with communities

This special issue of Environmental Science & Policy presents various approaches for assessing local environmental knowledge and perceptions. Many environmental management problems are caused by a mismatch between environmental decision-makers and locally affected communities. Our objective with this special issue is to present a range of environmental decision-making approaches to be matched with a range of community types. On one end of this range are traditional, indigenous communities where careful co-management is needed. On the other end are mixed residential/transient communities, where a regional survey of awareness of an environmental issue can provide adequate information for a practitioner to design an appropriate solution from the office. We may also have a wide range of environmental knowledge from the traditional community's elders to the transients. It may be encoded in folkloric symbols or verbal references to Internet WebPages, or a combination of these and other codes, signifying membership in social groups. Such diversity requires skill in assessing levels of environmental knowledge and appropriate strategies for engaging local knowledge as a basis for building culturally and environmentally appropriate projects.     

Integrating local and scientific weather knowledge as a strategy for adaptation to climate change in the Arctic

As the climate warms, stressors are developing that challenge the adaptive capabilities of Arctic peoples. In Nunavut, one of Canada??s Arctic territories, increased weather variability and changes in physical and climatic conditions are having profound effects on residents. One problem is that while these changes have magnified risks associated with travel and land-based activities, individuals lack sufficiently reliable and useful information on which to base decisions. In this paper, we argue that weather-related risk assessment can be improved by integrating local and scientific weather knowledge and making this information accessible to residents through the creation of weather hazards impact advisory groups. We present a qualitative case study of Iqaluit, the capital of Nunavut, using data from participant observation and semi-structured interviews conducted with indigenous and non-indigenous long-term residents in summer 2009. We examine how long-term residents of Iqaluit acquire, perceive, and use both local and scientific weather knowledge. We find that various barriers, such as a lack of land-based experience, cultural and linguistic differences, and an absence of social networks, prevent most people from obtaining all the information required to make fully informed decisions about the risks associated with land-based activities at different locations. Experienced hunters are perceived to be a reliable source of weather-related information, while scientific weather knowledge is not as accessible or informative as it could be. Increasing the potential use of traditional and scientific hazardous weather knowledge, by making both more universally accessible, can enhance strategies for adapting to climate change in the Arctic.     

The value of indigenous knowledge in climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies in the African Sahel

Past global efforts at dealing with the problem of global warming concentrated on mitigation, with the aim of reducing and possibly stabilizing greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations in the atmosphere. With the slow progress in achieving this, adaptation was viewed as a viable option to reduce the vulnerability to the anticipated negative impacts of global warming. It is increasingly realized that mitigation and adaptation should not be pursued independent of each other but as complements. This has resulted in the recent calls for the integration of adaptation into mitigation strategies. However, integrating mitigation and adaptation into climate change concerns is not a completely new idea in the African Sahel. The region is characterized by severe and frequent droughts with records dating back into centuries. The local populations in this region, through their indigenous knowledge systems, have developed and implemented extensive mitigation and adaptation strategies that have enabled them reduce their vulnerability to past climate variability and change, which exceed those predicted by models of future climate change. However, this knowledge is rarely taken into consideration in the design and implementation of modern mitigation and adaptation strategies. This paper highlights some indigenous mitigation and adaptation strategies that have been practiced in the Sahel, and the benefits of integrating indigenous knowledge into formal climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies. Incorporating indigenous knowledge can add value to the development of sustainable climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies that are rich in local content, and planned in conjunction with local people.     

A tradition of change: the dynamic relationship between biodiversity and society in sector Muyuy,Peru

The theme of biodiversity and society provides an opportunity to look beyond skewed environmental ideologies that impel biodiversity researchers to ignore land “tarnished” by humans in search of “pristine” ecosystems. Data reported and analyzed in this paper test and draw conclusions based on a non-partisan stance that recognizes biodiversity as a product of complex natural and anthropogenic interactions. The data in this paper describes this process in the Amazon floodplain of sector Muyuy, Peru. A smallholder tradition of adaptive change in this highly precarious and unstable landscape provides a dynamic foundation upon which biodiversity is produced, managed and conserved. To examine this tradition of appropriate response to change, data was collected on land-cover dynamics using Landsat images and biodiversity inventories and household surveys of resource use technologies and conservation practices were carried out. Through complex agricultural technologies, sector Muyuy smallholders, known as ribereños, use a highly differentiated and dynamic environment to produce a great diversity of crops while creating habitats for endangered and over-exploited species of fish and river turtles, plants, and other species. Ribereños are smallholder farmers, fishermen and forest managers. They are the descendents of several indigenous groups as well as migrants from Europe, Asia and Africa. Most of the rural inhabitants of Peruvian Amazonia are ribereños. In Muyuy, we found that ribereños manage an average of 76 tree species per ha, including tropical cedar and other over-exploited timber species. We conclude that meaningful attempts at biodiversity conservation must begin at the interface between ecological and social processes and incorporate locally developed knowledge and practice.     

Negotiating Indigenous knowledge at the science-policy interface: Insights from the Xáxli’p Community Forest

Despite increasing interest in learning from Indigenous communities, efforts to involve Indigenous knowledge in environmental policy-making are often fraught with contestations over knowledge, values, and interests. Using the co-production of knowledge and social order (Jasanoff, 2004), this case study seeks to understand how some Indigenous communities are engaging in science-policy negotiations by linking traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), western science, and other knowledge systems. The analysis follows twenty years of Indigenous forest management negotiations between the Xáxli’p community and the Ministry of Forests in British Columbia (B.C.), Canada, which resulted in the Xáxli’p Community Forest (XCF). The XCF is an eco-cultural restoration initiative that established an exclusive forest tenure for Xáxli’p over the majority of their aboriginal territory—a political shift that was co-produced with new articulations of Xáxli’p knowledge. This research seeks to understand knowledge co-production with Indigenous communities, and suggests that existing knowledge integration concepts are insufficient to address ongoing challenges with power asymmetries and Indigenous knowledge. Rather, this work proposes interpreting XCF knowledge production strategies through the framework of “Indigenous articulations,” where Indigenous peoples self-determine representations of their identities and interests in a contemporary socio-political context. This work has broader implications for considering how Indigenous knowledge is shaping science-policy negotiations, and vice versa.     

云南棕榈藤资源及发展策略

云南省具有丰富的棕榈藤种质资源,棕榈藤作为一种重要的非木材植物,不仅在全球生物多样性保护、经济贡献和生态重建等方面起着重要的作用,而且,与当地居民有着密切的联系,为各少数民族创造了财富。然而,随着经济的发展,森林资源减少,环境条件退化,棕榈藤资源日益减少,特别是有些优良棕榈藤种类处于濒危状态。因此,优良棕榈藤的引入、繁殖和栽培,不仅将满足棕榈藤发展的需要,而且亦将扩大良种藤的遗传基因库,为未来棕榈藤资源的进一步开发利用打下坚实的基础。论文基于云南棕榈藤资源发展的要求,对棕榈藤资源现状、利用、发展潜力和策略进行探讨。     

Local knowledge and adaptation to climate change in natural resource-based societies of the Asia-Pacific

This paper reviewed 42 studies of how local knowledge contributes to adaptation to climate and climate change in the Asia-Pacific Region. Most studies focused on traditional ecological or indigenous knowledge. Three simple questions were addressed: (1) How are changes in climate recognized? (2) What is known about how to adapt to changes in climate? (3) How do people learn about how to adapt? Awareness of change is an important element of local knowledge. Changes in climate are recognized at multiple time scales from observations that warn of imminent extreme weather through expectations for the next season to identification of multi-year historical trends. Observations are made of climate, its impact on physical resources, and bio-indicators. Local knowledge about how to adapt can be divided into four major classes: land and water management, physical infrastructure, livelihood strategies, and social institutions. Adaptation actions vary with time scale of interest from dealing with risks of disaster from extreme weather events, through slow onset changes such as seasonal droughts, to dealing with long-term multi-year shifts in climate. Local knowledge systems differ in the capacities and ways in which they support learning. Many are dynamic and draw on information from other places, whereas others are more conservative and tightly institutionalized. Past experience of events and ways of learning may be insufficient for dealing with a novel climate. Once the strengths and limitations of local knowledge (like those of science) are grasped the opportunities for meaningful hybridization of scientific and local knowledge for adaptation expand.     

Forest and agroecosystem fire management in Ghana

The threat of wildfires to the economic potential of forestry and agriculture is one of the persistent national and international concerns. Improving and applying indigenous wildfire management (IWM) approaches is seen as one of the main hopes for mitigating and adapting to this threat to rural forest communities. Identifying the contextual causes and adaptation measures practiced by local people is essential for planning an appropriate mechanism for IWM. Yet only limited studies are available on IWM practices and most of those studies were conducted outside of this study region. To fill this gap, this study examined the wildfire mitigation and adaptation methods of forest communities in Ghana using interviews with 266 farming households. Their perceptions of the causes, cost and risk factors were also examined. The result suggests that wildfires are annual events. More than half of the wildfires reported were caused by slash-and-burn land preparation, with hunting-related fires in second place. Forest households loose about 208 Ghana cedi (US$ 231 in 2006) in value due to damaged crops and tree seedlings annually (i.e. about 50% of annual income of a Ghanaian farmer). The respondents had the operational skill and coping abilities to deal with small-scale wildfires and were supported by well-established local arrangements, community rules and silvicutural techniques. In addition, they were well informed about the basic risk factors (e.g. fuel load, climate, and presence of ignition triggers) and how these can interact to cause devastating wildfire. Therefore it is critical that policies and institutions that promote IWM initiatives build on the strong underlying community knowledge and local networks to enhance their effectiveness.     

Rural vulnerability to environmental change in the irrigated lowlands of Central Asia and options for policy-makers: A review

Climate change, land degradation and drought affect millions of people living in drylands worldwide. With its food security depending almost entirely on irrigated agriculture, Central Asia is one of the arid regions highly vulnerable to water scarcity. Previous research of land and water use in the region has focused on improving water-use efficiency, soil management and identifying technical, institutional and agricultural innovations. However, vulnerability to climate change has rarely been considered, in spite of the imminent risks due to a higher-than-average warming perspective and the predicted melting of glaciers, which will greatly affect the availability of irrigation water. Using the Khorezm region in the irrigated lowlands of northwest Uzbekistan as an example, we identify the local patterns of vulnerability to climate variability and extremes. We look at on-going environmental degradation, water-use inefficiency, and barriers to climate change adaptation and mitigation, and based on an extensive review of research evidence from the region, we present concrete examples of initiatives for building resilience and improving climate risk management. These include improving water use efficiency and changing the cropping patterns that have a high potential to decrease the exposure and sensitivity of rural communities to climate risks. In addition, changes in land use such as the afforestation of degraded croplands, and introducing resource-smart cultivation practices such as conservation agriculture, may strengthen the capacity of farmers and institutions to respond to climate challenges. As these can be out-scaled to similar environments, i.e. the irrigated cotton and wheat growing lowland regions in Central Asia and the Caucasus, these findings may be relevant for regions beyond the immediate geographic area from which it draws its examples.     

民族传统文化对农作物遗传多样性的影响——以贵州黎平县香禾糯资源为例

贵州黎平县内丰富的香禾糯资源是侗族人民赖以生活的物质基础,孕育了侗族特有的生产生活方式和文化习俗,而侗族的传统文化习俗也促进了香禾糯的持续种植和保护.通过研究黎平县香禾糯的历史发展情况,结合2013 年对黎平县香禾糯品种资源的实地调查,发现黎平县至今仍保留了45 个不同品质特征和用途的香禾糯品种,说明香禾糯丰富的遗传多样性.从侗族的饮食文化、节日庆典、宗教信仰、传统农作方式等方面,探讨传统文化习俗与香禾糯品种资源保护的关系,发现香禾糯是侗族油茶、扁米、腌制品等日常食品的必备原料,也是婚丧嫁娶、传统节日、礼尚往来、祭祀仪式的必需品,同时,侗族和谐共生的“稻-鱼-鸭”生产模式更提高了香禾糯的社会经济效益,文章揭示了侗族的传统知识和文化习俗是保持香禾糯高度遗传多样性的根本原因.最后,针对香禾糯资源消失的现状,提出相应的保护措施与建议,供相关部门参考.     

Indigenous people and co-management: implications for conflict management

Co-management agreements among indigenous people, state agencies, and other stakeholders offer substantial promise as a way of dealing with natural resource conflicts in a participatory and equitable manner. However, experience shows that co-management regimes can set into motion new conflicts or cause old ones to escalate. In practice the result may not be power sharing but rather a strengthening of the state's control over resource policy, management, and allocation. Instead of contributing to local empowerment, such arrangements may further marginalize communities and resource users. We use case material, primarily from northern Canada and South Asia, to explore the pervasive role of conflict in generating, shaping, and influencing the performance of co-management regimes. The paper analyzes the divergent interests and motives of state agencies in planning and implementing co-management arrangements. It highlights the cultural, political, and legal obstacles encountered by indigenous people and other rural communities in trying to negotiate co-management arrangements. We also explore the conflicts that can arise in co-management regimes where local participation in decision making is very limited. General lessons and recommendations are drawn from our analysis.     

Underlying cause of fire: Different form of land tenure conflicts in Sumatra

One of the social phenomena that have arisen in Indonesia in the post-Reformasi period (mid-1998) is the increase in land tenure conflicts between local communities and tree plantation companies, and between local communities and the forestry department. Land tenure conflicts often trigger forest and land fires, which is both a symptom and a cause of increasing conflict over tenure and use rights. If the tenure issue is not appropriately addressed, it will continue to result in unwanted fires and forest degradation, related smoke and gas emissions, and environmental and economic losses. A recent study in Sumatra revealed that, in many cases, (1) tenure conflicts between companies and communities, resulting from past government policies and practices, often trigger forest and land fires because of frustrations by the communities of being unable to have their claims heard in a fair and transparent judicial system; and (2) even with the use of military force, forest policy and management has largely failed to protect forest resources when local communities were not involved. The nature of the partnership between communities and companies in land use development is also an important factor in influencing the incidence and control of fire.     

Future needs in potato post-harvest technology in developing countries

The reduction of post-harvest food losses, which are particularly high in perishable crops in developing countries, is important not only from an obligation to avoid waste, but also because the cost of preventing food losses in general is considered to be less than producing a similar additional amount of food of the same quality. In perishable vegetatively propagated crops like the potato, appropriate post-harvest technology is not only required to reduce food losses, but also to maintain the perishable planting material from one growing season to the next.Extensive knowledge on basic post-harvest technologies and principles exists for potatoes. The future emphasis in tropical developing countries should be in their low-cost application to specific local problems. In attempting to use known technologies to solve these problems, lessons should be learnt from many past failures where attempts concentrated on the direct transfer of technologies which were successfully used in one location to a similar problem in another location. Basic technologies and principles are universal but their application is location-specific and requires a good understanding of the socio-economic as well as technical needs of each location. The best use of limited resources in the transfer and application of known technologies could be achieved through the use of interdisciplinary research teams which involve their final client — farmer, merchant or consumer — in their efforts at an early stage, rather than relying on traditional disciplinary research and extension approaches.As an alternative to trying to copy the development path of countries which use high-input technologies, the authors suggest that developing countries, in an effort to reduce post-harvest potato losses and to make potatoes available to an increasing number of their peoples by the year 2000, should investigate alternative low-cost application of basic principles.     

‘Polishing the Kaswentha’: a Haudenosaunee view of environmental cooperation

Increasingly, Native American and non-Native governments, institutions and individuals are searching for cooperative ways to address environmental problems. While such approaches can offer substantial benefits over top-down or unilateral efforts, there are also potential pitfalls, especially when considering the needs and interests of the Native parties. Among these are threats to their status as sovereign nations, and to their political, economic and cultural autonomy. Given such concerns, many Indian Nations are seeking models for collaboration which protect their unique status based on indigenous and treaty rights, while respecting their cultural identity, values, and indigenous knowledge. In this paper we explore how one Native group in particular, a coalition of Haudenosaunee Nations in the US and Canada, has dealt with these complex issues. We show how positive relationships with outside agencies and researchers have been made possible through the use of mechanisms and processes based on traditional Haudenosaunee concepts and values. Finally, we explore how one item in particular, a 17th century treaty belt called the Kaswentha, offers a powerful symbol for forming relationships which respect Haudenosaunee autonomy while allowing collaborative partnerships to address critical environmental concerns.     

Wildfire policy and use of science in the context of a socio-ecological system on the Aegean Archipelago

This paper summarizes the results of a primarily qualitative (with certain quantitative elements) socio-ecological study on three Greek islands of the Aegean Archipelago to characterize fire science and policy at regional and local levels, and perceptions of fire risk. Among the most important factors influencing dynamics of fire regimes on the islands are changing land use patterns and practices, and changes in climate and fuel conditions. While use of scientific information is not widespread, there are individuals in all three islands who regularly consult scientific sources. Although fire policy is largely controlled at the national and European Union levels, local activity also occurs, most notably through the volunteer fire fighting organizations, interactions with local officials, and public education efforts. However, though seen as important, significant lack of financial support and resources exist to support prevention and pre-suppression programs. Prevention of fires on the islands, including the use of prescribed burning, is relatively inadequate, and while an intense interest in preventing the loss of communities and ecosystems is frequently encountered, public participation in fire prevention remains limited. The findings suggest that relying on local knowledge, in combination with fire managers’ decision-making abilities, could improve fire management options and reduce wildfire suppression costs and ecological disasters.     

Degradation and re-emergence of the commons: The impacts of government policies on traditional resource management institutions in China

In the vast majority of cases studied to date, rapid changes in indigenous resource management institutions and traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) have been reported with profound implications for indigenous livelihoods, biodiversity, and system resilience worldwide. In this case study, we examined how policy changes in China over the past 60 years have influenced indigenous resource management institutions designed to manage common pool pastoral systems in eastern Inner Mongolia. Based on semi-structured interviews (n = 91), focus group discussions (64 participants involved), and participant observation, we found that for over half a century rescaling efforts by the Chinese government shifted the focus to national level development planning, which led to the degradation of indigenous institutions that managed common pool pastoral systems in the region. However, we also highlight how local actors have used recent changes in government policies to revitalize traditional herding institutions. This provides a rare glimpse at the re-emergence of the commons from the bottom up.     

To kill or not to kill—Practitioners’ opinions on invasive alien species management as a step towards enhancing control of biological invasions

The spread of invasive alien species (IAS) has become an increasingly important environmental, social and economic issue in almost all regions of the world. To have the capacity to effectively counter the effects of invasions, besides basic research on invasion processes and the ecological impacts of IAS, there is a need to get an information and better understanding of the effectiveness of biological control and its social acceptability. Conservation practitioners are a particular group of stakeholders as they act in the first line to undertake control actions again IAS spread. Yet, not many research was done to deliver quantitative, comprehensive information on practitioners’ knowledge and attitudes towards IAS. In this paper, we present a study from Poland—a country with relatively well preserved nature, yet currently facing the problem of biological invasions in the terrestrial and aquatic environments. We investigated nature conservation practitioners’ knowledge of biological invasions, their views on the principles and methods of IAS control, and their degree of acceptance of control methods. We conducted a survey among people professionally involved in nature conservation in Poland and collected 916 questionnaires (out of 3330 sent). Overall, we find that conservation practitioners in Poland accept the use of radical methods of control, yet they differ about the use of various types of control method, and about the various control methods application to various systematic groups. Also, the level of practitioners’ knowledge is rather limited—both in relation to correct identification of IAS, as well as to knowledge on legal regulations. We also highlight significant differences between decision-makers and professionals not perceiving themselves as decisive over IAS management. We show examples suggesting that nature conservation practitioners may not hold well-formed opinions on the principles and methods of dealing with alien species. This is surely an important deficit to overcome to enhance the effectiveness of IAS control.