The Rise and Fall of a Second-Generation CBNRM Project in Zambia: Insights from a Project Perspective

Since the advent of community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) in the mid-1980s, scholars and practitioners have sought to explain the uneven performance of CBNRM programs. Most CBNRM assessments examine the underlying principles of community-based conservation, the local social and ecological contexts, and connections with larger political and historical patterns. In this article, I argue that analysis of the potential and pitfalls of CBNRM also requires an understanding of the institutional history and internal dynamics of projects that implement CBNRM reforms. Drawing upon theory and methods from development ethnography and public policy, I examine the rise and fall of CONASA, a second-generation CBNRM project in Zambia that operated from 2001 to 2004. CONASA was constituted from a merger of organizations and discourses to provide continuity with previous projects. Its ambitious suite of activities included support for household livelihoods, community-based resource management, policy analysis, advocacy, and conservation enterprises at local, national, and transboundary levels. While individual activities were largely successful, CONASA’s hybrid origins and logframe-centric management created fissures between its holistic design and operational logics, and hindered its ability to develop a broader narrative and maintain key alliances. This case study illustrates the importance of understanding the interplay between project design and operational context to fully appreciate the possibilities and limitations of project-mode conservation.     

Simulation and mathematical programming decision-making support for smallholder farming

Many mathematical programs have been developed over the past 50 years to aid agricultural experts and other farming decision-makers. The application of these mathematical programs has seen limited success because their development has focused on mathematical theory as opposed to the requirements needed for application. This paper describes the development of two mathematical programs that were designed to integrate with a visualization simulation that aids a nontraditional group of agricultural decision-makers: illiterate Sri Lankan subsistence farmers. The simulation was designed to help these illiterate farmers make business decisions about their crop selection choices which, in turn, will help them develop their business plans required for obtaining bank micro-loans. This paper’s focus is on the use of linear programming as a potential tool to demonstrate the benefits of crop diversification and rotation to the farmer based on various available crop types. It also highlights the issues using such an approach.     

Home energy efficiency grants and advice: findings from the English Midlands

Research was conducted in Nottinghamshire, England to investigate public attitudes regarding home energy efficiency issues. Quantitative data were collected in the form of a postal survey, achieving over three hundred responses. Additionally, predominantly qualitative data were collected in semi-structured interviews in 15 homes. The issues investigated included the grant-funded energy efficiency measures installed by the public, the organisations providing grants, the means by which the recipients were referred to the organisations, and the public's preferences regarding energy efficiency advice. Findings were made about the local authority's success in encouraging the take-up of energy efficiency grants, about the public's preferences for the means by which advice should be provided, about trust relating to energy efficiency grants provided by gas and electricity suppliers, and about people's knowledge of the most effective energy efficiency measures. Additional findings were drawn about specific energy efficiency issues, including old heating systems and compact fluorescent light bulbs.     

Community knowledge networks: an action-orientated approach to energy research

The Climate Change Act 2008 commits the UK to reducing carbon emissions by 80% of 1990 levels by 2050. With household emissions constituting more than a quarter of current total energy use in the UK, energy practices in the home have taken on increased policy attention. In this paper, we argue that the UK government's approach is founded upon a variant of methodological individualism that assumes that providing greater energy information to individuals will effect behaviour change in relation to energy use. Such an approach is potentially limited in its effectiveness and does not afford appropriate recognition to all those affected by energy policy. In contrast to this approach, we set out an alternative perspective, a community knowledge networks approach to energy and justice which recognises the contexts and relationships in which people live and use energy. Such an approach emphasises situated knowledge and practices in order to gain a greater understanding of how individuals and communities use energy, but, importantly, offers a means for affording greater recognitional justice to different social groups.     

Estrogen content and relative performance of Japanese and British sewage treatment plants and their potential impact on endocrine disruption.

Both the UK and Japan are densely populated islands with relatively short rivers. Therefore, both countries are likely to be highly exposed to contaminants emanating from their human populations. This review considered how effective the different sewage treatment facilities of the two countries are at removing steroid estrogens from the effluent. The methods of estrogen analysis in sewage effluent, the number and importance of different sewage treatment types, and their apparent effectiveness at removing estrogens were all considered. In both countries, the activated sludge treatment was dominant in terms of people served and water discharged. The analytical techniques used by those studying estrogen concentrations in effluents in both countries were broadly similar. Activated sludge plant (ASP) effluent in the UK typically contained around 2 ng/L estradiol (E2) and 8 ng/L estrone (E1), while Japanese ASPs typically reported E2 as below detection, and 10 ng/L E1 in their effluents. When estrogenic bioassays were used in Japan, they typically record an estrogenic potency of 10 ng/L E2 equivalents. Even taking into account ethinylestradiol (EE2) (not found in Japanese effluents), the overall estrogenicity of British sewage effluents would appear to be the same as that of Japanese sewage effluents (around 10 ng/L E2 equivalents). This suggests that the ASPs serving the large urban communities in Japan and the UK would have effluent of similar estrogenic potencies. Less information is available about the more numerous biological (trickling) filter plants (BFP) in the UK and oxygen ditches (OD) in Japan which tend to serve smaller, more rural communities. The available data would suggest that the BFPs are significantly less efficient than the ODs at removing E1. This would suggest that in similar circumstances, British headwaters (where this sewage treatment plant (STP) type is often found) might be more at risk from endocrine disruption than their Japanese counterparts. Overall, the apparently higher incidence of endocrine disruption in British wild fish than in Japanese wild fish cannot be attributed to differences in the efficiency of their respective STPs.     

A Systems Based Framework to Examine The Multi-contextural Application of the Sustainability Concept

A conceptual framework is generated through systems principles to explain sustainability’s wide diversity of interpretation and contextual application. Sustainability is reduced to a literal interpretation as the ability to sustain, and then expressed in simple systems as the ability of one system to sustain another system over time. This reinforces the importance of time in the sustainability debate, and suggests the concept can be legitimately applied to timeframes that have absolute limits. The framework is expanded to complex systems as the changing ability of one or many systems to sustain the changing requirements of one or many systems, over time. This accommodates multiple relations and system dynamics, and hints at the extraordinary complexity encompassed by the sustainability concept. Practical implications relate to the evolving meaning of sustainability, the need for continual change to remain sustainable, and that the sustainability concept can be validly applied to virtually any context or situation that exhibits a dimension of continuity. Derived criteria useful for clarifying contextual applications of sustainability include stating the how, what, why, who and for how long of sustainability, along with indicating the most appropriate hierarchical tier at which the concept is being applied.     

Planning for robust reserve networks using uncertainty analysis

Planning land-use for biodiversity conservation frequently involves computer-assisted reserve selection algorithms. Typically such algorithms operate on matrices of species presence–absence in sites, or on species-specific distributions of model predicted probabilities of occurrence in grid cells. There are practically always errors in input data—erroneous species presence–absence data, structural and parametric uncertainty in predictive habitat models, and lack of correspondence between temporal presence and long-run persistence. Despite these uncertainties, typical reserve selection methods proceed as if there is no uncertainty in the data or models. Having two conservation options of apparently equal biological value, one would prefer the option whose value is relatively insensitive to errors in planning inputs. In this work we show how uncertainty analysis for reserve planning can be implemented within a framework of information-gap decision theory, generating reserve designs that are robust to uncertainty. Consideration of uncertainty involves modifications to the typical objective functions used in reserve selection. Search for robust-optimal reserve structures can still be implemented via typical reserve selection optimization techniques, including stepwise heuristics, integer-programming and stochastic global search.     

‘Anting’ as food preparation: formic acid is worse on an empty stomach

Summary Anting is a behavior common among passerine birds, yet its function is unknown. The behavior consists of a highly stereotyped set of movements which start when a bird picks up an ant, usually one which sprays formic acid as a defense, and sweeps it with frenzied motions through its feathers. The bird will often also eat the ant. As formic acid is toxic, we have tested the food-preparation hypothesis, that is, that the birds are anting to remove a distasteful or toxic substance from the ant before eating it. In a pair of experiments on starlings, Sturnus vulgaris, we have found evidence in support of this hypothesis. Correspondence to: O.P. Judson