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.     

CONSTRAINTS IN WATER MANAGEMENT ON AGRICULTURAL LANDS1

ABSTRACT Whether the goal is minimizing water quality degradation in receiving streams or maximizing agricultural production on existing croplands; the solutions are identical - improved water management practices. Technology has succeeded in developing feasible solutions to improving irrigation water management, but the law has been slow to encourage or direct implementation. The villain of the western United States water problem is the property right concept of the appropriation doctrine. Improving water management also implies organizational improvements. Also, the so-called “human factor” involves questions of inefficiency and ineffectiveness, that when examined under the criteria of efficacy, may dictate a policy of continuing present practices in certain localities or regions with little technological intervention. The present effort for improving water quality management implies, therefore, a manyfold attack aimed at increasing project irrigation efficiency and effectiveness, under the larger rubric of efficacy and the achievement of larger social goals.     

THE LEGALIZATION OF GROUNDWATER STORAGE1

ABSTRACT: California's courts have recently recognized the existence of underground aquifer storage rights that permit public agencies to (1) store imported waters in aquifers; (2) prevent others from expropriating that water; and (3) recapture the stored water when it is needed. The article describes the two appellate decisions that represent the common-law development of aquifer storage rights. Each decision related to separate aquifers that were subject to separate types of groundwater management programs. One decision involved an aquifer under the southeastern San Francisco Bay area that was managed under statutory authority and is entitled, Niles Sand and Gravel Co. v. Alameda County Water District 37 C.A.3d 924 (1974); cert. denied 419 US 869. The other decision involved an aquifer under Southern California's San Fernando Valley that was managed under judicial authority and is entitled, City of Los Angeles v. City of San Fernando 14 Cal.3d 199 (1975). The two decisions provide separate, but complimentary, public interest rationales for aquifer storage rights: (1) to protect water supplies necessary for the overlying community; and (2) to increase water supply efficiencies by using natural underground reservoirs wherever practicable. The Article reviews the relationship of aquifer storage rights to conventional groundwater rights and indicates aspects of the storage right that may need additional development.     

THE IMPORTANCE OF PERCEPTIONS IN THE DETERMINATION OF INDIAN WATER RIGHTS1

ABSTRACT The American Indian occupies a unique place in the federal system of government There are indications that this relationship will continue and that Indian reservations are at the threshold of economic development. As this occurs, the nature and extent of Indian water rights becomes more important to Indian and non-Indian alike. The determination of these rights is a matter of more than judicial decisions. To a large degree the determination of these rights will rest in the non-judicial arena and will be influenced by the perceptions of those rights held by Indians and water allocation officials, both state and federal. If the perceptions of these political actors are not congruent, then political conflict will occur as the rights become more important. To depend solely upon the judicial system to resolve these conflicts entails risks and costs to both Indians and to allocating officials. Indians are taking seriously the federal policy of Indian self-determination, and water allocation officials run decided risks in failure to realize this. An alternative suggested is to include Indians as consulting parties when decisions are being made that affect Indian interests.     

Environmental justice as a (potentially) hegemonic concept: a historical look at competing interests between the MST and indigenous people in Brazil

ABSTRACT

This article explores the need to recognise and compensate the plurality of environmental justice claims, while paying close attention to the outcomes of the most marginalised groups – cultural and ecological – in political decision-making to avoid vestiges of hegemony. The early history of the Movimiento dos Trabalhadores Rurais sem Terra (MST) serves as a case study in which environmental justice claims clash with indigenous rights claims. In recent decades, the MST has refused settling Amazonian indigenous territories, consistent with the organisation’s Via Campesina platform, which focuses on redistributing the 50% of national territory controlled privately by Brazil’s richest 4%. Yet, in the 1970s and early 1980s, Brazil’s military government pitted landless peasants and indigenous people’s struggles against each other, circumventing land reform potentially disruptive to the country’s de facto colonial fazenda land system. This tactic pressured competing groups – landless peasants and indigenous people – to fight against each other, concluding predictably: the most powerful factions ended up getting their way, conceding less in negotiations than their less-advantageously positioned, marginalised counterparts. When marginalised groups gain concessions in environmental justice struggles, often the goods comprising those concessions come at a cost to marginalised groups with even less political visibility. Hegemonic structures of power remain non-negotiable in the process of alleviating other injustices in perceived zero-sum politics. Such systemic displacement and dispersion of violence in systems built on violence suggests hegemony affects not just to other marginalised groups, but to nonhumans too.     

Economic and Ecological Transformation Processes in East German Water Management Regimes: The Role of Property Rights and Governance Structures

As in many fen land regions in East Germany, long-standing intensive arable farming—enabled by reclamation—has caused soil deterioration and high water runoff in the Schraden region. The more than ten years of economic and political transformation that followed the breakdown of the socialist regime has worsened the situation and even added new problems. The visible consequences are droughts in the summer, waterlogged plots in the spring, and worn-down water management facilities that operate in an uncoordinated or even unauthorized way. Given the local public-good character of some features of the fen land, the common-pool character of the ecosystems intermittently scarce resource water, and the conflicting interests of regional stakeholders, it is argued that the reallocation of property rights over reclamation systems, together with ineffective coordination mechanisms, have caused the physical and institutional failure of the water management system and so impeded appropriate land use. Note: This version was published online in June 2005 with the cover date of August 2004.     

我国地热资源的开发战略

总结了我国地热资源的利用和管理状况,提出了"政策统一、市场运作、合理利用、可持续发展"的地热资源开发战略,并对战略内容进行了具体阐述.     

ADMINISTRATIVE,INSTITUTIONAL, AND STRUCTURAL CHARACTERISTICS OF AN ACTIVE WATER MARKET1

ABSTRACT: Voluntary water transfers through markets have been advocated by many diverse groups as a means to reallocate scarce water supplies in the semi-arid western U.S. Although transfers of water rights have occurred almost since the creation of prior appropriation laws over a century ago, functioning water markets have been very slow to develop and are few in number. The structure, composition, administration and transactions of one of the most well established water markets, shares in the Bureau of Reclamation, Colorado-Big Thompson project, are examined to better understand the institutional and transfer conditions that sustain an active water market. Results from a detailed study of C-BT project records reveal that between 1970 and 1993 there were 2,698 transactions through which over one-third of the project water changed ownership or type of use. Further analysis shows that the transactions involved many individual sellers and categories of buyers with different uses, including agricultural buyers. The transfer activity and efficiency of the C-BT market has lead some to suggest that it be used as a model for other markets. However, because this market has fewer institutional restrictions, a well developed infrastructure and unique market conditions, it will be difficult to transfer this model to other areas without accompanying modifications in water right administration and institutions.