Social Capital in Biodiversity Conservation and Management

Abstract:  The knowledge and values of local communities are now being acknowledged as valuable for biodiversity conservation. Relationships of trust, reciprocity and exchange, common rules, norms and sanctions, and connectedness in groups are what make up social capital, which is a necessary resource for shaping individual action to achieve positive biodiversity outcomes. Agricultural and rural conservation programs address biodiversity at three levels: agrobiodiversity on farms, nearby nature in landscapes, and protected areas. Recent initiatives that have sought to build social capital have shown that rural people can improve their understanding of biodiversity and agroecological relationships at the same time as they develop new social rules, norms, and institutions. This process of social learning helps new ideas to spread and can lead to positive biodiversity outcomes over large areas. New ideas spread more rapidly where there is high social capital. There remain many practical and policy difficulties, however, not least regarding the need to invest in social capital formation and the many unresolved questions of how the state views communities empowered to make their own decisions. Nonetheless, attention to the value of social relations, in the form of trust, reciprocal arrangements, locally developed rules, norms and sanctions, and emergent institutions, has clearly been shown to deliver a biodiversity dividend in many contexts. This suggests a need to blend both the biological and social elements of conservation.     

地方依恋有助于提高农户村庄环境治理参与意愿吗?——基于湖北省调查数据的分析

在农村社会转型背景下,从人地关系视角探讨农户地方依恋对其村庄环境治理参与意愿的影响,对剖析农村环境治理难题意义重大。以湖北省为例,利用1074份农户微观调查数据,从环境心理学视角下的人地关系出发,探讨了地方依恋对农户村庄环境治理参与意愿的影响,并进一步运用工具变量法(IV-Oprobit)进行内生性处理与稳健性检验。结果表明:①农户地方依恋水平整体一般,通过提高农户对村庄的依恋水平,可显著提升其村庄环境治理参与意愿。具体而言,农户地方依恋水平每提高1个单位,可使其环境治理“非常愿意”参与的概率提升35.51%。②社会信任在地方依恋对农户村庄环境治理参与意愿影响中发挥显著的调节和中介作用。一方面,地方依恋对农户村庄环境治理参与意愿的影响会随着农户社会信任水平的提高而不断增强;另一方面,地方依恋能够显著增强农户社会信任水平,从而提升其村庄环境治理参与意愿,即社会信任是地方依恋影响农户村庄环境治理参与意愿的重要传导中介,中介效应占总效应的比重为23.37%。③代际差异分析表明,在新生代和老一代农民群体中,地方依恋对其村庄环境治理参与意愿影响均显著。此外,性别、环保意识和环保态度等对农户村庄环境治理参与意愿也产生显著影响。据此,应加强村庄基础设施和文化建设等,不断增强农户的村庄认同感和依恋感,进而在美丽乡村建设中提升农户村庄环境治理参与水平。     

Perceived Collective Efficacy and Trust in Government Influence Public Engagement with Climate Change-Related Water Conservation Policies

Water insecurity, induced or intensified due to climate change, has emerged as a key policy challenge in poor and developing countries such as India. Drawing on social cognitive theory, this paper examines the role of perceived collective efficacy—people's shared beliefs about their group's capabilities to accomplish collective tasks—and trust in government as factors influencing Indians' engagement with government water conservation policies. Using a national survey of Indians (N = 4031), we found that individuals with high levels of perceived collective efficacy and trust in government are more likely to support government water conservation policies. Moreover, for individuals with low trust in government, higher collective efficacy is associated with greater policy support. Perceived collective efficacy is also associated with activist behaviours, while distrust is not. Increasing collective efficacy beliefs, for example through mass media channels and targeted campaigns, could help increase citizens' engagement with climate change adaptation policies.     

Making humanitarian relief networks more effective: operational coordination, trust and sense making

Effective coordination of humanitarian assistance activities remains elusive. This paper briefly addresses some of the reasons for what is widely perceived as a coordination dilemma in humanitarian affairs and argues for a new conceptualisation of the issue. Rather than continue to request that more authority be vested in a single organisation to secure coordination through top-down control, it contends that it may be timely to consider whether relief agencies involved in an emergency should be reconceived as social networks and efforts made to achieve changes in their organizational cultures that encourage operational coordination across institutional lines. Since such labours imply the need to trust, this article explores what forms of trust might be employed to promote improved coordination among relief institutions and how those relationships could themselves be conceptualised. Finally, while acknowledging that coordination is not costless, it suggests that its effective pursuit may be advantageous even in scenarios where aid organisations balk at cooperating to secure it.     

Managing invasive plants in a rural-amenity landscape: the role of social capital and Landcare

Rural-amenity migration is changing the social and ecological compositions of landscapes globally. The in-migration of new landholders is contributing to significant biophysical changes to rural landscapes, as well as the weakening of collective awareness, knowledge and skills needed to manage natural resources. This is leading to the proliferation of environmental harm. This paper focuses on invasive plants as one such harm, detailing how collective action is developed and challenged in a rural landscape undergoing increasing property turnover and diversifying management priorities. Focusing on the role of a Landcare group, located in southern New South Wales, Australia, I explore how social capital – with a particular focus on trust and social norms – is mobilised to recruit newly arrived residents and maintain commitment among landholders to manage invasive plants. This research provides insights into how policy can better steer management interventions, particularly how to develop and maintain collective action in diversifying rural landscapes.     

More than money: how multiple factors influence householder participation in at-source stormwater management

Urban stormwater run-off is a threat to stream ecosystems. New approaches to stormwater management aim to protect urban streams from such impacts, by retaining, treating and using stormwater at its source. As up to ～50% of runoff from urban surfaces comes from private property, fostering stormwater retention requires effective householder engagement. We evaluated householder participation in the Little Stringybark Creek project, a stormwater retrofit programme aimed at waterway protection, using qualitative enquiry through formal and informal interviews to identify factors that influenced participation. Participation was governed by multiple factors, with financial incentives and personal co-benefits of tanks primary motivators, while process complexity and distrust were primary barriers. Results suggest an approach combining education to encourage review of subjective norms and attitudes, with incentives to mitigate behavioural controls can transform public behaviour towards sustainable stormwater management.     

Knowledge,agency and collective action as barriers to energy-saving behaviour

Energy saving is becoming a rising priority as a response to climate change and fossil fuel depletion in recent years. However, despite energy-related behaviour change being an important part of many environmental education initiatives, “energy literacy” among citizens remains patchy in both the USA and the UK, with evidence of strong positive attitudes but less consistent knowledge. Whilst it is clear that increasing knowledge does not automatically produce behaviour changes, potential questions must be asked about the logic of focusing solely on behaviour without simultaneously exploring and enhancing understanding of energy issues. This research, undertaken at a higher education institution with a strong focus on sustainability, illustrates the potential risks of targeting behaviour change and individual action at the expense of increasing knowledge, or encouraging collaborative and democratic endeavours. Results from an online survey indicate widespread misconceptions about energy which may reduce the effectiveness of energy-saving behaviours, alongside variable levels of motivation and engagement with energy issues. Respondents report a strong belief in the efficacy of personal changes, yet uncertainty about their capacity to influence business and government alongside a persistent faith in science to provide solutions to energy issues. The paper concludes by reflecting on the challenges arising from these findings for understanding agency and effectiveness in energy relationships.     

重庆市土地储备制度的融资选择

城市土地储备制度的运行必须以连续的资金流为保汪，但是传统的融资渠道，如财政拨款和银行贷款已不能满足当前城市土地整理及开发中巨大的资金需求。以重庆市为例，从分析重庆市城市土地利用状况和土地市场特点出发，运用PPP模式和ABS模式，提出土地信托和土地债券的概念，得出一条创新的城市土地储备制度融资渠道，以加强城市抵御各方面风险的能力。     

How certain can we really be that our boss is trustworthy,and does it matter? A metacognitive perspective on employee evaluations of supervisor trustworthiness

This research helps to integrate the metacognitive concept of evaluation certainty into the trust literature by demonstrating that certainty can amplify the effects of trustworthiness evaluations and stabilize trustworthiness evaluations over time. Across an experimental study (Study 1) and a multiwave survey of employees (Study 2), we show that trustworthiness evaluations exert a stronger influence on individuals' trust at higher levels of certainty and that trust transmits the multiplicative effects of trustworthiness evaluations and certainty on key indicators of employee risk-taking including reliance and disclosure behavior. Further, in Study 2, we show that certainty can help predict change in trustworthiness evaluations over time. Finally, in a two-wave field survey (Study 3), we examine factors that influence evaluation certainty and show that relational transparency and leader prototypicality (LP) have interactive effects on employees' certainty such that the influence of relational transparency on certainty will be more positive at higher levels of LP. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.