A Systems Approach to Biodiversity Conservation Planning

With a recent media-fueled transition from a scientific to a political perspective, biodiversity has become an issue of ethics and ensuing values, beyond its traditional ecological roots. More fundamentally, the traditional perspective of biodiversity is being challenged by the emergence of a post-normal or systems-based approach to science. A systems-based perspective of living systems rests on the central tenets of complexity and uncertainty, and necessitates flexibility, anticipation and adaptation rather than prediction and control in conservation planning and management. What are the implications of this new perspective? This paper examines these challenges in the context of biodiversity conservation planning. The new perspectives of biodiversity are identified and explored, and the emergence of a new ecological context for biodiversity conservation is discussed. From the analysis, the challenges and implications for conservation planning are considered, and a systems-based or post-normal approach to conservation planning and management is proposed. In light of the new perspectives for biodiversity, conservation planning and management approaches should ultimately reflect the essence of living systems: they should be diverse, adaptive, and self-organizing, accepting the ecological realities of change.     

Adaptive response criteria in road hazard detection among older drivers

Objectives: The majority of existing investigations on attention, aging, and driving have focused on the negative impacts of age-related declines in attention on hazard detection and driver performance. However, driving skills and behavioral compensation may accommodate for the negative effects that age-related attentional decline places on driving performance. In this study, we examined an important question that had been largely neglected in the literature linking attention, aging, and driving: can top-down factors such as behavioral compensation, specifically adaptive response criteria, accommodate the negative impacts from age-related attention declines on hazard detection during driving?

Methods: In the experiment, we used the Drive Aware Task, a task combining the driving context with well-controlled laboratory procedures measuring attention. We compared younger (n = 16, age 21–30) and older (n = 21, age 65–79) drivers on their attentional processing of hazards in driving scenes, indexed by percentage of correct responses and reaction time of hazard detection, as well as sensitivity and response criteria using signal detection analysis.

Results: Older drivers, in general, were less accurate and slower on the task than younger drivers. However, results from this experiment revealed that older, but not younger, drivers adapted their response criteria when the traffic condition changed in the driving scenes. When there was more traffic in the driving scene, older drivers became more liberal in their responses, meaning that they were more likely to report that a driving hazard was detected.

Conclusions: Older drivers adopt compensatory strategies for hazard detection during driving. Our findings showed that, in the driving context, even at an older age our attentional functions are still adaptive according to environmental conditions. This leads to considerations on potential training methods to promote adaptive strategies that may help older drivers maintain performance in road hazard detection.     

Achieving sustainable development goals through participatory forest management: Examples from South-Eastern Bangladesh

Forests managed through peoples' participation can help to achieve a number of sustainable development goals (SDGs). This paper, drawing data from four participatory forest management (PFM) projects in south-eastern Bangladesh, explored: (a) the factors that influenced the outcomes of PFM; and (b) contribution of PFM towards achieving selected SDGs. The research used observation, semi-structured household interviews, group discussions, vegetation survey and Ostromʼs design principles for data collection, Divergent forest conditions and factors in four PFM sites have had differential contribution to SDGs. Heterogeneity of user groups, insufficient coordination, absence of motivation, and land tenure conflicts had affected the attainment of SDGs. The PFM helped to achieve 9–11 SDGs comprising poverty reduction (Goal 1), improving food security (Goal 2), maintaining health and well-being (Goal 3), enhancing childrensʼ education (Goal 4), fair access to jobs and committees (Goals 5 and 10), sources of clean drinking water (Goal 6), affordable energy for cooking (Goal 7), increased household economy (Goal 8), climate change through carbon sequestration (Goal 13), forest conservation (Goal 15), and partnerships with relevant institutions (Goal 16). In order to achieve SDGs, PFM could be viewed as an integral part of government development strategies, which needs sectoral coordination and integration of relevant policies.     

江苏省沿江城市饮用水系统适应能力评估

在对饮用水系统适应能力界定的基础上,基于水源地、供水、用水、排污处理和技术5个子系统的适应性要素构建沿江城市饮用水系统适应能力评价指标体系和评价模型,采用分指数与综合指数法评估系统的适应能力水平、存在问题,并据此对江苏省沿江地区城市饮用水系统适应能力分异特征、类型及影响因素进行深入探讨。结果表明,南部环太湖地区城市饮用水系统适应能力高于中部滨江地区,北部地区适应能力最低;从各子系统适应能力得分情况来看,需加大对沿江地区水源地的保护力度,合理规划港口、码头等的布设;加快北部地区供排基础设施的建设,提高风险应急防范能力;南部环湖地区重点开展节水型企业与生态工业园区创建。     

Atmospheric Change and Biodiversity: Co-Networks and Networking

Canada responded to the Global Biodiversity Convention by completing the Canadian Biodiversity Strategy in 1995. At the same time, Environment Canada also completed a national Science Assessment on Biodiversity. During this period, the Smithsonian Institution, in partnership with Parks and Environment Canada, initiated the implementation of a global biodiversity monitoring program in Canada. Under the auspices of the United Nations Man and the Biosphere Program, the SI/MAB monitoring protocols and plots have spread across Canada at an unprecedented rate. National champions in the science and educational sectors, working within an inter-disciplinary ecological framework, have guided the development, education, quality control and sharing of atmosphere-biodiversity observations electronically.Atmospheric-Biodiversity Networks and Networking have traditionally operated within separate mandates with little degree of integration. Air-Bio Networks were designed within an integrated framework to better understand the atmospheric stress on biodiversity and the adaptation actions, nationally and regionally. Detailed examples of the cumulative effects of climate change, stratospheric ozone depletion, acid deposition, ground-level ozone, suspended particulate matter and hazardous air pollutants on biodiversity will be discussed using a Southern Ontario case study. In addition, recommendations will be presented for future paired SI/MAB plots, linked networks and networking for adaptation within the context of climate, chemical and ecological gradients.     

Economic Development,Rural livelihoods,and Ecological Restoration: Evidence from China

This article uses a case study in Southeast China to demonstrate how the substantial changes in rural livelihoods have been driven by a combination of “pull” forces from external economic development, and “push” forces from local areas, leading to a shift in rural household economic activities: household outmigration and de-population of the countryside, changes in energy consumption, and most importantly, changes in land uses and eventually, ecological restoration. Such dramatic changes are becoming common across the Chinese countryside. It is pointed out that economic development has generally caused a deterioration of the environment at least at the early period of economic growth, but the positive impacts, especially in some ecosystem in rural areas, have become more apparent.     

Migration and animal husbandry: Competing or complementary livelihood strategies.Evidence from Kyrgyzstan

Animal husbandry and labour migration are important livelihood strategies for a large proportion of the rural population in developing countries. Up to now, the two strategies have usually been studied by looking at either one or the other; their interlinkages have rarely been examined. Based on a case study in rural Kyrgyzstan, the aim of this paper is to explore the links between animal husbandry and labour migration. Results show that for most rural households, livestock is crucial yet not sufficient to make a living. Therefore, many people diversify their income sources by migrating to work elsewhere. This generates cash for daily expenses and the acquisition of new livestock, but also leads to an absence of workforce in households. Yet since remittances usually exceed the expenses for hiring additional workforce, most people consider migration profitable. From a socio‐economic point of view, migration and animal husbandry can thus be considered important complementary livelihood strategies for the rural Kyrgyz population, at least for the time being. In the long term, however, the failure of young migrants to return to rural places and their settlement in urban areas might also cause remittance dependency and lead to an increasing lack of qualified labour. From an environmental point of view, the investment of remittances into animal husbandry poses challenges to sustainable pasture management. Increasing livestock numbers in rural areas raise pressure on pasture resources. Since most people consider animal husbandry their main future prospect while continuing to use pastures in a fairly unsustainable way, this may further exacerbate the over‐utilization of pastures in future.     

From food aid to livelihoods support: rethinking the role of WFP in eastern Sudan

Despite more than 20 years of distribution of free emergency food in eastern Sudan (38 years in the case of refugees) Global Acute Malnutrition rates are currently the highest in the country. There has been no real improvement in the chronic livelihoods vulnerability that affects people in the region—particularly pastoralists. Food security must be seen from an informed livelihoods perspective. While food aid may still be required as part of transition, WFP must rethink its assistance strategy and advocate for complementarity in the efforts by development actors working across a range of sectors. Alternative models and interventions focused on the rehabilitation of markets and the development of' cargo nets' for the destitute, including cash transfers, must be developed and tested. Land tenure issues should be given particular attention. Food aid will probably remain an important element in the overall response, but its significance relative to other less developed forms of interventions should be reassessed.     

FORUM: A Context for Participation in Sustainable Development

sustainability, but the most meaningful definition is set within an evolutionary framework. Mechanistic and evolutionary frameworks for sustainable development are discussed. Evolution and adaptation are characteristics of complex adaptive systems, and a new understanding of sustainable development can be gleaned by using the complex adaptive systems framework. This approach to sustainable development issues implicitly requires proactive involvement by the public. This paper supports that bottom-up participation needs to be nurtured. Appropriate processes to enable participation need to be designed and implemented.     

Network structure and adaptive capacity in watershed governance

What supports the adaptive capacity of watershed governance? Using document review, interviews, and network diagrams, we analyze how structural attributes of a governance network emerged and co-evolved with changes in biophysical conditions in a case study of a small watershed in northeast Ohio. Results indicate that the network governance structure that emerged evolved to become a hybrid of two different structural forms that diversified stakeholder engagement, generated social capital, improved social learning, and stimulated change in management practices, all of which have enhanced adaptive capacity. A significant challenge to adaptive capacity arises, however, as network governance has come to rely significantly on a centralized organization to broker relationships for information and other resources.