Integrating Top-Down with Bottom-Up Conservation Policy in Africa

Abstract:  Developed nations intervened in conservation policy across Africa during the 20th century to address needs to protect species and biodiversity that were based on their own perceptions and priorities. In the 21st century, conservationists in Africa have revised these perceptions and begun the process of identifying conservation priorities from an African perspective and in consideration of Africans' priorities. Although foreign conservation interveners struggled to identify mechanisms to which local people would respond, African conservationists are now demonstrating how to integrate the continent's unique socioeconomic circumstances into efforts to protect biodiversity. In Africa effective conservation policy must include the generation of wealth, reduction of disease and hunger, and support of traditional land-use practices.     

SUSPENDED SEDIMENT AND METALS REMOVAL FROM URBAN RUNOFF BY A SMALL LAKE1

ABSTRACT: A small lake in the Chicago Metropolitan Area was from 91 to 95 percent efficient in removing suspended sediment and from 76 to 94 percent efficient in removing copper, iron, lead, and zinc from urban runoff. Sediments accumulated in the lake in the form of an organic-rich mud at an average rate of 20 millimeters per year; this reduced lake storage and covered potential habitat for aquatic organisms. Copper, lead, and zinc concentrations were closely associated with suspended-sediment concentrations and with silt- and clay-sized fractions of lake sediment. Although concentrations of mercury and cadmium were near detection limits in runoff, measurable concentrations of these metals accumulated in the lake sediments.     

Poverty Reduction and Sustainable Development

The prominent place of the chapter on poverty in the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation (JPI) is totally in keeping with the priority given to poverty reduction in the development thinking of the international community of today. The Johannesburg process did not lead to any new insights or new commitments in the fight against poverty. Section one sets out a factual comparison of the poverty chapters in Rio's Agenda 21 (AG21) and in the JPI. Section two reviews the conceptual links between poverty reduction and sustainable development, since poverty is used both as a dependent and as an independent variable. This analysis shows a shift in the function of growth as related to environmental protection. Section three explores the naturalization of development thinking in its economic and social dimensions and shows how this affects the policy options for social protection. I also explain how social and environmental sustainability have become elements of risk management and how are both aimed at conflict prevention and enhanced growth. Finally, in section four three lines of action are suggested to enhance the emergence of a socially meaningful sustainable development agenda that, ideally, would make poverty reduction strategies redundant.     

Food and hunger in Sub-Saharan Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa is by far and away the most disadvantaged of the world's three main developing regions. Worse, its situation has mostly been deteriorating for much of the past several decades. Its agriculture is severely under-productive, and per capita food supplies have been steadily dwindling. Its environments and natural-resource base, characterised by water deficits, soil erosion, fuelwood shortages, rudimentary agro-practices, and grossly inadequate infrastructure, are generally unfavourable for sustainable agriculture. The population has expanded until it far exceeds carrying capacity, yet its growth rate is the highest in the world. The region also suffers from more disease than any other region. There is widespread and deepening poverty. As a result of these and other problems, and despite major food imports, two-thirds of the people are malnourished, one-quarter of whom endure outright hunger, even semi-starvation. Both these proportions appear set to keep on increasing both relatively and absolutely. Were these problems to persist with their decades-long trends, there could eventually arrive a stage when much larger numbers of people would succumb to terminal malnutrition, precipitating a human tragedy of unprecedented proportions. Fortunately, success stories demonstrate that solutions are available, on the part of both governments concerned and international agencies. Because of ignorance, or rather ignore-ance of the potential mortality disaster ahead, however, not nearly enough has been done to address the challenge with the energy and urgency to match its scale.     

Cyclone mitigation, resource allocation and post-disaster reconstruction in south India: lessons from two decades of research

This paper opens with a history of development and disaster-prevention strategies in a cyclone-prone area of the east coast of India and traces the evolution in the area of British and Indian governments' programmes and policy over a century. Research over the last 20 years has shown, however, that the programmes and policies have failed to balance economic growth with safety. Resources intended for the benefit of all have been diverted by alliances of powerful people to a small minority, and recent developments have reduced the physical protection of the area. The result is that increasing numbers of people are vulnerable to the effects of cyclones and floods. The findings suggest that the best way to reduce vulnerability is to improve the socio-economic standing of the most vulnerable and for this to happen these people must have an assured income based on assets that will enable them to acquire social and economic credit-worthiness within the local economy. This paper presents evidence that suggests that non-governmental organisation (NGO)-supported co-operatives are the best way to achieve this through self-help and self-employment schemes. It also suggests that NGOs should be encouraged to take up environmentally and ecologically beneficial activities involving the poorest groups in the communities, in this way combining sustained self-employment with environmental protection.     

Implementing SDG 15: Can large‐scale public programs help deliver biodiversity conservation,restoration and management,while assisting human development?

Among the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the proposed SDG 15 promotes activities that, inter alia, “Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems”. An important potential contribution in achieving SDG 15 is through public programmes designed to jointly promote human development through poverty alleviation and improvement of human livelihoods and biodiversity conservation/management/restoration. An analysis of twenty public programmes with such joint objectives yielded twelve lessons learned. In addition to financial commitments, government and intergovernmental agency input for such public programmes includes ensuring political will and appropriate legal frameworks. Local communities and civil society provide input through traditional and indigenous ecological knowledge and stewardship. Appropriate shared inputs in development and the implementation of such public programmes, with communication between local community, broader civil society, the scientific community and governments will result in: better use and management of biodiversity; alleviation of poverty; security of livelihoods and better governance systems. The Ecosystem Approach of the Convention on Biological Diversity provides an ideal framework when planning and implementing new programmes. Application of the lessons learned to new public programmes will ensure that the answer to the question posed in the title is an emphatic “Yes”, and assist with the achievement of SDG 15.     

Impact of payments for environmental services and protected areas on local livelihoods and forest conservation in northern Cambodia

The potential impacts of payments for environmental services (PES) and protected areas (PAs) on environmental outcomes and local livelihoods in developing countries are contentious and have been widely debated. The available evidence is sparse, with few rigorous evaluations of the environmental and social impacts of PAs and particularly of PES. We measured the impacts on forests and human well‐being of three different PES programs instituted within two PAs in northern Cambodia, using a panel of intervention villages and matched controls. Both PES and PAs delivered additional environmental outcomes relative to the counterfactual: reducing deforestation rates significantly relative to controls. PAs increased security of access to land and forest resources for local households, benefiting forest resource users but restricting households’ ability to expand and diversify their agriculture. The impacts of PES on household well‐being were related to the magnitude of the payments provided. The two higher paying market‐linked PES programs had significant positive impacts, whereas a lower paying program that targeted biodiversity protection had no detectable effect on livelihoods, despite its positive environmental outcomes. Households that signed up for the higher paying PES programs, however, typically needed more capital assets; hence, they were less poor and more food secure than other villagers. Therefore, whereas the impacts of PAs on household well‐being were limited overall and varied between livelihood strategies, the PES programs had significant positive impacts on livelihoods for those that could afford to participate. Our results are consistent with theories that PES, when designed appropriately, can be a powerful new tool for delivering conservation goals whilst benefiting local people.     

Towards Rio + 10 – Trend of Environmentalism and Implications for Sustainable Livelihoods in the 21st Century, The Context of Southern African Region

Since the Rio conference, many countries and organisations, including the environmental movement, bilateral and multilateral institutions have endeavoured to carry out activities related to the implementation of Agenda 21. These have mostly been done with or without other outcomes of the conference. Several environmental management and sustainable development agenda have been pursued to halt the continually degrading environment. Other programmes have concentrated on outburst of economic development at the expense of the environment and the worsening poverty especially in the South. This paper therefore seeks to examine a paradigmatic shift in environmentalism, emphasising the link between agenda 21 and sustainable livelihoods. It seems though the history of the environmental movement has been forgotten after the Rio conference by the whole world. This might probably be due to complacency with the results of the UNCED conference. However, it is now obvious that clear objectives to implement the results of UNCED are almost lacking with little or no proper supervision, and further threatening the existence of mankind. The environmental movement and associated milestones have had significant impacts on the current status of the global commons. Regionally in most of southern Africa, livelihood issues are in the forefront of efforts to sustain environmental resources, and minimising proximate causes of global environmental change.     

社会资本对农村贫困代际传递影响机制研究

社会资本在反贫困领域的重要作用已被理论和实践所证实。在新时代脱贫攻坚的决胜阶段,有效发挥社会资本的周急济贫功能,缓解乃至阻断贫困代际传递,已成为当前反贫困战略推进中亟待探讨的问题。研究整合了四期中国家庭追踪调查(CFPS 2010、2012、2014、2016)个体家庭和村庄的嵌套数据,建立了“认知型”和“结构型”两种类型以及“个体家庭”和“村庄”两个层级的社会资本框架,并基于探索性因子分析构建了社会网络、社会信任、社会声望、社会参与、集体参与以及公共服务6个社会资本变量。研究利用HLM软件构建了多层广义线性模型(HGLM),通过四阶段的空模型、截距模型、随机效应模型以及完整模型分析了绝对贫困背景下社会资本对农村贫困代际传递的影响机制。研究结果表明:①个体社会资本总量与贫困代际传递呈显著负相关。②在个体家庭层面,社会网络、社会声望、社会参与对贫困代际传递有显著负向影响,但社会信任和地方信任对贫困代际传递的影响并不显著。③在村庄层面,公共服务对贫困代际传递具有显著负向影响,集体参与对贫困代际传递具有显著正向影响,且公共服务水平对社会网络和贫困代际传递具有正向调节作用。研究提出要大力培植贫困群体和乡村两个层级的社会资本以缓解农村贫困代际传递趋势:①要通过协调“乡政”与“村治”以形成良性的乡村治理格局。②要促进精准扶贫与乡村振兴战略紧密衔接,在保障个体脱贫的同时完善农村公共服务及基础设施建设,推进城乡基本公共服务均等化;③须提振贫困群体脱贫信心,增强村级自治与集体参与的水平和能力。     

Introduction: Natural Capital, Poverty and Development

Can development occur without running down natural resources in an unsustainable way? The concept of natural capital offers a way for those with divergent views (ecologists and economists for example) to discuss this difficult question. Four aspects are examined in detail. First, the role of institutions in facilitating sustainable development is discussed, with examples from forestry. Then examples from (eco)tourism illustrate the potential – and limits – of applicability of the concept. Measurement issues for natural capital are then considered in detail. Finally, the concept is applied to agricultural strategy in fragile lands, where the tradeoff between the environment and development is likely to be most severe. Some implications for future research and policy are developed.