Dodging alligators,rattlesnakes, and backyard docks: a political ecology of sweetgrass basket-making and conservation in the South Carolina Lowcountry,USA

There is growing recognition among political ecologists of the need to examine shifting natural resource regimes and their effects on livelihoods in “First World” places. This emerging literature has variously examined the “Third World within,” the persistence of “subsistence activities” in the “First World,” and the “reterritorialization” of land tenure and access. However, much of this work has tended to focus on traditional extractive industries in the American West, indigenous claims to lands and resources in the U.S. and Canada, and non-timber resources on public lands. In contrast, we use a case study of African-American sweetgrass basket-makers, associated with the Gullah culture, in South Carolina’s lowcountry to examine the ways in which ongoing amenity-driven residential development is fundamentally reshaping resource access on private lands. Historically, basket-makers harvested the materials (primarily sweetgrass or Mulenbergia filipes) needed for their culturally important art form from accessible, rural, and privately held tracts of land in close proximity to their communities, but development pressures and changes in resident interpretation of property rights has decreased access to basket-making resources. The case is particularly illuminating, as it examines the emergence of ‘conservation subdivisions’ in the region and raises important questions about what “rural uses” and users are being conserved through responses to exurban, suburban, and urban development in formerly rural areas.     

Blue grabbing: Reviewing marine conservation in Redang Island Marine Park,Malaysia

While academic literature and media attention has rightly focused on the numerous instances of land grabbing taking place in various corners of the world, far less attention is paid to the enclosure, appropriation and dispossession taking place in the guise of marine conservation – or the recently developed concept of “blue grabbing”. Blue grabbing articulates how marine conservation results in the appropriation of marine resources and coastal land from previous custodians by more powerful actors, such as state and tourist operators. Blue grabbing can be considered a form of primitive accumulation, yet dispossession via marine conservation does not take the conventional form of privatising land, as the spaces involved are still formally state-owned areas. Rather, it is the benefits from natural resources that contribute to capital accumulation of tourist operators and indirectly the state. Restrictions on local resource use are justified using degradation narratives of “overfishing”, while financial benefits from tourism are drained from local communities within a system lacking transparency. This intervention draws on fieldwork research to reveal how blue grabbing plays out in Redang Island Marine Park, Malaysia, yet given that blue grabbing is a recently developed concept, argues there is a pressing need for research to build a more informed picture.     

The relationship between indigenous pastoralist resource tenure and state tenure in Somalia

Indigenous resource tenure systems in Africa have evolved to meet the constraints and opportunities of often difficult biophysical environments, while facilitating the operation of complex spatial and temporal land use patterns. Traditional systems provide security of tenure in culturally relevant ways that permit adaptation to new circumstances. On the other hand imposed tenure structures in Africa have often not strengthened individual rights and have often blocked indigenous tenure development and adaption in response to new situations.Pastoralists in Africa have in particular been negatively impacted by the imposition of national tenure systems which in many cases have served to marginalize nomadic populations, with repercussions in land degradation, food security, and instability.In Somalia the transient resource rights and resource use arrangements that are critical to transhumant pastoralism were ignored in the formulation of the national tenure regime which favored crop cultivation. The results were increased land degradation, resource use conflicts, declines in pastoral production, and impacts on Somali clan alliances which in many cases regulate rational resource access and use.Somalia possesses the greatest proportion of pastoralists in Africa. Transhumant pastoralism, as the most widespread agricultural enterprise in the country, will play a critical role in food production for the foreseeable future. However, the relationship between indigenous pastoralist tenure and state imposed tenure has, in many locations decreased the ability of pastoralism to reproduce itself, thereby compromising the rational utilization of very large areas of rangeland interior, which have very few alternative uses.     

Playing the indigenous card? The Shetland and Orkney Udal Law group and indigenous rights

The term ??indigenous peoples?? generally refers to the original inhabitants of areas of the world colonized by Europeans. Relatively few ethnic minorities in Europe have been recognized as indigenous. A consequence of globalization is that knowledge of rights gained by indigenous groups in different parts of the world has led to explicit or implicit claims for indigenous status by organized groups within some European ethnic or regional minorities. An example from the Northern Isles of Scotland is the Shetland and Orkney Udal Law group (SOUL), which includes on its website links to legal decisions supporting indigenous rights in Canada and Australia. SOUL argues for greater local autonomy regarding the use of resources. The islands were inhabited by Norse settlers from Scandinavia from the 9th century AD and came under Scottish rule in the 1460s. Certain elements of Norse law related to land tenure, in particular foreshore rights, have survived to the present as a form of customary law referred to as udal law. Udal law has been the subject of court cases in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It has been presented as symbolizing Orkney and Shetland identity, and brought into public debates on matters of concern to Orcadians and Shetlanders. Udal law is invoked to support a claim for local control over the surrounding sea and seabed, important for fishing, salmon-farming and oil exploitation. These issues are examined in relation to definitions of indigenous peoples applied by the United Nations, International Labour Organisation, and World Bank.     

A tale of two roads: Land tenure, poverty, and politics on the Guatemalan frontier

Agricultural frontiers are hot spots for the most dramatic land cover change in the history of humankind: forest conversion to agriculture. They are also areas of unusually rapid population growth and acute poverty, with scant access to public services and infrastructure. Although a large body of literature explores the determinants of land cover change on the frontier, one issue that has been largely unstudied is that of frontier political and socio-economic development. This paper reports on data from 28 communities along an agricultural frontier in a core conservation zone of the Maya Biosphere Reserve (MBR), where the predominant land tenure systems at the community level appear to be related not only to land use, but also to political organization and human development indicators.     

Woodcutting and territorial claims in Mali

In Mali, amidst moves toward political decentralization and the transfer of authority to manage natural resources, woodcutting has become an important tool for the assertion of territorial claims by villagers. The decentralization process has itself led to a profound political shake-up between the central state seeking to maintain land ownership and the de facto management of land by customary village authorities. But it is, however, primarily the devolution of forest resource management to village-led organizations that has prompted the cross-scale legitimization and assertion of various territorial claims from 1995 onwards. Based on two in-depth case studies on the outskirts of Bamako, Mali, the authors illustrate how new practices revolving around woodcutting and charcoal-making have been instrumental in intra- and inter-village disputes. At the village level, this transfer tends to exacerbate tenure claims over land and trees with the reactivation of autochthony-related arguments and thus the risk of excluding the most vulnerable social groups which are typically involved in woodcutting. At the inter-village level, this gives villages the opportunity to claim and demarcate boundaries by cutting, painting signs on some trees, or more radically tree felling being carried out solely to demonstrate appropriation. At the municipal level, this transfer leads to political and social adjustments between customary and decentralized authorities, each struggling to build their legitimacy in natural resource management.     

Reverse osmosis on a small barrier island: transformations of water,landscape, and vulnerability on Ocracoke Island,NC, USA

Globally, modifications to the landscape have drastically transformed social and ecological communities. The implication of global climate change for small islands and small island communities is especially troublesome. Socially, small islands have a limited resource base, deal with varying degrees of insularity, generally have little political power, and have limited economic opportunities. The physical attributes of small islands also increase their vulnerability to global climate change, including limited land area, limited fresh water supplies, and greater distances to resources. The focus of this research project is to document place-specific human–environmental interactions from a political ecology perspective as a means to address local concerns and possible consequences of global environmental change. The place in which these interactions are examined is the barrier island and village of Ocracoke, NC. I focus on the specific historical-geography of land and water management on Ocracoke as a means to examine relationships between local human–environmental interactions and environmental change. I provide an account of technological changes in potable water procurement and the paralleling development of island growth (i.e. people, buildings, tourism). Then, relying on interviews with island residents, I consider how advancements in local water infrastructure, specifically the installation of an additional reverse osmosis unit, are hinged on anticipated future economic development. Lastly the social dimensions of change are discussed with specific focus on the increase in housing density and overburdened septic drainage fields in relation to changing hydrologic processes with an examination of how all of these factors affect local vulnerability.     

Characteristics and mitigation of the snow avalanche hazard in Kaghan Valley,Pakistan Himalaya

Snow avalanche hazards in mountainous areas of developing countries have received scant attention in the scientific literature. The purpose of this paper is to describe this hazard and mitigative measures in Kaghan Valley, Pakistan Himalaya, and to review alternatives for future reduction of this hazard. Snow avalanches have long posed a hazard and risk to indigenous populations of the Himalaya and Trans-Himalaya mountains. Land use intensification due to population growth, new transportation routes, military activity and tourism is raising levels of risk. The history of land use in the study area is such that investigations of avalanche hazard must rely on different theoretical bases and data than in most industrialised countries. Despite the intensive use of valley-bottom land which is affected by avalanches, a number of simple measures are currently employed by the indigenous population to mitigate the hazard. Out-migration during the winter months is the most important one. During the intensive use period of summer avalanche-transported snow provides numerous resources for the population. In Kaghan the avalanche hazard is increasing primarily as a result of poorly located new buildings and other construction projects. The large scale of avalanche activity there rules out any significant improvement or protection of the currently difficult winter access. Instead, future mitigation of the hazard should focus on protecting the small number of winter inhabitants and minimising property damage.     

Ch’ixi landscapes: Indigeneity and capitalism in the Bolivian Chaco

Contemporary debates around the ontological turn have pitted efforts to take indigenous ontologies seriously against demands to make visible the forms of dispossession and environmental suffering that characterize the (post)colonial and capitalist present. Meanwhile, a growing array of governmental projects seeks to identify and protect indigenous ontologies in the face of capitalist development processes, including through forms of collective tenure. How can we make sense of such initiatives, and what kind of territories do they encounter and produce? This paper engages this question ethnographically through an examination of everyday life in a legally recognized Native Community Land in the Bolivian Chaco. Drawing on Bolivian Aymara scholar Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui’s notion of ch’ixi, I argue that indigenous territories are neither ontologically separate from, nor entirely subsumed by, capitalist development processes. Rather, they are subject to multiple land values, ontologies, and investments. A contested indigenous land titling process, capitalist labor relations, hydrocarbon compensation money, and efforts to maintain relations with spirit beings are all interwoven in the fabric of Guaraní everyday life. Such ch’ixi landscapes emerge at the confluence of capitalist efforts at rendering territories investable, governmental efforts at managing dispossession, and Guaraní efforts to maintain life and exercise territorial sovereignty amidst contradictory processes of (post)colonial governmentality.     

Customary tenure systems under siege: contemporary access to land in Northern Ghana

Land in most of Africa is controlled under the customary tenure system which is governed by well intentioned social and cultural rules meant to grant equal access to families within groups with common interest in land. Rapid changes in the domestic situation of countries resulting from both refractions of policies and influences from the global economy and emerging complexities within the local socio-economic context has altered the traditional land tenure systems in most parts of Africa. In the rural setting and for agricultural purposes, the customary tenure system seems to be crumbling slowly, while in the urban centres and for housing, industrial and commercial purposes the system has collapsed in favour of a commoditised one. The emerging patterns of access in Northern Ghana show growing inequalities in access, control and ownership. There is the need for a new architecture of land rights negotiated by a participatory process and regulated by both state and traditional institutions.     

Property rights, land tenure and the racial discourses

A persistent theme in land and agrarian studies is the appropriation of land and natural resources by mostly Western foreigners and the inequitable division of land and natural resources between Indigenous people and white settlers. It was this overt racial inequality in land ownership and the accompanying structures of oppression that led to the rise of liberation movements in Africa, South America and Asia. Most, if not all, land and agrarian reform programmes in the former colonies take the racial inequality in land as their point of departure. The same applies to the process of changing the inequalities in the use and ownership of natural resources such as wildlife, fisheries and forests. Whereas critical scholarship and social movements vehemently opposed the racialized nature of land dispossession, less attention has been paid to the persistence of racialized tenure systems. The silence on the racial character of land and natural resource tenure is rather surprising given that colonial tenure systems were based on race and racist grounds. This paper draws on examples from nature conservancies and communal land reform in southern Africa to argue that the dual land and natural resource tenure inherent from colonialism and apartheid remains intact in contemporary southern Africa. It also suggests that the democratic governments in the region and critical scholarship have failed to challenge the racialized character of land tenure. Instead, they continued to reinvent orthodox views of society and culture. Race seems to matter most in property regimes in the region in as far as it relates to equity rather than its initial categorization of people. The consequences of the persistence of the racialized tenure systems are that the success or failure of land and resource use and management reproduces racial explanations.     

蛇蟠岛野人洞景区某危岩体地质灾害风险分析与防治对策

我国山地旅游资源丰富。随着山地旅游资源的快速发展,山地旅游区地质灾害频发。以浙江省蛇蟠岛国家矿山公园野人洞景区某危岩体为例,在进行现场工程地质调查的基础上,根据2016年度该景区统计的客游量计算得出该研究区属于发生地质灾害高风险区的结论,并提出了“可绿化的加锚钢筋混凝土板与浆砌块石混合体”的防治对策。这对于其它山地景区的同类问题具有一定参考价值。     

Investigation of disputes’ resolving over ecclesiastical and monastic land property in Greece using cadastral and land use data

Land disputes are among the primary issues that Land Administration Systems attempt to accommodate. They derive from a variety of purposes including law, history, culture, traditions, administration and local geographical characteristics. There is no uniform approach in addressing land disputes and each country implements different resolution techniques. Ecclesiastical and monastic institutions throughout the world are owners of immense real estate property to such an extent that can indeed affect land administration policies. Greece is in the limelight of international attention due to its economical crisis and actually under pressure to modernise its dysfunctional land policy framework and create a stable investment environment. Within this framework, this paper investigates issues hindering proper land administration in Greece through the examination of a the resolving process regarding a case study in the island of Crete; a complex legal land dispute between the Greek State, two ecclesiastical institutions, a monastery and a church, and squatters took place, lasting for nearly 40 years. In order to evaluate this procedure and its impact on the development of the disputed area, a variety of data sources were accumulated and processed through time-based analysis. In this direction, cadastral survey’s contribution was examined along with land use change analysis, indicating how uncertainties in securing property rights on land, result in illegalities and trespassing posing significant barriers in land administration and management in the course of time. Although old and ambiguous in describing land boundaries the monasterial documentation might be, it proved sufficient to prevail over other litigants claims; the monastery was even adjudicated more than twice the size of the area that was claiming. By this investigation process, the distinct role of ecclesiastical institutions in Greece regarding land acquisition and the defects and malfunctions within Greek Land Administration System are presented. The paper concludes with the authors’ suggestions for addressing similar real estate property situations concerning land disputes.     

Intergenerational dynamics and local development: Mining and the indigenous community in Chiu Chiu,El Loa Province,northern Chile

Water conflicts are a significant issue in northern Chile, especially when linked to neoliberal economic activities – mainly mining – on the lands of indigenous peoples. In fact, political ecology tends to accentuate the ways in which their communities unite around a water-based territoriality and/or cultural politics when faced with ‘threatening’ outsiders. However, internal differentiation has become especially relevant to enable a more nuanced appreciation of local struggles and claims. Taking a political ecology of water perspective, this article analyses in what ways Intergenerational Dynamics (hereafter IGDs) shape the way indigenous communities articulate their collective vision of development when dealing with mining companies. In addition, it examines to what extent IGDs shape the key elements that constitute different positions regarding territory, and also assesses how such dynamics reflect age-related traditional interests and cultural senses of identity and territoriality.     

申报建立林州国家地质公园的地质环境综述

林州市2046km^2的面积内分布有太古代、元古代、古生代、中生代和新生代四个地质时代的地层，三大类30种岩性的岩石，丰富的古生物化石，以及极富观赏价值的地质地貌景观，这些具有科学意义的多种地质旅游资源，通过建立国家地质公园可以更好地得到保护，促进旅游业的可持续发展。     

International tourism and civil aviation in the South Pacific: issues and innovations

This paper examines recent trends in tourism in the South Pacific islands and looks in particular at the way in which airline links between markets and destinations are forged, maintained and developed through time. Geography, politics and organisational dynamics combine to present island nations in the South Pacific with numerous dilemmas. The interdependencies between tourism and aviation cannot be over-stressed. Tourism is no panacea to cure the economic problems of Pacific island microstates, but tourism and aviation are complementary industries which offer better prospects than standing in the dole queue for aid. Given the right political and managerial climate, there is a chance to trade with dignity.     

Effects of common property resource utilization on wildlife conservation in Nigeria

A survey was conducted in 21 rural settlements to assess wildlife conservation under a common utilization. Wildlife was managed through traditional regulations to meet subsistence requirements for food, income, recreation and health care. However, the conditions under which common property resource utilization thrived: traditional beliefs, communal land tenure system and uncertain income streams were almost disintegrated by changes in land use and social attitudes.The resource base for rural economies, the natural vegetation, was in crisis of depletion and degradation due to modern techniques of agricultural and forestry production. A conservative strategy is suggested. Rural land use should be based on planned agroforestry practices: smallholder tree planting, protection and regeneration of indigenous plants with potential social and economic value, domestication of wild animals and ranching of game with livestock.     

Resource conflict,policy change and practice in Canadian fisheries management

The Canadian marine fisheries are presently in the midst of a grave crisis. On both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, fish stocks have been depleted through overfishing. Fish habitats are being damaged or permanently destroyed through industrial development. Gross overcapacity exists in both the primary and secondary sectors of the fishing industry, which is primarily attributable to the common property status of the resource. Many fishermen and processors have been or are in states of near bankruptcy as increasing energy costs, high product inventories and market weakness have crippled operations. A lack of alternative employment opportunities for many participants coupled with a high regional and community dependence on depressed resource-based industries has confounded attempts by government to introduce measures leading to more rational fisheries management. The outcome has been a strategy characterized as ‘incremental ad hocery’. Major inquiries were conducted into both the Atlantic and Pacific fisheries in the early 1980s. Conflict between and among the federal and provincial governments, various sectors of the commercial fishery, Indian and recreational usergroups, fishery interests and other industries, as well as Canada and other nations, has made it difficult to implement needed reforms. Stock and habitat maintainence and improvement; user regulations, coupled with tenure rights for fishermen; and marketing research and promotion are accepted as key components of any long-run fishery management strategy. In the short-run, the need is to develop approaches that are implementable in the context of diverse conflicting and vested interests.     

万年县神农宫旅游资源综合评价与开发对策

溶洞作为一种重要的旅游资源,以其幽、奇、险等特点得到了广泛的旅游开发。科学、合理地对旅游资源开发价值进行评价是旅游开发的前提和基础。文章以万年县神农宫为研究对象,采用层次分析法和模糊综合评判法对其岩溶洞穴旅游资源的开发价值进行了系统评价,结果表明:神农宫的评价得分为87.38分,为优良级旅游资源,具有较高的旅游开发价值。在进行综合评价的基础上,将神农宫旅游资源的评价因子分为高开发价值和中低开发价值两个层级,并提出了相应的开发建议。      

The new politics of pastoralism: Identity,justice and global activism

Concerns with the politics and practices of resource rights and access are integral to contemporary debates over environmental justice. Struggles over identity politics, especially the strategic articulation and deployment of particular identities at diverse geographical scales, have recently emerged as important mediators of justice claims in respect of resources rights, but also of recognition and procedural justice. To date, critical, multi-scalar analyses of identity-based claims for environmental justice have focused largely on the indigenous peoples’ movement. In doing so, they have failed to embrace an emergent dimension of identity-based, trans-scalar justice, namely the fledgling global pastoralists’ movement, the empirical focus for this paper. In the early years of the 21st century mobile pastoralists have begun to carve out new global spaces, through which diverse groups have attempted to negotiate common ground and forge common identities in their struggles for justice. In particular, mobile pastoralists have become increasingly visible in conservation politics and contests over land rights as they lay claim to both discursive and material ground as ‘custodians of the commons’ in an era of global climatic change. This paper draws on empirical work amongst pastoralists, NGOs and activists from Kenya, Mongolia and Spain to explore these identities, their implications for resource rights and access and the multi-scalar chains of accountability and legitimacy between global activists and their local constituents.