Participatory Conservation? Community-based Natural Resource Management in Botswana

This paper examines the complexities of participatory conservation through a case study of the process of participation in a government funded community-based natural resource management programme in Western Botswana. The paper argues that different stakeholders have very different views on the levels of participation taking place in particular projects. Furthermore local people find it difficult to voice their concerns about the environment and issues of sustainability given the power relations involved in this 'participatory'process. The paper questions the accountability and motivation of the different stakeholders involved in participatory projects and suggests that implicit in the policy implementation process are mechanisms which constrain empowerment and dictate the forms of participatory conservation which can emerge. The paper concludes by reviewing the case study in the light of new policy developments in Botswana.     

Applying Resilience Thinking to Natural Resource Management through a “Planning-By-Doing” Framework

Natural resource management (NRM) organizations are increasingly looking to resilience thinking to provide insights into how social and environmental systems interact and to identify points of intervention. Drawing on complex systems analysis, resilience thinking emphasizes that landscapes constantly change from social and ecological interactions, and focuses NRM planners’ attention on identifying key variables, feedbacks, and thresholds that can help improve intervention strategies. More deliberative approaches are being developed to use resilience thinking in ways that engage and build human capacity for action. This article documents experiences shared with NRM agencies in rural Australia as we developed new approaches to link resilience thinking with collective learning principles. We present an emerging framework through which heuristics associated with resilience thinking is being used as part of a planning-by-doing process. The framework is being tested to assess whether and how it can enable change agents to advance their capacities for adaptation and transformation.     

The Limits of Economic Benefits: Adding Social Affordances to the Analysis of Trophy Hunting of the Khwe and Ju/’hoansi in Namibian Community-Based Natural Resource Management

In the global neoliberal ecological discourse, trophy hunting proponents often articulate the economic benefits it creates for local communities, especially through jobs and meat. Trophy hunting revenues are also crucial to support the overall operational costs of community-based natural resource management (CBNRM). The aim of this paper is to show that this rather simplified dominant discourse, based only on “benefits”, sells short the local realities of the Khwe and Ju/’hoansi Bushmen (San) in the Bwabwata National Park and the Nyae Nyae Conservancy, Namibia, respectively. Building on Gibson, I use the concept of “social affordances” as an addition to economic benefits. This leads me to argue for an expansion of the debate beyond the limits of economic benefits to the human domain, to better understand the multiple experiences, perceptions, power relations and meanings (for good and ill) of local actors on trophy hunting and its main players.     

Does Social Learning Lead to Better Natural Resource Management? A Case Study of the Modern Farming Community of Practice in Sweden

This study investigates whether social learning among large-scale farmers in central Sweden leads to better natural resource management in the agricultural landscape. Three different frames of social learning are first identified: social learning as a fundamental social phenomenon, social learning as collaborative learning, and social learning as deeper learning. This article investigates the role of social learning and other factors through semistructured in-depth interviews. Results show that learning among farmers is inherently social, but that this learning does not necessarily improve natural resource management or lead to better environmental governance. The article discusses when social learning can be expected to influence natural resources management, and finds that without the presence of policy, individual leadership, or facilitation, it is not an important factor. Furthermore, the call for social learning based on results from successful instrumental application risks obscuring findings indicating that both social learning and better natural resource management are conditioned on the same external factors.     

It’s Time To Learn About Learning: Where Should the Environmental and Natural Resource Governance Field Go Next?

This Commentary reflects on the state of the scholarship on learning for environmental and natural resource policy and governance. How have we been learning about learning? We highlight theoretical and empirical advancements related to learning, as well as areas of divergence between learning theories and frameworks, and underdeveloped knowledge around processes and outcomes. To address these limitations and improve progress in both theory and practice, we offer recommendations for learning scholarship by focusing on how to collectively engage in ‘learning about learning’.     

Coming to Terms with “Integrated Coastal Management”: Problems of Meaning and Method in a New Arena of Resource Regulation

This paper traces the emergence of coastal management in the late twentieth century and assesses the social and spatial implications of the new Integrated Coastal Management (ICM) philosophy that guides national regulatory programs worldwide. A review of the epistemology of ICM reveals its link to the United Nations marine regulatory regime (the Law of the Sea) and the sustainable development paradigm embraced at the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development. I suggest that the resulting regulatory regime facilitates the opening of coastal zones worldwide to aggressive state and global capital investment. By promoting the overhaul of existing social and spatial organization in coastal zones and by asserting the primacy of resource access for modern economic interests, ICM may introduce more rather than less social conflict and ecological degradation. To illustrate this dynamic, I examine the case of coral reef management in general, and in the context of the Sri Lankan ICM program.     

Are There Differences in the Response of Natural Stand and Plantation Biomass to Changes in Temperature and Precipitation? A Case for Two-needled Pines in Eurasia

A comparative discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of natural stands and plantations, including in terms of their productivity and stability, began from the moment of the first forest plantings and continues to this day. In the context of the progressive replacement of natural forests by plantations due to deforestation, the question of how will change the carbon storage capacity of forest cover when replacing natural forests with artificial ones in a changing climate becomes extremely relevant. This article presents the first attempt to answer this question at the transcontinental level on a special case for two-needled pine trees (subgenus Pinus L.). The research was carried out using the database compiled by the authors on the single-tree biomass structure of forest-forming species of Eurasia, in particular, data of 1880 and 1967 of natural and plantation trees, respectively. Multi-factor regression models are calculated after combining the matrix of initial data on the structure of tree biomass with the mean January temperature and mean annual precipitation, and their adequacy indices allow us to consider them reproducible. It is found that the aboveground and stem biomass of equal-sized and equal-aged natural and plantation trees increases as the January temperature and precipitation rise. This pattern is only partially valid for the branches biomass, and it has a specific character for the foliage one. The biomass of all components of plantation trees is higher than that of natural trees, but the percent of this excess varies among different components and depends on the level of January temperatures, but does not depend at all on the level of annual precipitation. A number of uncertainties that arose during the modeling process, as well as the preliminary nature of the obtained regularities, are noted.     

Towards Closure? Coexistence,remoteness and righteousness in Indigenous policy in Australia

The policy framework claiming to support Indigenous people in remote parts of Australia is in disarray with Commonwealth, state and territory governments proposing closure of remote communities on a range of economic and social policy grounds, but facing significant criticism on economic, environmental, social and cultural grounds. Western Australia's proposal to close 150 remote communities, announced in late-2014, is reviewed and found to reveal a profound failure of geographical literacy.     

I Do? On geography,marriage and love in Australia

Calls for law reform in Australia reveal marriage as central to the notions of family and citizenship. Attention here is drawn to the recent lack of willingness to debate marriage equality in Australia—from either its advocates or opponents—following a cross-party marriage equality private members bill. Federal Liberal/National Coalition politicians dismiss legislative frameworks that recognise marriage equality in Australia because it is thought to cause the demise of social mores, or is at best unimportant. Advocates for same-sex marriage present promises based on rights, justice and equality, yet fail to reflect on the social implications for those who arrange their sexual lives outside this institutionalised partnership. I argue that the lack of debate is operating to narrow rather than widen understandings about ‘love', drawing attention to geographical understanding of the links between sex, bodies, gender, families and belonging.     

Rural homes and urban dwellings? Gender,migration and the importance of tenure in Gaborone,Botswana

"The issue of return migration has been widely debated in African migration literature in view of strong rural-urban ties and urban growth based largely on in-migration. On the basis of fieldwork in Botswana, it is argued that there are important gender differences in terms of the commitment to rural and urban areas. It has been postulated in past studies that the decision to remain in towns depends in part upon urban tenure and it is argued that home owners are more likely than tenants to be permanent urban dwellers. Again, there are important gender differences and women appear to be more committed to the urban dwelling than men."     

Seeds for Change? Attaining the benefits of community gardens through council policies in Sydney,Australia

Modern industrial systems of food production cause a wide range of detrimental impacts to the environment, human health and society. Integrating community gardens into local food systems is one way to counteract some of those impacts. This research looks at the elements that community garden policies should contain in order to best promote community gardens and attain their benefits. Focusing on Sydney, the research evaluates and compares the quality of the community garden policies with the distribution of community gardens in local councils and across broader geographic regions. Councils or regions that might benefit from greater access to community gardens are identified and ways in which councils, and the Sydney Region as a whole, might improve their community garden policies are discussed.     

International Workshop on “Expanding Trans-boundary Cooperation for Water and Environment Security in Asia’s International Rivers” December 10-14,2005,Dali,China

The International Workshop on "Expanding Transboundary Cooperation for Water and Environment Security in Asia's International Rivers" was held on December 10-14, 2005, Dali, Yunnan, China. It was organized by Tsinghua University, the World Bank Institute …     

Reaching critical mass? Theory, politics, and the culture of debate in children's geographies

A small but growing number of voices have begun to raise questions about the current direction of children's geographies as a subfield and its status within the wider discipline. This article intervenes in these emerging discussions to examine the status of debate itself within children's geographies. I argue that children's geographies over the past decade has operated primarily in a consensus-based mode, with a number of potential tensions and differences between practitioners masked as a result. I develop the example of notions of children's competent social agency, a core theoretical assumption that is rarely interrogated in much depth. In closing, I pose questions regarding several contemporary political issues concerning children's agency about which geographers have had surprisingly little to say. I suggest that explicitly addressing some of these vexing issues would contribute to a richer state of debate within children's geographies.     

The poorest and most vulnerable? On hazards,livelihoods and labelling of riverine communities in Bangladesh

Within the field of hazard research, vulnerability studies have been central to inducing a shift in the perspective on disasters as being primarily inflicted by geophysical events to that of apprehending disasters as destructive outcomes of particular social as well as hazardous environmental conditions. However, the inherent tendency within vulnerability studies to classify certain areas or people as 'vulnerable' may in some cases also serve to reinforce popular and/or ingrained prejudices, negative stereotypes and dubious explanations of the living conditions and fate of specific communities that become so labelled. The riverbanks and islands in river courses of Bangladesh have long been portrayed as home to the 'poorest' and most vulnerable communities, the widespread assumption being that people would only live in such riverine environments because they have no other options. Drawing on an examination of existing literature on char settlements in Bangladesh and data from a field site in the Jamuna River, this paper argues that the prevailing perceptions and labelling of char dwellers as 'vulnerable' people is based on a far too simplistic understanding of both rural migration patterns and the livelihoods obtained in these riverine areas.     

The Northern Myth Revisited? Aborigines,environment and agriculture in the Ord River Irrigation Scheme,Stages One and Two

Western Australia's Ord River Irrigation Scheme has been controversial since its establishment more than twenty-five years ago. A substantial expansion of the scheme, known as Ord Stage Two, is currently underway as a joint project of the Western Australian and Northern Territory governments. In this study I examine and compare Stages One and Two in the context of the significant social and economic changes that have occurred during this period, focusing on attitudes to, and conceptualisations of, nature and the human place in it. Despite a context in which consideration of both Aboriginal and environmental issues is now integrated into the development process, three colonial themes persist in the rhetoric of Stage Two. These are the empty landscape, the invisible Aborigine, and the idealisation of agricultural land use. When expressed together these three help to naturalise the development process as both inevitable and strategically implemented. The contradictions inherent in this process enhance existing doubts about the social and ecological sustainability of continuing attempts to 'develop' Australia's north.     

“Protecting” street children? Urban revitalization and regulation in Lima,Peru

In this article, I develop a critical analysis of the relationship between urban “revitalization” campaigns and the regulation of street children in Lima, Peru. Scholars writing mostly in the Global North have drawn attention to increasingly punitive policies regarding public space. While in many regards Lima’s urban policy is reflective of such larger trends, I consider whether the regulation of street children is as punitive as might be assumed. I am particularly concerned with the role that children’s rights play as another logic structuring urban regulation. I first show how a language of children’s rights has been manipulated to justify the removal of street children from public space, as is most evident through Peru’s Law to Protect Minors from Situations of Begging. However, there is also something more ambiguous occurring. In the second part of this article, I examine the uneven implementation of policy: street children themselves resist and rework policies “on the ground,” and children’s rights frameworks may offer possibilities for rupture of formal regulation. I suggest that these overlapping and competing dynamics sustain an uneven and contingent geography of urban regulation.     

Are teachers and students ready for the new middle school geography syllabus in Sweden? Traditions in geography teaching,current teacher practices,and student achievement

The article examines the relationship between selective traditions in geographical education, what middle school teachers choose to emphasise in geographical education, and student achievement. The study, conducted in Sweden, is based on observations made by students in teacher training programmes, interviews with teachers, and analyses of a test administered to middle school students. It shows that selective traditions in geographical education are strong, resulting in a focus on country-related knowledge and map-reading skills. Both teachers and students seem unclear about what other subject-specific skills geography teaching provides. Furthermore, students have difficulty achieving a high level of geographic reasoning. The authors argue that a subject-specific language in geography is important in both teaching and assessment. They stress that students need more practice in geographic reasoning, since this is required by the new curriculum and in the national test in geography for Year 6 (i.e. pupils in the age range 12–13 years). The study adds to earlier research by highlighting Swedish middle school teaching, which is a neglected field within curriculum studies, and by using a combination of methods to analyse the impact of selective traditions.