Contending with unequal and privileged access to natural resources and land in the Okavango Delta, Botswana

This paper reviews how state policy and regulatory instruments, including protected area alienations and concessions, have altered or denied the access to land and natural livelihood resources of the indigenous Basarwa and minority subsistence-oriented communities in the Okavango Delta (OD) in Botswana. Drawing on field research and guided by a sustainable rural livelihoods framework, the paper provides an overview of key institutional interventions – in particular the setting up of the Moremi Game Reserve, Wildlife Conservation Policy, Tourism Policy, Agricultural Development Policy and the erection of veterinary fences – that have served to privilege a foreign-owned and dominated commercialized wildlife and nature tourism sector and the export-oriented beef industry in the OD. The officially sanctioned barriers to customary and usufructory rights and access, and the non-recognition of historically embedded traditional land uses have decimated already marginalized resource-based subsistence livelihoods, and precipitated intergroup conflicts over preferential rights and access to resources and opportunities, notably wildlife, non-timber veld products, agriculture and community-based tourism schemes. Such outcomes, moreover, will have consequences for the longer-term sustainability of the OD both as a socioeconomic resource base and as a natural ecosystem.     

Inuit spring hunting techniques and local knowledge of the ringed seal in Arctic Bay (Ikpiarjuk), Nunavut

Inuit hunting techniques used to catch ringed seals ( Phoca hispida ) were observed April-June 1993 on the land-fast ice of Admiralty Inlet, Nunavut, and adjoining fjords and bays. In addition, a survey of hunting techniques and knowledge of ringed seal biology and behaviour was conducted in the community of Arctic Bay (Ikpiarjuk), Nunavut, January-February 1994. A total of 246 seal structures were found in 31 days of hunting and 34 successful kills were observed. An experienced Inuk hunter found subnivean structures by sight, by walking on drifts and by probing snowdrifts with a harpoon ( unaaq ). Most structures were found using subtle visual cues. Breaking through the roof of a lair was the most common hunting technique observed in this study. Pups captured in this manner were subsequently used to lure the mother back into the breathing hole where she was harpooned. Ringed seals were also hunted by a number of other methods that have been described previously in the literature. Respondents in the hunter survey indicated that the ringed seal was the most important animal used by Arctic Bay Inuit. They also reported a variety of biological findings about ringed seals including: size differences among seals in different regions of the pack ice; that adult male ringed seals ( tiggak ) emitted a strong, mustelid-like odour from December until late May or early June. Hunters also reported that males were occasionally caught when coming to retrieve pups. All respondents reported seeing increasing frequencies of liver abnormalities in their ringed seal catches.     

Beliefs about Ecological Impacts Predict Deer Acceptance Capacity and Hunting Support

Ecological impacts of deer overbrowsing often lead resource managers to recommend deer control through hunting, which may be strongly opposed by local residents. Adaptive impact management argues that understanding wildlife impacts of concern to the public can improve wildlife management. However, research on public wildlife acceptance capacity for deer, and on support for hunting, has emphasized concerns about household impacts and deer well-being, general environmental beliefs and attitudes, and beliefs about consequences of hunting, but not public concerns about deer ecological impacts. Our survey of neighbors of urban wetlands shows that beliefs about deer ecological impacts are statistically significant predictors of deer acceptance capacity and of support for hunting, controlling for other factors. Including ecological-impact beliefs adds substantially to the explained variance in deer acceptance capacity, and slightly to the explained variance in support for hunting.     

Dynamics of hunting territories and prey distribution in Amazonian Indigenous Lands

Indigenous Lands in the Brazilian Amazon intend to guarantee indigenous rights and conserve forests, although many do not correspond to peoples' territorial needs and may not effectively preserve wildlife. Most indigenous people rely on game for subsistence, and the spatial distribution of hunts and prey determine hunting sustainability and wildlife conservation. I examined the Kaxinawa hunting territory dynamics through the participatory monitoring and mapping of 10 ILs. The Kaxinawa are central-place foragers whose ideal hunting territories have a circular shape with a radius of 5 km. The geopolitics of the Kaxinawa combined with spatial occupation distort hunting territories to maintain indigenous control while respecting the territories of nearby villages. The fission of large villages leads to reduced hunting territories but increases the overall hunted area, consequently affecting game populations. Kaxinawa hunting did not lead species to extinction. The Kaxinawa hunted 65% of prey within 2.5 km of the villages and the other 30% within 5 km. Although all of the species were hunted close to villages, the prey were smaller, and several sensitive species were rarely hunted. The replacement of such sensitivity for more resilient low-ranked species on hunting bags suggests that these species might be depleted near villages. These findings provide objective standards for titling Indigenous Lands and for improving wildlife management within these lands.     

Everyday Ecologies: Cities,Nature, and leaching Urban Ecology

Abstract

Conventional geographical approaches to the city tend to place the study of urban form and urban space squarely within the political-economic and cultural branches of geography. Geographic pedagogy has tended to assume, therefore, that nature is absent from the city or exists only as a backdrop or stage on which urban economic and cultural activities take place. In contrast, there has been a recent groundswell of interest—originating in places as diverse as environmental activism, environmental history, landscape architecture, and environmental education—in reinterpreting the city as a space intimately connected with nature. This article examines the possibilities for integrating this rethinking of the relationship between city and nature into undergraduate education. Specifically, it outlines the rationale, objectives, and design of a course on urban ecology and examines the benefits and challenges of doing urban ecology as part of geographic education.     

Transformations in resource peripheries: an analysis of the Chilean experience

Building on Hayter et al.'s (2003 ) characterisation of resource peripheries in terms of four institutional dimensions, this article conceptualises four, similar 'transformations' (political, economic, socio-cultural and environmental) intended to evolve this conceptual framework. The case of Chile is analysed in order to ground the analysis, emphasising the structural aspects of its historical experience as a resource periphery. It is clear that the country's condition as a resource periphery has been central to the transformations that have taken place since the early colonial period. In order to illustrate this, the article briefly explores the links between Latin American structuralist and emerging resource periphery accounts. As such, we discuss some of the policy options that might allow the country to move beyond resource periphery status – a goal which is necessary if uneven development in Chile is to be tackled. We conclude that if even and equitable development are goals of geographical analysis then structuralist-informed political-economic work of this nature warrants renewed emphasis.     

Agricultural expansion within Kimana electric fences and implications for natural resource conservation around Amboseli National Park, Kenya

Fencing has become a key strategy in mitigating human–wildlife conflicts and promoting agricultural production in Kenya. However, it can have negative long-term consequences for wildlife conservation as well as human development, especially if the fence is poorly maintained. Such is the case of the Kimana and Namelok fences in the Kimana Group Ranch. This study assessed the influence of fences on agricultural expansion, environmental and wildlife conservation. In both fences, irrigated agriculture was a dominant land use and occurred along riverbanks, causing drying downstream. Most farmers in both fences were noticing a decline in water quantity and time of access to it, as well as increasing human–wildlife conflicts. Wildlife sightings within both fences provided evidence that the inadequate fence maintenance allows wildlife to freely access the fenced areas. Both wildlife and humans were blamed for fence deterioration in both fences. Irrigated agriculture inside both fences is expanding at an unmanageable rate. While the fences have spurred socio-economic activities in the area, they are not only ineffective in reducing human–wildlife conflicts but have given rise to other critical conflicts. Fencing appears to be a short-term remedy for human–wildlife conflicts and it is crucial to explore other mitigation strategies.     

FARMING THE FOREST EDGE: VULNERABLE PLACES AND PEOPLE AROUND KIBALE NATIONAL PARK,UGANDA

ABSTRACT. Subsistence farmers near Kibale National Park, Uganda, fear and resent many wildlife species. In this article I compare records of crop damage by wildlife and livestock with local complaints about the worst animals and the most vulnerable crops. I discuss the concordance and discrepancies in complaints versus actual damage in light of physical parameters of risk and of social factors that shape perceptions and vulnerabilities. Crop losses were greatest at the edge of the forest, where immigrants are disproportionately represented. State proprietorship of wildlife amplifies local vulnerability and constrains traditional coping strategies, such as hunting.     

Use of NOAA-AVHRR data to monitor snow cover and spring meltoff in the wildlife habitats in Jameson Land, East Greenland

NOAA-AVHRR satellite data have been used for a multi-year analysis of the seasonal variation of snow cover on the peninsula of Jameson Land located from 70°30'N to 72°N on the eastern coast of Greenland. Monitoring programmes for muskoxen and geese populations in Jameson Land wert started in the early 1980s to assess the impact of oil exploration in the area. This study was conducted to provide snow cover data to the wildlife monitoring programmes because snow cover is an important factor which can affect the numbers and distribution of muskoxen and other wildlife in the area.
Snow cover mapping is based on the geometric correction and radiometric calibration of each satellite scene before the visual bands are corrected for the terrain-effects and high solar zenith angle by using a simple radiation model. The atmospheric effect on the thermal infrared bands is corrected by using the "split-window" method. An automatic filtering routine with empirically determined thresholds is used to determine cloud-and haze-covered areas before the snow cover is computed from a linear expression using albedos of bare ground and full snow cover. By combining the satellite information with ground measurements and a digital terrain model, both the spatial distribution of snow cover and the total snow cover depletion can be obtained.
The method makes it possible to analyse the variation in regional and seasonal snow cover in wildlife habitats. The variation in snow cover depletion has been analysed in five subareas in the muskox area, and the results indicate that the snow cover pattern is an important factor which influences muskox calf crop and regional distribution of the muskox population. The method has proved useful for monitoring the duration of snow cover, and its application ought to facilitate the future study of wildlife habitats in extensive alpine and arctic areas.     

The Role of Tourism in the Economic Transformation of the Central West Queensland Economy

Central West Queensland's predominantly pastoral sector experienced considerable hardship in the decade to 1996 as the consequence of drought and low commodity prices. The social and economic consequences were both large and spatially diverse. Those often remoter shires, characterised by few people and services, experienced sharp decline on both dimensions. In contrast, some of the larger and more accessible towns managed to stabilise or even increase both population and services, assisted by the development of the tourism sector. This, in turn, reflects the region's unique geographical character, features of which include strong historical associations, harsh and seasonably variable climate, vast distances, and sparse populations. Unsurprisingly, the tourist industry has been developed by small-scale local entrepreneurs, focuses on distinct market segments--especially the elderly and adventurous, and is highly seasonal.     

Political ecology of tiger conservation in India: Adverse effects of banning customary practices in a protected area

Protected areas have had significant impacts on local communities primarily through the physical removal of people. In some instances, people continue to live within protected areas due to the inability of the state to evict them. The restrictions on livelihoods placed on people living inside protected areas lead to in situ displacement. We show how conservation enclosures in the Biligiri Rangaswamy Temple Tiger Reserve have produced a class of people that the state ‘lets die’ by banning customary practices such as fire use, hunting and harvesting of forest produce. Using longitudinal ethnographic, socio‐economic and ecological data, we demonstrate that conservation policy has alienated indigenous forest dwellers from their agricultural and forest‐land. The outcomes of conservation policy include dispossession through increased crop losses, reduced income from agriculture and forest produce, as well as a forest that is dominated by weeds due to fire suppression. The ban on hunting in particular has increased wildlife densities, which has enabled the state to accumulate revenues through the establishment of wildlife tourism facilities. All in all, centralized protected area governance has changed the relationships among people, forest and the state in a way that has produced adverse effects for both livelihoods and the ecosystem.     

Breeding distribution and abundance of the great cormorant Phalacrocorax carbo carbo in Greenland

The Greenland population of the great cormorant Phalacrocorax carbo carbo numbers 2000–3000 pairs which breed in about 110 colonies distributed along a 1000 km long coastline in central and northern West Greenland. The number of colonies has increased and the breeding range has expanded in recent decades. These trends are believed to be related to a reduced hunting pressure. The number of nests per colony is smaller than in European colonies. The population is of particular conservation concern to Greenland because of its small size and presumed discrete status.     

New multifunctional hunting landscapes in Denmark

Between 1992 and 2008 subsidization of mandatory set aside land under the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) gave rise to the establishment of a characteristic type of multifunctional hunting landscapes in Denmark, primarily located on fallow land in tilled valley bottoms. A national survey of these landscapes in 2006 has been carried out and 1061 hunting areas have been identified nationwide. Subsidies relating to set aside land acted as a supplementary type of income, which supported the development of multifunctional land use on marginal soils where the income from hunting and subsidies in combination was a viable alternative to monofunctional rotational agriculture. Hunting landscapes developed as the consequence of landscape management strategies designed to comply with the requirements of the CAP while improving habitat conditions for wildlife and increasing income from hunting rental activities. Forty-seven percent of the hunting landscapes in 2006 were in rotational production in 2010 while 19% were used for other agricultural purposes and 34% were taken out of the subsidy regime and removed from the general agricultural register. In 2012, a total of 431 such areas ? 41% of the areas identified in 2006 ? were still used for hunting. The number and geographical distribution of the hunting landscapes seems closely related to the potential average hunting rent, the level of urbanisation and the occurrence of manorial estates with traditions for multifunctional land use as part of their economic strategy. Implications for the ongoing discussion on land use policy concerning land sharing vs. land sparing is discussed.     

SOIL CONSERVATION,POLITICAL ECOLOGY,AND TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE ON SAINT VINCENT*

ABSTRACT. A political-ecological perspective is used to analyze soil erosion, conservation, and the peasantry on Saint Vincent in the Eastern Caribbean. Peasants farm areas most susceptible to erosion because of the historical development of property relationships. A soil-conservation effort begun in the late 1930s was part of a broader, British Empire-wide program. Local political-economic conditions and the environmental and technical characteristics of the cropping systems influenced the nature of soil conservation on Saint Vincent. Official colonial discourse about erosion reflected a complex mixture of blaming peasants and recognizing their political-economic constraints.     

安徽淮河流域全新世环境演变对新石器遗址分布的影响

安徽淮河流域是我国自然条件多重过渡地带和古代文化交汇地区,新石器时代演绎了多期古文化,石山子文化时期以渔猎为主,大汶口文化时期渔猎与农耕并重,而龙山文化时期以农耕为主,渔猎为辅。利用野外考古资料和已有考古研究成果,系统地梳理本区新石器文化发展进程,利用钻孔孢粉、年代数据等恢复本区全新世自然环境演变过程,并将考古资料和环境演变研究有机地结合起来,探讨该地区全新世环境演变和古文化发展的关系。研究表明,随着全新世大暖期的开始,新石器早期出现石山子文化,地方特征明显。6.5 kaBP~ 5.5 kaBP气候暖湿,受高海面和洪涝灾害等的影响,地表环境恶劣,导致文化发展中断、考古遗址缺失,5.5 kaBP~4.0 kaBP气候趋干,自然条件有利于人类生存,大汶口、龙山文化逐渐繁荣。与中原、山东地区相比,本区在新石器文化发展阶段、遗址数量和分布变化等方面存在较明显差异。     

The conquering of climate: discourses of fear and their dissolution

We are living in a climate of fear about our future climate. The language of the public discourse around global warming routinely uses a repertoire which includes words such as 'catastrophe', 'terror', 'danger', 'extinction' and 'collapse'. To help make sense of this phenomenon the story of the complex relationships between climates and cultures in different times and in different places is in urgent need of telling. If we can understand from the past something of this complex interweaving of our ideas of climate with their physical and cultural settings we may be better placed to prepare for different configurations of this relationship in the future. This paper examines two earlier European discourses of fear associated with climate – one from the early-modern era (climate as judgement) and one from the modern era (climate as pathology) – and traces the ways in which these discourses formed and dissolved within a specific cultural matrix. The contemporary discourse of fear about future climate change (climate as catastrophe) is summarised and some ways in which this discourse, too, might be dissolved are examined. Conventional attempts at conquering the climatic future all rely, implicitly or explicitly, upon ideas of control and mastery, whether of the planet, of global governance or of individual and collective behaviour. These attempts at 'engineering' future climate seem a degree utopian and brash. Understanding the cultural dimensions of climate discourses offers a different way of thinking about how we navigate the climatic future. However our contemporary climatic fears have emerged – as linked, for example, to neoliberal globalism, to ecological modernisation and the emergence of a risk society, or to a deeper instinctive human anxiety about the future – they will in the end be dissipated, re-configured or transformed as a function of cultural change.     

Why do they burn the 'bush'? Fire, rural livelihoods, and conservation in Zambia

Despite the historical importance of fire as a savanna land management tool, much controversy still surrounds discussions on anthropogenic fire utilization and the sustainability of indigenous land management practices in African savannas. This controversy is arguably a result of a discord between official fire policies and actual indigenous fire practices – a discord based on a gap in existing knowledge of, and a lack of informed literature on, the importance of fire for socio-economic and environmental survival in savanna environments. Addressing a continuing lack of research on the political ecology of fire, this study investigates the historical and present day socio-economic, environmental and political frameworks that affect anthropogenic burning regimes and land management in the Kafinda Game Management Area and Kasanka National Park in Zambia. A series of participatory research activities revealed the continuing importance of fire to rural livelihoods, but that a mismatch in desired burning regimes exists between local stakeholders. The paper argues that local power relations are preventing the local communities from adopting burning regimes that would be more environmentally sustainable and more in line with present day farming systems.     

传统节庆在地方认同建构中的意义——以广州“迎春花市”为例

节庆是地理学研究地方认同的一个重要视角。广州“迎春花市”与广府人“年卅晚行 花街”的传统民俗密不可分。一年一度的地方民俗节庆“迎春花市”作为广府地区的特质文 化形式, 在塑造地方认同中具有独特意义。本文基于新文化地理学视角, 采用问卷调查、参 与式观察、深度访谈等方法来搜集数据, 对问卷数据利用SPSS17.0进行频数统计、描述性统 计分析、数据质量分析、因子分析和单因子方差分析, 对访谈记录、网络资料等定性资料进 行文本分析。结果显示:(1)地方认同形成过程包含认知、情感和意向三个心理过程, 迎春 花市在这三个层面上都对地方认同的建构有积极作用。特别是, 政府尊重民意举办花市之举 措有利于促进地方认同的建构;(2)广州世居居民、父辈移居广州者、己辈定居者三类群体 对迎春花市的认同过程存在一定差异。尽管, 节庆能很好地将不同群体整合进更大的社区, 但是新来者要成为“本地人”,建立起地方认同仍需假以时日。这些发现将有助于理解广州不 同文化身份市民的文化融合及地方认同的形成原因     

Influence of land use on the abundance of wildlife and livestock in the Kalahari,Botswana

Human land use such as pastoralism may be a key determinant of wildlife populations. We studied the influence of land use on wildlife and livestock in south-western Kalahari, Botswana, during the wet and dry seasons. We included two types of livestock areas and two types of wildlife protection areas. Wild and domestic mammals >0.2 kg were sampled by distance technique. Small mammals <0.2 kg were trapped and a vegetation survey was performed. Livestock and some medium-sized wildlife species were most abundant in livestock areas, while large-sized wildlife species were mainly restricted to wildlife areas. Most red-listed species were confined to the national park. The influence of land use on abundances changed moderately between seasons. However, cattle moved into wildlife areas during the wet season. Differences in species richness and diversity were most pronounced during the dry season. The trapping frequency of small mammals was highest in the national park. Differences in vegetation structure included sparser field layer and higher cover of an invasive shrub in livestock areas. Our study shows the importance of protected areas for many wildlife species in the Kalahari. It also shows the value of a multi-species approach for investigating the effects of land use on wildlife communities.