Relationship of Stakeholders in Protected Areas and Tourism Ecological Compensation: A Case Study of Sanya Coral Reef National Nature Reserve in China

The first step to defining the rights, responsibilities and interests of stakeholders and constructing a compensation mechanism is to identify the stakeholders and clarify their mutual relationships. Nature reserves are complex ecosystems involving nature, the economy and society. There exists a conflict between the public welfare benefits of ecological conservation and the private gains to be realized from social and economic development. There also exist in a nature reserve complex relationships among stakeholders, involving the utilization of ecological resources, ecological conservation and ecological-economic interests. The introduction of tourism brings substantial changes to the existing stakeholder benefit structure in a nature reserve. The implementation of tourism ecological compensation (tourism payment for ecological service) is a process for redefining the distribution of rights, responsibilities and profits among stakeholders and it is also an essential way to balance the interests of the stakeholders. This paper uses a case study of Sanya Coral Reef National Nature Reserve in China to examine the characteristics of stakeholders and analyze their interests. According to the method for defining basic attributes proposed by Mitchel and other scholars, in cases of tourism ecological compensation, stakeholders can be classified as definitive stakeholders, expectant stakeholders and latent stakeholders. This paper applies these classifications and then analyzes the relationships between the rights and responsibilities of these stakeholders and how these change after the implementation of compensation. Additionally, based on the impact compensation has on different stakeholders, changes in the relationships can be analyzed and the structure of the stakeholders can be modelled. This case study of the Sanya Coral Reef National Nature Reserve illustrates the operationalization of a new mechanism for tourism ecological compensation. The paper illustrates a method for coordinating the relationships among the stakeholders involved with this national-level nature reserve.     

Gendering Marine Conservation: The Politics of Marine Protected Areas and Fisheries Access

Drawing on ethnographic case studies from Madagascar, this research shows that multiple marine conservation projects have institutionalized inequitable access to marine recourses along gendered lines. Despite discursive and institutional shifts toward more “collaborative” and “community-based” conservation programing, there is a deficiency of women’s nominal as well as effective participation in community management organizations. This research shows that conservation organizations’ focus on proximate drivers of marine resource use, or a politics of picking the “low-hanging fruit,” over ultimate drivers such as global commodity chains, places disproportionate emphasis on marine spatial enclosures and restricting specific, and gendered, harvest methods. To address gender bias concerning access to and control over natural resources, we must go beyond the rhetoric of “community involvement” to address gendered inequalities in conservation decision making, and whose interests are served by conservation projects.     

Homeland Orientation of War-torn Diasporas: Remittances and Cultural Practices of Tamils and Somalis in Norway

Wild reindeer are under pressure from human development projects throughout their habitat. Norway is currently making a significant move to establish a new management model based on national reindeer regions and regional management plans. A focus on wild reindeer as a flagship species allows the species to be included as a broad conservation objective in complex land-use plans. The authors surveyed a representative sample of residents in the Rondane and Setesdal regions to examine their perceptions of the current status of reindeer and how management relates to other social and development issues. Local actors and institutions, including hunters, were perceived as more responsible and suited to make decisions about reindeer population sizes and management objectives than non-local actors. There was little local consensus on the role of human impacts on wild reindeer, and residents rated local knowledge higher than scientific knowledge for management purposes. Rondane residents attached more importance to reindeer than Setesdal residents, but the latter saw reindeer as more threatened by human development. New management approaches will need to take a social-ecological perspective and recognize that the inclusion of reindeer can enhance broader conservation goals at regional, national, and international levels, but may also escalate local social conflicts.     

Gorilla Tourism in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park,Uganda: An Actor-Network Perspective

This article performs actor-network theory (ANT) to examine the development of gorilla tourism at Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda. We depict a number of translations in which gorillas were designated and enrolled as coexisting with local livelihood practices, as “trophies” in the hunting network, “man's closest neighbor” in the scientific network, “endangered species” in the conservation network, and finally, through habituation processes, became part of the tourism network. These five versions of the “gorilla” network show how gorillas are shaped in and by the relations in which they reside. By examining Bwindi in terms of ANT's notions of ordering, materiality, and multiplicity, we not only show how gorilla tourism has gained permanence and popularity, but also draw attention to new ways of thinking about actors and agency in tourism, conservation, and development.     

Oil Extraction and Benefit Sharing in an Illiberal Context: The Nenets and Komi-Izhemtsi Indigenous Peoples in the Russian Arctic

ABSTRACT

How can indigenous communities in illiberal regimes benefit from oil production? This paper compares the experience of two indigenous peoples in the Russian Arctic, the Nenets and the Komi-Izhemtsi, in their quest for environmental protection and the development of benefit-sharing arrangements with Lukoil, a Russian oil company. The Nenets people, recognized by the Russian state as indigenous, are marginalized political actors who identified a route to receiving compensation for loss of land and damage to the environment as well as economic benefits under the auspices of Russian law and Lukoil’s corporate policies. In contrast, the Komi-Izhemtsi, despite indigenous status in global institutions including the United Nations and the Arctic Council, are unrecognized as indigenous domestically and initially received no compensation. Their path to benefit sharing was more challenging as they partnered with local nongovernmental organizations and global environmentalists to pressure Lukoil to sign a benefit-sharing agreement. Ultimately, the comparison illustrates how transnational partnerships can empower indigenous people to gain benefits from natural resource exploitation even in illiberal political systems.     

LOCAL PEOPLE AND CONSERVATION IN MEXICO's EL VIZCAÍNO BIOSPHERE RESERVE*

ABSTRACT. It is increasingly clear that local participation in conservation endeavors is not only critical but also highly problematic. El VizcaÍno Biosphere Reserve in Baja California Sur, Mexico, is examined to study the difficulties involved in translating community-based conservation rhetoric into on-the-ground nature-protection efforts. This case illustrates how inhabitants of a reserve are marginalized by the very conservation process meant to engage them as key actors in promoting natural-resource protection. It also highlights recent attempts to enhance local participation in reserve endeavors through collaborative efforts among field staff, nongovernmental organizations, and area residents.     

Collaborative landscape research in Reunion Island: Using spatial modelling and simulation to support territorial foresight and urban planning

This paper reflects on collaborative landscape research conducted in Reunion Island, an outermost region of the European Union. On this 2,500 km² tropical island also considered a major international biodiversity hotspot, land-use planners must address important challenges, especially growing population densities and urban sprawl that cause important pressure on agricultural land and natural ecosystems. While progress has been made towards land-use zoning and planning at the island scale, entrenched interests and a lack of communication between the agricultural, urban and environmental sectors continue to hinder the design and implementation of integrated land-use plans at the local level. This paper presents an approach to territorial foresight where urban development scenarios and spatial models were co-constructed with a collective of institutional actors in order to facilitate dialogue on future urbanization patterns and impacts on landscapes. It describes how spatially explicit models and simulations of urban development, first used as demonstrators, have raised individual interests and expectations and facilitated the structuring of a collaborative research network. Models and scenarios were then questioned, redesigned collectively and used as boundary objects to facilitate a shift away from statistical and sectorial readings towards more territorialized and integrated perspectives. Analysing inputs, reactions and feedback from the actors involved in the research, this paper discusses the role and potential value of landscape modelling and simulation in mediating debates among planning stakeholders and creating social learning situations.     

Land reform and the new elite: Exclusion of the poor from communal land in Namaqualand, South Africa

The reserves and homelands across South Africa share a common history of policy interventions resulting in sedentarization, villagization and formalization of communal land use. In Namaqualand, such interventions culminated in the 1980s with attempts by the state and local vested interests to privatize the commons in the three largest Namaqualand reserves, including Leliefontein. This proposed privatization, although ostensibly aimed at averting land degradation and modernizing agricultural production, was as much about the apartheid state's broader strategy of co-option, and served to further long standing processes of class formation in the coloured communal areas of Namaqualand. In the post-apartheid period land reform has expanded the communal land-base in Namaqualand by over 25%. In spite of this, the management of the new commons in Leliefontein has many of the characteristics of land management policies imposed during apartheid. As a result, the new commons have effectively been arrogated by the same category of people who would have benefited under past privatization initiatives.This paper examines how the interests of a local elite have gained exclusive access to the new commonage farms. This has come about despite the government's commonage policy which privileges access by poorer, disadvantaged communal farmers. This case study uncovers the dynamic complexity of community driven land reform especially in relation to the roles of rural elites and their relationship to government institutions.     

Scenarios for Community-based Approaches to Biodiversity Conservation: a case study from the Wet Tropics,Queensland, Australia

Natural resource management approaches that deliver biodiversity conservation remain elusive, with evidence of a persistent implementation gap between biodiversity science and conservation projects. Scenarios have been identified as potentially useful in addressing the complex issues underlying this implementation gap, but have been infrequently applied to biodiversity conservation. Our paper reports on action co-research to develop, apply and assess the efficacy of scenarios within a community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) approach to biodiversity conservation at Mission Beach, a key site within the globally significant Wet Tropics bioregion. We focused on the capacity of scenarios to address the issues of contested interests and uncertainty, aiming specifically to engage the community to build a cohesive vision. The scenarios' headline messages included a projected substantial loss of habitat in coastal vegetation communities that are highly valued by all stakeholders. Our assessment identified that the use of scenarios fulfilled the intended aims, resulting in a vision for biodiversity conservation that has substantial community support. Three factors contributed to this efficacy of the scenarios: (1) the focus on threat; (2) biodiversity science integration; and (3) simplicity in presentation. Further investigation of the potential of scenarios as tools to overcome the implementation gap in biodiversity conservation is recommended.     

Configuring growth coalitions among the projects of urban aggrandizement in Kunming,Southwest China

In this paper, we examine two urban projects in Kunming, Southwest China, one a massive scheme to build a new city center on rural land outside the city, and the other, an act of urban restructuring involving the rebuilding of an old Hui (Muslim) neighborhood in the old city center. We analyze the coalition of forces configured to undertake these large-scale projects; we underline the role of specially formed city-building organizations and the support provided by the state-owned institutions that dominate the city’s political economy; and we draw attention to the caution with which the city government handled resistance to urban restructuring among Hui residents. We argue that urban growth projects in inland cities like Kunming are marked by certain features that distinguish them from similar projects in Eastern Chinese cities but maintain that nonetheless the drive for profit maximization at the expense of residents is unchanged.     

From Soda Bottles To Super Labs: An Analysis Of North America's Dual Methamphetamine Production Networks

This article uses the global production network perspective to analyze the various actors involved in the production and distribution of methamphetamine in North America. The paper analyzes the organization and operation of the two dominant network typologies at work in the United States: small toxic labs and Mexican drug‐trafficking organizations. Particular emphasis is placed on how the networks have adapted to changes in the regulatory context in which they operate. I conclude with potential policy recommendations for curtailing methamphetamine production within both networks.     

Building a bioregion through transboundary conservation in Central America

Barquet, K. 2015. Building a bioregion through transboundary conservation in Central America. Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift–Norwegian Journal of Geography. Vol. 69, 265–276. ISSN 0029-1951.

Proponents of transboundary conservation argue for the formation of a bioregional scale of governance. How such rescaling should be done remains an undiscussed issue. Through a study of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor in Central America and Si-A-Paz, a transboundary protected area in Nicaragua and Costa Rica, the author investigates how a transboundary scale of conservation is enacted. The study shows that in order to meet the conditions of a bioregion, actors involved in transboundary conservation in Central America produced accounts of social and ecological integrity that did not entirely match local narratives. Moreover, transboundary conservation provided actors with increased mobility across governance scales and sources of funding. In turn, this scalar mobility enhanced the power of already powerful actors in the area, helped states to attract international sources of funding, and empowered previously marginalized local groups at the expense of others. The author concludes that actors involved in transboundary conservation attempt to create new meanings of nature and understandings of society in order to produce a new scale of conservation. However, the study highlights the problems of matching discourses of nature to accounts of social unity, and underlines the political nature of scalar projects.     

Configuring floating production networks: A case study of a new offshore wind technology across two oil and gas economies

ABSTRACT

The authors employ the global production network (GPN) approach to analyse the development of the renewable energy sector. Through a case study of the development of a Hywind floating offshore wind project (Hywind) across two oil and gas economies, namely Norway and Scotland, the paper sheds light on the key drivers and role of core GPN actors. Methodologically, the authors investigate the process from both ‘inside-out’ and ‘outside-in’ perspectives, referring to the efforts of firms expanding into overseas markets and the efforts of host countries to attract investment from outside their territories. The analysis shows how the configuration of extractive production networks is shaped by the interactions between the network development practices of firms and the market development strategies of host states. The authors conclude that the distinct materiality of floating wind power technology shapes the territorial configuration of the production network by enabling its spatial extension across a range of locations. By contrast, existing research on other extractive sectors has emphasized the spatially constraining effects of materiality (Bridge 2008).     

Financial market actors as urban policy-makers: the case of real estate investment trusts in Brazil

Focusing on the growth of Real Estate Investment Trusts in Brazil, the paper explores how financializing policy instruments intertwine financial markets and the urban built environment. It studies the career of REITs and questions the role of financial market capital and actors in urban dynamics. The paper uncovers three processes usually considered separately: i) how a network of public and private financial market actors coaxes state bodies into using their regulatory powers and financial resources to transform real estate into an asset class; ii) how the government-run financial market authority and banks lure urban households into liquid real estate through marketing and education campaigns; and iii) how asset managers are “applied economic geographers” insofar as they channel households’ capital into a selected cities and properties. The active role played by financial actors in the design, enhancement and implementation of such a policy instrument leads us to conclude on their role as urban policy-makers.     

北京经济适用房布局特征及影响因素研究

20 世纪90 年代,中国开始实施经济适用住房政策。然而,在政策的实施过程中,由于不合理的布局,经济适用住房并没有切实解决中低收入家庭的住房问题。学者们通过研究发现,大多数经济适用住房被安排在城市边缘地区,缺乏配套公共设施。目前,相关研究较多关注经济适用住房的空间布局及其引发的社会问题,少有学者关注影响经济适用住房布局的因素。因此,本文试图从地方政府的视角解答影响经济适用住房布局的因素。研究提出假设,地方政府受到土地财政收入的驱动,将经济适用住房项目布置在对土地收益损失最小的地方,同时兼顾政策实施过程中的拆迁压力、住房市场结构以及公共交通便利性等。在假设基础上,对北京经济适用住房空间布局的时空特征进行分析,并构建经济适用住房布局的影响因素模型。结果发现：1999-2009 年间北京经济适用住房建设速度放慢,同时呈现向五环以外扩散及向某些点集聚的趋势;模型结果证实土地价格是政府在落实经济适用住房项目时考虑的重要因素。     

2005-2009年三江源自然保护区生态保护和建设工程生态成效综合评估

本文评价了三江源自然保护区生态系统宏观结构及涵养水源、保持水土、保护生物多样等主要生态服务功能,分析了自然保护区生态保护与建设工程的生态成效及其原因。结果显示,工程实施后,各自然保护区的土地覆被转类指数明显增加,生态系统宏观状况好转;保护区内草地生产力皆呈增加趋势,水域面积增加,食物供给能力提高,栖息地生境好转。森林类保护区的森林面积减少趋势得到遏制;湿地类保护区的湿地面积多呈增加趋势;草地类保护区的草地减少趋势缓解,荒漠化明显遏制,草地植被覆盖度有所增加;冰川类保护区多条冰川出现明显退缩导致冰川融水增多,有利于雪线以下草地净初级生产力的增加。     

行动者网络视域下世界遗产地的空间生产——以广东开平碉楼与村落为例

行动者网络理论（Actor-Network Theory,ANT）通过把人与非人的、物质的和社会的要素并置在行动者网络内,为地理学家审视“空间”提供了一个强大的理论工具,在人文地理学各分支学科的应用日益增多。文章以开平碉楼与村落世界遗产地为研究对象,使用ANT研究了开平碉楼与村落从偏僻乡野向世界遗产地的空间生产过程。研究发现,开平碉楼与村落的行动者主要包括联合国教科文组织世界遗产委员会、国家各级政府、开平碉楼与村落专项基金会、旅游企业、旅游者、碉楼华侨业主、碉楼当地业主、其他非业主居民和开平碉楼与村落环境。开平碉楼与村落所处区域的经济衰落呈现出的行动者集体的问题是行动者转译原因,也是开平碉楼空间再生产的起点;申遗与旅游开发成为行动者利益赋予、征召与动员的过程,也同时阐述了空间再生产过程的机理,由部分业主对网络提出的异议则指涉了新的空间再生产。     

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.     

盐城世界生物圈保护区十年评估与启示

中国自然保护区建设已有近60年的历史,并成为我国最有效的保护生物多样性网络。如何对已建自然保护区,特别是快速演变的湿地类型自然保护区的保护成效进行评估已成为我们面临的最紧迫任务之一。中国人与生物圈国家委员会对其认定的保护区开展评估已有多年,但政府部门和学术界对此知之甚少。以中国人与生物圈国家委员会对以盐城世界生物圈保护区十年评估为案例,介绍了该组织对自然保护区保护成效评估方式与过程、特点,提出了我国湿地自然保护区今后如何开展保护成效评估的3点启示:1我国自然保护区事业必需转型到重建设和保护成效的新阶段;2对保护对象的科学研究和长期监测是提高保护成效的重要基础;3要特别重视滨海湿地的保护。