‘We Live Like This’: Local Inequalities and Disproportionate Risk in the Context of Extractive Development and Climate Change on New Hanover Island,Papua New Guinea

This study examines the local processes, effects, and responses to large‐scale logging and agricultural development efforts in subsistence communities on New Hanover Island, Papua New Guinea (PNG). Recently, New Hanover became the site of three special agricultural and business leases (SABLs) that combined to cover approximately 79% of the island. The proliferation of SABLs within PNG is an outcome of recent national development initiatives promoting a significant increase in the production of commercial agricultural crops such as oil palm and biofuel. Accordingly, SABLs are designed to facilitate the development of long‐term commercial agricultural industries in rural locations across the country through the conversion of forested lands and the simplification of communal land tenure, for the purposes of private lease. However, SABLs have simultaneously provided a convenient loophole around more restrictive national forestry policies and thereby become attractive to traditional logging interests in the Asian/Pacific region. Consequently, many SABLs across PNG have failed to produce viable agricultural development or broad local benefit. It is within this context, that this study pays particular attention to the experiences of women and lower‐status landowners living through the processes of SABL conversion, during the El Nino drought of 2015. The study details the statuses and roles of these groups within the overall development process, the ways in which their social relationships changed in the context of development, why these groups were particularly vulnerable to the broad livelihood effects of forest conversion and drought, how they adapted to these effects, and what their hopes were regarding the future of the development project and life on the island. This study adds to current theoretical interests on emerging neoliberal frontiers of land and resource control by examining these SABL landscapes on New Hanover as contemporary examples of land grabs and documenting the very real local level consequences of this phenomenon. The study is also particularly significant in light of the growing threats to forests and forest‐dependent livelihoods and the recognition of the importance of local forest practices to global sustainability.     

People in Between: Conversion and Conservation of Forest Lands in Thailand

The analysis of ‘ambiguous lands’ and the people who inhabit them is most revealing for understanding environmental deterioration in Thailand. ‘Ambiguous lands’ are those which are legally owned by the state, but are used and cultivated by local people. Land with an ambiguous property status attracts many different actors: villagers hungry for unoccupied arable lands in the frontiers; government departments looking for new project sites; and conservation agencies searching for new areas to be protected. This article shows, first, how two types of ambiguous land — state‐owned but privately‐cultivated land, and communal lands — were created. It then examines how the Karen, one of the hill peoples living on the ambiguous lands, have been struggling to survive between the forces of capitalistic development and forest conservation. Using a detailed study of forest use and dependency conducted in two Karen villages, I argue that the state’s efforts to reduce the Karen’s forest dependency, or even to evict them from the forests, are not leading to the stated objective of conservation. Finally, I draw some wider implications with reference to James Scott’s thesis on state simplification.     

‘The Law is to Blame’: The Vulnerable Status of Common Property Rights in Sub‐Saharan Africa

The context of this article is the surge in large‐scale land acquisitions of African lands by local and foreign investors for commercial food, livestock, oil palm and carbon trading purposes. Involuntary loss of rural lands at scale is not new to Africa's majority rural poor, nor is it driven by a single factor. Historically inequitable land relations within communities, compounded by a century of capitalist transformation, take their toll. This study argues, however, that the weak legal status of communal rights is the most pernicious enabler in their demise, allowing governments to take undue liberties with their citizens’ lands, and particularly those which are unfarmed and by tradition held in common. While international acquiescence to abusive domestic law helps entrench the diminishment of majority land rights, the domestic laws themselves are principally at fault and necessarily the target for change. This legal vulnerability is explored here through an examination of more than twenty African land laws.     

Balancing Preservation and Logging: Public Lands Policy in British Columbia and the Western United States

Both the United States and Canada have made fundamental changes in their policies regarding natural resources. The province of British Columbia made major revisions to its forest policy in the earlyto-mid-1990s; in the western United States, policy efforts have been stymied by conflicts between state and federal officials and between conservationists and resource developers. The different structures of federalism in the two countries result in two different approaches to policymaking that are discussed here. However, the ultimate test of natural resource policy, I argue, should be their consistency with the goal of sustainable ecosystems and preservation of biodiversity. From the perspective of ecological science, neither country has been particularly successful in policymaking for public lands and for logging in particular. Both nations have failed to give priority to protecting old-growth forests and largely have rejected the idea that ancient forests are much more valuable than simply sources of timber     

Measurement of Urban Fringe Sprawl in Nanjing between 1984 and 2010 Using Multidimensional Indicators

Due to the global increases in urbanisation rates, urban sprawl has become a worldwide issue. In China, the development of rural areas has been affected by urban expansion and adjustments of metropolitan areas by administrative divisions that have led to losses in agricultural lands and ecosystem services. There is the ‘paradoxical’ desire for governments to promote rural development and protect land resources. Urban fringe sprawl is a prominent issue in the process of rural development. Identifying and measuring sprawl at the urban fringe could assist policymakers to either encourage or discourage this phenomenon. This paper demonstrates use of multidimensional indicators to effectively measure urban fringe sprawl by remote sensing, in addition to demographic and socio‐economic data. Using integrated indicators observed in the recent Chinese development context, urban fringe sprawl was measured comprehensively for Jiangning, a district in the city of Nanjing, China. This study indicates that Jiangning is sprawling rapidly. The results also show that the multidimensional indicator approach could provide decision support to create effective long‐term land‐use planning policies for controlling urban sprawl patterns.     

Notes on Treasure Trove.1

Abstract

The rediscovery of an unpublished Survey of Rievaulx Abbey made for the Earl of Rutland, the first lay owner after the Suppression, and a re-evaluation of three other contemporary documents has enabled the writer to reconstruct in general terms the precinct of a major Cistercian abbey at its final stage of development. In particular, it has been possible to identify many of the buildings of the Outer Court which no longer survive and to establish the general layout of the whole precinct, thus placing the surviving ruins in context. From the evidence of the four documents studied, it would seem that a particularly Cistercian form of precinct development can be identified for the first time.     

Human ecology and the early history of St Kilda,Scotland

It is 300 years since Martin Martin published hisVoyage to St Kilda, one of the most informative accounts ever published of a seventeenth-century community. Historical treatments of St Kilda have often dramatized its isolation, distinctiveness and «marginality» but Martin's writings suggest that the lifeways of the St Kildans were not very different from those of contemporary Hebrideans. The economy described by Martin was subject to a rigorous regime of communal self-management. This article argues that in late medieval climatic conditions, St Kilda's particular combination of resources—sheltered arable land, seals and sea-bird colonies, including a huge gannetry—would have made the archipelago a valued component of the MacLeod chiefdom and a good target for the annual predatory visit of the sub-chief and his retinue. St Kilda's history should be seen not in isolation, but in a context of regional interdependence, and the archipelago's «marginality» is best understood in a long-term historical perspective.     

Investigating student use and value of e-learning resources to develop academic writing within the discipline of environmental science

The use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in higher education to support student learning is expanding. However, student usage has been low and the value of e-learning resources has been under investigation. We reflect on best practices for pedagogical design of e-learning resources to support academic writing in environmental science. A case study demonstrates that where resources are embedded into the curriculum they are highly valued by students with on average 83% of the class accessing files. Students were confident at writing tasks indicating that the resources effectively met their needs and expectations and enabled them to further develop discipline-specific writing skills. Scaffolded e-learning resources, designed around the identified threshold concepts of writing within the discipline, incorporating a knowledge narrative of explicit instruction and a strong teacher presence, delivered in a sequential manner and embedded into the curriculum, are valued and highly used by students in academic writing tasks.     

Reforming Land and Water Rights in South Africa

Redress of historical injustice in access to land provided a mobilizing force for the overthrow of the apartheid government in South Africa. Inequality of access to water resources marks South Africa's history even more profoundly than inequality of access to land. Yet in South Africa, post‐apartheid legislative reform relating to land and water has followed largely separate, if parallel, paths. This article traces the development and current status of water reforms in the Inkomati Water Management Area, where water use is dominated by established commercial agriculture and forestry, by important environmental interests, including the Kruger National Park, and by demands for improved access to water from a black population of around 1.5 million living in former Bantustan areas. It indicates that in practice water and land reform are interdependent, but, although both have become more closely linked within local political and economic arenas, they remain largely disconnected and disabled by unresolved tensions within their separate policy processes. The article argues that the commoditized nature of land and water use within the established patterns of commercial agriculture sets constraints on what redistributive land and water reform can deliver to those historically dispossessed. In particular, increasing recourse to ‘strategic partnerships’ between African community landowners and commercial agribusiness as a means of maintaining the productivity of commercial farmland poses questions about the control and beneficial use of new forms of communal property.     

The Present State and Future Tasks in the Theory and Method of an Evaluation of the Natural Environment and Resources

The needs of optimal resource development policy in the Soviet Union have given rise to a new interdisciplinary research discipline concerned with the evaluation of the physical environment and natural resources. Evaluations are made of particular environments or resources or an integrated natural complex as a whole (the “object” of the evaluation) from the point of view of particular elements of society or society as a whole (the “subject” of the evaluation). Evaluations may be in terms of social utility, economic cost, technological feasibility, or medical-biological requirements. A number of methodological problems remain to be solved in evaluative research: (1) comparability between evaluations of particular elements and of integrated environments or resource complexes, (2) commensurability of various categories of evaluation (social, economic, technological) of a particular type of environment or resource, (3) the problem of weighting individual elements in integrated evaluations; and (4) the question of converting physical measurements into evaluations on a point scale.     

Some Aspects of Byzantine Military Technology from the Sixth to the Tenth Centuries

Abstract

Byzantine military technology remains to be examined thoroughly, despite its importance in demonstrating the Byzantines' ability to absorb ideas and practices from areas outside the Empire as well as developing their own traditions. This article examines arms and armour from the mid-sixth century to the end of the tenth century and puts the military panoply into a wider context, that of the development of offensive and defensive military equipment in Europe and the lands to the north and east of the Empire. Finally, it examines the relationship between military affairs and the economic and political situation of the Empire and attempts to account for the use of particular weapons and methods of equipping the soldiers at particular times.     

Indigenous Autonomy,Delinquent States,and the Limits of Resistance

This paper focuses on struggles by Mexican indigenous communities to defend their patrimony and guarantee their own security in an environment dominated by the parallel power of organized crime, paramilitary violence, impunity, and a neo-extractivist economy. After reviewing the relationships between the radicalization of indigenous autonomy demands and transformations of the Mexican state, analysis focuses on recent developments involving a Nahua community on the Pacific coast of Michoacán state that has a long history of successful defence of its communal lands, alongside a Purépecha community in the central highlands that has been its longstanding ally. The violence of external actors reflects the penetration of all levels of government by organized crime, but violence is not a new historical experience in this region. What has changed is that the capacity of these communities to resist has been affected by their internal disarticulation by the same forces.     

American home: Predatory mortgage capital and neighbourhood spaces of race and class exploitation in the United States

Predatory home mortgage lending has become a central concern for housing research, public policy and community activism in US cities. Regulatory attempts to stop abuses, however, are undermined by claims that ‘predatory’ cannot be defined or distinguished from legitimate subprime lending, and claims that the industry performs a public service by meeting the needs of low‐income, high‐risk consumers (many of them racially marginalized) who would have been denied credit in previous years. We evaluate these claims in historical‐geographical context, drawing on David Harvey's theory of class‐monopoly rent to analyse what is new (and what is not) in contemporary financial exploitation. We use a mixed‐methods approach to (1) provide econometric measures of subprime racial targeting and disparate impact that cannot be blamed on the supposed deficiencies of borrowers, (2) qualitatively assess the rationale for judging particular subprime practices and lenders as predatory, and (3) trace the connections between local practices and transnational investment networks. The fight against predatory lending cannot succeed, we argue, without a renewed analytical and strategic emphasis on the class dimensions of financial exploitation and racial‐geographical discrimination.     

The importance of communal forests in carbon storage: Using and destabilizing carbon measurement in understanding Guatemala's payments for ecosystem services

Payments for ecosystem services (PES) are a conservation initiative that offer payments to people who own or manage lands that provide desired ecosystem services. Utilizing mixed methods, I examine how PES in the form of government-issued forestry incentives interact with land tenure to affect carbon storage in Guatemala's Western Highlands. Land tenure is a larger determining factor for carbon storage than payments, as communal forests managed by Indigenous Maya K'iche' communities have significantly higher carbon stocks than private landholdings in these same communities. No statistically significant differences were found in carbon stocks between incentivized and non-incentivized plots, and participants enrolled only a fraction of their land, likely prioritizing enrollment of degraded plots. These results indicate the importance of using both social and physical science methods to understand the physical outcomes and social context of forest management. I also reflect on why carbon storage is often prioritized, drawing on a critical physical geography framework to analyze carbon accounting methods. Measuring carbon storage gives us the tools to describe the success of communal forest management, yet I also caution relying on the quantification of ecosystem services as a method for landscape valuation and suggest avoiding prioritizing carbon storage and sequestration.     

Sustaining the Forests: The Community-based Approach in South and South-East Asia

The concept of sustainability emphasizes four basic principles when applied to rural communities: that basic needs must be met; that resources should be subject to local control; that local communities must have a decisive voice in planning; and that they should represent themselves through their own institutions. These principles have been notionally accepted by development planners and conservationists at all levels. Yet, throughout the tropical forest belt, they are being systematically overridden by international and national policies and development programmes, leading to increasing poverty, social conflict and rapid deforestation. Traditional knowledge and systems of land use have proved far more environmentally appropriate, resilient and complex than initially supposed by outsiders. Forest peoples have successfully opposed many socially and environmentally destructive development schemes proposed for their lands. However, these societies are not resisting all change: population increase and the internal dynamic for development have also created social and environmental problems. A review of community-based initiatives in South and South-East Asia shows that in some countries, positive initiatives have been taken by local and national governments to promote a community-based approach. Notable successes have been achieved but many other initiatives have failed. The examples show that, besides the four principles noted above, environmentally successful management also depends on innovative political organization at the community level.     

Climate triggers: Rainfall anomalies,vulnerability and communal conflict in Sub-Saharan Africa

The mounting evidence for climate change has put the security implications of increased climate variability high on the agenda of policymakers. However, several years of research have produced no consensus regarding whether climate variability increases the risk of armed conflict. Many have suggested that instead of outright civil war, climate variability is likely to heighten the risk of communal conflict. In particular, erratic rainfall, which reduces the availability of water and arable land, could create incentives for violent attacks against other communities to secure access to scarce resources. Yet, whether groups resort to violence in the face of environmentally induced hardship is likely to depend on the availability of alternative coping mechanisms, for example through market transfers or state accommodation. This suggests that the effect of rainfall anomalies on communal conflict will be stronger in the presence of economic and political marginalization. We evaluate these arguments statistically, utilizing a disaggregated dataset combining rainfall data with geo-referenced events data on the occurrence of communal conflict in Sub-Saharan Africa between 1990 and 2008. Our results suggest that large negative deviations in rainfall from the historical norm are associated with a higher risk of communal conflict. There is some evidence that the effect of rainfall shortages on the risk of communal conflict is amplified in regions inhabited by politically excluded ethno-political groups.     

Renegotiating Barbuda's commons: recent changes in Barbudan open-range cattle herding

Barbuda remains little developed and sparsely populated relative to its neighbors in the Leeward Lesser Antilles, a rather extraordinary and relatively unknown Caribbean place. Much of its distinctiveness derives from the communal land-tenure system, itself rooted in three centuries of open-range cattle herding. Yet, as revealed through interviews, newspaper archives, and landscape observations, open-range cattle herding has declined over the past three decades, with related changes in land tenure. As the new Barbuda Land Act came into effect in 2008, codifying the communal tenure system, the very landscape elements that manifest open-range herding have become obscure. In particular, the rock-walled stockwells have become largely defunct, many of the walls lie in ruins or have been entirely consumed by the crusher that converted them into gravel to surface roads. With the principal land use that had supported communal control largely out of practice, usufruct access to land now largely obsolete, the new act might have little actual impact in preserving Barbuda's uniqueness.     

Gender,Traditional Authority,and the Politics of Rural Reform in South Africa

The new South African Constitution, together with later policies and legislation, affirm a commitment to gender rights that is incompatible with the formal recognition afforded to unelected traditional authorities. This contradiction is particularly evident in the case of land reform in many rural areas, where women’s right of access to land is denied through the practice of customary law. This article illustrates the ways in which these constitutional contradictions play out with particular intensity in the ‘former homelands’ through the example of a conflict over land use in Buffelspruit, Mpumalanga province. There, a number of women who had been granted informal access to communal land for the purposes of subsistence cultivation had their rights revoked by the traditional authority. Despite desperate protests, they continue to be marginalized in terms of access to land, while their male counterparts appropriate communal land for commercial farming and cattle grazing. Drawing on this protest, we argue that current South African practice in relation to the pressing issue of gender equity in land reform represents a politics of accommodation and evasion that tends to reinforce gender biases in rural development, and in so doing, undermines the prospects for genuinely radical transformation of the instituted geographies and institutionalized practices bequeathed by the apartheid regime.     

The Department of the Interior's Appeals Process and Native American Natural Resource Policy, 1970–94

Department of the Interior (DOI) administrative appeals involving Native American lands and resources were studied to find out whether these cases or their outcomes had changed during the "self-determination" era of US. Indian policy. This policy's stated intention has been greater Native American control of lands and resources, but in the DOI arena this research indicates the opposite as a policy outcome     

Speaking the land: exploring women's historical geographies in Northern Québec

This review article explores the significance of studying the historical geographies of Aboriginal women in Northern Québec and presents potential research avenues. The article's premise is that we cannot understand the historic and contemporary geographies of subsistence economies without more research about the roles that women played in them. Related to this issue is a broader reflection on how geographies of the past are reconstructed by historical geographers, both from an epistemological and methodological point of view. As a discipline, historical geography has been chiefly dedicated to the study of the encounter of migrant Europeans with new world lands and societies, with the result that Aboriginal and women's geographies have commanded less attention. This gap in knowledge should be addressed by emerging researchers. Taking an interdisciplinary approach and moving from the general to the particular, my inquiry evolves in three parts. First, I identify some key debates that are pertinent to a study of gender and Aboriginal women in a colonial context. Second, I review the existing ethnographic literature on Cree women in Eastern Canada and assess insights about their role in subsistence economies. Third, I outline specific avenues that help frame a research programme to study the historical geographies—by which I understand the places, placing, and place-making—of Aboriginal women in Northern Québec.