Loggers,Development Agents and the Exercise of Power in Amazonia

Many believe that Amazonian communities could benefit from the growing market for timber through self‐governed approaches to forest management. However, there is no clear understanding of how communities are to develop such approaches given logging frontiers that are characterized by informal negotiations with loggers and community forestry initiatives that are promoted by development agents. This article reports on research from four study areas in Bolivia, Brazil and Peru which reveals that external players exercise considerable power over communities. First, loggers and development agents impose forest management schemes directly on communities, hindering them from developing their own approaches. Second, paternalistic relationships with loggers and development agents prevent communities from identifying common interests and expressing these through their representative organizations. Finally, loggers and development agents use powerful discourses to shape acceptable schemes in forest management, silencing communities’ voices in debates. Through these different power mechanisms, external agents thwart the emergence of self‐governed community management approaches.     

CONTESTED BOUNDARIES: STATE POLICIES,FOREST CLASSIFICATIONS,AND DEFORESTATION IN THE GARHWAL HIMALAYAS

Prominent environmental scholars and activists in India have posited that environmental crises in the Indian Himalayas result primarily from adopting forestry practices that override local communities and argue that the region can be sustained only when the state allows local communities to practice indigenous forest management. This paper challenges those critiques: focusing on the Garhwal Himalayas, it shows that forestry practices involve contestation and negotiation between the state and local communities and argues that environmental scholars fail to recognize how particular classes have shaped forest use and management practices and played a central role in determining environmental sustainability for local communities.     

The Contested Landscapes of World Heritage on a Tourist Island: the case of Garajonay National Park,La Gomera

This paper considers the World Heritage Site of Garajonay National Park on the island of La Gomera (Canary Islands). It is based on a research project carried out during 1999-2000 that explored the circumstances surrounding its declaration as a National Park and inclusion into the World Heritage List, in conjunction with the consequences for local communities which ensued. The proximity of Garajonay National Park to a large concentration of mass coastal tourism constitutes a further source of potential conflict which may have a wider relevance to other sites of a similar and indeed diverse nature. This paper, therefore, examines the configurations of space and social relations occasioned by the processes of social change, conservation and tourism development in and adjacent to this protected forest. In doing so it elucidates the manner in which these processes are locally mediated in and through contested values over the meaning and purpose of nature conservation in this 'world heritage space'. It argues that a sense of the forest as a place of cultural belonging has been marginalised in favour of its intrinsic ecological value.     

Diamond Mining in Canada's Northwest Territories: A Colonial Continuity

Abstract: The Canadian diamond industry has been lauded as a new approach to resource extraction, one whose institutions are characterized by a greater attention to Indigenous rights and the environment. However, an institutional analysis obfuscates the terrain of unequal relations that is the context for the Canadian diamond boom; an analysis of the effectiveness of social and environmental policies in relation to the extraction of diamonds in the Canadian North suggests that there is an intent on the part of those instigating this extraction (that is, the Canadian state, Canadian capitalist interests and international capitalist interests) to protect the Northern environment and to provide economic benefits to Northern Indigenous communities. This piece argues, instead, that this assumption is erroneous and that the Northern mining industry is part of Canada's project of internal colonization of Indigenous communities, a project that has intensified and expanded in the neoliberal era.     

Public participation geographic information systems (PPGIS): challenges of implementation in Churchill,Manitoba

Public participation geographic information systems (PPGIS) increasingly are utilized in geographic research, yet researchers rarely are provided with guidance on how to implement PPGIS in an appropriate and effective manner. This article reports on the process of research that explores responses to current and future local tourism development offered by a sample of residents using a modified PPGIS approach called ‘community action geographic information system’ (CAGIS). The conceptual development of CAGIS is reported and the challenges encountered during its implementation in Churchill, Manitoba during 2005–2007 are reviewed. It is suggested that researchers wishing to conduct similar research should undertake thorough preliminary fieldwork to assess the likelihood of finding agreement on a common problem; acquiring adequate resources; establishing collective responsibility for the project's outcome; attaining stakeholder support; developing trust and meaningful relationships; and incorporating indigenous knowledge appropriately. Feedback of results to community members also should be an integral part of the research process. A number of feedback mechanisms are reported, including an interactive weblog, which helped facilitate communication between heterogeneous groups in Churchill. Although ambitions for a truly participatory GIS approach to this project have been set aside, it is held that PPGIS can yield positive outcomes for communities and academia. Sharing this research experience will be useful to others who venture into PPGIS research, especially in northern communities.     

Ecological Knowledge and the Regional Economy: Environmental Management in the Asesewa District of Ghana

This study examines perceptions of the environment in farming communities in the forest ecotone of Ghana. It places local knowledge within a socio-economic and historical context and argues that knowledge is continually evolving, attempting to solve existing problems and discovering new ones. It maintains that favourable conditions exist in farming communities for environmental actions and development approaches based on sustainable development, since these areas have suffered from the negative effects of degradation. However, major constraints exist within the wider political economy and policy framework, which is still locked into environmentally-hostile export-oriented production, and political models which marginalize rural people.     

Patterns of Forest Settlement in Western Thailand

Most studies of land settlement are concerned with planned schemes. This is despite the fact that unplanned settlement has more often been the major process by which agricultural land is settled in many countries. In this local study of spontaneous forest settlement in western Thailand, the recent history of two communities is traced in order to shed light on the process of settlement Common assumptions about frontier communities are examined critically. It is suggested that many aspects of the post-settlement community, in particular social differentiation, can best be understood in light of the process of settlement     

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.     

Vegetation history at the multi-period prehistoric complex at Ballynahatty,Co. Down,Northern Ireland

Palaeoecological methods can provide an environmental context for archaeological sites, enabling the nature of past human activity to be explored from an indirect but alternative perspective. Through a palynological study of a small fen peatland located within the catchment of a multi-period prehistoric complex at Ballynahatty, Co. Down, Northern Ireland, we reconstruct the vegetation history of the area during the early prehistoric period. The pollen record reveals tentative evidence for Mesolithic activity in the area at 6410–6220 cal BC, with woodland disturbance identified during the Mesolithic–Neolithic transitional period ca. 4430–3890 cal BC. A more significant impact on the landscape is observed in the Early Neolithic from 3950 to 3700 cal BC, with an opening up of the forest and the establishment of a mixed agricultural economy. This activity precedes and continues to be evident through the Mid-Neolithic during which megalithic tombs and related burial sites were constructed at Ballynahatty. Due to chronological uncertainties and a possible hiatus in peat accumulation in the fen, the contemporary environment of the Ballynahatty timber circle complex (constructed and used ca. 3080–2490 cal BC) and henge (dating to the third millennium cal BC) cannot certainly be established. Nevertheless, the pollen record suggests that the landscape remained open through to the Bronze Age, implying a long continuity of human activity in the area. These findings support the idea that the Ballynahatty prehistoric complex was the product of a gradual and repeated restructuring of the ritual and ceremonial landscape whose significance continued to be recognised throughout the early prehistoric period.     

‘Balding Nevis’: Place Imperatives of an Invisible Cohort within Tasmania's Forest Communities

An under‐recognised cohort within Tasmania's forest communities is identified, one that shares the social and cultural background of Timber Communities Australia's constituency, but holding deeply antipathetic views toward current forest regimes. Deploying ethnographic data gathered in the upper North Esk country in Tasmania's North‐Eastern Tiers, where this cohort seems to predominate, the elements of a deep attachment to place are explicated: these include a desire to return to a past local economy based upon small but labour‐intensive sawmills with viable satellite hamlets, and a concern for water quality, for the integrity of forest ecosystems, and for the wellbeing of individual plant and animal species therein. Overwhelmed by a sense of powerlessness, lacking political skills, and distressed by the dramatic economic and environmental changes within their community, this cohort is unlikely to organise politically, and is likely to remain relatively voiceless within the fraught dynamics of local politics within riven forest communities. Nevertheless, this ‘third cohort’ suggests wider issues for the politics of place. Its worldview constitutes a potent contemporary articulation of ‘the moral economy’, as described in the 1970s by E.P. Thompson, and extended to a conception of ‘moral ecology’ by Karl Jacoby. It also suggests, contra Doreen Massey, that the identity‐based place theory of the phenomenological tradition is compatible with a conception of places as sites of conflicted meaning, and that it is wrong to assume the vector of change within place to be progressive; rather it is as likely to conduce to a loss of individual and collective agency.     

Voices from the sea ice: the reception of climate impact narratives

This paper argues that indigenous peoples' responses to climate change are better understood in relation to emerging notions of citizenship than to climate change crisis narratives. The latter, like development narratives, are often used to license the intervention of experts in debates about resource management and conservation. Dominant climate change narratives about the Arctic emphasise the power of global climate systems to threaten northern communities by situating them as being intrinsically ‘at risk’. These narratives envisage Arctic citizenship within very narrow parameters which have largely masked the voices of northern citizens. Definitions of ecosystem resilience, while providing a framework for comparing disparate cultural and ecological contexts, are predicated on avoiding systemic collapse. It is argued that such definitions heighten the sense of risk implicit in climate change impacts. This may ultimately impede the development of different aspects of civic participation by northern citizens with climate change policy opportunities. Policy responses across a range of diverse geographical contexts require new narratives that put communities back into the calculus of risk and decision-making. One way to be more critical about the language of climate change narratives is to evaluate the extent to which they can account for, and mitigate, growing inequalities of power and wealth. Studies in the historical reception of science narratives are proposed as a better approach for making grounded comparisons of the discursive strategies with which climate change narratives are made to work. This also helps to bridge discussions of climate change across regions like the Arctic and Africa, which share much in common, but are too often studied in isolation.     

Deep commoning: public folklore and environmental policy on a resource frontier

Abstract

This article explores the concept and practice of the commons as a holistic, multi-sectoral, cross-disciplinary framework for critical heritage work on resource frontiers. Drawing from my research on forest commoning in the Appalachian coalfields, I argue that land-based systems of commoning vital to communities in the path of resource extraction merit more attention from heritage workers. Commons tend to disappear through their atomization into siloed objects of study and stewardship. This disappearance, partly a function of reductionist, dualistic thinking, also signals a persistent colonialist myth of emptiness. I argue that the embodied, participatory field methods of public folklorists are particularly well-suited to the study and accreditation of land-based commons as heritage. Building on the idea of ‘deep ecology’, the notion of ‘deep commoning’ espouses our implication in worlds we bring into dialogue through the practice of public folklore as critical heritage work.     

中国农村社区研究进展及展望

农村社区作为推进城乡一体化以及实施乡村振兴战略的重要节点,是统筹城乡发展,推进新型城镇化的有机载体.本文梳理了近年来我国农村社区研究的热点领域及相关成果,基于CiteSpace分析了该领域的主要进展及存在的问题,并提出了今后研究的方向与重点.农村社区研究在理论构建、治理体系、建设模式、规划策略及研究方法等方面均取得了一...     

Community perceptions to place attachment and tourism development in Finnish Lapland

Tourism in the Arctic is increasing rapidly and affecting local communities through land development pressures. In addition to providing economic opportunities, this development trend is affecting more intangible areas of life such as place attachment. The aim of this paper is to examine place attachment in tourism-dependent communities in the Arctic through place dependence and place identity. This is done through mapping sites with personal meanings and locally valued tourist sites in two communities in Finnish Lapland. The attachment is expressed in two different ways: currently, the economic activities are manifested almost exclusively through tourism development in Kilpisjärvi and Saariselkä, of which the most important sites are located in the natural landscape. As a result, the communities’ dependency on the natural surroundings is evident. The attachment also occurs through non-economic activities and is present through consumption-related actions, (e.g. fishing) as well as through less tangible issues, such as connecting with nature. The economic and consumption-related activities link with place dependence, whereas the more intangible factors with place identity. Mapping and calendar exercises helped to identify where the intensities of place attachment are located, and how they vary in space and time. Whilst considering place attachment and future tourism development, this paper also draws attention to changes in the local environment as a result of human activity, which may be amplified by climate change. When considering future tourism (or any) development, place attachment should carry a larger role in community and development planning.     

Re-visiting the field: Collaborative archaeology as paradigm shift

Abstract

The emphasis of the JFA on field methods resonates strongly with current disciplinary interest in multivocality and participatory research. In this new epistemology of inclusiveness, communities play an active role in the production of archaeological knowledge as well as in the conservation of cultural heritage. From the perspective of archaeologists trained in the U.S. who conduct research in Latin America, we historicize changes in the triadic relationship among archaeologists, contemporary communities, and things of the past. This examination focuses on the evolving social context of archaeological practice. The social milieu within which archaeology is conducted is explored further by reference to a recent survey of archaeologists that elicited comments on grand challenges to archaeology. A few examples of the many forms that an engaged archaeology might take are offered from the Maya region. Although collaborative research poses challenges that emerge as communities entangled with archaeological practice become research partners, we suggest that the enhanced relevance that accompanies this transformation is well worth the effort.     

The role of honey hunting in supporting subsistence livelihoods in Sumbawa,Indonesia

Honey from the giant Asian honey bee (Apis dorsata) has been harvested by communities throughout Southeast Asia for centuries. In Indonesia, 80 per cent of the national supply of honey comes from Sumbawa; however, there is limited information regarding the sustainability and importance of honey hunting in supporting rural livelihoods. This study used semi‐structured interviews and questionnaires to examine honey hunting and forest honey production in Sumbawa. It evaluates the economic and cultural importance, opportunities, and constraints of honey hunting and prompts us to suggest that income generation from honey plays a critical role in supporting rural communities. Of respondents, 83 per cent reported that income from honey was essential and accounts for 68 per cent of cash income. Yet honey hunters were harvesting using destructive methods under dangerous conditions and are subject to unpredictable market prices and fluctuating yields. Unlike situations in other areas of Indonesia, no system of customary law was found to exist that defines ownership of honey trees and the right to harvest from them. Limited access to market information, high moisture content of honey, and limited training and extension services were identified as key constraints. Future research exploring the sustainability of harvesting practices and mechanisms for improving profitability of honey hunters would be valuable.     

Telling stories: Exploring research storytelling as a meaningful approach to knowledge mobilization with Indigenous research collaborators and diverse audiences in community‐based participatory research

A growing number of geographers seek to communicate their research to audiences beyond the academy. Community‐based and participatory action research models have been developed, in part, with this goal in mind. Yet despite many promising developments in the way research is conducted and disseminated, researchers continue to seek methods to better reflect the “culture and context” of the communities with whom they work. During my doctoral research on homelessness in the Northwest Territories, I encountered a significant disconnect between the emotive, personal narratives of homelessness that I was collecting and more conventional approaches to research dissemination. In search of a method of dissemination to engage more meaningfully with research collaborators as well as the broader public, I turned to my creative writing work. In this article, I draw from “The komatik lesson” to discuss my first effort at research storytelling. I suggest that research storytelling is particularly well suited to community‐based participatory research, as we explore methods to present findings in ways that are more culturally appropriate to the communities in which the research takes place. This is especially so in collaborative research with Indigenous communities, where storytelling and knowledge sharing are often one and the same. However, I also discuss the ways in which combining my creative writing interests with my doctoral research has been an uneasy fit, forcing me to question how to tell a good story while giving due diligence to the role that academic research has played in its development. Drawing on the outcomes and challenges I encountered, I offer an understanding of what research storytelling is, and how it might be used to advance community‐based participatory research with Indigenous communities.     

乡村社区可持续性研究进展与展望

伴随着全球气候变化和粮食危机出现,乡村地区成为可持续性转型研究的新焦点。乡村社区可持续性是可持续发展研究的重要领域,对促进我国乡村振兴、城乡融合和可持续发展具有重大意义。根据世界可持续发展历程,结合国内外研究文献分析,乡村社区可持续研究可以划分为起步、拓展和逐步深化三大阶段。可持续性、脆弱性、韧性是可持续发展理念下演变的不同研究主题,是当前城乡发展研究的三大热点议题。乡村发展多功能、多维度、多主体等趋势下,乡村社区可持续性包含社区生态、社区产业、社区空间、社区规划、社区治理等多维度实施路径。未来的乡村社区可持续性研究,要重视多维度综合的乡村社区可持续性评定、乡村社区风险识别与监测、乡村社区可持续性转型、乡村社区生活质量与乡村吸引力提升和现代化治理等问题的深入探讨。实现中国乡村社区可持续性,应综合考虑较优越的政治背景、较大的地域环境差异等基本特征与现实问题。     

Two Models of Residential Conservation: communal life in an Australian box-ironbark forest

Grassroots community organisations offer simple ways of maintaining natural heritage values. Given the degradation of landscapes supporting fauna in many parts of the world, such organisations promise direct benefits for local communities and ecological biodiversity. Also, global warming, resulting in part from the removal of forest, will abate with the restoration of trees. The Bend of Islands (Victoria, Australia) boasts two organisations dedicated to the communal conservation of a landscape of remnant box-ironbark (eucalypt) forest. This woodland heritage is managed by residents to preserve its ecological values.The Round the Bend Conservation Co-operative (RBCC) is a land settlement co-operative. Members are committed to maintaining the local bushland in as natural a state as possible using minimal-impact environmental practices. The Bend of Islands Conservation Association (BICA) was established several years after the co-operative, but with the same environmental purpose. It covers a broader area, incorporating over 130 private land titles. This article describes the history and practices of RBCC and BICA and indicates their potential as models for the development of conservation principles and practices by other communities in similar landscapes.