Group items tagged

"For most indigenous communities, communal lands and natural resources have fundamental spiritual, social, cultural, economic and political significance that is integrally linked to both their identity and continued survival. Denial of the inherent and inalienable rights to their traditional land and natural resources is often at the root of human rights violations, giving rise to intra-state tensions and laying the foundation for emerging and ongoing conflicts. Full enjoyment of their land rights, including access to and control over the lands and their natural resources, would imbue indigenous peoples with the economic independence they need to preserve their distinct cultures and determine their futures. Immediate resolution of this issue is critical to ensuring that indigenous peoples are able to enjoy the rights to which they are entitled, and to enhance stability at the national level. It is suggested that one possible means is through the strategic reconceptualisation of self-determination. More specifically, the implementation of alternative manifestations of this right, particularly the effective realisation of the emerging right to autonomy, recognised in the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, would enable indigenous peoples to have effective, de facto control over all aspects of their political, social, cultural and economic survival."

"This article investigates the treatment of gender issues in "research for development" natural resources management (NRM) projects. Through discussion of an NRM research project in the United Kingdom and India, the article explores how the use of inaccurate gender stereotypes results in projects being compromised. The article seeks to explain why this happens despite widespread appreciation of the centrality of gender issues to NRM and poverty. In explanation the article identifies the significance of difficulties in the partnerships between the natural and social science dimensions of these projects. The study demonstrates that instead of easy and equal partnership, the relationship between natural and social science practitioners and practices remains characterized by inequality and poor communication, with serious consequences for the understanding of, and response to, gender issues."

"While few would deny that present generations have a moral obligation to preserve the environment for future generations, some theorists reject the existence of a legal duty in this regard. This article takes the opposite view. It argues that ample juridical as well as ethical social justice theory-contractarian distributive and reciprocity-based theories prominent among them-establishes that future generations have a legal right to a clean and healthy environment. But most helpful in ensuring intergenerational ecological justice, the author contends, is a respect-based theory of social justice which at its core honors the values that underwrite human rights law and policy inclusively conceived and embraced."

Forest governance has greatly evolved over the last few decades, moving from a state-based management process to a more private one. This evolution enabled stakeholders to become more involved in forest management decisions. The process of forest certification also encouraged greater participation in civil society. However, few studies have been done on the role of local stakeholders in forest certification initiatives. We used a qualitative approach to define the scope of local stakeholders' participation. Results show that their role mainly lies in the implementation phase of certification, where they are consulted more often. Stakeholders are less involved in the monitoring of forest certification and are not entirely satisfied with the place they are offered. We argue that if certification is to become an authentic governance process, better definition of the role of stakeholders is essential.

Case studies from Canada and Vietnam demonstrate both the importance and content limitations of local ecological knowledge (LEK) acquired during collaborative research between local fishers and scientists. The Canadian research disproved fishers' contentions that white hake (Urophycis tenuis) was the main predator on juvenile lobster (Homarus americanus). In the Vietnam case, the LEK of 400 fishers was used to test a hypothesis about monsoon seasonality and the availability of fish for fermentation. Fishers' LEK was important in both confirming the basis of the hypothesis and highlighting anomalies. The cases demonstrate that although important, harvesters' local experiences and observations may not characterize accurately such ecosystem processes as predator-prey dynamics or seasonality. It is unrealistic to expect fishers' LEK and understanding of ecology to embody such attributes, since stomach contents of commercially important target species are rarely examined, and fishers interact with ecosystems primarily to earn a living.

Significant tenure reforms have taken place over public forestlands in the past 20 years in Latin America. These reforms differ from previous tenure reforms with respect to their origins and goals. In forest tenure reform, rights have being granted through a diversity of tenure arrangements, mainly to those already living in forests and to collectives rather than individuals, and with the potentially contradictory goals of promoting local well-being while conserving forests. These reforms face several challenges for achieving their goals and have resulted in ambiguous outcomes. We argue that outcomes for people and forests could be improved if, besides the simple recognition of rights to forests, greater attention is placed on aligning broader policy incentives to support community and smallholders efforts to manage their forests. We discuss the characteristics of forest tenure reform based on five cases, representing different tenure arrangements, in four countries in Latin America.

"This research investigates a practical way to address clashes in stakeholder values and enhance outcomes in water allocation planning, in a case study of the water-stressed Lockyer catchment in Australia. A conflict assessment using photovoice interviews early in the process was used to identify divergent interests and values about sustainability, private and public benefit, and equity. A photovoice workshop as well as separate and joint meetings of government and irrigator groups using various consensus-building techniques fostered mutual respect, identified common ground, and contributed toward a negotiated package. This case study shows that techniques that clarify parties' values can reduce areas of divergence and refocus parties on topics for further negotiation in water planning. A consensus-building process need not be formalized in legislation; techniques can be tailored for the purpose and needs of the situation, and together with institutional change will contribute to more collaborative and deliberative planning processes."

"A substantial body of research explores local residents' perceptions and attitudes toward protected areas. However, less research focuses explicitly on different aspects of local residents' knowledge about protected areas. To examine the local residents' knowledge regarding the existence and regulations of a nearby protected area and some of the socioeconomic correlates of this knowledge, we surveyed 425 adults living in urban and rural settings around the Dandeli Wildlife Sanctuary, Karnataka (India). We found that knowledge of the existence of the protected area was low, especially among urban dwellers. We also found that socioeconomic characteristics of informants, such as sex, education, and place of residency, explain variation in awareness of the existence of a protected area. As information on protected areas only reaches selected groups of the population, our findings highlight the importance of reinforcing policies that promote public awareness of protected areas."

Uneven Development endeavours to derive a theory of uneven geographical development by putting in motion a 'historical dialogue' between Marx's critical theorisation of capitalism and the geograhical reality of capitalism at the close of the twentieth century, and by theorising the relations between material nature and the spatial dynamics of capitalist accumulation. The result, however, is a theory of uneven development predicated on a logical rather than a historical conception of capitalism, which furthermore supersedes the question of the production of nature in conceptualising the spatial dynamics of (contemporary) capitalism. This article argues for a re-theorisation of uneven geographical development that considers the production of nature, namely extractive industry, as a point of departure in theorising the spatial dynamics of contemporary capitalist accumulation, focusing briefly on the concentration and centralisation of capital.

Neil Smith's Uneven Development has had profound impacts on the way geographers have come to understand questions related to space and nature. In this short piece I explain what UD brings to a longstanding literature and set of debates that is commonly named 'the Agrarian Question' and revolves around agriculture's unique relationship to capitalist relations of production. Smith's distinctive approach that sees nature and space as produced by capitalist relations of production helps resolve some of the longstanding debates within the study of agriculture. While this piece applies the production of nature thesis to one particular social scientific field, I hope it points to the currency and significance of this understanding for many other academic fields and for political economy more generally.

The problem studied consists of the relations between the interests and militancy and the differences in expectations of rewards in an agrarian reform settlement linked to the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST). In this settlement, many 'leaders' gathered the 'socialisation of production'. The situation arising from these circumstances produced the different reasons for engagement and different relations with the militancy. In the transition from the encampment to the settlement, it becomes important for the leaders to reinforce their positions both of 'leadership' and as mediators of policies and public resources, while it becomes difficult for those settled to maintain their previous investments in strong engagement. Consequently, these new conditions tend to increase the differences between the expectations of rewards from the militancy. These expectations can be pragmatic, such as viability as a farmer, or have a more symbolic character, which is associated with the struggle to create social organisation models.

It has been said that in Brazil the Catholic Church, by the adoption of the Theology of Liberation, chose the poor, but the poor chose the ever growing churches and sects of Pentecostal derivation. This paradox haunts the sociology of religion, in Brazil and elsewhere. This paper suggests to its solution a hypothesis inspired by Weber's 'Religious Directions of the World and their Directions' (the 'Zwischenbetrachtung').The social, political and economic efficacy of a given religious movement is essentially linked to its theodicy. In other words, the passage of religion to politics, if understood as the exit from religion as allegedly motivated by religion itself, involves a contradiction as it implies the elimination of its basic religious motivation. The inner-worldly success of a religious tendency depends, therefore, on the persistence of a properly religious 'rejection of the world'. In fact the whole of the Theology of Liberation movement falls under a certain cognitive penumbra, a kind of theological and philosophical syncretism, which constitutes both its main strength and its main weakness.

This article, along with this special symposium, engages with the lasting significance of Neil Smith's Uneven Development: Nature, Capital, and the Production of Space 25 years after its publication. Few books have made such productive contributions to expanding the horizons of political economy, particularly the spatiality of political economy, as has Uneven Development. This introductory article explores some of these aspects of the book's significance for the readership of New Political Economy; it remarks on the lasting if not growing significance of Smith's intellectual and political contributions two and a half decades after one of his, and the discipline of geography's, crowning achievements. At the same time it foreshadows ways in which the text can continue to push our understanding of the interconnections among nature, capital and the production of space.

This article draws on research at an eco/feminist peace camp set up to facilitate blockades against clear-cut logging in coastal temperate rainforest in Clayoquot Sound on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, in Canada in the early 1990s. The camp was said to be based on feminist principles and sometimes these were even articulated as eco/feminist principles. The slippage between these terms provides a focus for my discussion. Specifically the article explores the apparent paradox of the sheer vitality of this eco/feminist activism, and in particular its insistence on international connections, in contrast to the widely circulating accounts of the end of feminism, and especially the end of global sisterhood, which emerged in the early 1990s. Thus this article is also necessarily about how recent histories of eco/feminism, including tensions between theory and activism, are narrated. I take as a departure point references to the work of Vandana Shiva and the Chipko movement which circulated in accounts of the camp, and explore ways in which eco/feminists might read such utterances as more than evidence of a naive and problematic universalism. I situate eco/feminism's internationalism genealogically in feminism and eco/feminism and read this as a counter-narrative to the ending of global sisterhood. Through paying attention to various movements, back and forth, between Clayoquot and Chipko, Canada and India, and drawing on Anna Tsing's notion of 'friction', I offer an account of what has been at stake in disavowals of the possibility of reading Chipko as eco/feminist, and suggest the importance of a more generous reading of eco/feminists' attention to the Chipko movement.