Advanced technologies in oil and gas extraction coupled with energy demand have encouraged an average of 50,000 new wells per year throughout central North America since 2000. Although similar to ...past trends (see the graph, this page), the space and infrastructure required for horizontal drilling and high-volume hydraulic fracturing are transforming millions of hectares of the Great Plains into industrialized landscapes, with drilling projected to continue (1, 2). Although this development brings economic benefits (3) and expectations of energy security, policy and regulation give little attention to trade-offs in the form of lost or degraded ecosystem services (4). It is the scale of this transformation that is important, as accumulating land degradation can result in continental impacts that are undetectable when focusing on any single region (5). With the impact of this transformation on natural systems and ecosystem services yet to be quantified at broad extents, decisions are being made with few data at hand (see the graph, this page).
This study considers the contours of the coal transition in the United States from the perspective of local planning responses to coal plant retirements in the U.S. West. Plant closures in the region ...affect a diverse set of geographies and have developed in a complex, uncoordinated policy environment. The study applies an assessment framework informed by economic geography and community planning scholarship to a dataset of 12 planning documents written by and for local communities experiencing coal facility closures. The findings highlight the absence of effective strategies to address lost local revenues, lack of connections between environmental quality and long-term economic resilience, and a range of levels of acceptance of the coal transition. Together, the plans demonstrate the negative consequences of an uncoordinated, contradictory policy environment for transition planning at the local level and the need for policy interventions to address issues of equity and efficiency in this process.
•Planning for the impacts of plant closure in the US West is primarily led by local entities.•Effective planning is limited by the uncertain policy environment and the complex geography of facility stakeholders.•Few plans meet four basic criteria for effective transition responses.•There is an unmet need for a network of state and regional entities to support and enhance transition planning.
Despite the increasing concentration of wealth among high net worth (HNW) individuals and their rising influence as proprietors of natural resources worldwide, the discipline of geography has only ...recently begun to consider the interactions between the contemporary global super-rich and systems of environmental management. This article addresses a gap in the literature related to the social and ecological implications of ranches owned by the very wealthy. Drawing from a life course perspective, we complicate static representations of landowners and examine HNW ranchland ownership dynamics in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem, an iconic conservation area in the U.S. West. Four stories about HNW ranches, compiled through a composite narrative approach, describe how ranch management practices and strategies play out over time and space. The result is a set of management trajectories linked to broader geographies of the super-rich where social-ecological outcomes related to an ability to ranch with, as opposed to for, money reinforces the connections between systems of wealth, elite interests, and land control. Our findings underscore a need for future scholarly efforts attuned to HNW ranch management trajectories as consequential drivers of change in rural areas and critical conservation areas.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Urgency and deliberateness are often at odds when executing conservation projects, especially as the scale and complexity of objectives increases. The pace of environmental degradation supports ...immediate and measurable action. However, best practices for adaptive governance and building resilient social-ecological systems call for more deliberate efforts and participatory processes, which can be slow. We explore conflicts between urgency and deliberateness and the potential for their reconciliation through a case study of the challenges of conserving native rangelands in North America's Northern Great Plains, an ecoregion targeted for global conservation initiatives. This region is undergoing a significant social-ecological transition, which underscores a need to rethink conservation strategies in light of the social-ecological system dynamics and potential future trajectories. Based on a structured narrative literature review process and iterative engagement with key regional stakeholders, we identify three interrelated factors critical to the system's future outcomes that illustrate system complexity as well as trade-offs between urgent and deliberate action and unilateral and multilateral approaches to conservation: (1) influences of land management on biodiversity, (2) economic restructuring and shifting land use priorities, and (3) changing climate and disturbance regimes. We identify key gaps in the literature for each factor and across the factors-an effort that informs our call for research and practice agendas that address uncertainty and complexity at regional scales through more inclusive and future-oriented approaches.
Local economies with immediate ties to coal-fired power generation face acute challenges from energy system transitions, particularly in the United States where energy policy is heavily devolved and ...uncoordinated. This study employs a community resilience and transition theory framework to examine how federal and state policies enable or constrain transition planning in rural, coal communities in the U.S. West. Our mixed-methods approach incorporates policy and document analysis with in-depth interviews with policy experts and practitioners. We find that the absence of a national energy transition policy exacerbates uncertainty for coal communities, and as a consequence, two distinct and diverging policy corridors emerge at the state level. According to expert interviews, existing transition assistance policies do not align with the needs and capacity of transitioning coal communities. Together, these findings highlight the need for policies that coordinate the energy transition and provide opportunities and resources that support communities navigating the social and economic impacts of transition.
•Applies policy corridor framework to assess policies addressing U.S. coal transition.•Lack of U.S. energy policy increases uncertainty for coal-reliant communities.•Two diverging responses to coal industry decline emerge at the state level.•U.S. transition assistance programs are inadequate for rural coal communities.•Policy should provide more certainty, early planning support, and secure funds.
Achieving food security is a critical challenge of the Anthropocene that may conflict with environmental and societal goals such as increased energy access. The "fuel versus food" debate coupled with ...climate mitigation efforts has given rise to next-generation biofuels. Findings of this systematic review indicate just over half of the studies (56% of 224 publications) reported a negative impact of bioenergy production on food security. However, no relationship was found between bioenergy feedstocks that are edible versus inedible and food security (P value = 0.15). A strong relationship was found between bioenergy and type of food security parameter (P value < 0.001), sociodemographic index of study location (P value = 0.001), spatial scale (P value < 0.001), and temporal scale (P value = 0.017). Programs and policies focused on bioenergy and climate mitigation should monitor multiple food security parameters at various scales over the long term toward achieving diverse sustainability goals.
Most of the public lands protected for conservation in the western United States are surrounded by working landscapes of various types, typically in agro-pastoral ownership and use. How these working ...landscapes evolve over time and how their inhabitants respond to various conservation goals will in large measure determine the success or failure of efforts to maintain regional biodiversity. This article contributes to a better understanding of ecological threat on the important private lands of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem by suggesting the ways in which changes in ranch ownership become conservation opportunities or challenges. Relying on a combination of real estate sales data, land ownership data, and interviews with key informants, we assess trends and patterns of ownership change around Yellowstone National Park. The main ranchland dynamic in this region involves the transition from traditional ranchers, typically full-time livestock producers, to a more diverse cohort of landowners, including absentee owners focused on amenity or conservation values in addition to, or instead of, livestock production. We present a conceptual model for distinguishing between different ranch landscapes and discuss some of the conservation implications of these geographical patterns.
The world’s wealthiest individuals own an increasingly large portion of the world’s rural agricultural land and through their ownership, assume unprecedented control over ecosystem processes and ...biodiversity. This critical review considers recent geographic scholarship and its implications for gaining traction in understanding high net worth (HNW) owners as critical components of complex social-ecological systems. Though scholars have begun to question the role of the super-rich in systems of environmental management, questions remain about how HNW individuals influence and shape rural communities and ecologies over time. This review identifies HNW landowners as key constituents of social-ecological system dynamics and examines how they change with the ecological and social systems in which they operate through feedbacks that are unique to the nature of ownership and management of extensive rural properties. To address literature gaps and motivate future work on HNW landownership and rural change, we offer a novel research framework and agenda that integrates affective political ecology and sociology’s life course perspective through a social-ecological systems approach.
Where agricultural land use and biodiversity conservation values overlap, conservation science has tended to focus on the challenges posed by land ownership fragmentation. However, the dynamics of ...land concentration also affect rural landscapes and economies upon which biodiversity conservation increasingly depends. In this study, we provide a methodological approach to measuring concentration using parcel-level data to generate a description of private landownership trends at the boundary of the Northern Rockies and the Northern Great Plains, two ecoregions of global conservation significance. Across our 25m-acre study region in Montana, USA concentration in large land ownership increased by 7 percent between 2005 and 2018. Growth of a county's largest landholding through the agglomeration of properties into a single mega-estate emerges as a recurring trend. Other drivers contribute to concentration, suggesting a mix of conservation opportunities and challenges that merits further research and consideration by academic and resource management stakeholders.
Unconventional oil and gas (UOG) projects have emerged as fundamental, yet often controversial, components of contemporary energy systems. In contrast to the prevailing academic focus on sites of ...conflict, this paper explores why and how the social license to operate succeeds in UOG settings, or how private landowners accept or accommodate development. This paper applies the concept of social license to operate to landowner-industry relations during an episode of coalbed methane (CBM) development in the Powder River Basin, Wyoming. Conclusions draw on forty semi-structured interviews with stakeholders, including industry personnel, oil and gas attorneys, and surface owners that hosted CBM development. The findings indicate that mutual respect, procedural fairness, and trust were necessary preconditions of social license. These three preconditions created an opening for surface owners to effectively engage in private participation and advocate for their instrumental priorities. However, the key priority of surface owners to retain energy infrastructure, instead of demanding reclamation, has contributed to the existing U.S. land-use phenomenon of energy sprawl. Therefore, reclamation policy should aim to secure positive personal outcomes for private surface owners while mitigating against the cumulative environmental impacts of energy production.
•Unconventional energy development occurs on public and private lands in the U.S.•Private participation influences development outcomes.•Surface owners and industry maintain social license for mutual instrumental benefits.•Mutual respect, procedural fairness, and trust were preconditions of social license.•Presence of social license does not translate to positive environmental outcomes.
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